Duck Lake Story; one.

keepin ursus thread vague; a bit of naturalist in there

Loam to clay, clay to grit, grit to lake;
paper crown searches in the watery gloom, as if his reflection will reach for his rotund cheeks and lilt into his ears what he wants to know. The triad and the cowbird had departed from Ursus' claim, where the argent had laid safe and ever-watchful among the poppies and posies. Quailing; spineless ; he knew all too well —

I am no swordsman.
Gossamer-thin patience, withering like lead in flexing digits. And so it is here Astraeus confides his hand-to-mouth woes, streaming from lips, lashes; only so the banks and the water can hear. He assumes he must listen in return, or their oath was just emptily dealt nothings;
but not afore ruminating about what makes him. Oh, father who bore him, was he warlord? And his mother? His prize? Maybe she was some forlorn maiden, who'd fled her son in lusting for hear homeland and her hearth. And him? Was he not her heart; her hearth?

Does his papa, does his Mahler even love him? All those wishy-washy nights where he'd sat in-waiting for those empurples royals to lick a n assuring kiss and his crown a guide him homeward. Was the warden even searching? Or was he besides himself with his real brood, saying the same words he'd spoken to him?

Maybe my father was a swordsman.
gauzy-eyed, bleary, infantile pearls of tears who'd been welling in the sacks of his emeralds, solemn cadence of pitter-patter breaking the still vigil of the lake breaking. Those inscrutable seconds which sorrow drowns every-and-each moment, he mimicries what his so-called papa had ruffed: “Hooo, mein herz.”
a single, last tear that he would ever shed.

Ebbing sadness departs like the flowing of raging river, broken into pieces as it passes him by, now he resolves absently listen to what the earth has to riddle to him...