The Noble One

by Mike Mayak

Princess Talis smiled as she looked around Paolo’s Bar and Grill. Not the place one would expect to find a princess but at least the food was worthy of someone of royal lineage, if in taste if not in reputation. She sighed. This was a strange country, America. She glanced at the small shelf behind the bar. Just room for a bottle, a little figurine, a helmet from that strange game they called “football” (not the football she knew!) and the small painting of the Moon setting over the ocean with a deep purple sky.

She smiled again. She had done that and gifted that to the bar with thanks for the time they had fed her when she had been thrown out of her apartment. No way to treat a Princess, even an exiled one. That had been three years ago.

It was afternoon and there were few people in the bar. A grey haired man sitting at the bar, wearing a ballcap and a sweater and a burly, younger man becoming frustrated with the pinball machine in the corner. With an angry snarl he slapped at the machine and strode to the bar.

“I want a beer,” he snarled.

The bartender who looked barely old enough to drink himself, said “I think you’ve had enough.”

“I want my damn beer,” he snarled again.

The bartender cleared his throat and politely said “Andy, no more for you. Okay?”

The man was going to say something else when he glanced in the mirror behind the bar and saw the Princess. He turned around and smiled.

“Well, whaddoo we have here?” the man said. “A real pretty little thing too.”

The Princess might have momentarily been flattered. But she had seen his kind before.

“I am…Talis,” she said.

“Cute little furriner,” Andy said with a smirk. “Your kind is costin’ us jobs and causin’ all kinda trouble here. You need to go back where you came from.”

“Where I came from no longer exists,” Talis said thinking of her Father and their vanished island principality. “I wish I could say the same for you.”

Andy’s eyes flashed with anger and for a moment Talis saw a flicker of dark purple in the eyes but then another voice cut in.

“I think you’re bothering her,” said a male voice. The grey-haired man from the bar was standing behind them. He was broad shouldered with a determined look on his weather beaten face. “I think you ought to leave. Or at least leave her alone.

Andy clenched a fist and swung at the man, who ducked and grabbed his shoulders and slammed him against the wall.

“I said LEAVE!” the grey-haired man yelled in Andy’s face.

Andy pulled free, glared at the Princess and then the grey-haired man then stalked out the front door. After a moment, they heard a motorcycle engine revving and leaving the parking lot.

The Princess stood up. She was almost imposing and elegant in her flowing robe of dark blue, matching the painting, with flowers printed like a well-planned garden. She wore what looked like a turban covered in spangles like jewels. The fabric was a light tan that matched her skin.

“I am the Princess Talis of Talar,” she said. “Now living in America. I am in your debt.”

The grey-haired man inclined his head slightly. “That won’t be necessary,” he said. “I’m Alonzo Norton. A fortuneteller told me a long time ago I was the reincarnation of a Knight so I shouldn’t be surprised to meet a Princess at Paolo’s.”

Talis smiled. “You are The Noble One,” she said. “And I see in your eyes the flash of green, the banner of ones destined to battle Angra Mainyu. For it was he who controlled the man you defended me against.

“Angra Who?” Alonzo asked.

“The, what you might call demon who overran my Father’s kingdom and made me flee. I fear this will not be his last attack. And now you have angered him so he may come for you too.”

“Well, I was in the Gulf so It won’t be my first battle,” Alonzo said. “If I was a Knight once it must be my destiny.”

“To defend against evil, Noble One.” Talis said.

“No greater honor,” Alonzo said, inclining his head again. “No greater honor.”

—end—