Coeur.

I obviously cannot create quality titles--something to work on this year :3 I wrote this story during the summer... Enjoy!

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In the city of Coeur, there was peace and beauty. It was a lovely place, filled with lush gardens and grand buildings. All the people lived in happiness and peace, and it was good and beautiful. Coeur was a special place--everyone knew that much. Nobody was quite sure why it was so special, but everyone wanted to live there. Reaching such a perfect place was not simple, though. For Coeur was hidden inside a huge range of mountains, a tiny city dwarfed by the giant grandeur of nature.

But one day, to this small city of Coeur, there came a traveler. Although the journey to Coeur was long and difficult, he came looking as if he had simply taken a leisurely stroll along the city streets. He wore a mask, and clothing dark as the night. Behind the mask, though, was a handsome face--that much everyone could tell. His genteel manner and kindness to all quickly won over the inhabitants of the city. Why shouldn't this well-mannered traveler live out the rest of his days here, in perfect peace and happiness?

So he became one of them. Spoke like them, acted like them. But he kept his dark clothes and mask, so that nobody really knew who he was. At first no one was willing to trust him. They said, "He hides himself with a mask! His clothes are darker than the night! If he does not see fit to share his identity with us, why should we give him our trust?"

But his refined ways eventually won them over. "Perhaps we do not really know who he is, but he is a good man," they began to say. And they accepted him as one of their own.

One day, many years later, he became the mayor of Coeur. The most powerful person in the city.

But everything changed one night. One night, the city woke up to flames. Bright golden fire, devouring all the beautiful buildings and homes and everything that made Coeur lovely. And the masked mayor was gone, along with everything beautiful in Coeur. The city was burning, in agony and chaos. Surely this must be death itself, because nothing in life could hurt this much.

This masked man, the one whom everyone had trusted--he had, in one stroke, destroyed every good thing in Coeur.

This masked man had destroyed the heart of the city's beauty. The city of the Heart, broken beyond repair by a single man in a single night.

{Coeur means "heart" in French}.