He'd always dreamed of knights. Scattered across his floor in a constellation of colors, little jousters astride their steeds, plastic smiles thundering across the great desert of the old beige carpet. His own little world, there inside his mind, and as he grew he carried the dream of swords and songs tucked away in his heart.

Things had faded away, as they do.

He grew and changed, dreams shifting from the flutter of banners in a clear blue sky to the green and mud of the world, but the dreams still remained. The years thundered past, a faint clatter of hooves through the books, through the mud and the quiet buzz of fluorescent lights. Like a knight, some distant part of him thought, when he stood before a flag with right hand raised. He didn't think too much after that, for a while. A storm of screams and the dull pop of bullets overhead, the trickle of sweat in the sun and the weight on his back dragging down right to his bones.

But the day came, when he stood there in black and white, a glint of gold on his body, and a sword. Like a knight, part of him said.

The world wasn't too much different, after all, for knights, he found. And not at all for dreamers who tried to get close to being one. Meetings and long, slow days in the summer sun, the shuffle of reports and the crack of rifles on the range always present in the distance. So he wrote, to capture the magic again. In the small hours of the morning and the late ones of the night, a thousand stories flowing out to feel the feeling of banners in the blue again.

She had always dreamed of being a knight, she'd told him soon after they met, a silly story spinning from their pens together, the ink mingling and mixing across an ocean. His lunch was her dinner, her breakfast his smiling slumber, and voices raced across the world, eventually. Faraway worlds and friendly words drew closer until it felt like there was no distance at all, and he felt a smile take root in his chest when he read her latest. A few words in a foreign tongue traded, whispers in the night.

Things had faded away, as they do.

He grew and changed, the reports shifting to numbers and dates drawing near, the memory of that moment trapped like a banner in the clear blue sky. But the dreams remained. Buried deep, as the weight of the world tugged at his shoulders, and the sea fell away in great gray ships behind him, until he was under an older sun.

Wheels turned and the sun beat down, and he had been there for days, weeks, months. All the same, a convoy in and a convoy out, the dusty rattle of an old dirt road under the weight of the new world's tread, until-

A flash of blue in an ordinary day, the weight of armor and the world lensed dark behind his goggles, a familiar wisp of a voice in the bustle of a crowd. Dirt thumping under his boots as he ran, the dreams rising again, a heart roaring back to life and a brain furiously denying the odds.

His voice was the same, a smile on his lips, as he slid past the market stall and she heard that soft twang again.

Dreams have a way of coming back, he thought as they stared, thundering across the great desert of time. Like a knight, part of him said, and the world fell away into the clear blue sky.

I got the seed of this idea from another DPP'er, so I can't take complete credit for the concept, but the idea's been niggling at me for a while. Maybe it's a bit of myself in there, and maybe I was just gunning for a certain feeling, but I think it works. Some ideas you just need to write when they pop into your head, y'know?

As usual, I have many other prompts in my post history to peruse and play, and please feel free to check out my profile.