Tristan was from the northern country, much further north than waking dream. A traveler of roads less taken, he wore his boots neverendingly, except while bathing for that would be strange. The world’s greatest shot, none in all the territories could shoot a glance with such ferocious rapidity and deadliness of precision. Oddly, Tristan had lost his eyesight many moons past, late in his youth. He found it only recently, in a small box buried in the woods above his father’s grave. Reminded of the world’s perpetual flaws he thus felt vindicated for always holding an exhausted expression across his face, to mask the laughter and tears of a life misspent,
until he met his Isolde-to-be.
Isolde found preternatural delight in describing herself as being a spiritual loan-shark. She had long, long red hair and pale, pale mother ‘o pearl skin. It was not that she could necessarily dance on the air, but rather she could dance on words, frequently riding idle gossip across the lands, simply for the view. On one such breezy flight, she saw her Tristan-to-be. He, in the middle of nowhere and quite late at night, sat up clutching a bottle of rotgut, mysteriously staring into his small campfire precisely as one might stare into the left eye of god.
In lieu of finding words of her own, Isolde stepped out from beneath the midnight and undressed before him. Tristan was thankful for the chance to smile, as of course all things should be thankful for the chance to smile. Their ecstatic howls throughout what remained of the night frightened away the pack of hungry wolves who had been lurking in the shadows, waiting for Tristan’s poison to compel him out beyond foresight. The hungry wolves were profoundly frustrated by the turn of fate.
He was a double negative. She was a double entendre. Together they compounded, like adjectives vexed in the night, prolonging the moon’s waning remorse as though it were the most desperate of run-on sentencing ever begat by good intentions.
In the morning, Tristan and his Isolde and Isolde and her Tristan were awakened by the gentle song of birds. Full of riddles, the day had never been so new. Tristan was still smiling. Isolde was still unclothed.
Suddenly, god (the one with said left eye) unleashed his own giant booted foot down, down, down from on high in the heavens, smashing young Tristan and Isolde into the dirt like the frail things such lovers oft tend to be. It was truly the most fretful of messes, what bloodied and broken piecemeal fragments were left for the hungry wolves to sniff about on that particular bed of the forest’s flowery floor.
“That’ll learn ‘em,” thought god to himself. And he saw that it was good.