The king drifted through the ruins of a long dead kingdom wearing a cape of dead leaves and a crown of broken bones. He does not know how long he has been there, the years had blended together a long time ago. How old was he? Was he still alive? Still human? He no longer knew. The king stopped looking at lakes and mirrors even before he lost track of time.
The people in the nearest town have learned not to come near his kingdom. The king had cursed the kingdom grounds to devour any trespassers after all. At first, many people had attempted to enter his kingdom for a variety of reasons and at the end, all that was left of them was a new leaf on the king’s cape. The same thing would happen to animals, producing smaller leaves. Every few years, a leaf would fall off his cape and the king didn’t know why for a long time.
~-~
These days, the king’s “cape” reached his shoulder blades at most. It had been a long time since any humans had come by and the leaves of whatever animal had trespassed into his kingdom never lasted long. The king had realized that the leaves only fall off once the rest of the natural life of whatever they represented ended. He didn’t want to know what would happen once all of them had fallen.
He was afraid.
One day, he heard something crying. While his memory of the past was hazy, the king could clearly remember the sound of a human crying and the urge to comfort them. The source of the noise turned out to be a small child no more than eight sobbing right at the edge of his territory. “What are you crying for, child?” the king asked, his voice was hoarse from how little he used it.
Startled, the child looked up at him and started sobbing harder. As if by instinct, the king reached out to try to wipe away the child’s tears. This only succeeded in making the child flee into the forest and the king returned to his kingdom.
Later, he would notice that the only one leaf stuck to what had been his cape was one that was not there that morning.
~-~
The next day, the kid came back shouting, “Hey, sir! I know you’re there!”
He didn’t know why but the idea of the kid coming back made the king excited in a way he hadn’t been in a long time. Out of curiosity or because the kid was the first human he’d seen in so long, the king came to meet the child again, sitting right at the edge of his kingdom, unwilling to cross into foreign territory. “If you ran away crying yesterday, why come back again?”
“I was only crying because the ground ate my goat!” the boy huffed then looked away. “My goat and I were born on the same day and Mom says that if something bad happens to one of us, another bad thing will happen to the other too!”
“You did not answer my question.”
“I want my goat back.”
“Your goat is dead. You cannot bring him back.”
The kid pouted. “What are you anyway? Your hand turned into bones yesterday…”
“I am the king of this kingdom”
“That doesn’t explain why your hand became bones” When the king didn’t answer, the kid huffed again. “It’s rude to ignore someone when they’re asking you something y’know. Mom said so!”
“... I do not know the answer”
“Then at least tell me what happened to my goat!”
“It got subsumed by the ground”
“... What does ‘subsumed’ mean?”
“It means that your goat became part of the ground.”
“Why would the ground do that?”
“A curse. It is supposed to keep trespassers away from my kingdom.”
“But there’s nothing there for people to go to!”
The king was about to answer when a voice called out from the forest. The child sighed, “I’m coming Mom!” Before they left, they said to the king, “We aren’t done talking y’know! I’ll come back tomorrow!”
~-~
Sure enough, the kid did come back the next day and the day after that, and soon they fell into a routine. Whenever the kid had free time, they would come to visit the king and the two of them would talk about whatever was on the kid’s mind. The king learned that the kid worked on his family farm as a goat herder and that he wanted to move to one of the bigger cities and see the world. The kid, in turn, learned very little about the king aside from the curse on the grounds and his cape of leaves.
“So if a living thing steps into your kingdom, you get another leaf and if you run out of leaves, you die?”
“Yes.”
“Since the only leaf you have is my goat’s, and I’m seven years old… that means that you have about eight years left!”
“If no other animal is foolish enough to come into my kingdom, then yes.”
~-~
The years passed and the only animals who came were insects and they didn’t provide much time. As the years passed, the king knew he would die soon. It had almost happened several times before the kid’s goat ran into his territory. Both of them knew it was coming, but neither were ready for goodbye. They had become as close as brothers or as a parent and their child.
When the day came, neither of them were ready. The two of them were talking about the kid’s plans for when they were in a city when suddenly the king faded until all that was left were his crown and his bones.
“You left with a smile on your face,” the kid sighed. “Didn’t even finish listening to my plans.” A gust of wind blew, turning the king’s bones into dust. The kid picked up the crown reverently. It was lighter than they thought it would be considering the king had always told them of how it was the representation of his people and how heavy it was to him.
The kid walked to the center of the kingdom and found what he assumed to have been the throne room. With the king’s death, the curse on the grounds had lifted, leaving the kid able to go where he needed to go. After contemplating where they should put the crown, the kid decided to bury it. The crown of the people should be with the people after all. Their mom said so.