Damon June Iondora was squatting on the ground.
The imperial crown sat slightly askew on his dark brown hair, its seven violet-jeweled points catching the pale winter sunlight and scattering it across the frozen grass.
The mantle of the emperor, heavy with threads of true gold, pooled around him on the dirt like a discarded picnic blanket. The hem was definitely getting stained, yet he did not appear to care.
In one hand, he held a small wooden stick. The stick had probably come from one of the skeletal trees lining the garden path, a fallen branch snapped to size. He was using it to scratch a grid into the hard earth.
Two lines across. Two lines down. A game board.
Across from him, also squatting, also with a stick, was Princess Gertrude. She was frowning at the grid, intensely concentrating like a general surveying a battlefield.
