Daily Writing Challenge: Epilogue
"And so the whole room blazes, flames scouring along those wretched weeds like burning wool," Janus cried as he leapt about, his hands waving in the air as if to mimic the fire of his story. His green eyes scanned the crowd to insure their attention was fully on him, his count was around half of the adults and a gaggle of children sitting on the dry street. It wasn't a bright lit stage of Oxenfurt, but for a midday rabble rousing in the market district he'd take it. Along with whatever ended up in his iron pot. The bard continued on with his tale.
"The witch stood his ground with myself by his side, our hands wide and faces hard to the chaos we unleashed to free the city," Janus again would begin to move about, hands shooting out to show how he through the signs. "Aard! Igni! Aard! Igni! Fire and wind! Power and grit! Flowers bursting and popping all about us as the painful echoing laugh of the dead rang in our ears!"
A harsh cackle was issued from his throat as his arms outstretched like a crucified man, green eyes wild as the gaping maw he stretched his mouth to become. "It laughed as it burned and I as ever laughed back in the face of madness! Ha ha! Burn you black-hearted monster! Burn to the power of the Archefire! Beware the song and stories of the wily pair of heroes who crossed your dark doorstep!"
The bard took on an impressive stance as he propped one foot up on the edge of his pot and looked to the sky with a mighty laugh. The children rapt to his tale were far more intrigued by the man than say the adults meandering the market. Their eyes were keeping watch for more important things like the call for next at the butcher or when the egg man was to arrive. Life on market day.
"Wha happened next?" Piped up a child.
"Aye, did ya die?" A voice from the crowd called out to him followed by a smattering of laughing at the stupid question.
Janus laughed as well, as he pulled his foot down from the pot and did his best to strike another heroic stance. "Die? Hardly. For I was with the witcher, the Archefire himself. Heroes don't let their stalwart companions die. Especially not to a rose bed."
"So what did you do?" A little girl asked from the front row, perhaps no more than five or six, Janus smiling as he slowly crouched down before with a slight wince from a pop in his knees.
"What did I do?" The bard's hands shifting and swirling a moment before reaching into the sleeve of his ratty coat. A beautiful red flower coming to palm as he gently offered it to her. "I lived. I hung on for dear life. I was thankful every creaky step of the way out of that rotten curse of a sewer. The flames consumed it all. Just as before, so too again."
The little girl took the flower shyly and breathed in it's scent as the bard stood up straight again with a wink. "I was saved. My brother was saved. Jamurlak was saved. The only casualty of it all."
Janus was reached up to rub at his short cropped hair, the hairline falling back some to match the deepening crows at his eyes. "My luscious locks. Vanity doth wound the hero, but ever so do they live on."
The bard would take a bow, his coat floating about him as the crowd looked slightly confused by the end of his story but accepting it none the less. His main audience though were quite pleased as they clapped and ran to their parents for a few bits to throw the storyman. A few came forward and dropped them with hollow clinks in his pot that made his stomach ease at the thought of real lunch today.
"Thank you, thank you, thank you," Janus would repeat as he held out his pot to help, surprised even by a few adults who tossed him a coin.
Breathing in deeply the bard would give it a shake and look back to see the young flower girl waving to him with her new red flower. Janus would smile and wave back, some time the job was more than just the coin. Especially in dark times. Sighing softly he would give a soft shake to his pot to hear the clatter and clink with a nod of satisfaction.
With the coins at rest the sounds of the market would swallow him up again and already he could hear other street performers working the crowds as well. A jaunty song carried by the masses as Janus smiled and headed out onto the streets singing along with a yodeling fiddler.
"Mush-a ring dumb-a do dumb-a da; Whack fall the daddy-o, whack fall the daddy-o!"
"There's whiskey in the jar-o."
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