Silver and Diamonds

Moonlight flowed over the snow, turning the hilltop to silver and diamonds. The diamonds were reflected in the sky, where cold stars looked down from black velvet seats. The stage below them was free of trees and perfectly crystalline. 

A man stood dead center, his shadow dimming the diamonds behind him. He wore a thick wool coat and a warm fur cap, but he shivered as though a north wind was knifing through him. His boots creaked as he shifted from one foot to the other, breathing out clouds of gossamer.


A few feet away, a woman knelt in the snow. She was clad in a green dress, edged with creamy stitches, the same dress she had worn when he first saw her so long ago. Long dark hair hung over her face and the moon picked out the argent strands, making her look as old as she felt. The darkness almost hid the blindfold he had wrapped over her eyes, but the moon had found it too, turning black fabric to grey. 

He couldn't look at her, so he focused on the ring on her finger, the only sign of her rank, a red ruby engraved with a rose. Unlike so many of the others, she wasn't twisting the ring around her finger. She held her hands in her lap, perfectly still.

"Please." Her word shattered the glassine silence. It nearly broke him, too. She thought he was toying with her. Dragging the moments out into eons just to watch her crumble under the weight. 

He had to do it.

He could not.

It was his job. He must.

"Please."

She was so different from the others, she did beautiful and clever things. Yet she had stepped over the line, and so, like the others, she had to become as silent as the moon above them. He couldn't do it it, though. He had watched for too long as she spun gold from flax and carried sunlight over her shoulders. She was splintering his diamond with her gold.

"Please."

It took all of his strength not to scream "I can't!" and let the noise resound around them. Instead, he drew the gun from his pocket and slowly, slowly, cocked it.

The world echoed with rolling thunder and the stars watched from above as rubies and rubies spilled over the silver and diamonds.