#fridayflash - Surrender

It was not going well.

Leah squinted at the two figures on the horizon. The shadows were coming quickly - Prince had told her earlier that if the light failed, they were lost. Still, the two men stood, locked in a mysterious battle she couldn’t understand. Prince’s eyes stared unseeing at his opponent, his face a stony mask. The other man, known to Leah only as the Enemy, stared back, his sinister smile sending shivers down her spine. Or had, two hours ago when she had gathered the courage to creep up near them to watch.

But there had been nothing to watch then, and nothing to watch now, except the deepening dusk. She wondered where they really were - were they fighting a physical battle on some unknown planet? Or were they somehow battling wills here in the invisible realm? Leah pulled her coat tighter around her. Was it time? They looked like statues from where she was and she was reluctant to get any closer.


“When the shadows touch this rock, you have to wake me, Leah,” Prince had told her early that morning. “Promise me this.”
“Why?”
“Promise me first.”
“Okay. I promise.”
“If the Enemy holds me until night, I will never live again.”
“But if you lose -”
“If I lose because you wake me, so be it. We live to fight another day. If I lose because of night fall, all is lost.”
“I don’t understand.”
“You don’t need to.”
“But -”
“You promised, Leah. Wake me when the shadows come.”
“How?”
“You’ll know how.”


The shadows had come and Leah didn’t have a clue. She forced herself up the hill again, picking up the pace when she realised that the shadows had completely engulfed the stone. Had she waited too long? She hoped not.
“Prince?” she called softly as she approached.
Nothing happened.
“Prince!” she tried louder.
Desperately, she tugged at his hand as the sun slipped lower and lower, calling his name over and over again.
“You lied to me, Prince! I don’t know how!” she finally yowled in desperation, tears streaming down her cheeks.

A sliver of pink remained in the sky as she surrendered to her final impulse. If this was their last night alive, let her do what she had always wanted to do from the first moment she laid eyes on his roguish face framed by little brown curls. She kissed him. And then he kissed her back.

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Prompt "surrender" from Christine. 

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Also, argh, that doesn't really fit as surrender but... oh well.