A Tiny Heart Loaded with Giant Emotions

As the king lay into his bed, exhausted as usual. His brother, John, ran into the room with excitement spewing from every pore in his body.

"Bro, bro!" He ran, wandering through the room to find his brother.

"In the bed." Arthur coughed, telling his brother.

"Ahh, here come, stand up," John shouted, running toward the bed with a measuring tape, pen, and paper.

"Uh, got it." Arthur sat in his bed. "What is it, little brother?" He sincerely looked John in the eyes.

"I have this measuring tape. So, here don't move your head, okay?" John jumped into the bed, standing behind his older brother as he took his measurements.

"What for, Johnny?" Arthur didn't move an inch as he asked his little brother, who kneeled and wrote the first measurement on a piece of paper.

"It's a present. I can't tell you." John stood up to take another measurement.

"I see... Ya cheeky brat, make sure not to stray too much." Arthur chuckled.

"Fine, fine. I want you to see what I have in store for you, me so excited!" John, since birth, was taught to speak, dress, and carry himself properly to uptake the role of king. John was smart. He fluently spoke twenty-seven other languages.

Along with other studies in psychology, manipulation, economy, strategic plans, military leadership, political studies, etc., his older brother taught him more than any of the instructors he had growing up. The lesson was how to be a kind yet dangerous man.

The only person left in Arthur's life was the one who had received the most love and devoted side of him. Arthur was given a gift into which he could pour all his sincere emotions. John grew up fortunate.

"You're done?" Arthur asked his brother as he again kneeled to write down his measurements.

"Hmm!" John hummed as he struggled off the bed.

"Are you not going to sleep with me today?" Arthur asked, grunting while lying back down.

"Ahh, right, this can wait for tomorrow." John walked over to a drawer, placed the stuff down, and ran to the bed again.

"Hup!" He got into the bed and crawled over to his brother.

"Here, get into the covers too." Arthur helped John under the covers.

"So warm!" John blushed, smiling.

"Right!" Arthur agreed as he asked his brother. "Wanna pray?"

"Yes, please." The two brothers slowly sat up in bed. John helped his brother.

"Okay, close your eyes and follow me," Arthur told him, both closing their eyes.

"Oh lord of peace and love, grant us another prospering day full of joy. Hang the sun and moon above our enemy and us, for it is up to you for us humans to live another day beside our loved ones. We pray to you, for ourselves, our family, friends, neighbors, and enemies, bless us all."

The two brothers laid back down, blushing with smiles.

"It's like he heard us, huh?" Arthur asked John after the prayer.

"Yeah, I felt like I was talking to him."

"Right." Arthur smiled, at least from the inside, as his deformed face didn't allow him to. "Now, Goodnight, my beloved little brother."

John seemed to be fast asleep. He was exhausted from today's duty.

Arthur chuckled, watching all he had peacefully asleep. In his eye was an affliction no human or cause could take away from him.

"Should a monster who is feared and cursed feel this way?" Arthur felt hatred towards himself, towards the image he had constructed.

"I've given you what I've not given even father or mother—my heart and soul."

"I never gave my heart to them because father was cruel, but he was fair. He was always on me about keeping to my studies to succeed him." He rolled over onto his back, watching the ceiling now.

"Mother was full of herself and always paid no mind to me. Instead, she cared about the status and wealth of our father. She was harsh and always taught me to place my tiny heart loaded with giant emotions away in a box and to never reveal its emotions to her or father."

Arthur stopped talking, taking a break to catch his breath.

He confessed his feelings to his brother he trusted, but not enough to do so when he was awake.

"When I was your age, I was confined to a tiny space for political studies, and one day mother came to me. She was upset, and her angry words led to physical abuse." Arthur narrowed his eyes.

"She was mad because our father denied her a precious stone that she wanted to be bound to a necklace. With my swollen eyes, I could see her disgust. I could feel her spiritual hatred towards me in my physical pain."

"Sigh... I was foolish. I wanted mother to love me. So I threw away her true intentions and image and created an inaccurate one to bring her to love me with genuine intentions. So I became a man that she kept venting my father wasn't, I learned things she said father had flaws in, and I led armies and obtained victories with no loss like our father never achieved. I yearned for mother's love, which carried me for years, but our parents were slaughtered before I knew it."

A tear drizzled down his cheek.

John was fully awake, listening and crying about his brother's past. This confession of emotions and memories has been expected of John.

He once was unawarely awake while Arthur rehearsed to tell his brother a grand story before death, but death could come at any given time, so John now stays awake and acts asleep to hear his brother's stories.

He knows his brother is dying, and Arthur wants to die without regret. John plans to tell him about it one day so that he can ease his mind and not try too hard to tell a story that he already knows. He wants to speak to his brother genuinely in his last moments so that the brothers can bear no regrets.