The Symphony, finished.

The dawn light hushed the winds to stillness. No sound of rustling leaves; no chirping of morning fowl to herald the coming of the light. And the animals; they had long left the area. Even the trees seemed to close their eyes for a time.

For a time, the cacophony ensued as rage crazed men clashed metal on metal; shouting; screaming. Dry ground turned to mud as countless fell to bleed upon it.

With stiffening limbs, growing heavier with each gasp for breath, he struggled to rise; perhaps for the last time he thought. The air was wet with the dawn chill. It hang heavier still this morning, tainted with the metallic smell of copper so thick you could almost taste it as you drew breath: the blood of the broken bodies; silent or otherwise soon to be.

The light of the new sun ducked and weaved around leaves and branches to find him leaning against an old oak. He looked down at the beams as they danced across his wounded limbs and smiled mirthlessly at their lack of warmth. His back to the tree trunk so thick and tall it was surely counted amongst the first in this place. An unlikely friend in this last hour.

It had been whispered among the trees of a tale of love that saw a man go to war to rescue his wife from an abduction; and when she was killed to stem his progress, his grief consumed his capacity for compassion and there was no end to his blood lust.

'A king,' he thought. 'Is that all there is?' Knowing that his time was almost at hand he raised his hands; one hand open, knife in the other. Those of his men that stood further came rushing closer as they heard him yell. They found him laying on the ground, panting and knelt about him in a circle.

"I go now to join her," the king uttered breathlessly, and with these words he closed his eyes and breathed his last.

In time, all of it came to nothing more than the forlorn calls of the lost above the constant whimpers and moans of the departing.

Once again the trees opened their eyes and stood poised to watch the last of them that now remained. The victory was hard to tell from the faces of those they watched walking past below.

One amongst them had stood by a dying king; and would go on to whisper the tale of a man that had loved so deeply, that he carved his beloved's initials into the palms of his hands as he lay dying. Thus he would never forget her as he followed her into the next life.

Some say he looks for her still.

Kah'weh