The Darking Prince

I am horrible at dialogue. Anything that someone would realistically say is not eloquent enough for me and everything else is ridiculous if you say it out loud. Which is probably why my characters hardly ever talk. Again, this is another one from the stores of my on-going project. I was thinking to develop it more and connect the dots for the quarter-long English project. Right now I am combing through to try and make it sound better so that when I get down to work it is more actual writing than correcting. I am on the Read-It-Out-Loud stage. The problem with that is that if you read something with a certain voice everything sounds good. I am also biased now that I have had this floating in my head and computer for so long. What can you do? Here it is. This connects directly to the last part that I posted on Pilar. This hasn't been VERY well revised yet, I just wanted to post and see if anyone commented.


"Pilar stayed for a time with the tree-folk of Gilcross Grove, a name given for the stories of merpeople who lived in the lake that comprised the eastern border of the meadow. The trees whispered these stories as well and Pilar was happy to imagine that enchanted world, a portrait that she stored in her mind alongside thoughts of the Darking Prince. The trees brought her this magic and light with no expectation of payment other than her eager and listening ear. With a mind like hunger and an imagination that consumed, Pilar absorbed it all and took her own sort of charms from the tales of sorcery and witchcraft. She began to build her own power, a different sort that came from half-spoken words and the winding wind. And the trees began to whisper of something other than the sovereign led astray and ancient stories of times long gone. They sung now of the witch woman that had found herself in things forgotten and lost. Pilar knew this, and asked of them one thing: that they send a song into the world to bring the Prince to her. For she, recognizing herself in his shadow, could not bear not knowing any longer.
So they sang for her, breathing half-formed thoughts into the hearts of passing souls, so that villages were uneasy with some unknown need. Restlessness passed hands until it found the Prince in his hall of shadow and fire, and gave him a desire to go out into the world to see the white of the hated snow. Her call had gone forth from the wood, and he answered it without thought. Perhaps he knew that his heart had been found at last or maybe she was simply too powerful too ignore. In any case, he came to the Grove on his black mount, a lost and bewildered look twisting his sure and handsome features. In the center, by the lake she waited.
Like a boy, that lost child that he had been, he wished to run to her, to go to her with trust and love in his heart. For he did love her already. He saw her and he loved her because she was sunshine in his world of cold and grey. She was happiness where he had thought there was none left. She was good in his cruel and wicked soul. And he wanted her, needed her warmth in his frozen heart just as his darkness completed her light. He wanted, but the dark Prince that he had become was wary and shrewd. His mount led him to the edge of the clearing and his lost look left him as he observed the scene, as any proper hunter would, beholding his prey. She too watched and listened, and saw from the way the wind bent the trees and the snow glistened ever so slightly more in patches that the Prince had arrived. Both hunter and hunted, the Prince knew when he was seen. His black cloak billowed out behind him like dark wings as he stepped towards his future.
She met him halfway, walking barefoot through the snow as she had for years before and would continue to for years into the future. His own heavy boots stomped and crushed unwittingly, no thought to the destruction below. They stood looking each other over, into each others eyes, his of the deepest black of night, unwinking and without stars, hers the lightest green of ivy leaf on a summer sprig. They stood like that for an hour, perhaps two. Or so it seemed to them.
“So,” he said at last, breaking their long-held silence. “You are the witch woman who disturbs my wood. I had thought you would be older.”
“And you are the Darking Prince in whose heart I have walked. Your blackness is not so great as they have told me, my liege,” she replied, a small smile pulling her lips up at the fold.
Her slight and almost mocking levity shocked and frightened him; accustomed as he was to the fear of those below him, he knew not what to do with her friendship. So he answered with the smallest whiff of menace on a frosty voice, “Who is it that tells you such false tales, witch?”
“None you could punish, my lord,” she returned lightly, “if you do not know their names.” He stared her down for some time, as if she suddenly might quail and give him a name, betray fear, the one thing he could not allow. She simply stood though, and a smile stole across his lips at last. Here is a fearless one, he thought. Here is one to match me."