Style Challenge

            Weeping girls; scared women, blonde, brown-haired, and curled; shiny knights; wealthy men and proletariats; all from the palace, all from vending fruit, from sweeping the streets with the carelessness born of boredom, and rushed to the perimeter of the kingdom to relinquish their sadness, if they could. The weather was dreadful, the air suffocating, the humidity thick as if an ocean inhabited at the atmosphere. Perspiring, marching with haste, gossiping about the fate of a doomed neighbor, the villagers and the knights descended upon the great barrier that separates their great kingdom from the sprawling countryside, a region ripe with thieves, crazed wanderers, and despicable beasts. Oh how exciting was the scene, oh how depressing was the scene; the setting sun seemed full of hope, the setting sun seemed full of dread; the pathway to the lost friend was paved with happiness ever after, was paved with sadness ever after. Now, now, now was the time to act.

            In a frenzy of motion all the village men acquired their supplies and their composure (the ladies fetched pails of water and food for it was going to be a long day at the edge of town). The knights burst through the crowd with their ladders, and, riding their horses, they approached the immense brick wall that separated their humble kingdom from the chaotic wilderness that surrounded them. One by one, the knights lined up to the wall and linked their ladders together using the hardware supplied to them by the generous village men. Each man whispered words of encouragement and hope to the other; they were determined to rescue their poor, lost king from the top of the wall.

            King Hubert was a unique personality; frizzy, unkempt, black hair; eggshell white skin; bright blue eyes and dark pupils. What a man he was in his youth, always concerned for the welfare and happiness of subjects, always the best in the practice of diplomacy. But then his sons died in battle. Oh he could not bear their loss; the poor man went mad months after and periodically wound up in the strangest of places, like today, he sat mysteriously atop the outer brick wall of the kingdom.

            Frantically, the knights tried to scale the immense barrier that currently served throne to their deranged leader. Shouting words of hope, the knights exclaimed that they would be up soon, that he need not worry, and that he must absolutely not leap from the towering wall. But those words fell silent to the ears of the king who sat and stared at the horizon dreaming of his boys who lay asleep, cradled in the arms of angels. Ignoring the pleas and the cries of the knights and the village men and the village ladies, the king jumped from the wall and hurtled toward the ground below. Smashed and dull, his golden crown drifted in the pool of blood that formed at the feet of a most saddened, heavy-hearted people.