All characters 18+.
*****
The night was chill and the light of the piercingly white crescent in the sky loomed over the prince in his chambers. The breeze made his nipples hard and all the hair on his body stick up like sentinel trees. "It cannot be passed midnight yet," the prince thought. He flung the sheets away and stood naked in front of a grand and narrow mirror, admiring himself, as he often did. "My father gave me this," the boy consoled himself, "there is no shame in admiring it." He put on his crimson robes and left the chambers.
He had no real reason to wander the corridors other than to find something to do. He had had trouble sleeping, but when he did sleep, his dreams were littered with frightening images of blood and burning towers. "I am safe in here."
The walls of the keep were built from red, orange and black bricks from a variety of sand found from all reaches of the world. Red sands from the beaches in the south, orange sands from the deserts in the east men have failed to find again, and black sands the Grim Mountain spewed hundreds of years ago, before he and his father had even been alive. The prince trailed his fingers across the bricks, aimlessly, until he happened upon a household guard which he knew as Girth. Why they called him Girth? He had never known. So what better time to ask than in the middle of the night, when the moon still hung high.
"Girth," the prince said, admiring his stern face. A pitch black stubble lined his jaw.
"My lord," Girth said, with a smile.
A silver tooth peaked through his full and pink lips. He had gotten it defending the prince himself from an incoming spear. Luckily only the butt of the weapon smashed into his mouth. When the king asked what Girth wanted in return for saving his son, Girth replied simply, "A silver tooth, to serve as a reminder of my loyalty." And the king had laughed joyously, "Silver? I will have you made a whole mouth of pure gold!" But Girth had declined. And although denying a king would, under most circumstances, have his head lopped off, the king understood the man's humbleness. "If that is what you wish," the prince's father told him.
"You never told me," the boy told the Captain of the Guards, "Why they call you Girth."
"If it please m'lord, my birth name's Garth."
"And so why do they call you Girth, Garth?"
"It was your father whom had named me."
"A jape, I presume?"
"Indeed, m'lord."
"Walk with me," the prince demanded.
The halls of the keep were as quiet as ever, but for the sounds of their footsteps side-by-side.