The Bard

How many times can the story be told
of a beautiful girl and her quest for gold?
Can youth and ambition stay firmly bold
when passions wane and embraces grow cold?
Or will she regret the price for which her soul was sold?

And so the story begins…

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Melina was the third child, born on the third day of the third month in the ninth year of her parents’ marriage.  Another family would have thought their daughter lucky, to have such an auspicious start to life.  Another family may have been right.  Melina’s family, however, was among the poorest in the valley.

As soon as she was able to hold a brush, Melina’s family sent her out to work, scrubbing floors in the homes of merchants and minor lords.  By the age of eight, she was doing dishes, and at eleven, laundry.  On her thirteenth birthday, Melina left home for good to become the chambermaid of Lady Cecily d’Argent.  Of course, her wages were still sent to her father, so any appearance of freedom or escape from her childhood was merely an illusion.

Thus, Melina found herself on her sixteenth birthday, drawing water for her Lady’s bath.

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A wandering bard has entered a medium-sized tavern on a brisk autumn night. After he has eaten his dinner, the barkeep approaches and asks if his visitor would mind entertaining the other patrons of the establishment. The bard obliges and begins a story about a young woman named Melina. As he starts to speak, a cloaked stranger slips into the tavern and takes a seat at a corner table.

Style notes:

The bard will occasionally drop in a poetic break to either summarize or foreshadow events in his tale.

Melina is, essentially, a gold-digger. Will she find the true meaning of love over the course of the bard's tale?

updated Nov 19, 2008 by RejectedMuse