The castle was a home of arm-deep walls, the stones of yesteryear hewn and stacked. Its door and shutters were well kempt oak; how they sang of their forest days. Within the floors were a yawn of warm and sunny squares, heat radiating from below. And into it the sunlit shone through windows two-men tall. Doorways led left and right, stone steps rose up and up. Such places are made for family and more, for a happy crowd of hearts.
The castle rose upon the hill as if it had woven its stones from the most golden of early sunrays.
In those times of the sword, of armies with their philosophy of plunder, the castle was our safeplace, our cocoon, our fortress. For we lived together. That's how we survived, everyone needing one another. From the fletcher to the baker, we were the castle, we were the heartbeats within the rock.
The evil kings were the ones who lived only in the Money-Nexus, who valued only the treasures of cold metal. The good kings were connected to the Love-Nexus and had the philosophies that saw creation and mankind as the upmost treasures of their kingdom. The ignorant saw castle walls of rock, we saw our method of protecting whom we love. You could say that we came to have different Gods, those lectured to by either good kings or bad, the latter losing the ability to tell the difference between virtue and vice, so easily misled, so barbaric and vile.
The castle was bold on the blue beyond. It stood there as if conjured from the storybook of a child. It was perfect. Amy imagined unicorns in the courtyard, because if those towers could exist, why not? Every stone was even and square, as if those who built were set on perfection, as if they really loved what they made. They were walls made to protect a community, to echo with laughter and be the shelter they needed for the millennia to come.
The castle walls are the strongest thing for miles around, yet when Rose looks carefully she notices the stones. It is built of stones of varying sizes and shapes, each one unique. From a distance it is uniform grey, from up close it is a mosaic of humble rocks, each of them nobody would think anything of were they loose by the roadside. But together they are a castle, the crown of the landscape and protector of ancient peoples.
We stood upon the drawbridge, upon the ancient wood. At one time this was where the horses passed over, where they carried the goods into the citadel within. This was more than a castle; it was a home for everyone in these parts.
In the days of the good king, the castles made peace with one another. We traded goods and inter-marriage was normal. In that we grew stronger and the golden age began, the days of the rise of magic.
If one has a heart to plunder, to be the wrong sort of king, I suppose a castle is what you need. I suppose if you want so much more than any man or woman has a right to, then you need tall walls of stone... for your castle and your mind. I imagine these people are lonely behind such rocky towers, paranoid as they fill their world with weapons, each as deadly as the last sin they inflicted on the less powerful. How they preach, those greedy ones who sit and guzzle, taking whatever and whomever they please. Yes. I can see why they would need to live in a building such as that... grand and empty, dank with small windows and surrounded by their own filth. It's just perfect.
The castle was a tower of rock amid the jolly green, a fine accompaniment to the bonny foliage.