Hi there all: I know I keep starting up new stories, and really, I will go back and finish the other ones instead of just starting up new story after new story. Really, I will.

This one is great. It’s based off a dream I had while on a trip with my family to the coast up in Rockaway Beach. The dream reminded me greatly of the movie “300” but I decided not to have it a fanfiction for several reasons, among them being that I of course haven’t yet seen that movie, so how close can it be? And also, I had to fill in all the holes in the dream to make things make sense.

Longer summery: Two boys, friends since adolescence, one a prince, and the other a childhood friend, later his personal guard. These two grew up with the knowledge that war could enter their lives at any time, and when the prince became king, and his guard became leader of the king’s men, war did appear on the horizon. They stood strong against the enemy….at first.

When war is upon them, and they will fight until their last breath, until every enemy has been cut down, and every threat…..vanquished, if only it were that simple. By the time this war is finished, lust will flare for many; betrayal will cut threw a trust decades old. Battling both their fatigue and their enemies, these men will mourn their defeats, rejoice in their victories and change their lives.

This is written in three parts, and will be interesting to write. I have never written anything entirely from the point of view of males before. Besides that, I’ve never written from the POV of children. Yes, part 1 of this story is from the POV of the main two boys as children. It will include lot’s of little boy things, and will be generally cute, but will have a darker side.

Part 2 is their later teenager years and early adult years. This will contain some of their first encounters of romance, as well as responsibility, death, and heartache.

Part 3, is where the war gets really nasty. This part includes things such as betrayal, and a lot more death.

By the way, don’t mind the name of the prologue below. There isn’t any guy on guy/Yaoi/gay stuff in this story.

Owning each other’s hearts:

Part one:

By: Night Silver

Chapter one: The Male Snow White.

To swear one’s life to someone is not something to be taken lightly, for you are binding yourself, soul and body, to that person. Your life is there’s for the taking. In that moment, your life is not as important as theirs. Your life is to be thrown away, abandoned even into the fiery depths of hell, all to make sure they never loose theirs to the same fate.

If you swear, your life is already abandoned.

If you so swear…

Ah, forget that shit.

Nobody believes that pile of duck-dung anymore. These days, those words are only spoken by scholars and nobles trying to upkeep reputation and appearance. “Those teachings are ancient and sacred,” my teachers have drilled into me time and time again. “They are to be respected and followed.”

The truth is though, the belief in all of those sacred teachings died when the belief in the goddess did. Those days when war took our lands into it’s keeping, squeezed us for fifteen years, letting the life drain out of us drop by drop, until there was nothing left of our great kingdom but a puddle of despair on the floor that had once prospered.

War took from us more than lives and land. They gave us more than casualties and pain.

Like traders cloaked in disdain and conceit, their hoods covering their lying orbs called eyes, their hands in pockets, hissing “danger,” they came portraying the appearance they were laden with gifts, when in fact, they were laden with death. It was as if the grim reaper walked ahead of them, and each place its toes whispered, his warriors followed.

They brought us war. They drizzled us red rain. They taught our fields the meaning of being barren, and they taught us what it meant to be alone.

I grew up never alone…people were at my side everywhere I went. I was never alone…but loneliness skipped along ahead of me, as merry as the grim reaper was jubilant leading his own followers.

As a child, loneliness left me well alone.

When I approached the days of courting, loneliness graced me, but it was only to teach me the blissful lesson of appreciating loving company.

And when I left boyhood behind me for good, loneliness took my hand, but not to teach me. It ran ahead of me, leading me along, hissing in my ears, wavering in front of my eyes, tickling my toes as I slept…loneliness possessed me, and took me as its own son.

I have sworn my life to only two souls. One was a public affair, half done only for politics sake. The other was a secret between me and one other. It later became public as well, but no one ever knew that that promise had been made as children, long before loneliness ever graced me.

When adolescence had just begun to descend upon my young ignorant shoulders, I made a promise truer and more dangerous than any commitment I would ever make. I released a part of my soul, and let him keep it, just as he gifted me with a segment of his.

That was back when those teachings still mattered, when the goddess mattered to this kingdom.

I never lost faith.

If I did, then the promise I made would dissolve into a pit of flames, and with it, would go the piece of my soul that I had relented to him.

I would never be whole again.

So I will never loose my faith.

Even if I loose everything else.

Which is a likely outcome with war. War may very well take everything from me, leaving with me nothing but the ruins of the things I built. Were it to leave me with nothing, I would if I would dissolve into the pit of what it offered?

Or perhaps, as it is told in fairytales, would I be saved at the very last moment? Would he swoop in and stop the last swing of the sword? Would he keep my head on my shoulders, instead of letting it take to rolling across the dead field of flowers that he and I had played upon as children?

Would he save me from that fate?

He’s saved me so many times before after all. So many times did he put his life in front of mine as a shied for my body and my mind. How many times he took a wound for my sake?

But he had reason for all those. That was after we had given each other a piece of our souls. What about before that? The first time he saved me, he had no reason to.

He saved me.

He was a little boy when he ran through the kingdom’s forest for the first time. He was only 8 years old, tripping over his own feet, blood running down his back. He didn’t know why he ran, he later told me. He didn’t know why he was going where he was going. He just knew the message the female had told him when he’d begun this race.

“Lucas, you must run right through this forest. Do not stop. Speak to no one until you reach a field, and beyond that, the castle Gwenlin. Go inside, and let them take care of you.”

Lucas, only 8, ran merely because she’d told him. He didn’t know why he listened to her words without question or doubt. Lucas never told me why he did. He insists he doesn’t remember. I believe him. I have always believed him in everything.

Years later, I still wonder if that was a good idea.

Lucas tripped over branches on the forest floor hidden in mountains of snow, and got hit in the face with those he couldn’t see in the fading light. Scratches on his bare feet and hands were bleeding. He was too numb to take notice, just as he didn’t notice the bleeding lashes across his back. He doesn’t remember why he has those either. I later told him they looked like whip marks.

When Lucas, clad in only a pair of brown leather breeches, and a bearskin coat over a bare chest, shoved his way past 3 tall bushes with vines that tangled his legs, he lost his balance and tripped. He fell to the ground, getting a face full of snow. He curled up a moment, and then looked up. He saw a stream, frozen over with ice.

Lying on it was a younger version of me.

I had shoulder length black hair splayed across the ice with a light layer of snow flakes covering it, in fact, snow covered every inch of me in a soft sheet. It lay on my midnight eyelashes, closed so peacefully. It lay on my fingernails, long and curved perfectly, and on my bare chest. I wasn’t shivering, because I was unconscious.

Lucas had only one thought: This boy looks like snow white.

Lucas, as if his mind were as numb as his body, didn’t even consider the dangers of what he was already doing. He crawled to the edge of the iced over stream, and put one hand on it. He reached out toward the boy totally immobile on the ice, but he was out of reach. He put two hands on the misty surface, and felt the burning coldness of it shoot up his tiny arms. Still, he crawled onto the surface, his whole body having now left the snowy bank. He grabbed the tiny pale hand that felt almost as cold as the ice supporting him, and began pulling him back to the bank. He dragged the boy with the perfectly snow white skin an inch at a time, never pausing for breath until both of them were safely on the snow bank. He collapsed there, my small sleeping form beside him, my back to the snowy surface of the forest floor, and my hair now a tangled mess from being dragged.

Lucas did perhaps the nicest thing someone had ever done for me in my life. The next thing he did….in all of my 8 years of living at that point, no one had ever done something so self-sacrificing for me without having ulterior motives.

Lucas removed his bearskin coat made for winters, and wrapped it about my shoulders, tugging my arms into the sleeves. Once it was on, and buttoned up my front, he began dragging me the same way he’d been heading. He held onto the scruff of my shirt, and almost never stopped except for when he tripped. He stumbled, he shivered and shuddered, but he never once let go of the boy he dragged.

He never abandoned me.

He crossed the wood, and entered upon the field. It was coated in white, hills and hills of shinning silver that looked like heaven to Lucas. He pushed onwards, his tiny body about ready to give, when he saw the tallest spire of a grey castle. When he finally crossed the sea of white hills, and saw the gates of the castle 20 feet in front of him, the bare shouldered and shivering child could go no further. He collapsed, unconscious, just as the noise of a horn blared. From the gates of the castle Gwenlin rushed 2 people clad in velvet coats and crowns upon their heads, concern written into their wrinkled faces. They fell to the side of the black haired boy with the bearskin coat, and touched his face. They carried him into the castle, and it was the guards who carried Lucas in after me.

Lucas. How many times did I say his name after that? It was so amazing. Now, I even look back on it and I smile. Lucas saved me, when he didn’t even know who I was. He saved me without knowing where I came from, or that I had run away. He hadn’t known my last name, or who my parents were, or who I would be when I grew up.

He didn’t know he’d saved the prince of Gwenlin. He didn’t know he’d saved royalty. Therefore, he hadn’t any logical reason to save me at all. He hadn’t known who I was, and yet, he had still helped me, saved me from death.

No one had ever done that before.

That was the first time he did something for me that he didn’t have a good reason to do. Over the next several years, I believe I gave a piece of my soul to him, and he gave me a piece of his. With that promise, we’ve chained ourselves together.

Therefore, even if the war takes everything us from me, I’ll still have him.

Right?