"Gather round one and all, for the tales of adventures far and wide, by your gracious provider ...Elliot!" Suddenly all sound stopped, and dark emotions filled that void. Fear, Anxiety, and all those common emotions that come along with it. Yet the greatest of them all was not any of them; it was euphoria.
'A dark treacherous feeling, this was wrong wasn't it?'
Relishing the feeling of taboo, the villages children met on the plains, just out of sight of their parents a bit to the north with the back drop of the woods surrounding it and a hill on the end. The centre of attraction, was the aforementioned boy wearing ragged clothing, just as the rest of them. Yet his pale skin held no blemish, his hair a gleaming blond as well. Yet his hands, were so horribly callused that you could use them to scrape sandpaper. In few ways could he be seen as a commoner, yet he still lowered himself beneath them as he performed his play.
Elliot told a story, one of magic and myths, a genre older then time itself, but he decided to start it with his signature start, just to differentiate himself from the rabble.
"Knowledge is powe-arurgh?!" He bellows from the bottom of his lungs, before being rudely interrupted by many scrambling children, scared of their parents catching wind of it. Not that he cares much, relishing the sheer emotion running through them.
Lightly swatting their hands from his face, they quickly retract their hands almost looking at him with fear. Before he crouches down and whispers to their ear.
"Have no fear my friends, people care a lot less about you then you think." He said in an almost whimsical tone, with such joy that it made a few children cringe at its sincerity. Such a cold comment delivered with a righteous smile, worse of all it might have been meant to comfort them. Their reactions brought joy to his face, if not because they would openly dislike his tone, it would be because now they wouldn't interrupt.
"Ahem," He said as he beat his rags to get their attention. "Long ago, before the many attacks of the northerner, even before the 3 great hero's of our land." A gasp left the audience, but by just raising a hand they stopped.
"Before, the idea of mystic arts, maybe even before the conceptualisation..." Now he had lost them, he nigh-instantly realised his mistake, using such big word for such small things. Clicking his tongue, he damned his noble heritage for rearing its pompous head." ...creation of our lands." A wave of understanding sweeps through the audience. His smile falters for but a moment, before his voice forces a sense of cheer.
"There was a great dragon who's mighty tail curled around mountains, and who's head towered over clouds..." from his a finger, a long string of vines seemed to ripple into reality, before spreading throughout the air like snakes slithering on land. They settled just a metters above their head, before slowly coming down to form a sort of canopy around them. From that canopy, a form emerged; a perfectly refined dragon head formed entirely out of wood and leaves, poked its enormous head out of the canopy that had now taken on the wisps and twirls of what seemed to be clouds.
"And a scholar who could question him."
On his next finger, a Stickman looking just as in awe of the great creature above it as the people that Elliot entertained.
Then the cocoon finally shut itself from the outside world.
Unauthorized usage: this narrative is on Amazon without the author's consent. Report any sightings.
------------
Around 20 minutes later there was a small crack in the wooden shell, then it started to come apart like a flower in bloom. Each petal revealing the fleeing form of children, sneaking back to their home in the village, trying as best as they could to hide their awe of their experience.
Then final petal fell and revealed Elliot, sending waves to them as he leisurely strolled South to his own home. As the petals shriveled and wilted, so did his mood. This was the most he could interact with them, because a noble always had to be "distinguished" and "elite". Higher and mightier then all.
Even in their place of residence.
A fairly large house sat at the top of the hill, just barely making itself known; it tried to make itself look bigger, like a child puffing out their chest. It's glass work was shoddy at best, a few windows so small that even a child couldn't fit through them. It's priorly painted white ,walls now stood with their painting peeling off, with the hideous red bricks showing just underneath. A piteous state of affairs for a house once called "noble".
'Well we are still noble, but only in blood you know?' He thought to some invisible crowd he deemed right to entertain.
As he walks back to them, he believes that he has, even if slightly, bridged that gap. Not between the aristocracy and the Common folk, but him and the commonfolk. He couldn't even know at this point if he would be considered nobility, with the dissapointment that he was.
Though, if their was one thing to improve on for his life...
A smile spread on his face.
It would be that his comment to the children didn't especially land well.
'Such stupidity, thinking that telling people they don't matter could comfort them.' He lampoon's his failures, with a smile straighter then the thorns of a rose. Showing not even the slightest sign of his lament, in his arrogance.
'This must be why Kenny is inheriting, he would never make such an egregious mistake!' He thought, with bit of jump in his metaphorical step.
Sure he maybe just a tad more skilled at the mystic arts then him, but that never seemed to matter...
Politicking, marrying and all those other things that Elliot wasn't privy to seemed to be the only thing that mattered in this world. Sadly, Elliot was horrible at anything other than telling lies and his little garden.
'Whatever, not like I would ever want that drab of a lifestyle.' His thoughts turning to the ridiculing of noble structure, how dull it was. No need for journeying, no grand adventure, just controlling what you could and conquering what you couldn't.
He much more liked the stories of his brother, of the many adventures that he told him of and the...
'No need to think of that again.' His thoughts cut like cold ice through his growing ambition, lacking any of the cheer present before.
Most of them he had told as tales to the people at the villages, well mainly children...completely children actually.
Completely distracted, he didn't notice the low, orange glow coming from the house.
Then suddenly, as If it was a dragons layer, a burst of inferno shot from the nobles house straight for him. Yet he had an almost dismissive attitude about it, eventhough it was closing in on him faster then he could protect himself against.
Like a python, it suspended him in the air and wrapped tightly around him pushing his ribs together in a tight squeeze of... Love?
"You're a bit early then I expected, did my stories not provide a good tale for them?" A figure started to outline itself in the flames, tall yet not towering, broad but not brutish, muscular yet not muscle bound. The perfect blend of any characteristic, wielding a redder head of hair then the boy in his arms along with a much less angular face. On top of all of that, he was in the most pristine of attire that one could think of, almost princely in its cleanliness. The perfect hero of sorts.
'Exactly why he is the family heir.' Kenneth Cole, was the name of the man who held him up in his arms with a bright smile on his face. Also his brother.
As to not cause alarm, he feigned thinking before responding. "Yes, they were dreadfully dull. I had to make up a new one on the spot."
His experssion seemed to fall for a moment, before being painted over by intrigue.
"Oh and what was it?" He said with a slight, wrap of his non-existent chin hair.
"I depicted you as a brutish, misguided dragon and myself as the fair scholar." Speaking in the flattest tone imaginable he did so. For a moment, he believed that Kenneth had actually believed him, as his face seemed to scrunch up for a moment. Sadly, the only thing it would scrunch up into was a faux laughter, that he had to suppress to not alert our parents.
"How...interesting." His face quickly sobered up as a hint of ...Reminiscence(?) Seems to play upon his face for a moment.
Oddly, He didn't press for details, maybe he might have caught on to its actual meaning.
'...' Staring at his brothers fleeting form, Elliot seems to be deep in thought, the smile having already melted off his face. Face flattened into an almost inhuman stare. Silently, they shared a solemn understanding.
Elliot shadowed his brother, just as he always did.
Treading on the formerly blackened grass, that seemed to regain its lustre with each of his steps.
"You should stop doing that..." He said with a low tone, just out of ear reach of his brother.

