A Stony Heart

A Stony Heart (Word Count 1360, Words From List 1)

Ezekiel had watched from his place, high on the wall of a park, for nigh on four hundred years. After all, watching was his job. Cast in stone and bronze, he was a hideous thing to look at. All twisted features and elongated limbs, designed and created to inspire horror and revulsion in all those that passed, designed to scare away spirits long ago forgotten to this world.

As the years slipped by – as only they can for a gargoyle, whose sense of time is more distorted than our own – Ezekiel made note of events of consequence - though they were few in this small town in rural England - and watched for signs of a change he was sure would never come, for he was sure the old ways were long dead.

So he sat and watched, as he had done for centuries and would do for centuries to come. That was until the day she came, they day he stopped watching and started seeing. Could he be more than a watcher on a wall? Could his stone heart love? Is that what this was that struck him so suddenly out of nowhere?

She had come wandering on a bright winters day, the sun warm on her skin but with a bite of chill still in air. Her face betrayed a shadow of melancholy and her demeanour bore an almost palpable sense of sadness.

Some might describe her as plain, others – who may have a smirk on their face as they say it – might call her robust but to Ezekiel she was a wonder to behold.
Arriving at the pond – ducks quacking, hopeful of a free meal – she pushed ringlets of blonde hair from her eyes and wiped a stray tear from her eye. Clutched in her left hand was a ring, a sparkling diamond set at the centre of a silver band surrounded with yet more shining stones. Time stretched on as she gazed at it, glistening there in her fingers, her thoughts elsewhere, on better times.

The sadness slipped from her face to be replaced with an expression so stony that it matched Ezekiel’s own. With a flick of the arm and a blur of motion the ring - a symbol of promise, of happiness and of hope - sailed through the air and disappeared into the murk of the pond, lost to her now forever.

Ezekiel felt ashamed to have intruded in such an intimate moment in her life yet, despite that shame, he was transfixed, unable to tear away his gaze. With a deep breath to steady her shaken nerves, she spun on her heel and marched, victorious and triumphant, toward the exit Ezekiel sat silently guarding.

He did not know what it was to yearn yet, in all his time he had never felt such a primal urge to do more than sit. To do more than watch. A deep and haunting desire rose up with in him to break his stony bonds and leap down from his wall. To take his new-found beau in his arms and tell her all would be fine. To tell her that for centuries he had sat and watched humanity and knew their condition well. She would pick herself up and find someone new to mend her tattered heart. She would find him.

Alas, that was not a gargoyles lot. His legs were not made for leaping or his arms not made for holding. He was an essence bound to a brick, here not to love or laugh but to coldly observe and take note. If he had a heart he was sure it would ache, was sure that the pain that poured through him would shatter his form and free him from this torment.

None of this happened as she walked past him without a glance, not even knowing his need. The last he knew of her that day was the scent of her that drifted up on the breeze, a final act of beguilement that cast this woman deeply in his mind as the true reason he had been placed here in his place on the wall. He must find a way to unshackle himself and be free to love as he knew he must.

The hours, days and months passed by as Ezekiel resumed his silent vigil, the eternal watcher. However, he was now joined by the ghost of that day, the day she came and changed his life. Where once he was cold to the goings on of man, he seemed more sensitive to the currents of humanity, how each little life was a bundle of hopes and fears, joys and sorrows all packaged together neatly in its frail form, clinging on to life until the inevitable end. What had she done to him? What witchcraft had replaced the silent sentinel with this tender monster? More importantly, when would she return to lift his heart once more?

Winter soon gave way to Spring and he caught his first sight of her again, off in the distance through the trees. Though it was only the briefest of glimpses, it was more than enough to arouse the fires of his passion and set his mind aflame.

As the weather warmed her visits to the park became more frequent. Sometimes she came with friends, sometimes she walked alone but always present in her eyes was the tiny trace of sadness that he saw that fateful day not long ago.
His desire to act still burned within, burned so much it hurt, yet what was he - a mere gargoyle, glued to the wall as he was - to do? Nothing is what. He was powerless to do more than watch.

Yet, what was this? As she walked toward him, heading no doubt to her home, her gaze fell upon his gruesome visage and lingered there briefly, not horrified or scared, but puzzled, as if she had never seen him before. Their eyes meet and lingered on each other for a second. The electric thrill that rushed through him as he stared into soft green eyes set in a face he would never touch both lifted him and crushed him.

Without knowing what she’d done to him, she turned away and a well of sadness he did not know was in him crashed open. The impossible began and tears cascaded down his face. The weight of emotion blasting round his mind disoriented him, blinding him to what was happening in the world beyond his stone form.

The emotional storm raged for what seemed an eternity yet stopped as suddenly as it had begun. There was silence around, eerie and eldritch, broken only by the very faintest of tinkling.

His nameless love stopped dead and turned, scanning the ground around her. A puzzled look came to her as she stooped to pick a ring, a simple cut shining diamond set in a brass ring featuring gothic detailing.

Still puzzled she looked around, seeking who may have dropped this ring, where the owner may be. Her search eventually drew her gaze upward, toward the once gurning gargoyle. A different creature perched there now. Its features remained the same yet it’s face was wet, as if it were weeping, and it’s mouth no longer twisted into a grimace of malcontent but – and she’d swear this sounded ridiculous – smiling like the happiest man in the world.

Smiling to herself and shaking her head in disbelief, she unconsciously slipped the ring on her finger and walked away feeling newfound warmth in her life.
He did not know how, he did not care how. This motionless creature of myth and legend had reached out and gifted a part of himself to the woman he had come to love. He knew in his heart that it would get no better than that, there would be no soft caress, but the comfort it brought him in the quiet nights when the rain lashed against him was immeasurable.

She would still walk that park, the gargoyles wife, and she would pause at his gate and offer a smile, a truly genuine, heartfelt smile to her secret stone man.