This didn't seem to work very well in the Road Trip, maybe if I'd put it in about 2 months ago it would have, but it doesn't fit now so Ill put the rough draft here rather than waste it.
Basically its the story of Actors bird and how it got bound to him.
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They gathered around the old man in their maddness as he spoke to them a story of the old times.
The people were all insane, they thought that their world was nothing more than an illusion created by some people called watchers, they thought that they were nothing but figments of a forums perverted imaginings.
Some of them had fled the back corridors where the bodies piled higher than the sky. Some had awoken in such places and did not dare speak of it.
While the Watchers watched and the Expatriots returned to their beginings the People walked to the far sides of the world. Looking away from their prison and walking the longer roads not built for them.
The old man was waiting for them there. He called himself the Story. And his arms and legs were twisted and mangaled as if in his past much damage and pain had crossed him, as though a million ants pulled him in a million directions and all that they achieved was for naught.
"I will tell you all a tale of a girl, cursed to live forever."
The crowd became silent as The Story began to speak, his tale begining.
"She was a child in the old kingdom, a place of magic and monsters, her name was Diana. The feudal lord of her tribe claimed her as his own after her parents died in the plagues. The lord over her was a kind man, his people were looked after and the field would overflow from his care and his peoples tireless work.
"Her life as his servent was a hard life but a good one, she worked in the daylight and slept in the night times. Never learning to read she was entrusted to clean his libraries and the libraries of his long vanished son as well as the bedrooms of both men. The books in the libraries called out to her, cursed as they were but she could not heed their wishes, being unable to read the dark words left in their pages.
"There came a time, as always these things did, that the prince returned from his time away from the kingdom, in that time the prince had become an acomplished mage, his wizard skills were sought after across the lands. And he made all things that could happen happen to those they paid their coin.
"One day an old lady came to him and asked him to raise from the dead her lost grandson, a child barely six months old killed by wolves and he told her what he told all that came to him for help: 'For coin I serve and Sever. For coin I Serve and Sever.'
"She said she had but one coin, so old that the mud crusted over it was hard as stone. But it was a coin and she thrust it into his hands. Small and cold the coin burned in his hand and he stared at it for ever more time than was custom.
"The prince thought himself worth more than this womans old and dead coin so he took the coin and hid it within his coat from her and said once more: 'For Coin I serve and Sever. For Coin I Serve and Sever.'
"So she went to leave the palace, alone, but before she bit her finger off, turned and spat on the doorway to the Princes library, cursing it and the next person to walk through the doors.
"Before the prince could warn anyone of the curse the girl Diana walked through the doors to clean as was her task and she was struck into a horrible sleep from which she could not be awoken from.
"The Son of the King tried everything within his power to revive her and could not. Soldiers were sent to find and bring the old woman to heal her but she had long vanished into the woodlands. So stricken was the Kings son that he went into the dungeons below the palace and asked the King of Death whom his father had trapped below the world long ago for aide.
"His father had fought the king of death one night two hundred years earlier, from his death bed he laid a trap and the king of death leaving him below he earth for many years, without food and water he withered into a frail skeleton of a man.
"The King of Death looked the prince over and said: 'For Coin I serve and Sever. For Coin I serve and Sever.' so the prince gave him the coin he had taken from the old woman. The king of death looked at him again and said: 'For Coin I serve and Sever. For Coin I serve and Sever.' so the prince gave him all the coins he had and the god of death said: 'She is alive when I walk free forever now and forever be..'
"So the prince unlocked the doors holding the King below the ground. As the king walked out of the building a chill went up in the air and a Dove sent from the place beyond the world flew into the Palace and lay next to the Dying girl.
"The Prince saw the life in the dove and guided by the very force of life and death itself he took a sword and cut from the girl her heart and fed it to the dove. The bird suddenly stopped moving as if for a moment struck by the gods own fury and then it breathed in deeply and became a blackened Hawk, the fire in its eyes burned beyond the room.
"And then when the bird did, the girl blinked. Her body was alive but she could not move to live, conected forever to the bird. And the prince cursed the old woman, curse the King of Death and cursed his now dead father, whom the King had visited on his journey to the surface.
"And so the prince locked her body and the bird in the tallest tower, sealing the door the windows and the roofs. All the while his guilt ate at him, and search did he for decades for a cure to the curse until his pain began to eat away at the kingdom. His father was dead and the crops began to fail. Soon he died as well and the lands fell into curse, to never be walked on again.
"Many years later a thief seeking the treasures of the old kingdom challanged the curse, walked the lands and broke into the palace seeking treasure, he climbed up to the highest tower and found inside it the girl, still with her eyes open staring into the sky. The hawk stuck in a cage hanging next to her.
"The Thief knew about the curse and believed that by eating her heart the bird had been granted imortality. So the thief cut her eyes out and swallowed them. Within moments the Thief was screaming in pain and agony as his own eyes began to burn, cursing the girl he grabed her bed and the birdcage and threw them out the window and then, in his blindness he jumped after her.
"Landing on the ground he found himself still alive, unable to see, he gropped around the ground till he found the girl and he carried her body as far as he could until he found an old man chopping wood.
"The old man looked him over and said: 'For Coin I serve and Sever. For Coin I serve and sever.' So the thief gave him the girl saying that his coin was life everlasting if he could get back his sight.
"The old man looked at the theif and took a knife and cut open his stomach, removing the eyes. Upon removing them the Theif could see again and then died from the wounds.
"The old man looked at the girls body and took his knife and cut her open and took out her brian and fed it to the bird which began to claw at the theifs body.
"The old man took the knife once more and cut her open and took out her soul, small and golden he melted it in a pot with the eyes and made a stew from it.
"Many days later, his son, comming home from the Wars wanted to know how the bodies had come to be there and the old man gave him the stew and said: 'For Coin you Sever and Serve. For Coin you sever and serve.' and his son suddenly screamed and could see the roof of the forrests, could feel the winds rising under his wings."
The man called the Story shifted in his seat, the people watching him intently.
"He had joined the girl and the bird in eternity, his father wanting him safe on the battlefields had made him drink the stew, but in time he died and his child one day asked why he could see from the birds eyes. And his mother answered: 'For coin they served and severed. For cursed the coin will be, forever from her saddened eyes, your children will eversee.'
"So the child and his children from that day foward saw the world from twin eyes, watching the universe from their Shoulders the Girl was never free again."
The people looked at the old man and in time one of them spoke up: "So what happened next?"
The old man looked at them all, slowly rose from the rock he was sitting on, he spoke: "They lived until they died, and then the bird went to the next. And to this day the bird flies bound to the body. It is bound by the King of Death's curse. All for a single golden coin."
"The girl sits, waiting inside her cage, for the last page when she will be free. And I know that that day will not come soon enough for her."
And with that the Story walked away from the crowd and left them to their own conclusion.
_________________ "Why can't we go back to living like cavemen? I know it was a rough and ready existence - the men where always rough and the women were always ready! " - Santa.
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