Flash Fiction: The Rising Sun.

    Here was the Shadowglenn Valley of Carneland, razed to the ground. Plumes of smoke rose into the damp air from campfires. Homeless elves huddled around them, devastated. 

    We’re too late. Lord Meridin of Errthenshore had his people hand out blankets while he marched on with five of his best soldiers. As they neared the palace, shapes came into view, towering, monstrous, yet now benign. The trolls had not noticed the rising sun. Now nothing but stone statues, they remained frozen on the threshold. The door lay on the ground. 

    As the elves walked over the door, it rocked as though something was beneath it. At a nod from their master, the soldiers lifted it and propped it against the wall. Meridin’s eyes welled with tears as he looked down at the two crushed bodies. These elves had wings – they were high-born, like him. Not a guard or servant in sight. They died defending their own home.

    Meridin raised his hands to his head and folded his own wings tight. “Let us search for survivors.”

    In the uppermost chamber, under a sheet on a large bed, a small shape wriggled. Sword drawn, Meridin led his soldiers forward. He pulled back the sheet. Dropping his weapon, he fell to his knees. Meridin pulled the small, winged infant to his breast. Both cried.

    They took him outside to his people. He was newborn, and none knew his name. Meridin’s wife, Sheanni, stepped forward, their own daughter strapped to her back.

    “We must stay and salvage his land, help his people. We’ll care for him as our own.”

    Meridin nodded and smiled through his tears. “We will name him ‘Erloff,’ from the ancient tongue,” he announced. “It means ‘the rising sun,’ and it is what saved him.”

© V. H. Stone