The Shattered Covenant of Stormhaven
A vessel limps, its sails like widows’ veils,
To pierce the mist that smothers Stormhaven’s stream—
A home once carved in sunlight, now gone pale.
Here strode he forth, a youth with iron creed,
To distant drums that stole his springtide years;
Now shadows cloak the warrior’s gaunt rede,
His eyes twin coals extinguished by salt tears.
The jetty creaks, a harp of rotting wood,
Its notes the dirge of all that time erodes.
No clasp of hands, no voices understood—
The harbor wears despair like ragged clothes.
Yet in his breast, a locket’s ghostly weight:
*”By ash and ocean, I return or die.
Though tempests rend the hinges of fate’s gate,
Our vows shall outlast stars that bleach the sky.”*
Through lanes where memory and ivy twine,
He tracks the path where cherry blossoms fell,
Now choked with weeds that strangle each decline,
Each step a dirge, each stone a sentinel.
The cottage door, once crimson as dawn’s blush,
Now hangs ajar—a wound in splintered gray.
Within, the hearth’s cold maw and ashen hush
Proclaim the sunlit hours long fled away.
*”Elara!”* echoes through the rafters’ bones,
A name once sweet as clover-mingled rain.
The wind replies through fissures’ hollow moans,
And in the gloom, a figure, frail as pain.
Her hair, once flaxen harvest ‘neath the moon,
Now silver webs on shoulders bowed and thin;
Her hands, which wove their promises in June,
Now tremble like the moth that seeks the flame.
*”You live…”* Her whisper rustles autumn’s death,
*”The sea gave back what war had snatched away?”*
He moves to clasp her, feels her fleeting breath,
Yet in her gaze, a tempest holds its sway.
*”I kept the oath—no bullet found its mark,
Though blood and thunder drenched the trampled mud.
Each night I gripped this locket in the dark—
Your face my lodestar through the reek of blood.”*
Her fingers trace his scars, a chart of woe,
*”What wars are these that steal not life but light?
Your soul, once clear as mountain runoff’s flow,
Now bears the taint of endless slaughter’s night.
The man who swore to shield our sacred ground
Returns a specter clad in battered mail—
The storms you fled have here, alas, been found;
Our crops lie drowned, our children sallow-pale.”*
He turns toward the window’s fractured eye,
Where once green fields embraced the cobalt strait.
Now marshlands sprawl beneath a sickly sky,
The lighthouse choked by tendrils of fell fate.
*”While cannons roared across the eastern fen,
I dreamt these shores untouched by sorrow’s hand.
What blight has crept where paradise was then?
What claw has gored this Eden’s throbbing heart?”*
*”The sea,”* she sighs, *”rose fierce as dragon’s ire,
Its maw unhinged to gorge on all we wrought.
Through seven winters, waves of molten fire
Have gnawed the cliffs where your last vow was caught.
I kept the faith, though tides devoured the lea,
Though neighbors fled and plague stalked door to door.
Each dawn I scanned the desolate, debris-strewn sea—
But hope’s a crutch that splinters on death’s shore.”*
The locket burns against his calloused palm,
Its engraved vow now acid to the touch.
*”I swore to break the tempest’s rabid calm,
To guard these lands—my honor pledged as much.
Yet while I chased the phantom cries of ‘glory,’
The true war raged where my heart dared to dwell.
Forgive this husk that returns with its gory
Tales—each breath now tastes of salted hell.”*
She lifts a cloth, unveils a sunken frame—
A child’s portrait, eyes extinguished coal.
*”Our Tomas… when the fever came,
He fought three moons, then fled its barren toll.
I buried him beneath the rowan tree
Where first we pledged our troth in better years.
He asked for you with every labored breath—
‘Why stays my father in that land of spears?'”*
The soldier crumbles, armor rent at last,
His battle-wept resolve now hollow reeds.
*”I carved no grave, raised no stone to the past—
My hands, trained solely now to plant death’s seeds.”*
He stumbles seaward where the breakers howl,
The locket hurled into the rabid foam.
*”Let vows be drowned where shattered timbers prowl—
What use are oaths when all one loves is gone?”*
She finds him there at dawn, a salt-bleached wraith,
His boots embraced by seaweed’s cold caress.
No dirge but gulls that mock the aftermath,
No shroud but mist that palls his last distress.
The cottage door now gapes, a toothless maw,
As winds excise the remnants of their tale.
The sea still chants its liturgy of war—
Where once dwelt hope, now only stones bewail.
Thus Stormhaven keeps its covenant with grief,
Two lovers’ ashes scattered to the surge.
The locket sleeps where kraken and reef
Entwine with vows the ocean dared to purge.
No ballads grace their unremembered rest—
Just crashing waves that never cease to mourn,
And far-off wars that carve in the world’s breast
New wounds where other hopes will yet be born.
