This Was My World

There was a time when I knew the words to use. I knew too how to make the gestures that took hold of the fabric of this world and twisted it into new shapes. I knew the secrets that underlie this world and I knew how to use them and turn them to bring about my desires.

Now though, I have forgotten so much.

I cannot remember the words and my hands can no longer shape the air. The secrets under the world we call reality are lost to me. I no longer even know where to find them, not any more.

There was a time – it seems long ago now – when this world was full of possibilities to me. I could use my power to turn it all and shape it all. It was true too, that the more I used those powers the more they grew.

Until I held this world in the palm of my hand.

Kings cowered before me. Emperors offered me everything from gold to land to their own daughters, just for a favourable glance from me. By shaping reality, I shaped their worlds, created and destroyed kingdoms and empires wherever I willed.

This was my world.

Until I found the price for keeping it.

Not only did those kings and emperors shower me with gift and titles, fame and glory. Not only did those rulers send their daughters, wives, sisters, and noblewomen to me as gifts for me to use and discard at a whim. Not only did they offer me portions of a world I could already make my own with a word and gesture. They did far more than that.

They sent assassins and killers, armies and murderers against me. They tried to kill me in every way a man can die. Some even sent their daughters to me, with them either knowingly or unknowingly, carrying the means of my death from concealed daggers to poisoned bodies.

They, the rulers of this sorry world, needed me alive, but wanted me dead.

There came a time when I could trust no-one. A time when I spent the nights unable to sleep, listening for the assassins that hid inside every shadow around me. I was always listening for the sound of marching armies carried on every breeze that ruffled my curtains. I lay awake at night sniffing for the poisoned air that my latest princess breathed out as she lay sleeping on my bed. Tensed against the concealed dagger she held waiting for me to close my ever-watchful eyes.

There came a time when it was all too much and I could no longer have the energy to scheme, fight and conqueror.

So, I died.

At least, they all thought I did.