TBC Publishing Pride Month Flash Fiction Challenge, 18 of 30
Title: The Guardian
Author: R. Scott Tyler
Genre: Fantasy
Word count (500 max): 477
Every hundred years, the enchanted island of Liraeth selects a new Guardian—someone bound by magic to protect the land, yet doomed to eternal solitude. When Aeron, a gentle-hearted herbalist, is chosen against his will, he braces himself for a life of loneliness among the spirits and storms.
Aeron must relocate to the Guardian quarters overlooking the harbor, where all the ships arriving at and departing from the island dock. During the relocation, many of his herbs die or wither on their branches. “How am I to be the guardian of anything if the only tools at my disposal are unhappy with their new surroundings?” he wonders after a week of losing some of his most important plants. “I will certainly bring ruin to the island.”
But one night, a shipwreck brings Kalen, a mysterious sailor with a cursed past, to the island’s port. Since it is Aeron’s duty to keep the island safe, he must greet each new ship and its passengers as they make landfall. When this enigmatic and heavily damaged ship arrives at port, Aeron feels a cloud come over him that doesn’t clear until he meets the sailor known as Kalen, traveling in chains aboard it.
Something in his mind compels him to request that the man be entrusted to his watch, and Kelen is brought to Aeron’s quarters in chains.
Aeron assesses him and inquires about his only possession. “Stranger, what is it that you bring onto our fair island? I am its guardian, and nothing gets past me to our home.”
“My name is Kalen, and I can see I won’t be a stranger for long,” he replied, looking around the big room filled with sickly-looking plants. “For I am known to be a healer and herbalist, such as yourself.” With that, he gently handed over the bag tied around his waist.
Aeron peered into the bag, filled with seeds and dried items, some of which were unfamiliar to him. He then looked up at the man in chains in front of him, surprised, and said, “Then why did you travel in the ship’s hold in chains?”
“Simply put, I chose to heal the wrong sort of person. One that was known not to follow the prescribed ways of living,” Kelen replied, lifting his head slightly to show his pride in his statement.
As the two men grew closer, Aeron’s plants and the seeds Kalen added began to bloom in strange, new ways, defying centuries of understanding and magic. Aeron’s potions were now twice as strong as before, and the two were head-to-head, creating new combinations beyond either’s knowledge. Their new potions, along with the burgeoning friendship between them, would either heal the island or transform it into something entirely new and possibly dark.
Aeron was torn between his loyalty to the kingdom and his fascination with his new friend, Kalen.
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The Hierophant. Tradition, conformity, the importance of knowledge in established systems.
