The Talking Sword – post 1

Clutching her blanket possessively, four year old Dawn walked into the family room.

“’m scared, Daddy.”

Her father looked up from the bench where he was scribbling in a notebook.

“Scared of what?”

“A funny noise.”

“Oh? What kind of funny noise?”

“It’s a monster growling.”

“Sweetheart, I’ve told you before. There are no monsters. There is nothing in the darkness that isn’t there during the daytime. Now, I have to finish this and it’s past your bedtime. Now off you go and I’ll be up in a few minutes to tuck you in.”

Dawn turned and headed back to bed. But as she walked past her parent’s room she heard the noise again. It sounded a little bit like the cat purring, but not quite. It was not really like any noise she had heard before.

She went inside, and saw a box of polished timber resting on top of the blanket box at the foot of the bed. Pausing, she could just hear that strange noise again. It sounded like it came from inside the box.

Little fingers slid trembling across the slick varnish, then found a simple brass catch. The lid lifted smoothly, revealing a swathe of red velvet. The noise seemed to be getting louder.

Dawn lifted the corner of the velvet, and caught the gleam of metal.

She lifted the velvet higher and saw that the metal was actually a sword. It was snoring.

“Wha…? Wazzump? Who is that? Is it you Lucca?”

“It’s Dawn. I didn’t know swords could talk.”

The sword looked at her. It didn’t have eyes, but somehow Dawn knew that it was looking at her.

“You didn’t know swords could talk? Well I didn’t know that little girls were allowed to sneak around in the middle of the night and wake people up. I guess that makes us even.”

Dawn smiled. The sword sounded like her grandfather when she woke him up from a nap on the couch, all grumpy but smiling at the same time.

“I heard a monster. Daddy says there are no such things as monsters, but I heard it.”

“No such thing as monsters? Hmph. I’ll tell you how to deal with monsters. You keep looking for it, and when you find it you give it a good hard whack, alright? Now close the box and let me go back to sleep.”

Dawn dropped the velvet back into place, and closed the lid down. Then thinking for a moment, she picked up the box in both hands. It wasn’t as heavy as she thought it would be. If she was going to give a monster a good whack, she knew just what she was going to whack it with.

Not long after, her father quietly opened the door to Dawn’s room, a smile spreading across his face as he saw her cuddled up under her covers, her pile of teddy bears in the corner of the bed against the wall.

Then he looked closer. Buried under the pile of bears was the sword box.

“Help me” came a plaintive voice, muffled by all the fake teddy fur.

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