#theme: storge

[queenlucythevaliant]

Tell Your Dad You Love Him

A retelling of "Meat Loves Salt"/"Cap O'Rushes" for the @inklings-challenge Four Loves event

An old king had three daughters. When his health began to fail, he summoned them, and they came.

Gordonia and Rowan were already waiting in the hallway when Coriander arrived. They were leaned up against the wall opposite the king’s office with an air of affected casualness. “I wonder what the old war horse wants today?” Rowan was saying. “More about next year’s political appointments, I shouldn’t wonder.”

“The older he gets, the more he micromanages,” Gordonia groused fondly. “A thousand dollars says this meeting could’ve been an email.”

They filed in single-file like they’d so often done as children: Gordonia first, then Rowan, and Coriander last of all. The king had placed three chairs in front of his desk all in a row. His daughters murmured their greetings, and one by one they sat down. 

“I have divided everything I have in three,” the king said. “I am old now, and it’s time. Today, I will pass my kingdom on to you, my daughters.”

A short gasp came from Gordonia. None of them could have imagined that their father would give up running his kingdom while he still lived. 

The king went on. “I know you will deal wisely with that which I leave in your care. But before we begin, I have one request.”

“Yes father?” said Rowan.

“Tell me how much you love me.”

An awkward silence fell. Although there was no shortage of love between the king and his daughters, theirs was not a family which spoke of such things. They were rich and blue-blooded: a soldier and the daughters of a soldier, a king and his three court-reared princesses. The royal family had always shown their affection through double meanings and hot cups of coffee.

Gordonia recovered herself first. She leaned forward over the desk and clasped her father’s hands in her own. “Father,” she said, “I love you more than I can say.” A pause. “I don’t think there’s ever been a family so happy in love as we have been. You’re a good dad.”

The old king smiled and patted her hand. “Thank you, Gordonia. We have been very happy, haven’t we? Here is your inheritance. Cherish it, as I cherish you.”

Rowan spoke next; the words came tumbling out.  “Father! There’s not a thing in my life which you didn’t give me, and all the joy in the world beside. Come now, Gordonia, there’s no need to understate the matter. I love you more than—why, more than life itself!”

The king laughed, and rose to embrace his second daughter. “How you delight me, Rowan. All of this will be yours.”

Only Coriander remained. As her sisters had spoken, she’d wrung her hands in her lap, unsure of what to say. Did her father really mean for flattery to be the price of her inheritance? That just wasn’t like him. For all that he was a politician, he’d been a soldier first. He liked it when people told the truth.

When the king’s eyes came to rest on her, Coriander raised her own to meet them. “Do you really want to hear what you already know?” 

“I do.”

She searched for a metaphor that could carry the weight of her love without unnecessary adornment. At last she found one, and nodded, satisfied. “Dad, you’re like—like salt in my food.”

“Like salt?”

“Well—yes.”

The king’s broad shoulders seemed to droop. For a moment, Coriander almost took back her words. Her father was the strongest man in the world, even now, at eighty. She’d watched him argue with foreign rulers and wage wars all her life. Nothing could hurt him. Could he really be upset? 

But no. Coriander held her father’s gaze. She had spoken true. What harm could be in that?

“I don’t know why you’re even here, Cor,” her father said.

Now, Coriander shifted slightly in her seat, unnerved. “What? Father—”

“It would be best if—you should go,” said the old king.

“Father, you can’t really mean–”

“Leave us, Coriander.”

So she left the king’s court that very hour.

 .

It had been a long time since she’d gone anywhere without a chauffeur to drive her, but Coriander’s thoughts were flying apart too fast for her to be afraid. She didn’t know where she would go, but she would make do, and maybe someday her father would puzzle out her metaphor and call her home to him. Coriander had to hope for that, at least. The loss of her inheritance didn’t feel real yet, but her father—how could he not know that she loved him? She’d said it every day.

She’d played in the hall outside that same office as a child. She’d told him her secrets and her fears and sent him pictures on random Tuesdays when they were in different cities just because. She had watched him triumph in conference rooms and on the battlefield and she’d wanted so badly to be like him. 

If her father doubted her love, then maybe he’d never noticed any of it. Maybe the love had been an unnoticed phantasm, a shadow, a song sung to a deaf man. Maybe all that love had been nothing at all.  

A storm was on the horizon, and it reached her just as she made it onto the highway. Lightning flashed and thunder rolled. Rain poured down and flooded the road. Before long, Coriander was hydroplaning. Frantically, she tried to remember what you were supposed to do when that happened. Pump the brakes? She tried. No use. Wasn’t there something different you did if the car had antilock brakes? Or was that for snow? What else, what else–

With a sickening crunch, her car hit the guardrail. No matter. Coriander’s thoughts were all frenzied and distant. She climbed out of the car and just started walking.

Coriander wandered beneath an angry sky on the great white plains of her father’s kingdom. The rain beat down hard, and within seconds she was soaked to the skin. The storm buffeted her long hair around her head. It tangled together into long, matted cords that hung limp down her back. Mud soiled her fine dress and splattered onto her face and hands. There was water in her lungs and it hurt to breathe. Oh, let me die here, Coriander thought. There’s nothing left for me, nothing at all. She kept walking.

 .

When she opened her eyes, Coriander found herself in a dank gray loft. She was lying on a strange feather mattress.

She remained there a while, looking up at the rafters and wondering where she could be. She thought and felt, as it seemed, through a heavy and impenetrable mist; she was aware only of hunger and weakness and a dreadful chill (though she was all wrapped in blankets). She knew that a long time must have passed since she was fully aware, though she had a confused memory of wandering beside the highway in a thunderstorm, slowly going mad because—because— oh, there’d been something terrible in her dreams. Her father, shoulders drooping at his desk, and her sisters happily come into their inheritance, and she cast into exile—

She shuddered and sat up dizzily. “Oh, mercy,” she murmured. She hadn’t been dreaming.

She stumbled out of the loft down a narrow flight of stairs and came into a strange little room with a single window and a few shabby chairs. Still clinging to the rail, she heard a ruckus from nearby and then footsteps. A plump woman came running to her from the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron and softly clucking at the state of her guest’s matted, tangled hair.

“Dear, dear,” said the woman. “Here’s my hand, if you’re still unsteady. That’s good, good. Don’t be afraid, child. I’m Katherine, and my husband is Folke. He found you collapsed by the goose-pond night before last. I’m she who dressed you—your fine gown was ruined, I’m afraid. Would you like some breakfast? There’s coffee on the counter, and we’ll have porridge in a minute if you’re patient.”

“Thank you,” Coriander rasped.

“Will you tell me your name, my dear?”

“I have no name. There’s nothing to tell.”

Katherine clicked her tongue. “That’s alright, no need to worry. Folke and I’ve been calling you Rush on account of your poor hair. I don’t know if you’ve seen yourself, but it looks a lot like river rushes. No, don’t get up. Here’s your breakfast, dear.”

There was indeed porridge, as Katherine had promised, served with cream and berries from the garden. Coriander ate hungrily and tasted very little. Then, when she was finished, the goodwife ushered her over to a sofa by the window and put a pillow beneath her head. Coriander thanked her, and promptly fell asleep.

 .

She woke again around noon, with the pounding in her head much subsided. She woke feeling herself again, to visions of her father inches away and the sound of his voice cracking across her name.

Katherine was outside in the garden; Coriander could see her through the clouded window above her. She rose and, upon finding herself still in a borrowed nightgown, wrapped herself in a blanket to venture outside.

“Feeling better?” Katherine was kneeling in a patch of lavender, but she half rose when she heard the cottage door open.

“Much. Thank you, ma’am.

“No thanks necessary. Folke and I are ministers, of a kind. We keep this cottage for lost and wandering souls. You’re free to remain here with us for as long as you need.”

“Oh,” was all Coriander could think to say. 

“You’ve been through a tempest, haven’t you? Are you well enough to tell me where you came from?”

Coriander shifted uncomfortably. “I’m from nowhere,” she said. “I have nothing.”

“You don’t owe me your story, child. I should like to hear it, but it will keep till you’re ready. Now, why don’t you put on some proper clothes and come help me with this weeding.”

 .

Coriander remained at the cottage with Katherine and her husband Folke for a week, then a fortnight. She slept in the loft and rose with the sun to help Folke herd the geese to the pond. After, Coriander would return and see what needed doing around the cottage. She liked helping Katherine in the garden.

The grass turned gold and the geese’s thick winter down began to come in. Coriander’s river-rush hair proved itself unsalvageable. She spent hours trying to untangle it, first with a hairbrush, then with a fine-tooth comb and a bottle of conditioner, and eventually even with honey and olive oil (a home remedy that Folke said his mother used to use). So, at last, Coriander surrendered to the inevitable and gave Katherine permission to cut it off. One night, by the yellow light of the bare bulb that hung over the kitchen table, Katherine draped a towel over Coriander’s shoulders and tufts of gold went falling to the floor all round her.

“I’m here because I failed at love,” she managed to tell the couple at last, when her sorrows began to feel more distant. “I loved my father, and he knew it not.”

Folke and Katherine still called her Rush. She didn’t correct them. Coriander was the name her parents gave her. It was the name her father had called her when she was six and racing down the stairs to meet him when he came home from Europe, and at ten when she showed him the new song she’d learned to play on the harp. She’d been Cor when she brought her first boyfriend home and Cori the first time she shadowed him at court. Coriander, Coriander, when she came home from college the first time and he’d hugged her with bruising strength. Her strong, powerful father.

As she seasoned a pot of soup for supper, she wondered if he understood yet what she’d meant when she called him salt in her food. 

 .

Coriander had been living with Katherine and Folke for two years, and it was a morning just like any other. She was in the kitchen brewing a pot of coffee when Folke tossed the newspaper on the table and started rummaging in the fridge for his orange juice. “Looks like the old king’s sick again,” he commented casually. Coriander froze.

She raced to the table and seized hold of the paper. There, above the fold, big black letters said, KING ADMITTED TO HOSPITAL FOR EMERGENCY TREATMENT. There was a picture of her father, looking older than she’d ever seen him. Her knees went wobbly and then suddenly the room was sideways.

Strong arms caught her and hauled her upright. “What’s wrong, Rush?”

“What if he dies,” she choked out. “What if he dies and I never got to tell him?”

She looked up into Folke’s puzzled face, and then the whole sorry story came tumbling out.

When she was through, Katherine (who had come downstairs sometime between salt and the storm) took hold of her hand and kissed it. “Bless you, dear,” she said. “I never would have guessed. Maybe it’s best that you’ve both had some time to think things over.”

Katherine shook her head. “But don’t you think…?”

“Yes?”

“Well, don’t you think he should have known that I loved him? I shouldn’t have needed to say it. He’s my father. He’s the king.”

Katherine replied briskly, as though the answer should have been obvious. “He’s only human, child, for all that he might wear a crown; he’s not omniscient. Why didn’t you tell your father what he wanted to hear?”

“I didn’t want to flatter him,” said Coriander. “That was all. I wanted to be right in what I said.”

The goodwife clucked softly. “Oh dear. Don’t you know that sometimes, it’s more important to be kind than to be right?”

.

In her leave-taking, Coriander tried to tell Katherine and Folke how grateful she was to them, but they wouldn’t let her. They bought her a bus ticket and sent her on her way towards King’s City with plenty of provisions. Two days later, Coriander stood on the back steps of one of the palace outbuildings with her little carpetbag clutched in her hands. 

Stuffing down the fear of being recognized, Coriander squared her shoulders and hoped they looked as strong as her father’s. She rapped on the door, and presently a maid came and opened it. The maid glanced Coriander up and down, but after a moment it was clear that her disguise held. With all her long hair shorn off, she must have looked like any other girl come in off the street.

“I’m here about a job,” said Coriander. “My name’s Rush.”

 .

The king's chambers were half-lit when Coriander brought him his supper, dressed in her servants’ apparel. He grunted when she knocked and gestured with a cane towards his bedside table. His hair was snow-white and he was sitting in bed with his work spread across a lap-desk. His motions were very slow.

Coriander wanted to cry, seeing her father like that. Yet somehow, she managed to school her face. Like he would, she kept telling herself. Stoically, she put down the supper tray, then stepped back out into the hallway. 

It was several minutes more before the king was ready to eat. Coriander heard papers being shuffled, probably filed in those same manilla folders her father had always used. In the hall, Coriander felt the seconds lengthen. She steeled herself for the moment she knew was coming, when the king would call out in irritation, “Girl! What's the matter with my food? Why hasn’t it got any taste?”

When that moment came, all would be made right. Coriander would go into the room and taste his food. “Why,” she would say, with a look of complete innocence, “It seems the kitchen forgot to salt it!” She imagined how her father’s face would change when he finally understood. My daughter always loved me, he would say. 

Soon, soon. It would happen soon. Any second now. 

The moment never came. Instead, the floor creaked, followed by the rough sound of a cane striking the floor. The door opened, and then the king was there, his mighty shoulders shaking. “Coriander,” he whispered. 

“Dad. You know me?”

“Of course.”

“Then you understand now?”

The king’s wrinkled brow knit. “Understand about the salt? Of course, I do. It wasn't such a clever riddle. There was surely no need to ruin my supper with a demonstration.”

Coriander gaped at him. She'd expected questions, explanations, maybe apologies for sending her away. She'd never imagined this.

She wanted very badly to seize her father and demand answers, but then she looked, really looked, at the way he was leaning on his cane. The king was barely upright; his white head was bent low. Her questions would hold until she'd helped her father back into his room. 

“If you knew what I meant–by saying you were like salt in my food– then why did you tell me to go?” she asked once they were situated back in the royal quarters. 

Idly, the king picked at his unseasoned food. “I shouldn’t have done that. Forgive me, Coriander. My anger and hurt got the better of me, and it has brought me much grief. I never expected you to stay away for so long.”

Coriander nodded slowly. Her father's words had always carried such fierce authority. She'd never thought to question if he really meant what he’d said to her. 

“As for the salt,” continued the king, "Is it so wrong that an old man should want to hear his daughters say ‘I love you' before he dies?” 

Coriander rolled the words around in her head, trying to make sense of them. Then, with a sudden mewling sound from her throat, she managed to say, “That's really all you wanted?”  

“That's all. I am old, Cor, and we've spoken too little of love in our house.” He took another bite of his unsalted supper. His hand shook. “That was my failing, I suppose. Perhaps if I’d said it, you girls would have thought to say it back.”

“But father!” gasped Coriander, “That’s not right. We've always known we loved one another! We've shown it a thousand ways. Why, I've spent the last year cataloging them in my head, and I've still not even scratched the surface!”

The king sighed. “Perhaps you will understand when your time comes. I knew, and yet I didn't. What can you really call a thing you’ve never named? How do you know it exists? Perhaps all the love I thought I knew was only a figment.”

“But that’s what I’ve been afraid of all this time,” Coriander bit back. “How could you doubt? If it was real at all– how could you doubt?”

The king’s weathered face grew still. His eyes fell shut and he squeezed them. “Death is close to me, child. A small measure of reassurance is not so very much to ask.”

.

Coriander slept in her old rooms that night. None of it had changed. When she woke the next morning, for a moment she remembered nothing of the last two years. 

She breakfasted in the garden with her father, who came down the steps in a chair-lift. “Coriander,” he murmured. “I half-thought I dreamed you last night.”

“I’m here, Dad,” she replied. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Slowly, the king reached out with one withered hand and caressed Coriander's cheek. Then, his fingers drifted up to what remained of her hair. He ruffled it, then gently tugged on a tuft the way he'd used to playfully tug her long braid when she was a girl. 

“I love you,” he said.

“That was always an I love you, wasn’t it?” replied Coriander. “My hair.”

The king nodded. “Yes, I think it was.”

So Coriander reached out and gently tugged the white hairs of his beard. “You too,” she whispered.

.

“Why salt?” The king was sitting by the fire in his rooms wrapped in two blankets. Coriander was with him, enduring the sweltering heat of the room without complaint. 

She frowned. “You like honesty. We have that in common. I was trying to be honest–accurate–to avoid false flattery.”

The king tugged at the outer blanket, saying nothing. His lips thinned and his eyes dropped to his lap. Coriander wished they wouldn’t. She wished they would hold to hers, steely and ready for combat as they always used to be.

“Would it really have been false?” the king said at last. “Was there no other honest way to say it? Only salt?”

Coriander wanted to deny it, to give speech to the depth and breadth of her love, but once again words failed her. “It was my fault,” she said. “I didn’t know how to heave my heart into my throat.” She still didn’t, for all she wanted to. 

.

When the doctor left, the king was almost too tired to talk. His words came slowly, slurred at the edges and disconnected, like drops of water from a leaky faucet. 

Still, Coriander could tell that he had something to say. She waited patiently as his lips and tongue struggled to form the words. “Love you… so… much… You… and… your sisters… Don’t… worry… if you… can’t…say…how…much. I… know.” 

It was all effort. The king sat back when he was finished. Something was still spasming in his throat, and Coriander wanted to cry.

“I’m glad you know,” she said. “I’m glad. But I still want to tell you.”

Love was effort. If her father wanted words, she would give him words. True words. Kind words. She would try… 

“I love you like salt in my food. You're desperately important to me, and you've always been there, and I don't know what I'll do without you. I don’t want to lose you. And I love you like the soil in a garden. Like rain in the spring. Like a hero. You have the strongest shoulders of anyone I know, and all I ever wanted was to be like you…”

A warm smile spread across the old king’s face. His eyes drifted shut.

#inklingschallenge #theme: storge #story: complete #inklings challenge #leah stories #OKAY. SO #i spend so much time thinking about king lear. i think i've said before that it's my favorite shakespeare play. it is not close #and one of the hills i will die on is that cordelia was not in the right when she refused to flatter her dad #like. obviously he's definitely not in the right either. the love test was a screwed up way to make sure his kids loved him #he shouldn't have tied their inheritances into it. he DEFINITELY shouldn't have kicked cordelia out when she refused to play #but like. Cordelia. there is no good reason not to tell your elderly dad how much you love him #and okay obviously lear is my starting point but the same applies to the meat loves salt princess #your dad wants you to tell him you love him. there is no good reason to turn it into a riddle. you had other options #and honestly it kinda bothers me when people read cordelia/the princess as though she's perfectly virtuous #she's very human and definitely beats out the cruel sisters but she's definitely not aspirational. she's not to be emulated #at the end of the day both the fairytale and the play are about failures in storge #at happens when it's there and you can't tell. when it's not and you think it is. when you think you know someone's heart and you just don' #hey! that's a thing that happens all the time between parents and children. especially loving past each other and speaking different langua #so the challenge i set myself with this story was: can i retell the fairytale in such a way that the princess is unambiguously in the wrong #and in service of that the king has to get softened so his errors don't overshadow hers #anyway. thank you for coming to my TED talk #i've been thinking about this story since the challenge was announced but i wrote the whole thing last night after the super bowl #got it in under the wire! yay! #also! the whole 'modern setting that conflicts with the fairytale language' is supposed to be in the style of modern shakespeare adaptation #no idea if it worked but i had a lot of fun with it #pontifications and creations

[inklings-challenge]

2024 Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge Archive

Godmother: A Cinderella retelling by @lydiahosek

Hank and Gracie: A Hansel and Gretel retelling by @ashknife

A Love as Red as Blood: A Little Red Riding Hood retelling by @dearlittlefandom-stalker

Marks of Loyalty: A "Maid Maleen" retelling by @fictionadventurer

Maybelle and the Beast: A Beauty and the Beast retelling by @griseldabanks

The Princess and the Pulverized Pea: A "Princess and the Pea" retelling by @popcornfairy28

The Selkie Story: A Little Mermaid retelling by @allisonreader

Tam Lin: A retelling by @physicsgoblin

Tell Your Dad You Love Him: A "Cap O'Rushes" retelling by @queenlucythevaliant

Twelve, Thirteen, One: A "Cinderella" retelling by @confetti-cat

A Wise Pair of Fools: A retelling of "The Farmer's Clever Daughter" by @fictionadventurer

#four loves fairy tale challenge #four loves fairy tale challenge 2024 #inklingschallenge #theme: storge #theme: eros #theme: philia #theme: agape #inklings challenge stories

[clari-writes]

The Prince

[ A Cinderella Retelling | Wordcount: 4006 Words | Estimated Reading Time: 20 minutes ]

A sovereign ruler must be, above all, a man of duty and reason. Prince Dominic knows this, and lives heart and soul by the edict. Grasps full well the consequences of what could happen if he didn’t.

So why is it that when he asks the Captain of the Guard if they found her, his voice catches with hope?

“No, Your Majesty,” Captain Bernard says. “We managed to track her as far as the Bridge of the Diwata, but after that, it was as if her carriage turned into thin air. We can only suspect it was magic.”

There is a warning laced into the word magic, both in the captain’s tone and Dominic’s own instinctive understanding. The fae folk were unruly; unpredictable; dangerous. While they had marked themselves as enemies only to nation’s former colonizers, the Spanish, Dominic knew better, as the heir to the Islands’ third-generation monarchy, to count on them as friends. He should feel relieved that the lady cloaked in their torrid enchantments vanished without a trace.

Better, he tells himself and his sinking heart, in the long run.

He clears his throat. “Thank you, Captain. Is that all?”

“Well,” Captain Bernard says, and then hesitates.

Prince Dominic barely restrains himself from pouncing on the man. “What is it?” he asks with deep patience.

“We found what we believe is something of hers, Your Majesty. A slipper.”

“A slipper?”

“Made of glass.” The captain nods at one of his men, and a guard liveried in green and gold moves forward to place a glimmering object in front of the prince. “It was at the base of the bridge. We cannot know for sure it was hers, but-“

“It’s hers,” says Prince Dominic hollowly. He remembers now, in one of the more lively dances of the ball, when the lady kicked her feet in the air he’d noticed in an instant how they sparkled.

Do you have jewels encrusted on your toes? he’d teased.

She’d replied with a dazzling smile. Something like that.

 “If you forgive me, Your Majesty,” Captain Bernard says. “May I inquire as to the urgency of finding this girl?”

“Pardon?”

“If she’d stolen something significant, perhaps, during the hours you were alone,” the captain prompts. Dominic flushes, even though there is no rebuke in the captain’s words. “If so, I’ll organize a search party straight away.”

Do it, Dominic’s heart sings. The prince bites his tongue. Takes another deep breath.

“That won’t be necessary,” he says. “She isn’t important.”

_ _ _

So why is he paying a visit to the royal glassmaker, shoe in hand?

“No doubt about it, Your Majesty,” Doña Rosaline says, after taking a close look at the slipper through her famed magnificent magnifying glass. She places the pristine object in front of him with a mixture of awe and fear. “That’s the fae’s work. No human hands could have produced something as fine as this.”

“Is it cursed?” he asks. He’s half convinced himself it’s so.

“Gifted, more like,” she replies, stopping his errant wonderings in their tracks.

“What do you mean?”

“Your lady seems to have won the favor of a fairy,” the artisan replies.

“I’ve never heard of-“

“Neither have I, Your Grace, but the proof is right here in front of us.” She gestures to the slipper. “You cannot force the fae to create. You have heard of the case of Count Floribel-“

“I have,” Dominic says with the wince. It was years ago, back when the Islands’ revolution still consisted of whispers in the dark. Count Floribel, their appointed ruler, had actually managed to capture a fairy – rumor has it, with a desperate native’s help, after the noble promised to curb his family’s debt – and he had demanded of the creature to provide the secrets of the yet-unconquered mountainfolk’s intricately woven designs.

In response, the fairy blew themself up. There is still a crater where the count’s mansion had been.

“Well, there you go. We’d have to rule that out. The other option, then, is to strike a deal with the fae, and of course there are records of that, such as the royal crown. But, Your Majesty,” Doña Rosaline says with the shake of her head, “I cannot imagine what your lady could have traded for a fairy to craft something so unique, it would only find its fit and perfection in her wearing it.”

“How could that be so?”

“The glass,” Doña Rosaline says, “Is not still. Not when you look at it closely enough. It ripples and bends at one’s touch—it is truly quite remarkable. I can only imagine what it would look like on the feet of the one it was meant for. And if rumors are to believed,” she continues, “the shoes’ beauty weren’t even the most marvelous aspect of the lady herself.”

Dominic can’t help himself. He smiles. “I can confirm that.”

“Oh?” Doña Rosaline voice takes on a teasing lilt. “And how would you describe the young lady, dear prince?”

“She was kind,” he says, almost unthinkingly. There are many things he could have said of her, but her kindness is what lingers in his mind the most, is what made her beauty more revelation than ornamentation. His first breathtaking sight of the lady was her descent down the staircase in all her gorgeous glory. His second was her approaching him with a platter of food and not a whit of guile in her eyes, saying shyly that he looked like he was hungry. She’d been right; he hadn’t had a bite to eat all day out of nervousness.

“Will you look for her?”

“What?” he says, snapping out of his reverie.

“I assumed that was why you were asking,” Doña Rosaline says. She is grinning. “I wasn’t at the ball myself, Your Grace, but I’ve heard what others are saying of you, and I’m glad, if you forgive the presumption. After everything that happened with your sister, I am truly happy that you’ve found-“

“I think you misunderstand, Doña,” he says, holding up his hand. “I was concerned about her, is all.”

“Concerned?”

“When it occurred to me that the fae might have had her in their thrall,” he says. 

There were other things, as well. Little things, like how she flinched at the chamberlain’s loud voice, how she startled when he first raised his hand to lead her through a dance, as if she expected to be struck instead. Like how she recognized his hunger because she was clearly starving just the same.

“But that’s no matter,” he says. “The lady must be fine, if she has a fairy looking after her.” That ought to quell his persistent little anxieties over whether she is eating enough.

“Perhaps,” Doña Rosaline says, but she looks doubtful.

“You disagree?”

“If the fairy isn’t tricking her,” Doña Rosaline says, “then they are gifting her something that she needs.”

“She needs little, then, if all that they gave her was access to a party all noble families are invited to,” he points out.

“Perhaps,” she says again.

“She did not ask for help,” Prince Dominic says.

“Did you offer?” she asks pointedly.

“Of course.”

The old artisan raises her eyebrows. “And she refused?”

“In a manner of speaking,” he says. He is fairly certain that running away counted as refusal. “Aside from that, she had every opportunity to ask for assistance and she did not. Coupled with what you’ve told me, I can only conclude that there is no imminent threat that looms over her.”

“Danger can take many forms, Your Grace.”

“I know.” Oh, how he knew. He can feel the judging eyes of the Spanish from beyond the seas, staring greedily at him and his kingdom. “Yet I cannot drop everything to save one damsel, Doña. Not if she didn’t ask for it.”

“True enough, young prince,” Doña Rosaline allows. “But aren’t there other reasons why you would wish to look for her?”

The way she made him laugh uproariously, while remaining utterly unmoved by his puns. The warmth her presence and conversation brought him. The hours they spent, the first time he could remember he felt truly carefree since his parents died and his relationship with his sister turned sour.

“None that matter, Doña,” he says finally.

_ _ _

So why is it that, three weeks after the ball, she is all that he can think about?

He refused to let it show, of course. He had councils to attend—ambassadors to welcome—marriage contracts to assess. He needed an alliance with a country large enough to keep Spain at bay – a grand task, considering the few countries who were willing to even recognize the Islands as a nation, rather than a land full of savagery and witchcraft – and his hand in marriage is the simplest way to ensure the fidelity of that alliance without putting his kingdom in danger of another invasion.

Though who is he fooling—they are always in danger of another invasion. Which is why you must redouble your efforts in finding allies, he tells himself.

Which is why he cannot shirk his responsibilities, cannot lose one of the most precious cards he has to play in the game of politics, even for the beautiful, kind, fae-favored girl.

He is trapped.

“Brother?”

He starts, sending the papers he’d been staring at scattering across the floor. If he was not Crown Prince, he thinks he would have liked to swear like a sailor.

Instead, he inhales deep through his nose and stands up, all decorum. “Sister Regine,” he says. He makes sure his tone is firmly under control. “Why were you not announced by my chamberlain?”

“I was. You were the one still gaping at your papers like an idiot,” she replies bluntly.

Not for the first time, Prince Dominic wonders how the sisters of Saint Sofia – an order that was known to prioritize gentleness, peace, and humility – deal with his sharp-tongued older sibling. He supposes there are a lot of prayers for patience involved. He sighs, rifling a hand through his long hair. “The papers…”

“I’ll help you organize them,” she says, already stooping to the ground.

“You’re not supposed to be able to read them anymore,” he says tiredly.

“Or what? You’ll clap me in a tower again?” She smirks. “I guarantee that would be more comfortable than my room at the priory.”

“Only because you could convince Captain Bernard to bring you anything you wanted.”

“He always had a sweet spot for me,” she preens.

It is more than that, both of them knew. There is no etiquette in how to deal with a queen turned prisoner turned novitiate, especially since she is still technically the queen until she takes her final vows.

But they do not talk about that.

Her long habit makes a pool of coarse blue cloth around her as she bundles papers into her arms. “Anyway, Your Majesty,” she says, all razor-sharp exaggeration at the honorific, “That is not why I am here.”

“You didn’t just want to see me?” His hurt is not entirely feigned. He grabs a receipt that has somehow lodged itself between Pinuno: From Datu to Constitutional Monarchy and 1670: La Revolución de Las Islas.

“Heavens, no. Do you understand how hard it is to get here?”

“I had taken pains to ensure you always have access to me,” he says. Despite everything.

She shoots him a look. “You are not the problem, brother. The prioress loathes having me leave the grounds—for good reason, I suppose. No matter.”

“Yes, matter,” he says. He is fighting to keep his breath even. “You’re supposed to be able to-“

“Not the reason I’m here,” she sings.

“Fine,” he says. “Fine. Why are you here, Regine?”

“Haven’t you heard, dear brother?” she asks. “My sisters are a-buzz with the rumors, and you must know how difficult it is to get them to gossip—which means the entire kingdom must be talking it. Apparently, our very own honorable, practical, darling Prince Dominic is in-“

“I am not in love!” he snaps.

Regine pauses, her jaw slackening. Then a truly evil grin spreads across her mouth. “I was going to say,” she says, “in search for a mystery girl. But that works, too.”

Prince Dominic’s cheeks burn. “I am not in love,” he enunciates carefully, though he knows it’s hopeless. As far as Regine is concerned, he has already dug his grave. “And I am not looking for her.”

“Why not?” she asks airily.

He splutters. “Why not?” he repeats. “Why not?”

When it comes to duty, they have always been so many worlds apart.

“You still haven’t grown out of babbling when you’re confused, hm?”

“Because I am required to marry a princess!” he yells. He stands up, papers forgotten, even breathing be damned. “Because I am the de facto ruler of this kingdom and whether I like it or not, whether I want to or not, every aspect of my life must be devoted to ensuring its security! Because I am the only one left,” he says, and his voice breaks, “and if I don’t do it, no one else will.”

Then he sobs outright, a hand covering his eyes.

_ _ _

The first and last time he’d spoken this truth that he had long buried in his heart was the night of the ball.

He hadn’t meant to unbridle his tongue. It hadn’t been his parents’ fault that they’d died, after all, and his sister—well, it was hard on her, turning from the blithe heir to the burdened head of the family overnight. It had been understandable, that she hadn’t wanted to face it. He had been the one who had chosen to act. He had taken the responsibility, and so consequently had to face it forever alone.

So why did he find himself spilling his guts to this beautiful stranger?

It was unseemly. It was embarrassing.

But she was so very easy to talk to; and when he began to apologize for his impropriety, she stoppered his flow of words with a gaze full of understanding. “I know what it’s like,” she said, “to be the one left behind and alone.” Her eyes lowered, her cheeks pink. “To be angry about it, sometimes.”

They were out on the balcony—far from the prying eyes and ears of the court, though he knew there would be whispers once they noticed his absence. For once, he hadn’t a care about that. Just as he hadn’t a care or thought about anything when he took the lady’s hand. “Not alone anymore, I hope.”

“Not right now, at least.” She twined their fingers together.

“Not ever again!” he declared recklessly, though he knew he wasn’t in any position to make promises like that. “Tell me about yourself now, lady stranger. We’ve spent so long in each other’s company and you’ve refused to tell me a thing. Though to be fair, I suppose I’ve barely asked.” He shook his head at himself. “What kind of prince am I?”

He’d expected a bump of his shoulder, a roll of her eyes. Instead, the lady’s smile faded. “Prince?”

“Yes?”

“You’re the prince?”

“Yes, of course—you didn’t know?” She had arrived late and had missed the proclamation, and they had dispensed with calling each other by any name as a game, but he hadn’t believed she didn’t know who he was that entire time. Hadn’t known she was getting to know him as Dominic, rather than the prince. He was flabbergasted.

And she looked devastated. She pulled her hand away from his. “If you were just a noble, maybe,” she murmured to herself. “But a prince…”

“What’s the matter?” he asked.

She forced a smile on her face. “Nothing, Your Majesty.”

“Don’t give me that,” he begged her. “Something’s wrong. Please tell me what’s wrong.”

“I-I just…I had hoped to see you again.”

“Whyever not?” He made to take her hand once more, but restrained himself at the last second. “I would very much like that as well.”

“I don’t think you would, Your Majesty. Not if you knew who I really was.”

“I know who you are.” In the weeks to come, he would doubt this; he’d put it down to his chronic sleep deprivation, the heady night air, enchantment. But in that moment, he felt as close to her as someone he’d known all the days of his life.

“You do?” She sounded afraid.

“Yes. You, my dear lady stranger,” he says, “are the funniest person I’ve ever met.” This, finally, got the fond eyeroll. “Really, you are hilarious. Yet you’re honest enough to tell me when I’m not.”

“It was only the puns,” she protested.

“You are determined,” he continued. “You said you would finish the platter of stuffed pan de sal and by God, I have never seen anyone eat so much so fast. That’s a compliment, by the way,” he said to her reddening cheeks. “It was a marvel.”

“You had it right the first time, Your Majesty. For a prince, your manners are deplorable.”

“You’re also extremely kind,” he added.

“Deplorable!” she exclaimed.

“Really.” He stretched out his hand, giving her the choice, and after a beat she laced her fingers with his again. “When you see someone requires assistance, no matter who they are, whether or not they themselves know it, you take action. Even when you clearly need help yourself.”

“I don’t-“

“You have not told me much of your family, my lady, but from what I’ve gathered you are in a rather unhappy situation. Please,” he said, “let me help you. I promise to stand by you no matter what happens, wherever you come from, whatever your name is. Just say the word.”

The lady seemed torn. In the bright, pale moonlight, away from the glitter and ornaments of the ballroom, her masterpiece of a dress seemed to be just a shade more quotidian, her elfin features less otherworldly and more tremendously human as she bit her lip and decided. It made him fall for her all the more. “I,” she said, and stopped herself. She cleared her throat. “My name is…I mean. I-I’m-“

“It’s alright,” he said gently.

She squeezed his hand, as if asking for courage. He squeezed back. “My name is-“

Then the clock struck midnight.

_ _ _

“She’s a commoner, isn’t she?” Regine asks.

For a moment, Prince Dominic did not answer, lost for a time in the way his sister stroked his hair soothingly. She had strode across the room and insisted he sit down on the plush couch, and then laid his head on her lap, just as she did when the doctors gave them the news that their parents died of the plague. When he finally found his voice, he says dully, “Yes.”

It is the logical conclusion. Why had it been such a miracle for her to go to a party? Why did she need a member of the fae to magic her improbable glass shoes, and perhaps the rest of her lovely attire?

Why was she so afraid to let him know who she was?

It would take another miracle to see her again, let alone to offer her what he wished. “So why am I still hoping?” he whispers. Then he curses himself, realizing that he spoke out loud.

But Regine does not tease. She gives a soft, almost resigned sigh. “Because, dear brother,” she says, “you are a person who loves deeply and truly. You are that, as well as a good and kind king.”

He snorts.

“It’s true,” she says, rueful. “You’re a much better ruler than I ever could have been. You knew from the start that being a leader was more burden than privilege, and I—I never completely grasped that. Not until I was called by God and realized how selfish I’d been.” She ruffles his hair again. “You were right to stage that coup against me.”

“Sister,” he says, but she shakes her head.

“But even if I was selfish,” she says, her eyes bright, “I still know enough about statecraft to comprehend the state of our kingdom, both when I ruled and even more so after the stability you brought to the Islands. And what I know is that we are not in peril.” She looks at him. “You do not need to give your hand out of desperation, brother.”

“But Spain is still watching us-“

“They will always be watching us,” she says disdainfully. “Their precious former colony that rose up against them, foolish and still in need of their oh-so-enlightened help and guidance. Whatever we do, they will always be looking for a chance to snatch us up again.”

“So what do we do?” he asks. His voice sounds small.

“I don’t know,” she admits. “And, selfishly, I am glad that burden is no longer on my shoulders.”

“Thanks, Regine,” he mutters.

She flicks his nose.

“Huy!”

“I have not abandoned you,” she says. “I will not abandon you. I am here beside you, Dominic, and from now on I promise to give you whatever advice you need.”

“And what advice is that, dear sister?”

“That you remember we cannot, as a nation or as people, live on fear alone. And that you must remember you are a leader as well as a ruler, Dom. Your kingdom is watching how you make your choice, and will be led by how you make it.”

“What choice?”

“What to do,” she says, “when love beckons you.”

_ _ _

He goes with them, of course. It would have been out of the question to get a significant portion of the guard to go through this wild goose chase without him at the helm, albeit in plain soldier’s clothes so as to obscure his identity. To begin with, they were to fit the glass slipper on every maiden within each invited household.

He felt like sinking into the floor when he made this proposal in the council room, even with his sister by his side. And indeed, they had all looked at him as if he’d gone mad.

None of them protested, though. Even when he told them of his intentions.

Some of them even looked—excited. As if they were genuinely thrilled their future queen was going to be chosen in this way.

“It’s because they trust you,” Regine said after the meeting. “And they want you to be happy.”

“If you say so,” he said, still bemused.

And so they went.

Household after household, family after family, maiden after maiden until Dominic had seen more than enough feet he had ever wanted to encounter in his lifetime.

Then they get to the capital city's outskirts.

The two young ladies residing in the last mansion before the gates try and fail. Their mother, of grand bearing and clad in even grander skirts, glares at them as if it is their fault. He and the company of guard bow, take their leave, when—

“Wait.”

Prince Dominic turns.

And there she is. Clad in dirty old rags, hair in disarray, fists clenched and bare feet looking half-ready to bolt any minute. But her voice is steady, calm and familiar, when she says, “I would like to try the slipper on.”

The lady of the house hisses, “You are nothing but a scullery maid! What right do you-“

“Every right,” Prince Dominic says, stepping forward. “The prince proclaimed every maiden in each invited household.”

When he turns his gaze at the lady, she has paled. She recognizes him, too.

She glances at the door. He swallows at the lump in his throat, knowing that if she runs, he must take the rejection for what it is.

But she does not run. Instead, she gives him a short, polite curtsy, walks forward, and seats herself delicately on the coach. She is taking long, calming breaths.

He kneels down. “It’s alright,” he tells her again, even more gently than before.

“It’s you,” she whispers. Her eyes are bright with tears.

He smiles at her. “What’s your name?”

Her mouth twists a little. “Cinderella.”

He notices the spray of ashes on her cheeks. Remembers how she never did like puns.

“My stepmother was right,” she says in a sudden rush. “I am nothing but a scullery maid—worse than that, really. I have no status in life, no claim to anything or anyone. I have nothing worthwhile to offer you.”

“Alright,” he says.

“Alright?” she repeats with an incredulous laugh. She lowers her voice. “You are known to be a wise ruler, you know. They say you never make a decision without considering it twice, thrice, and once more for good measure.”

“I don’t think I’m as hesitant as that,” Dominic protests lightly. “But yes. I do like being sure of my choices.”

“So why, my dear, famously pragmatic Prince Dominic, are you here?”

He slides the slipper onto her foot. It’s a perfect fit.

“Cinderella.” He says her name with so much soft reverence she cannot help but blush. He offers her his hand. “I think you know.”

/ / /

A/N: Written for the @inklings-challenge's Four Loves Fairytale Challenge! I'd love to know what you think of the story, if you have time to comment/tag. Either way, I hope you enjoyed, and I look forward to reading everyone's entries!

Also: Because I didn't outright say it in the story (and because it's very important to me), this story is set in an alternate history/fantasy Philippines <3

#The Prince #inklingschallenge #theme: agape #theme: eros #theme: storge #Cinderella #Cinderella retelling #story: complete

[ashknife]

Hank & Gracie

Another holiday, another @inklings-challenge. I missed the deadline for the Christmas challenge, but I can revisit that next year. This is my entry for the 2024 Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge. This is a retelling of Hansel & Gretel. As always, I do appreciate criticism and suggestions. Enjoy!

I’m Hank. I live with Ma and my li’l sister Gracie. We live in an apartment in the middle of the city. Sometimes there’s a dog or a cat, but it’s mostly just us. Pa used to live here, but Ma said he ran off after some hussy. I don’t know what a hussy is, but I don’t like ‘em. I don’t like Pa, either. I miss him.

The apartment is on the second floor of a tall brick building. I think I counted thirteen floors on the building. I’d look in the elevator, but Ma won’t let us go on it.

“That’s for folks who need it,” she said. “Don’t you let me catch you playing on it.”

I tried climbing the stairs to the top instead. They went on forever! But me and Gracie, we made it. The door said 14 at the top. The door below said 12. We looked all over for 13. Spent all day, but somehow it was missing. Gracie cried. She does that a lot. Ma found us while we was still looking. We got in big trouble.

“Henry James, you know better than to fool around and get lost while looking after your sister! What are you gonna do when you get lost for good? Huh? Now dinner’s cold!”

Ma sure yells a lot. She says I’m the man of the house. I have to be big and look after Gracie. I’m seven, and she’s only four. I say it ain’t fair, but Ma says it ain’t fair she have to work, but she does it anyway. It’s hard to get past Ma. She knows everything. I wanna be like her when I grow up.

Ma works hard. Sometimes she’s home, cleaning up the apartment and cooking supper, but most times she’s gone. During the day, it’s some office. At night, she’s waitin’ at some tables. That seems easy enough, but when I asked if I could wait at the tables, Ma just laughed.

“Thank you, child, but you ain’t old enough yet.”

“But you could stay home and be with Gracie, Ma.”

Ma just looked tired, shook her head, and drank her coffee. She drank a lot of coffee.

“Someday, maybe. Just not today.”

As much as Ma worked, she didn’t have a lot of money. Bills and rent, she said. She’d always talk about the bills and rent when we got holes in our clothes or made a mess or asked for a piece of candy. Bills and rent. They just keep going up and up. Sometimes it gets hard. Sometimes Ma can’t get nothing but the roaches in the cabinets. We’d go to churches more, then. Sometimes they have free food. Ma would cry every time she got a bag of somethin’. She’d cry more at home, when we was supposed to be asleep. You’d think she’d be happy. Ma does strange things sometimes.

The other day, Ma was at the office. She told us to behave and be good. It was payday, so maybe she would bring us home something nice. We didn’t have no food for a couple of days. I was hoping for some chips from that new shop that opened down the street. Some big white guy named Pete opened it and named it after himself. He was a little fat and covered in hair. He sure liked to laugh a lot, especially at Ma’s jokes. Ma said he was trying too hard. His store sure was nice, though. All sorts of candy and chips and soda, more than I’d ever seen in my life. Not even the grocery store has that many. Pete certainly didn’t have a bin of celery. Yuck.

Sometimes, when Ma wasn’t looking, Pete would slip me and Gracie a piece of candy.

“On the house,” he whispered with a wink. “Our little secret.”

We’d pocket that candy and hide it when we got home. When Ma was asleep or away, we’d eat it. It was real good. The candy smelled nice, too. We’d save the wrappers and smell them, especially when we was hungry. We’d dream of something nice to eat when Ma got paid. It’d help us hold on for just a little longer. We’d stash those wrappers under our mattresses. Ma would have a fit if she saw them. She might wonder if we stole them from Pete.

Since Ma was getting paid today, maybe she was gonna get that special something from Pete’s. But that was a whole day away, and we was hungry, and it was hot out, and we didn’t want to do nothing. But we was hungry. It was gonna be a long day. Then Gracie came up with a great idea.

“Hank, you go hide!” she said. She went to a corner and started counting. So, I went and hid behind the couch in the living room. It felt cooler back there.

“Ready or not, here I come!” she yelled.

I heard her go through the kitchen and her room and my room. I tried to hold my breath, which was hard to do because I was trying not to laugh. Then my belly growled really loud.

“Found you!” Gracie said. She crawled behind the couch and tagged me.

“No fair!” I said. “You heard my belly!”

“Still found you. Now you go, and I’ll hide.”

“Okay, okay.”

I crawled out from behind the couch and went to the corner.

“Ooooone…twoooooo…” I started. I have to count real slow for Gracie. She gets mad if I go too fast. It doesn’t help her much. She giggles and laughs while she’s looking for a place to hide. I know where she is, but if I go too fast, she’ll get mad. She gets mad if I take too long, too. I play at looking around in other rooms first before I find her, and then she laughs and calls me dum-dum for taking so long, but she isn’t mad. Gracie is as strange as Ma sometimes. Can’t please nobody.

This time, Gracie hid under the kitchen sink. I stomped down the hallway to Ma’s room.

“Where’s Gracie? Is she in Ma’s room?” I open the door to Ma’s room real slow so that it creaks real loud.

“No, not here,” I said, quickly closing Ma’s room. Ma doesn’t want us to go in. She has a way of knowing even if she ain’t there. I stomp to my room.

“Is Grac–”

She screamed and fell out onto the kitchen floor. I ran to see what was happening.

“What is it? What is it?” I said.

“It’s on me! Get it off! Get it off!”

I saw a roach crawl across her shirt. I didn’t think too much about it. I got up and swat the thing. It smacked against the wall and fell on its back. I got up to it and stomped on it, and again, and again, and again. I’m sure it was dead, but I gave it a couple more just to be sure. I swept it into the dustbin and closed the door under the sink.

Gracie cried and cried. I looked around her and pat her clothes in case there was another one that was hiding. I sat by her and held her.

“It’s gone, Gracie. I got it.”

“Did you kill it?”

“Yeah, I killed it.”

“It tried to eat me, Hank!”

“It’s gone, Gracie.”

Our bellies growled. It was gonna be a long day.

After a while, Gracie calmed down.

“I’m hungry, Hank.”

“Me, too.”

“Can we go to Pete’s?”

“We ain’t got money.”

“Aww…”

We sat for a minute.

“Do you want to go hide again? Somewhere without bugs?”

“Okay…”

“I’ll count to a hundred so you can make sure it’s real safe. If it ain’t, you yell, and I’ll take of it. Okay?”

“Promise?”

“Yeah.”

She got up, and then she got this grin on her face.

“Okay, you count to a hundred!”

So, I did. I went to my room and counted loudly to a hundred. It takes a long time to count to a hundred. I figured Gracie might have gotten bored, because she stopped giggling after a while. I heard doors open and close, but there was no screaming. Ain’t no bugs gonna get her this time.

“Niiiiinety-eeeeeight…niiiiinety-niiiiiine…oooooone huuuuuundred! Ready or not, here I come!” I called out. She opened and closed a lot of doors. She must have hid in a closet. She wasn’t giggling like she usually does. Maybe she fell asleep waiting, or got mad waiting for me. I don’t know, but I put on my act just in case. I stomped out into the hallway…

…and the front door was wide open.

I ran and looked out the open door into that hallway. Nothing but a bunch of doors to other apartments. I closed the door and went to the living room closet. She wasn’t there. Kitchen closet. Nope. Under the sink. Nope. My closet, her closet, Ma’s closet, under Ma’s bed, all nothing. I got real scared. Ma’s gonna really let me have it if I can’t find Gracie. My bottom can already feel the paddle.

I ran out into the hallway.

“Gracie! Gracie!” I called out. One of the neighbors told me to shut up. I ran down the stairs.

“Gracie!” I called out again. The old landlady was standing in her doorway, eating some kind of pudding.

“She went out a little bit ago, hon,” she said, pointing to the outside door. “Ain’t your momma home?”

“No, ma’am,” I said. “Ma’s in the office.”

“Mm-hm,” she said, going back into her apartment.

I ran outside.

“Gracie! Gracie!”

I looked left, and then right. The street was empty. There wasn’t anyone walking out. It was too hot. There was a parking lot next to our building, so I looked there first. Not a lot of cars. Everybody’s out to work or something, so there weren’t a lot of hiding spots. I looked, but she wasn’t in any of them.

“Hey!”

The landlady called me to the outside door.

“Your momma’s on her way. You better go find your sister,” she said.

“Where did she go?”

“Don’t know, hon, but you better be lookin’,” she said.

“Oh, no…” I said. So, I ran. I ran down to the corner, watched for cars, crossed the street, and kept running. I slowed down by another parking lot. Ma told me I better watch for cars or I’d get knocked into next week. I saw that happen to somebody. I waited to see them next week and the week after, but they never showed up. I don’t want to end up like that.

Then I saw it. A candy wrapper. It looked like one of the ones Pete would slip us. I smelled it, and it smelled kinda good still. It felt a little wet. I think somebody licked it. And then I saw another down the sidewalk. And another. And another. It was a trail of candy wrappers. Looked like there was some in the street, too. They was leading somewhere. And so I started running again, following the trail. I picked up each wrapper along the way. This went for a couple of blocks, and then it ended, right in front of Pete’s.

There are a lot of tall buildings around with lots of apartments, but Pete’s was a house with a garage. He turned the garage into his little store. Lots of people normally come by to buy something from him, but it’s too hot today. Ain’t nobody around. Pete was sitting at his counter with a fan blowing in hairy face.

“Oh, it’s Hank!”

“Hi, Mr. Pete,” I said, trying to catch my breath. I bent over and coughed. Pete pointed his fan at me. It felt good after running in that heat. His store was full today. There were shelves of chips and sweets and drinks and other stuff. My belly growled hard. Pete put a trash can in front of me, so I threw the candy wrappers away.

“Looking for a snack?” he asked, laughing.

“No, sir,” I said, still breathing hard. “No, sir. Gracie. Did Gracie come by here?”

“Oh, your sister? She’s fine! She’s inside having a snack!” He laughed some more. “Why don’t you pick yourself something out? Get a drink, too. I’ll put it on your mom’s tab.” He winked at me.

“Ma’s coming home. I need to get Gracie,” I said.

“Now, now, don’t you worry. Hey, take a look at this!” He got up from behind his counter. He grabbed my shoulder with one of his massive hands, and then he pulled me over to a box with little bags. The box looked new. The bags said “fried pie” on them. I could smell them.

“Just got these in today. They make the dough and pie filling at the factory, put ‘em in a fryer until they’re nice and crispy, and then coat them in a sugary glaze. They’re something else, and I got a nice, cold Coke to go with it. You’ll have that down in no time.”

I shook my head yes. That sounded amazing. I really wanted that.

“Now, don’t you worry about your momma. I’ll be watching over you two and explain everything to her when she comes by,” he said, laughing.

“Yes, sir. Thank you, Mr. Pete.”

“Don’t you worry about it, Hank. Here,” he said, handing me a fried pie. He led me to the fridge and handed me a cold Coke. He then pointed to the door to his house.

“Go on in,” he said. I was so hungry, I couldn’t wait. I went to the door and opened it carefully so I didn’t drop the Coke or the pie. I stepped in, and then there was this big pain in the back of my head.

-----

I woke up. I didn’t know how long I was asleep, but it was much later. Probably sunset. I was on Pete’s kitchen floor. I don’t remember falling down or going to sleep, only that I had a Coke and a fried pie. I looked for those, but they weren’t there. The back of my head hurt real bad. I felt around. It was kind of sticky. I don’t think it was that pie, though. It didn’t smell like it. I think it was my blood.

Past a door was the living room. It was hard to see in the setting sunlight, but I could make out Pete. He was crouched in front of a fireplace. There was a fire lit. He looked like he was sweating from all the heat.

“You keep behaving, and I won’t have to hit you again,” he said. “You’re gonna fetch a good price.”

He laughed, but this laugh made me shiver. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at someone else, someone who was next to him. There was a moan, like someone who wanted to cry. He was fiddling with something, and then he had a shirt in his hands. It was Gracie’s! He threw it into the fire!

“What did you do to my sister?” I yelled. He jumped to his feet like he was ready for a fight.

“I think you need another nap,” he said, getting a bat. It looked like a bat, but a little smaller.

I got up and ran into the living room. He brought that bat down on me, but he missed. I got something from a bin next to the fire, a little shovel. He swung his bat again. He hit my back. It hurt. It hurt a lot. It was hard to breathe. He swung again. I made myself move out of the way. I grabbed that little shovel with both my hands and swung it hard, not thinking too hard where it might land. It struck him right under his belt just as he tried to swing at me again. He cried out, and then he tripped and landed head first into his fire.

I never heard a person scream so loud in my life. His arms flailed, flinging burning wood into his living room. The room started to smoke up. Some of the paper lying around caught fire, and the curtains, and the couch. Lying in the middle of the floor was Gracie, without her shirt. It looked like someone punched her a bunch of times. Her eyes were black, blacker than our skin. There were bruises and rashes all over.

“Gracie! Come on!” I said.

“I can’t. It hurts,” she said. I picked her up the best I could and got out to the garage, and then through the shelves of Pete’s food. And then we made it outside.

“Henry James!” Ma yelled. “What–Gracie Joy! Who did this? What happened?”

“It was Pete, Ma! Pete tried–”

“You’re dead meat, kids!” Pete yelled. Black smoke came out of his house as he stumbled out. His hairy face was now red and burnt, and some of his body, too.

“What happened to you, Pete?” Ma said.

“These little shoplifters–”

“Shoplifting?” she said, looking at Pete like he was crazy.

“He burned Gracie’s shirt in the fireplace! He beat her up!”

“What?” she said, glaring at him with the full wrath of God.

There was a gunshot. A policeman stood in the street, and the pistol he shot up was now pointed at us.

“Nobody move,” he said. Another cop was in their car on the radio. There were sirens approaching.

-----

It was after dark when we got home. Ma held Gracie in her arms as she led us in, turned on the lights, and closed the door.

“Go fill the bath, Hank,” she said.

I looked down. I knew what was coming and I just couldn’t wait for it anymore.

“What’s the matter, son?” she said.

“Aren’t you going to paddle me?” I said.

“Why would I do that?” she said.

“‘Cause I lost Gracie, and then all this happened, and Mr. Pete…”

Ma laid Gracie down on the couch, and then she knelt down and held me. I cried.

“This all started because Gracie snuck out,” she said.

“But…I could have paid more attention,” I said.

“We could all do better. Be thankful that you both made it out okay,” she said. She didn’t say anything for a minute, and then she let me go, held my face, and wiped my tears with her thumb.

“Ain’t enough paddles in the world to replace what happened today. Mr. Pete was an evil man who did evil things. You don’t understand the half of what just happened, but you will, and there won’t be enough paddles in the world to replace that.”

“Ma, Gracie’s all beat up,” I said.

“And you rescued her. You took responsibility. You looked for her, found her, and even after Mr. Pete fooled you, you wisened up and fought him for your sister. You know where you screwed up, and you took responsibility. Son, you don’t need the paddle.”

“I’m sorry, Ma.”

“I’m sorry, too, son. If things were better, I could be at home, and none of this would happen. It ain’t fair, but it’s what we got. You might not feel it right now, but you did good. Now go fill the bath. We need to clean Gracie up.”

“I’m hungry,” I said.

“When we all get cleaned up, we will go to the diner,” she said.

“Really? Yeah!”

Maybe I was too happy about it, but Ma didn’t shush me like she usually did. She said I already grew up a little too much. My bath felt good, like a bath never did before. The burger and shake was real good. I slept hard that night.

I miss Pa. I wish he’d kick Mr. Pete.

But he ain’t here.

#inklingschallege #theme: storge #hansel and gretel #story: complete

[fictionadventurer]

For February's Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge at @inklings-challenge, I've thrown together some bookmarks featuring illustrations of fairy tales that each feature one of the four loves.

Storge: "The Six Swans" (illustration by Elenore Abbott), for the heroine's efforts to save her brothers

Eros: "East of the Sun, West of the Moon" (illustration by Kay Nielsen), since it features a wife questing to save her husband

Philia: "Tattercoats" (illustration by Arthur Rackham) for the friendship between Tattercoats and the gooseherd

Agape: "The Star Money" (illustration by Victor Paul), since it's about a poor girl who gives away everything to others before receiving her reward.

#fairy tales #four loves fairy tale challenge #inklingschallenge #theme: storge #theme: eros #theme: philia #theme: agape #the six swans #east of the sun west of the moon #tattercoats #the star money

[dearlittlefandom-stalker]

A Love as Red as Blood

Storge Blanchette’s point of view, age eight

Grandmother is sick. To clarify, Grandmother has been sick for a long while. Ever since…

“Wear this Cloak, my little Blanchette. Can you do that for me?” 

“Yes, Grandma.”

“Good girl.”

Grandmother needs food, and Mother is very busy.  So I must wear my Cloak. I must not leave the path. I must not talk to anyone. Grandmother is sick, and I must deliver her food.

The woods are dangerous. Wolves and Wolf-Men prowl within its darkness and await whatever prey is foolish enough to enter into their domain. 

But Grandmother is sick. 

I take up my basket, fasten my Cloak, and set my feet on the road. 

~*~

The Cloak of Gold and Fire. It is a heavy thing, both in physical weight and its burden upon the wearer.  Passed down with great ceremony from one bearer (always a Daughter) to the next.  It is said to have protective abilities for whoever wears it, to bring good luck to the land its wearer sets foot upon. 

Stories have been told of it rejecting some who would have worn it. Stories of it turning into fire that burned the hands of those who attempted to steal it.  So many stories surround the Cloak; some true, some terrible, some good. 

Blanchette prefers the good ones. The ones her Mother and Grandmother told her at bedtime.  The ones that make her feel safe when she cuddles into her Cloak. The ones that remind her that she is loved.  

Regardless of what story you hear, one fact remains certain: the Cloak has a value not conceivable by mortal eyes, and should be valued above measure. 

Wars have been fought for the right to obtain the Cloak.  

Such wars brought ruin to many lands. For those who unduly go to war for such a great thing often find themselves cursed by it: the Cloak is not a thing to be hoarded away. 

And thus the Cloak was “lost”.  The Daughters of the Cloak went into hiding for a time.   

Many witches and other such sorts would craft their own cloak and pretend they were a Daughter of the Cloak.  Some were deceived by these women, but always they were found out and met their gruesome ends. The Cloak is not a thing to be faked. 

And so the Cloak lived on, passed down as it always had been. 

Blanchette’s Grandmother called for her on her fourth birthday and showed her the Cloak.  Blanchette knew at once it was the Cloak, having heard the stories all her life,  and wondered that anyone could mistake any other for it. 

The Cloak is ornately designed, and double-sided.  One side is red as fire; red as blood.  The other side is golden as the sun.  The wearer can choose which side they wish to show to the world, the gold or the red. 

When Blanchette’s Mother fastened the Cloak around her small shoulders for the first time (Grandmother being too weak to properly fasten it) the red side faced outwards. And there Blanchette had stood, about waist-height to all the adults in the room, utterly enveloped by a blood-red Cloak so big on her that she could have used it for a tent. 

And she was safe. 

But safety is not always guaranteed, and adventures must always start somewhere. 

~*~

Philia

On Blanchette’s first journey through the forest separating her village from her grandmothers, she met a boy.  

Not just any boy, but a Wolf-Son.  Wolf-Men are men (criminals, it is often whispered) who make their living in the wild forest.  They are not to be trusted. 

But this Wolf-Son was just a young boy, and she was just a young girl.  He walked alongside her on the path and they were made friends.  When they had to part ways as Blanchette exited the forest, he offered her a handful of red carnations. 

“Rhory. That’s my name.” the Wolf-Son says abruptly after handing her the flowers. He doesn’t quite meet Blanchette’s eyes as he speaks. “I wish you well on your journey. And I hope-” he stops, as if mustering courage, then continues. “I hope you like the flowers!”

I hope I shall see him again, Blanchette thinks to herself, absently smelling the red carnations he had given her. He was quite fun to talk to.

After that day, whenever Blanchette ventured on the path through the forest, Rhory walked with her. 

~*~

Blanchette’s point of view, age twelve

“Halt!” A voice commands, and a tall figure steps out from behind a tree ahead of us. We stop.  The figure is that of a man and he bears no markings as a Wolf-Mam. His stance is imposing and searching, as if he is daring us to take a step closer and find out what he can do to us with his bare hands. “Why are two children traveling alone in the forest?” Before we have a chance to answer, he looks us both up and down and his eyes narrow as if he does not like what he sees. “Who are you?” He demands again. 

I step forward. “He is Rhory, a Wolf-Son. My friend. I am Blanchette, a Daughter of the Cloak.”

“I know a Wolf-Son when I see one, lass.” He says gruffly, suspicion lurking in the downturned corner of his mouth. Beside me, Rhory ducks his head in shame and I feel fire stir within me. “But a Daughter of the Cloak is not so easily determined by sight.” The man continues, eyeing my Cloak distrustfully, perhaps to determine if he thinks it fake or stolen. I swallow my anger -it would do me no good to appear as a child throwing a tantrum to this strange man- and straighten ever so slightly to perhaps seem taller and more mature. To make it seem as though the Cloak I wear is not almost too large for my childish frame and dragging along the forest floor. But what of it, if my Cloak is slightly too big? Does it not cover me all the better for it?

“I inherited the Cloak from my Grandmother.” I say, careful to keep my tone both respectful and confident.  

The man’s eyebrows raise. “Your Grandmother.” he says, doubt coloring his words. “And where is she?”

“She is at home. I am going to see her now.”  She has been at home for a long time, sick. That is why she passed down the Cloak to me so early. 

The man hums doubtfully. “And how do I know you’re not just a thief?” 

“Has the Cloak ever submitted to being worn by someone not of it?” I ask, only slightly petulantly. 

The man shifts back, seemingly satisfied if no less grumpy for it. “I concede you that, miss. But better it’d be for you to keep yourself and the Cloak away from those who might have a want to snatch it.”  He looks pointedly at Rhory, and my face flushes in anger.  

I take Rhory’s hand in my own and practically stomp away from the stupid man and his stupid words, muttering unkind things under my breath. 

“Don’t listen to stupid men like him, Rhory.” I say once I’ve quite recovered myself.  The man must be miles behind us now.  

Rhory tilts his head at me, a small smile gracing his lips. “How could I listen to him when all I can hear is you mocking him?” He laughs, and I have to remind myself that he is laughing at me and that his laugh is not cute why would I think that.

“Well!” I sputter, red returning to my face as it did earlier for a far different reason.  “He was being rude!  And mean!”

Rhory shakes his head. “Overall he wasn’t that bad. I’ve heard worse.”

The silence lingers for a moment.  “You shouldn’t have to, you know.” I say quietly. 

Rhory shrugs. “Eh, well.  You shouldn’t have to walk through the forest alone, yet here we are.” 

I blink. I think of my Grandmother, ill these last eight years of my life, yet always so grateful when I go visit her.  I think of my Mother, always so harried and busy with a neverending list of things to do, yet always pausing her work to give me a smile or press a kiss to my head. 

Yes, I may walk the path alone, but their love walks with me. And besides…  I lift my and Rhory’s still-clasped hands. 

“But I’m not alone, see!” I say, “You’re here with me, aren’t you?”

He smiles at me again, and my heart flutters the teensiest amount. “That I am!”

I nod fiercely. “And that’s the way it should be.”  Suddenly possessed by a spirit of mischief, I let go of his hand and take off at a run. “Race you to the forest’s edge!”

“Blanchette!” he exclaims, and I laugh at his dismayed cries from behind me. He quickly catches up, however, and soon overtakes me, every now and then slowing down just enough to tease me. Both of us are laughing and out of breath when we part ways.  

~*~

In some stories, Little Red Riding Hood walks the path alone. 

She does not meet a friend. 

And the Wolf invades Grandmother’s home

But for this Daughter of the Cloak, I like to think she has a better end. 

Knowing that she carries the love of her family with her

And holding the hand of a friend. 

@inklings-challenge

Hey! It’s a bit of a mess and kinda unfinished but here it is!

#inklings-challenge #Theme: storge #theme: philia #theme: agape #If you squint #also the philia could blossom into eros but that comes later #writing #my writing #my story #red riding hood #fairytale retelling

[confetti-cat]

Each, All, Everything

Words: 6.5k

Rating: PG

Themes: Friendship, Self-Giving Love, Romantic Love

(Written for the Four Loves Fairytale Retelling challenge over at the @inklings-challenge! A retelling of Nix, Nought, Nothing.)

The giant’s daughter weeps, and remembers.

—

She remembers the day her father first brought him home.

It was a bit like the times he’d brought home creatures to amuse her while he was on his journeys, away on something he called “business” but she knew was “gathering whatever good of the land he wanted”. Her father had brought back a beautiful pony, once—a small one he could nearly carry in one huge hand. One for her, and not another for his collection of horses he kept in the long stables. She wasn’t as tall as the hills and broad as the cliffs like he was, so she couldn’t carry it easily, but she heaved it up in both arms and tried nonetheless. (And—she thought this was important—stopped trying when it showed fear.) She was gentle to it, and in time, she would only need speak to it and it would come eat from her hand like a tame bird. She’d never been happier.

(The pony had grown fearful of her father. Her father grew angry with anything that wasted his time by cowering or trying to flee him. There was a terrible commotion in the stables one day, and when she sought her pony afterward, she couldn’t find him. Her father told her it was gone, back to the forest, and he’d hear no more of it if she didn’t want beaten.)

(There was a sinking little pit in her stomach that knew. But when she didn’t look for the best in her father, it angered him and saddened her, so she made herself believe him.)

The final little creature he brought one day was so peculiar. It was a human boy, small as the bushes she would sometime uproot for paintbrushes, dressed in fine green like the trees and gold like her mother’s vine-ring she wore. He seemed young, like her. His tuft of brown hair was mussed by the wind, and his dark eyes watched everything around him, wide and unsure and curious.

When he first looked at her from his perch on her father’s shoulder, he stared for a long moment—then lifted a tiny hand in a wave. Suddenly overwhelmed with hope and possibilities (a friend! Surely her father had blessed her with a small friend they could keep and not just a pet!), she lifted her own hand in a little wave and tried to smile welcomingly.

The boy stared for another long moment, then seemed to try a hesitant smile back.

“This,” boomed her father, stooping down in the mist of the morning as he waved away a low cloud with one hand, “is what I rightly bargained for. A prince, very valuable. The King of the South—curse his deceitful aims!—promised him to me.”

“He looks very fancy,” she’d said, eyes wide in wonder. “How did the king come to give him to you, Father?”

“How indeed!” the giant growled, so loud it sent leaves rattling and birds rushing to fly from their trees. He slowly lowered himself to be seated on the weathered cliff behind him and picked up his spark-stone, tossing a few felled trees into their fire-basin and beginning to work at lighting them. “Through lies and deceit from him. When he asked me to carry him across the waters I asked him for Nix, Nought, Nothing in return.”

The little boy shifted, clearly uncomfortable but afraid to move much. Her father scowled, though he meant it as a smile, and bared his yellowed teeth as he laughed.

“Imagine his countenance when he returned to find the son he’d not known he’d had was called Nix, Nought, Nothing! He tried to send servant boys, but I am too keen for such trickery. Their blood is on the hands of the liar who sent them to me.”

Such talk from her father had always unsettled her, even if he said it so forcefully she couldn’t imagine just how it wasn’t right. Judging from the way the boy curled in on himself a little, clinging meekly to her father’s tattered shirt-shoulder, he thought similarly.

“Nix, Nought, Nothing?” She observed the small prince, unsure why disappointment arose in her at the way he seemed hesitant to look at her now. “That is a strange name.”

Her father struck the rocks, the sound of it so loud it echoed down the valley in an odd, uneven manner. He shook his head as he worked, a stained tooth poking out of his lips as he struck it again and again until large sparks began alighting on the wood.

“His mother tarried christening him until the father returned, calling him such instead.” He huffed a chuckle that sounded more like a sneer, seeming to opt to ignore the creature on his shoulder for the time being. “You know the feeling, eh, Bonny girl?”

The boy tentatively looked up at her again.

The fire crackled and began to eat away at the bark and dry pine needles. A soft orange glow began to creep over it, leaving black char as it went. With a sudden, sharp breath by her father, a large flame leapt into the air.

“It is good that she did so. He is Nix, Nought, Nothing—and that he will remain.”

—

Nix Nought Nothing grew to be a fine boy. Her father treated him as well as he did the prized horses he’d taken from knights and heroes—which was to say that the boy was given decent food and a dry place to sleep and the richest-looking clothes a tailor could be terrified into giving them, which was as well as her father treated anything.

Never a day went by that she was not thankful and with joy in her heart at having a friend so near.

They spent many days while her father was away exploring the forest—Nix would collect small rocks and unusual leaves and robin’s-eggs and butterflies, and she would lift him into high trees to look for nests, and sometimes stand in the rivers and splash the waterfalls at him just to laugh brightly at his gawking and laughing and sputtering.

Some days she wished she was more of a proper giant. She wasn’t large enough for it to be very comfortable giving him rides on her shoulder once he’d grown. She was hesitant to look any less strong, however, so she braided her golden curls to keep them from brushing him off and simply kept her head tilted away from him as they walked through the forests together.

He could sit quite easily and talk by her ear as they adventured. Perhaps she would never admit it, but she liked that. Most of the time.

“I’m getting your shoulder wet,” he protested, still sopping wet from the waterfall. He kept shifting around, trying to sit differently and avoid blotching her blue dress with more water than he already had. “I hope you’re noticing this inconveniences you too?”

“Yes,” Bonny laughed. “You’re right. I hope there’s still enough sun to dry us along the way back. Father won’t be pleased otherwise.”

“Exactly. Perhaps you should have thought that through before drenching me!” he huffed, but she could hear the grin in his tone even if she couldn’t quite turn her head to see it. He flicked his arm toward her and sent little droplets of water scattering across the side of her face.

Her shoulders jerked up involuntarily as the eye closest to him shut and she tried to crane her neck even further away, chuckling. Nix made a noise like he’d swallowed whatever words were on his tongue, clutching to her shoulder and hair to steady himself.

“You’d probably be best not trying to get me while I’m giving you a ride?” Bonny suggested, unable to help a wry smile.

“Yes. Agreed. Apologies.” His words came so stilted and readily that she had to purse her lips to keep in a laugh. As soon as he relaxed, his voice grew a tad incredulous. “Though—wait, I can’t exactly do anything once I’m down. Are you trying to escape my well-earned retaliation?”

“I would never,” she assured him, no longer trying to hide her smile. “I’ll put you in a tree when we get back and you can splash me all you like.”

Somehow, his voice was amused and skeptical and unimpressed by the notion all at once.

“Really? You’d do that?” he asked, sounding as if he were stifling a smirk.

She shrugged—gently, of course, but with a little inward sense of mischievousness—and he yelped again at the movement.

“Well, it would take a lot of water to get a giant wet,” she reasoned. “I doubt you’ll do much. But yes, for you, I would brave it.”

He chuckled, and she ventured a glance at him out of the corner of her eye.

“Bonny and brave,” he said, looking up at her with a little smile and those dark eyes glimmering with light. “You are a marvel.”

It would probably be very noticeable to him if she swallowed awkwardly and glanced away a bit in embarrassment. She tried not to do that, and instead gave him a crooked little smile in return.

“Hm,” was all she could say. “And what about you?”

“Me? Oh, I’m Nothing.” The jest was terrible, and would still be terrible even if she hadn’t heard it numerous times. “But you are truly a gem among girls.”

If by gem he meant a giantess who still had to enlist his help disentangling birds from her hair, then perhaps. She snorted.

“I don’t know how you would know. You don’t know any other girls.”

“Why would I need to?” His face was innocent, but his eyes were sparkling with mirth and mischief. “You’re the size of forty of them.”

The noise that erupted from her was so abrupt and embarrassingly like a snort it sent the branches trembling. She plucked him off her shoulder and set him gently on the ground so she could swat at him as gently as she could—careful not to strike him with the leaf-motifs on her ring—though it still knocked him off his feet and into the grass. He was laughing too hard to seem to mind, and she couldn’t stifle her laughs either.

“Well, you are really something,” she teased, unable to help her wide smile as she tried futilely to cast him a disapproving look.

That quieted him. He pushed himself to sit upright in the grass, and looked out at the woods ahead for a long moment.

“You think?” Nix asked quietly.

She smiled down at him.

“Yes,” she laughed softly. “Of course.” When he looked up at her, brown eyes curious, she held his gaze and hoped he could see just how glad she was to know him. “Everything, even.”

A small smile grew on his own face, lopsided and warm. He ducked his head a bit and looked away from her again, and embarrassment started to fill her—but it was worth it.

It often weighed on her heart to say that more than she did. She supposed she was the type of person who liked to show such things rather than say them.

She had a cramp in one of her shoulders from trying to carry him smoothly, but the weight on the other one—and on his—seemed far lighter.

—

She remembered the day her father came home livid.

She couldn’t figure out what had happened. Had he been wounded? Insulted? Tricked? He wouldn’t say.

He just raged. The trees bent under his wrath as he stamped them down, carving a new path through the forest. He picked up boulders and flung them at cliffsides, the noise of the impacts like thunder as showers of shattered stone flew in all directions.

She was tending to the garden a ways off—huge vines and stalks entwined their ways up poles and hill-high arbors made from towering pines, where she liked to work and admire how the sunset made the leaves glow gold—and suddenly had a sharp, sinking feeling.

Nix was still at his little shelter-house at their encampment. Her father was there.

Dread washed over her.

“Riddle me this, boy,” her father boomed, in the voice he only used when he wanted an excuse to strike something. “What is thick like glass and thin as air, cold but warm, ugly but fair? Fills the air yet never fills it, never exists but that all things will it?”

There was silence for a long moment.

...Silence. The answer was silence. Her father was trying to trick him into speaking.

Her hands curled around the bucket handle so weakly it was a surprise she didn’t drop it. Her father could crush him if he felt he had the slightest excuse.

Hush, hush, hush, her mind pleaded. Her hands shook. For your life and mine, hush—

There continued to be silence for a moment—and then, Nix must have answered. (Perhaps in jest. He tended to joke when uncertain. That would have been a mistake.)

There came the indescribable sound of a tree being ripped from its roots, and the deafening thunder of it being thrown and smashing down trees and structures.

Her whole body tensed horribly, and all she could see in her mind’s eye was nightmares.

No, she thought weakly.

Her father kept shouting. But not just shouting, addressing. Asking scathing rhetorical questions. She felt faint with relief, because her father had never wasted words on the dead.

I should have brought him with me. The thought flooded her body and left room for nothing else but dread and regret. I could have prevented this.

The stables were long and broad and old. Once, they had housed armies’ steeds and chariots. Now, they were run-down and reinforced so nothing could escape out the doors. The roof was broken off like a lid on hinges at intervals so her father could reach in to arrange and feed his horses.

Her father had seen no reason to keep the stalls clean. When one was so packed with bedding it had decomposed to soil at the floor level, the horse was moved to the next unused stall. There were so many stalls that she barely remembered, sometimes, that there were other ways of addressing the problem.

“The stable has not been cleaned in seven years,” her father boomed. “You will clean it tomorrow, or I will eat you in my stew.”

She couldn’t hear Nix’s response, but she could feel his dread.

Her father stormed away, more violently than any storm, and slowly, after the echoes of his steps faded, silence again began to hang in the air.

That night, it was hard to sleep. The next morning, it was hard to think.

She did the only thing she could think to do in such a nervous state. She brought her friend breakfast. His favorite breakfast—a roast leg of venison and a little knife he could use to cut off what he wanted of it, and fried turkey-eggs, and a modest chunk of soft brown bread.

When she arrived with it, he was still mucking out the first stall. There were hundreds ahead of him. He was only halfway to the floor of the first.

“I can’t eat,” Nix murmured, almost too quietly to hear and with too much misery to bear. “I can’t stop. But thank you.”

The pile outside the door he’d opened up was already growing too large. Of every pitchfork-full he threw out, some began to tumble back in. He was growing frustrated, and out of breath.

Why would her father raise a boy, a prince, only to eat him now? Her father was cunning; surely he’d had other plans for him. Or perhaps he really was kept like the horses, as a trophy or prize taken from the human kingdoms that giants so hated.

Was this his fate? Worked beyond reason, only to be killed?

Pity—or something stronger, perhaps, that she couldn’t name—stirred in her heart. A heat filled her veins, burning with sadness and a desire to set right. Would the world be worthwhile without this one small person in it?

No.

This wouldn’t end this way.

She called to the birds of the air and all the creatures of the forest. Her heart-song was sad and pure—so when she pleaded with them, to please hear, please come and carry away straw and earth and care for what has been neglected, they listened.

The stable was clean by the time the first stars appeared. When she set Nix gently on her shoulder afterward, he hugged the side of her head and laughed in weary relief for a long while.

—

She remembered the lake, and the tree.

“Shame on the wit who helped you,” her father had boomed. He’d inspected the stable by the light of his torch—a ship’s mast he’d wrapped the sails around the top of and drenched in oil—and found every last piece of dirt and straw gone. Had he known it was her, that she could do such a thing? She couldn’t tell. “But I have a worse task for you tomorrow.”

The lake nearest them was miles long, and miles wide, and so deep that even her father could not ford it.

“You will drain it dry by nightfall, or I will have you in my stew.”

The next morning, soon as her father had gone away past the hills, she came to the edge of the lake. She could hear the splashing before she saw it.

Nix stood knee-deep in the water, a large wooden bucket in his hands, struggling to heave the water out and into a trench he’d dug beside the shore.

When she neared him and knelt down in the sand, scanning the water and the trench and the distant, distant shoreline opposite them, Nix fell still for a moment. She looked at him, hoping he could see the apology in her eyes.

“Can I help?” she asked.

He shook his head miserably.

“Thank you. But even if we both worked all day, we couldn’t get it dry before nightfall.” He gave her a wry, sad smile, full of pain. “The birds and the creatures can’t carry buckets, I’m afraid.”

It was true. They could not take away the water.

But perhaps other things could.

She stood and drew a deep breath, and called to the fish of the rivers and lake, and to the deep places of the earth to please hear, please open your mouths and drain the lake dry.

With a tumult that shook the earth beneath them all, they did. The chasm it left in the land was great and terrible, but it was dry.

Her father was livid to see it.

“I’ve a worse job for you tomorrow,” he’d thundered at Nix as the twilight began to darken. “There is a tree that has grown from before your kind walked this land. It is many miles high, with no branches until you reach the top. Fetch me the seven eggs from the bird’s nest in its boughs, and break none, or I will eat you before the day is out.”

She found Nix at dawn the next day at the foot of the tree, staring up it with an expression more wearied than she’d ever seen before. She looked up the tree as well. It seemed to stretch up nearly to the clouds, its trunk wide and strong with not a foothold in sight. At the top, its leaves shone a faint gold in the sunlight.

“He is wrong to ask you these things,” Bonny said softly. Her words hung in the air like the sunbeams seemed to hang about the tree. There was something special about this place, some old power with roots that ran deep. “I’m very sorry for it.”

“You needn’t be,” Nix assured her. His countenance was grey, but he tried to smile. “But thank you. You’re very kind.”

She looked up the tree again. Uncertainty filled her, because this was an old tree—a strong one. Even if it could hear her, it had no obligation to listen. “Will you try?”

He laughed humorlessly. “What choice do I have?”

None. He had none.

He could not escape for long on his own—he could not be gone fast enough or hide safely enough for her father not to sniff him out. The destruction that would follow him would be far more than he would wish on the forests and villages and cities about them.

She, however, bit her lip.

She slipped the gold vine-ring off her hand, and rolled it so that it spiraled between her fingers. It was finely crafted, made to look like it was a young vine wrapping its way partly up her finger.

“This is all I have of my mother,” she said quietly. “But it will serve you better.”

Before he could speak—she knew him well enough to know that he would bid her to stop, to not lose something precious on his account (as if he weren’t?)—she whispered a birdlike song, and pleaded with the gold and the tree and the old good in the world to help them.

When she tossed the ring at the base of the tree (was it shameful that she had to quell a sadness that tried to creep into her heart?), it writhed. One end of it rooted into the ground, and suddenly it was no longer gold, but yellow-green—and the vine grew, and grew, curling around the tree as it stretched upward until it was nearly out of sight.

Nix stared at her with wide eyes and an emotion she couldn’t quite place. Whatever it was, it made her ears warm.

She smiled slightly and stepped back, tilting her head at the vine.

“Well?” she said. He was still staring at her with that look—some mix of awestruck and like he was trying to draw together words—and it made her fold her arms lightly and smile as she looked away. She quickly looked back to him, hoping faintly that her embarrassment wasn’t obvious. “You’d best hurry. That’s still a long way up.”

He seemed to give up finding words for the moment. Nix glanced up the tree, now decked with a spiral of thick, knobby vine that looked nearby like uneven stairs.

“Give me a boost?” he asked with a bright grin. “To speed it up.”

She laughed and gently scooped him up in both hands. “A boost, or just a boost?”

He beamed at her. “As high as you can get me,” he declared, waving an arm dramatically.

She laughed and shook her head. ”Absolutely not. Ready?”

Nix nodded, and she smiled thinly and poured all her focus into a spot a good distance up the tree. With a very gentle but swift motion, she tossed him upward a bit—and he landed on his feet on the vine, one shoulder against the bark, clutching to the tree for support as he laughed.

“A marvel!” he shouted down to her as he climbed. “Never forget that!”

The sun was nearly setting when he descended with the eggs bundled in his handkerchief. He was glowing.

He triumphantly hopped down the last few feet to the ground.

A moment after he landed, a soft crack sounded. He froze.

Slowly, he drew the bundle more securely into his arms against him and looked down. There, by his foot, was a little speckled egg, half-broken in the grass.

She put a hand over her mouth. Nix clutched the rest and stared.

A grievous pain and numbness slowly filled her heart, and she knew it was filling his too.

His shoulders began to shake, and his eyes were glassy.

“Well,” he laughed weakly. ”...That’s it. That’s... that was my chance.” The distress that overtook him was like a dark wave, and it threatened to cover her too. He only shook his head. “I’m so sorry. Thank you for—for helping me.”

For everything, she didn’t give him a chance to add. He was looking at her with the eyes of one who might say that. She couldn’t afford to be overcome with the notion of saying goodbye now.

“No,” she said. Her voice was quiet, at first, but it grew more resolute. “It won’t end this way.”

He blinked up at her, still clutching the other eggs to his chest. She looked down at him, then across the stretch of forest to their home.

Without a word, she gently picked him up and set him on her shoulder. Her jaw tensed as she strode quickly through well-worn paths of the forest, walking as fast as a horse could run.

Once home, she set him down. He was still looking at her questioningly. Her heart beat faster in her chest, and she hoped he couldn’t see the anxiousness rising in her and battling with the excitement.

“I will not let him have you,” she announced firmly. The trees and hills all around were witness to her promise. “Grab what you need. We’ll leave together in the hour.”

—

She‘d barely had time to fix her hair, grab her water flask, and decide it would be best this time of year to go south.

Her father’s footsteps boomed closer across the land.

—

They fled.

They ran, and ran, and struggled and strove, and she called for the help of anything she could think of that would have mercy on them.

Her comb grew into thorns, her hairpin into a hedge of jagged spires. Neither stopped him. Her dress’s hem was in tatters and sweat poured from her brow when they were finally safe.

Her flask lay behind them, cast down and broken, its magic used up.

Her father—her father—lay stretched out motionless in the flooded plain behind them, never to rise again.

—

There was a tiny spark of hope they had that they clung to. A hope of a future, of restoration, of amending the past and pursuing peace—of a life worth living, perhaps far, far away from things worth leaving behind.

(“I’ll go to the castle,” he’d said, his voice brimming with nerves and hope and uncertainty and sadness and an eager warmth. It made her heart try to mirror all those emotions alongside him. “I can tell my mother and father who I am. I’d still recognize them, even if they don’t know me. They’ll take us in, I’m sure of it.”)

He set out into the maze of village streets, assuring her he’d ask for directions and be back promptly. She stayed back by the well at the edge of the town so not to alarm anyone, too exhausted to go another step, but full of hope for him. She would wait until he returned.

(And wait. And wait. And wait and wait and wait and dread—)

The castle gardener came to draw water, and—as if she weren’t as tall as the small trees under the huge one she sat against—struck up a conversation with her about the mysterious boy who’d fallen unconscious across the threshold of the castle, asleep as if cursed to never wake up.

(The spark didn’t last long.)

—

She remembered when he could move.

“Please,” she whispered, as soft as her voice would go. “Please, if you can hear me. Wake up.”

(“Oh, dearest,” the gardener’s frail wife had murmured to her when the kind gardener brought her home to partake of a bit of supper. “I’m afraid they won’t let you in as you are. Would you let me sing you a catch as you eat?”)

The gardener’s wife was frailer by the end of it, but her heart-song could change things, like her own. Instead of towering at the heights of the houses, she was now six feet tall by human reckoning, and still thankful the castle had high halls and tall doors.

(Their daughter, a fair maiden with a shadow about her, had watched from the doorway.)

Nix Nought Nothing lay nearly motionless in the cushioned chair the castle servants had placed him in. His chest rose and fell slowly, like he was in a deep sleep.

He was still smaller than she was, but not by much. He seemed so large, or close. She could see details she’d never noticed before—his freckles, the definition of his eyelashes, the scuffs and loose threads in his tunic.

The way his head hung as if he could no longer support it.

She held him gently—oddly, now, with both her hands so small on his arms and an uncertainty of what to do now—and wept over him. She sung through her tears, her heart pleading with his very soul, but to no avail. He did not wake up.

He didn’t hear her—likely couldn’t hear her. All around him, the air was sharp and still and dead. Cursed.

Still, her heart pleaded with her, now. Try, try. Don’t stop speaking to him. Remember? He never stopped trying.

“You joke that you are nothing," she said, with every drop of earnestness in her being. "But I tell you, you are all I had, and all I had ever wished for.”

There was power in names. She knew that. But was his even a proper name? It really wasn’t—though it was all he had.

It was all she had as well. She had exhausted everything else close to her. There was nothing left to call on, to plead with, but him.

“Nix Nought Nothing,” she said softly. “Awaken, please.”

Her voice, no longer so resonant and deep with giant’s-breath, sounded foreign in her ears. It was mournful and soft like the doves of the rocks, and grieved like the groan of the earth when it split.

“I cleaned the stable, I lave the lake, and clomb the tree, all for the love of thee,” she said, her voice thickening with tears. A drop of saltwater fell and landed on his tunic, creating another of many small blotches. “And will you not awaken and speak to me?”

Nothing.

—

She didn’t remember being shown out of the room. Her vision was too blurred, and her mind was too distraught and overwhelmed. The next thing she could focus on enough to recall was that she was now seated on a stiff chair in the hall. Someone had been kind enough to set a cup of water on the little table beside her.

The towering doors creaked softly behind her, and at last, someone new entered. She looked over her shoulder, barely able to see through the dry burning left behind by her tears.

A man and a woman stood in the door. They were dressed in fine robes, and looked like nobles.

"What is the matter, dear?" the woman asked, looking over her appearance with eyes soft with pity. She came close, and her presence was like cool balm, gentle and comforting. "Why do you weep?"

The gold roses woven in the green of the woman's dress swam in her vision as she dropped her gaze, unsure what to say. These people seemed kind. But were they? Would they send her out from here, unable to return to him?

They would be right to do so. She was a stranger here, and Nix could not vouch for her like he'd planned.

"No matter what I do," she finally said softly, "I cannot get Nix Nought Nothing to awaken and speak to me."

In one moment, only the woman stood there—in the next, the man was beside her. The air was suddenly still and heavy like glass, and it felt as though there was a thread drawn taut between them all for a moment.

"Nix Nought Nothing?" they asked in unison, their voices full of something tense and heavy and sharp. When she looked up, nearly fearful at the sudden change in their tone, their faces were slack and pale.

Something stirred in her heart. Look. What do you see?

Green and gold. Their wide eyes were a familiar warm brown.

—

Now, things are changing.

According to the servant who'd been keeping an eye on him, all from the kingdom had been offered reward if they could wake the sleeping stranger, and the the gardener's daughter had succeeded. It was a mystery how it had happened—by whom had he been cursed? Her father? Then why could she not wake him, but a maiden from the castle-town here could?—but now, with the King and Queen hovering beside her and unable to stay still for anticipation, no one cared.

The gardener's daughter was fetched, and bid to sing the unspelling catch for the prince. (Prince. He was a prince, while she was a ruffian's daughter. She kept forgetting, when she was with him.) It was a haunting one that grated on her ears, as selfishly-written magics often did—and as if bitterness still crept at the girl's heart at the sight of all who were here, she left as soon as it was finished.

Nix Nought Nothing awoke—he awoke! He opened his eyes and sat up and looked at her as if seeing the sunrise after a year of darkness, and how her heart leaps high into her throat at the sight—and true to form, only blinks a few times at her as he seems to take her in before coming to terms with it.

"You look a bit different," he remarks, tilting his head slightly. "Or did I grow?"

She chokes on a snort.

"Hush," is all she can say. What had been an attempt at an unimpressed expression melts into a wavering smile. "Are you done napping now?"

He opens his mouth to retort, but a grin creeps onto his face before he can. He snickers. "Have I slept that long?"

"Nigh a week," the Queen says—and when Nix turns his head and sees her, his eyes grow wide. The Queen's smile grows broad and wavers with emotion, and the King's eyes are crinkled at the edges, and shining. "It has been a long time."

Her own father had never shown love like this—like the way Nix tries to leap from his chair at the same moment his parents rush to hold him, all of them laughing and sobbing and shouting exclamations of love and excitement and I-thought-I-would-never-see-you-agains. So much joy rolls off of them that she thinks she could have stood there watching forever and been content.

The first thing he does, after the first surge of this, is turn and introduce her to his parents, who had barely finished hugging him and kissing him and calling him their own dear son.

"This is the one who helped me," Nix says, already gesturing to her in excitement as he looks from her to his parents. "She sacrificed much to save me from the giant. Her kindness is brilliant and she blesses all who know her."

She tries not to look embarrassed at the glowing praise as Nix comes and stands beside her as he recounts their blur of a tale to his parents.

"Ah! She is bonny and brave," says the King. By the end of Nix's stories of their escapes, they're smiling warmly at her with such pride that she dips her head and smiles.

Nix Nought Nothing glances sideways up at her and raises a brow, a knowing smirk tugging at his lips.

"I've tried to tell her that," he agrees. "I don't think she's ever believed me."

She purses her lips and glances down at him. "I'll believe it the day you believe you are not nothing."

"Alright." Simple as that, he folds his arms and raises a brow at her. "I believe it. Fair trade?"

"Fair enough," she decides, with a crooked little smile. He beams, as if she's done something worth being proud of, and looks to his parents, who indeed look proud of them both.

"We would welcome you as our daughter," the King declares heartily, and both the Queen and Nix brighten, which makes her too embarrassedly fixated on the thought of family? Starting anew? to register what comes next. "Surely, you should be married!"

Nix looks at her, arms still folded, his eyes twinkling. There's something hopeful in his eyes that makes her certain this diminutive new heart of hers has skipped a few beats.

"Should we? Surely?" he asks, as if this is a normal thing to be discussing.

She works her jaw and swallows a few times, unable to help how obviously awkward she still likely looks. A flush tickles her face, and the queen seems to put a hand over her mouth to smile behind it.

"I... don't... suppose... I would mind," she manages, and—with those bright eyes so affectionate, and on her—Nix starts snickering at her expression. It's rude, but so, so warm she can't mind. She only discovers how broadly she's smiling when she tries to purse her lips and glare at him but is unable to. "Oh, go back to sleep!" she chides, too gleeful inside to truly mind, even as she makes a motion as if throwing one of the chair-cushions at him.

"Never!" he declares, pretending to dodge the invisible pillow. He makes broad gestures that she presumes are meant to emphasize how serious he is about this. When he stands straight and tall and sets his shoulders, she thinks that the boy she's explored the forest with really does look like a prince. "I have my family and my love all together in safety at last. We have much to speak of, and much time yet to spend with each other." He's a prince, but of course, he's also still himself. He immediately gets a mischievous glimmer in his eyes and puts a hand to his chest nobly as he does what he's done for as long as she's known him—jokes, when his emotions rise. "I shall never adhere to a bedtime as long as I live!"

My love, her heart still repeats every time it beats—as payback, likely, for her calling it diminutive. My love, my love, my love.

She doesn't let it out, for she doesn't know what it will do. But the words weave a song within her, so vibrant and effervescent and strong, brighter and clearer than any she's had before.

"I am glad to see you are certainly still my dear son," the Queen says, her own eyes twinkling. "I'm certain you both need fed well after such a journey. Come, perhaps you both can tell us more of it as supper is prepared."

They fall into an easy tumble of conversation and rejoicing and genial planning, and her heart is so light she thinks it must be plotting to escape her chest.

On the week's end from when she brought him here, Nix Nought Nothing and his family welcomes her into their home. It feels natural. It feels warm, and homey, and so pleasant and right that she often has to stop tears of weary joy from welling up as she considers it all.

Once upon a time, she thought she'd known happiness well enough without him. She had known what it was like to be without a friend, and without love.

Now, it’s hard to remember it.

#inklingschallenge #four loves fairy tale retelling challenge #each all everything #theme: philia #theme: eros #story: complete #Nix Nought Nothing #fairy tale retelling #And there we have it!! A THING that is now FINISHED #Some changes have been made from the original fairytale #such as: no one’s losing their toes like that on my watch!! #please note that having everyone keep their toes actually improves the story #by letting the characters be happier thanks to having toes #you’re welcome #edit: I forgot it was fingers AND toes #oof?? #this is an extremities-safe zone #Bonny and Nix #There are some parts of this I’m not sure are the best they could be BUT it’s FINISHED and that was my main goal! #(I don't finish things I start writing near often enough; so whoo! Small victory!) #wait a minute did I include all four types of love?? #I DID #that's hilarious that was not intentional #at the discretion of the contest runner to include; as doing all four sounds a bit extra: #theme: storge #theme: agape #This was supposed to be a friendship/romantic love combination that would surprise no one who has read my writing #imagine my own (retrospectively unwarranted) surprise when it turned into an excuse for me to write all the kinds of love?? #Anyway this was so much fun to write! I hope you enjoy! <3 #salt and light

[griseldabanks]

Fundevogel

For my entry in @inklings-challenge's Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge, I decided to write my version of the obscure Grimm's fairy tale "Fundevogel," which can be found in text and audio here. It's always appealed to me, for reasons I hope will soon become obvious to you! I took some creative liberties with my rewrite, mostly to flesh out the characters and make certain things (hopefully) make a little more sense. Please let me know of any thoughts, questions, or constructive criticism you might have!

Once upon a time, there was a rich landowner whose land was covered with lush forests. He had a loving wife, with whom he lived happily in a beautiful house on a hill overlooking the forest on all sides. Early in their marriage, they were blessed with a lovely daughter they named Lina.

For five years, this little family lived in happiness and prosperity. Lina grew more lovely every day, her hair falling about her shoulders in golden curls, her eyes sparkling like the sun on the merry brook at the foot of the hill. The house was filled with merriment and song, the servants carrying boughs of fragrant leaves and flowers in from the forest to freshen the grand old house. Lina skipped and sang on the emerald-green grass on the hill on fine days, and brought her songs and games indoors when the weather confined them all to the house. Many long, dark winter evenings were brightened by Lina's laughter mingling with that of her parents as they played and sang before the fire.

But on the darkest night of Lina's fifth year, her mother took ill and was confined to her bed. The illness moved swiftly, so that the landowner had barely begun to worry for his wife's safety before she was taken away. The servants whispered that this sickness was unnatural—after all, no one else had fallen ill. A curse, they said, though none could say who would have dared to curse their kind mistress, nor why.

Overnight, Lina's sunny, golden world was overshadowed by grief and darkness. Bowed down with grief and a thousand unanswerable questions, her father no longer tossed her up in the air with a laugh or carried her about on his shoulders as he strode through the forest. Moreover, he no longer let her run carefree about the hilltop or at the edge of the forest, not even during the height of summer. He was terrified of losing the only treasure remaining to him that he cared about, so he kept Lina closeted away in the big old house. By his orders, the house was shut up and kept silent. No more songs echoed through the halls. No more flowers were brought from the forest to freshen the rooms.

As time passed, Lina's father emerged from the darkness swamping him long enough to see that Lina needed more care than he in his grief-stricken state could give. At that time, one of his servants approached him. Old Sanna was a fat old crone who had worked in the kitchens since the landowner himself had been a boy. He remembered her scolding him coldly when he would sneak down to the kitchens as a child to sample a pie before dinner.

“My Lord,” Old Sanna said, wringing her hands with a gap-toothed smile, “if it please you, I would be happy to act as Lina's nurse. I will see to it that no harm comes to the lovely child's head.”

With relief, the landowner swiftly agreed to this arrangement. He put Lina under Old Sanna's care, then threw himself into his work as a balm for his grief. He would stop in once a day to see that all was well with Lina, but besides that, Lina rarely saw her father anymore.

As for Old Sanna, Lina at first thought the old woman was kind, as all the other servants were. The old woman preened and petted her, running a gnarled finger down Lina's smooth cheek and admiring her youthful beauty with many words of praise. This treatment was a far cry from the love her mother had always lavished upon her, but Lina craved even the tiniest crumb of esteem, now that her days had grown so cold and empty.

However, as Lina grew, she slowly became aware of a hungry light that would gleam in Old Sanna's eyes when she spoke these words of praise. Sometimes, when she would brush out Lina's soft curls, her gnarled fingers would tangle almost painfully in them, as if she secretly longed to yank Lina's hair straight off her head. Sometimes, Old Sanna would sigh as she helped Lina into her pretty little dresses, “Ah, once I was young and beautiful as well! To have a body as young and strong as yours....”

Lina also began to hear the occasional whisper from the other servants, when they thought no one could hear. They said there had been nothing natural about her mother's death—it had been too quick for someone as young and strong as her, and those who had helped prepare the body for burial said she looked as though she had aged several decades overnight, as though someone had stolen her youth away.

Though she could not quite explain it to herself at such a young age, Lina discovered that she did not like Old Sanna at all. Lina's needs were met, but there were no games with Old Sanna, no songs, no laughter. Lina had no playmates, and Old Sanna wouldn't even let her play by herself if it disturbed the old woman's rest in front of the fire. She was to sit and spin, or embroider, or work on her letters. But when she did, she would often look up and find Old Sanna watching her with that hungry look in her eyes, as if she longed to gobble Lina up.

It was at this time that Lina's father went on an inspection of his property, and his path led through the forest. When the edge of the forest had left his sight, he heard the sound of a baby's cry high above him. Upon closer inspection, he discovered that, sure enough, a baby lay in an eagle's nest high above him. It seemed that an eagle had swooped down and snatched up the baby from where it had been lying in the open, and brought it back to its nest.

Taking great care not to shake the tree and dislodge the child, the landowner climbed the tree and brought the baby down to safety. The child was a boy, not more than a year old, with dark eyes and a tuft of hair as brown as a sparrow's wing. He seemed strong and healthy, though hungry and frightened, and the landowner's heart went out to him. He carried the child back to his house, sending servants into the surrounding countryside to discover whose child this was, and saw to it that the child was fed and washed.

When a thorough search had been made and none claimed the child, the landowner decided to raise the boy as his own son. He could not bear to leave such a small, helpless child to fend for himself in the great, wide world—and besides, he thought perhaps the boy would be a good playmate for Lina. So he made it known that the boy was now his son, and he named him Fundevogel, or bird-foundling.

As for Lina, she was overjoyed to have a little brother to love and care for. At last, her cold solitude was brought to an end. She called her brother Vogel for short, saying that he was her little sparrow that her mother had sent from heaven so that she would have someone to play with. And from the first time Vogel looked up at Lina as she held him in her arms, he smiled with a look that would have melted a heart of ice.

Lina and Vogel could not have looked more different from one another. When Vogel began to walk, it became common to see Lina holding his little hand as he toddled along the dark corridors, her golden curls seeming to shine in the candlelight while Vogel's dark hair seemed to blend into the shadows. Nothing in their appearance would have suggested they were brother and sister, but it was not long before they were inseparable. Any time Vogel was taken away from Lina, he would begin to cry, and Lina would grow sad when she had to leave him, even for a short time.

“Mother left me,” Lina said sadly to Vogel as she rocked him to sleep at night, “and Father is rarely here. So I will never leave you, little brother, if you will never leave me.”

Old Sanna still had the care of the two children, for though the landowner had taken Vogel in, he had much work to do and little time to care for two small children. At first, Old Sanna seemed resentful that she was now responsible for another charge, and left much of the work of caring for Vogel to Lina. Though at first it was difficult, for Lina knew nothing of caring for babies and was only a small child herself, she was more than happy to look after her little brother. Besides, Vogel would laugh and babble and sing, and was a much better companion than grumpy Old Sanna sitting before the fire.

As the years passed and Vogel grew into a fine, strong boy, Lina began to notice the way Old Sanna would look at him when she thought no one was looking. She had grown used to the hungry light in Old Sanna's eyes when she looked at Lina, but the hunger seemed even more ravenous when she looked upon little Vogel. Lina was not sure what to make of this, but she was even more careful to remain by Vogel's side at all times.

One night, Lina woke when she heard someone shuffling around the nursery. Peering carefully over her blankets so that she would seem to still be asleep, Lina saw Old Sanna standing hunched over by the fireplace. By the dim light of the dying embers, she could see that Old Sanna clutched the hairbrush with which she brushed Lina's golden curls every day. Old Sanna pulled out a single golden hair from the brush, lifted it to her lips, and ate it.

With a flash of light, Old Sanna suddenly straightened her old, bent back. Lina could not be quite sure in the uncertain light, but it seemed to her that Old Sanna had become transformed into a young woman, smooth-cheeked and beautiful, moving with the ease of youth.

When the morning came, however, Lina looked at Old Sanna and saw that she was the same old crone she had always been. At first she thought she must have simply dreamed that the old woman had become young, but that night she feigned sleep until she heard Old Sanna moving about the room again. Just as she had done the night before, Lina watched Old Sanna eat a single hair from Lina's hairbrush, and was transformed into a young woman once more. Night after night, the old woman would go through the same ritual, as though the only thing sustaining her life was devouring Lina's hair.

Lina told no one of what she had seen, for who would believe her? And if Old Sanna knew of her suspicions, what would she do? So Lina remained silent, but became even more protective of her little brother. She grew more and more suspicious of the way Old Sanna looked at him. If she merely ate the hairs that fell from their heads, that would not be a problem. But Lina feared that eventually even this would not be enough for Old Sanna.

As much as possible, Lina tried to keep Vogel away from Old Sanna. They spent many long hours together in the extensive gardens around her father's house, and occasionally ventured into the forest—but never out of sight of the great house. The many hours they played together not only kept them out of the old nurse's hungry grasp, but also strengthened the bond between brother and sister.

In the years following the discovery of Fundevogel in the branches of the tree, Lina began to realize that he was far from ordinary. When he was overcome with great emotion, he would often transform into a bird, or a toy he had been playing with, or some other object he was familiar with. The first time he turned into a little sparrow while crying at the top of his lungs, Lina was filled with terror that he would be forever trapped in that form. However, once he had flown about the room several times, twittering loudly, he settled on Lina's pillow and became a little boy again in the blink of an eye.

Lina went to great lengths to keep her brother's strange ability from being discovered. She feared that, if anyone knew what Vogel could do, they would think he was a fairy-child or an evil spirit, and they would send him back into the forest where he had been found. Unable to bear the thought of being separated, Lina told Vogel sternly that he was not to talk about his gift or transform into anything unless they were alone. Vogel loved Lina more than anyone in the whole world, so he always strove to follow what she said.

As Vogel grew, he gradually became better able to control his powers. When they were alone in the forest together, he would beg Lina to let him turn into a bird or a squirrel or a fox. One such time, when he turned into a tree to stop her from pulling him to his feet to go back home, Lina transformed with him. Vogel became a tall oak tree, and Lina became a vine that twisted around his trunk. Vogel was so surprised that he immediately changed them back into their original forms.

“I'm sorry!” Vogel cried, tears filling his eyes as he stared imploringly up at Lina. “I didn't mean to! Did it...hurt?”

“No...” Lina said slowly, staring down at her hands that had been pale green leaves moments before. “But it felt...strange....”

An overwhelming curiosity overcame Lina. Taking Vogel's little hand in hers, she said, “Try turning into something else. Maybe...a cow?”

With an overjoyed laugh that Lina wanted to play with him, Vogel turned into a cow just like the ones that produced the milk they drank every morning. Lina held tight to his hand, and she became a silver bell hanging from his neck. She laughed out of pure joy, and the bell tinkled merrily.

After this discovery, Lina and Vogel would often transform as part of their games. Lina could only transform if she were touching Vogel when he used his power, but that was of no matter. They were always together.

As birds and beasts, the brother and sister roamed the nearby countryside, discovering the beauties and small wonders of the world around them. No longer were they confined to the cold, drab halls of their gloomy house. Even in the winter, if they had a spare moment to themselves, they could turn into mice and explore inside the walls, or become wolves and race across the icy hills in the moonlight. Once or twice, Lina was sure that Old Sanna had seen them transform, but the old woman never spoke a word about it. Lina thought that as long as they were careful, perhaps they would still be safe.

But then came the day that their father left on a trip to a town several days' journey away. Though he kept himself busy, and Lina and Vogel saw little of him on any given day, his presence was constantly felt in the huge old house, and he returned at the end of every long day. This time, however, he would be gone for a score of days, long enough that he took a number of servants with him. Old Sanna was to be left in charge of the household while he was gone, for she had lived there all her long life and knew what was to be done. At the ages of ten and five, Lina and Vogel did not need her constant care; they had been taking care of each other for the most part already.

Thinking he was leaving his children in good hands, their father left to conduct his business. As soon as the sound of jingling harness had faded into the distance, Old Sanna turned upon the children with a hungry light in her eyes brighter than ever before, and Lina felt her heart sink to her toes. She could see now that the only thing holding the old woman back had been her fear of the consequences should harm come to the children while their father was near.

But Old Sanna did nothing that night. As she pondered it in later years, Lina suspected that the old woman was merely waiting until she could be sure that her master was far enough away that he could not be swiftly fetched back home. So the children went to bed unharmed, but Lina did not close her eyes all night.

It was in the early hours of the morning that Lina heard some of the remaining manservants grumbling in the courtyard. Creeping to the window, Lina cracked it open and listened to them wondering aloud why Old Sanna had ordered them to gather enough wood to make a bonfire, and so early in the morning.

“She said she was ravenously hungry,” one of the servants said with a yawn.

“Oh, is that why she had us haul out that old cauldron?” the other servant replied. “I wonder what she intends to cook in it.”

“Whatever it is,” the first servant grumbled, “I certainly hope she sees fit to share it with the rest of us. There ought to be enough to go around—one could boil a grown man alive in that thing!”

Upon hearing this, Lina's very blood turned to ice in her veins. She knew that Old Sanna would not be boiling a grown man in the cauldron, but two children. Clearly, she would no longer be satisfied with a few hairs from their heads.

Swiftly, Lina dressed herself and went to shake her little brother awake. “Make haste!” she urged him as he blinked sleepily up at her. “We must run away—now, at once! Old Sanna means to boil us alive and eat us!”

Vogel began to cry. “But I don't want to be eaten!” he wailed.

“Hush, now,” Lina soothed, her heart clenching to see her brother in such distress. Hoping to reassure him, as well as quiet him before someone heard them, she said, “I will be with you, Fundevogel. Every step of the way.”

Wiping away his tears, Vogel looked up at his sister, the dearest person to him in the whole world. “You won't leave me alone?”

Lina grasped her brother's hand tightly in her own. “I will never leave you, if you will never leave me.”

“No,” Vogel said earnestly, clinging to her hand with all his might. “Neither now, nor ever will I leave you.”

As soon as the two were dressed, they slipped out of the house. At first, Lina intended to sneak into the kitchen and steal some food for their journey, but when they approached the final corridor, they could hear Old Sanna ordering the cooks about at the top of her lungs, as they prepared for her horrific feast.

So Lina and Vogel slipped out of the house and ran for the forest, taking nothing with them but the clothes on their backs. Until they had reached the shelter of the trees, Lina was sure at each step that she would hear the sounds of pursuit hot on their heels. However, no one seemed to notice them; the servants were all too sleepy and too preoccupied by their unusual orders. Holding tightly to each other's hand, the two children put as much distance between them and their home as they could.

For a time, Old Sanna was none the wiser as to the children's escape. But as the sun rose higher in the sky, she left the other servants to their tasks and made her way up to the nursery again. She thought to fetch Fundevogel and throw him into the boiling cauldron first, for she knew of his power. If he had the slightest inkling of the danger he faced, he might turn into a sparrow and fly away, and then she would lose her prized meal.

To Old Sanna's shock, when she opened the door to the nursery, she found the children's beds empty and cold. Immediately, she called the servants to search the whole estate for them, but even after a thorough search, they could not be found. Enraged, Old Sanna sent the three strongest and swiftest men to find the children's trail and hunt them down.

Lina and Vogel had been walking for hours, but their progress was hampered by the undergrowth in the forest and by Vogel's short legs, which grew more and more weary as time dragged on. Yet neither of them dared to stop and rest, for they knew they had not reached safety yet.

Then came the sound Lina had been dreading most: the tread of men's heavy boots, and the call of voices angered by the inconvenience of fighting through the forest in search of two runaway children. It was only a matter of time before the children would be found and dragged back to their deaths.

“Quickly, Vogel!” Lina cried, as the sound of tromping feet grew closer and closer. “Turn into a bird and fly away while there is still time!”

But Vogel gripped her hand more tightly and stared up at her with a stubborn set to his jaw. “I will never leave you, if you will never leave me.”

Seeing that her brother would not be persuaded otherwise, Lina nodded and said, “Neither now nor ever will I leave you. Now turn into a bush, and we will hide until the men are gone!”

So Vogel turned into a small, leafy bush, and Lina became a rose on the bush. They held still and silent as the servants burst into the clearing, following the sound of the children's voices and their footprints in the soft earth. But instead of two children, they saw only a small, trim rosebush—which looked very out of place in the wildness of the forest, but after all was not the children they had been sent to find.

At last, not knowing what else to do, the servants returned to Old Sanna. “We followed the trail into the forest,” they told her, “but all we found was a bush, with a single rose on it.”

“You fools!” Old Sanna shrieked, seeing at once what the children had done. “You should have plucked the rose and cut down the bush, and brought them back here! Now go after them again, and do not fail me this time!”

Startled by this strange outburst, but knowing they had been ordered to follow all of Old Sanna's directions, the servants returned to the forest and picked up the trail again.

Meanwhile, Lina and Vogel had waited for the servants to leave, then had returned to their original forms and continued on their way. But it was only a matter of hours before their steps flagged once again, and they heard the sounds of pursuit close behind them.

“I will never leave you, if you will never leave me,” Lina said, knowing her brother would not consent to leave her behind.

“Neither now nor ever will I leave you,” Vogel said. “I will turn into a church. They will not be able to take us back then.”

So Vogel turned into a little chapel in a forest clearing, and Lina became a chandelier hanging from its ceiling. He had never transformed into something so large before, but he managed it, down to the smallest detail. When the servants came upon the clearing, thinking to find two children, instead they were met with a small, quaint chapel. They looked all around it and peered through the windows, but they found no one inside. Indeed, it was completely bare except for the beautiful, glittering chandelier. The servants could not find the children's trail leading away from the chapel, so they could do nothing but return home again.

“We followed their trail into the forest,” they told Old Sanna, “but all we found was a church, with a chandelier inside it.”

“Fools, all of you!” Old Sanna roared again. “Why did you not pull down the chandelier, and break the church down stone by stone, and bring it back to me? This time I will go after them myself, for I can see that you are all useless!”

Then she opened wide her mouth, and swallowed the men in one gulp. As she devoured their lives, her back straightened, her shriveled fingers stretched out, and her hair grew long and golden as it had not in decades. Instead of an old, bent woman, she became a young, strong maiden again, with eyes that blazed with a cold flame. The rest of the servants ran from her, screaming in terror, but she paid them no heed. Filled with the strength and vigor of three men, she hastened in pursuit of the children. For she knew that the youth she had derived from the grown men would not last long. She needed the fresh, unlived lives of little children.

Once the men had gone away, Vogel and Lina had returned to their usual forms and continued on their way. At last, they emerged from the forest and set out across the open fields as the sun sank into the hills before them. They were weary enough that they could have lain down on the ground and slept, come what may. But just as they began to think that surely they had lost their pursuers once and for all, they heard the sound of feet running after them. Lina looked over her shoulder, and in the distance, at the edge of the dark forest, she could see a woman of terrible beauty running after them. Though she looked so different, Lina could recognize Old Sanna in an instant.

Holding tightly to her little brother's hand, Lina said, “I will never leave you, if you will never leave me.”

Vogel looked back as well, and though he trembled at the sight of their pursuer, he said staunchly, “Neither now nor ever will I leave you.”

So they ran to a dip in the ground, where they would pass out of Old Sanna's sight for a moment or two. Then Vogel turned into a pond, and Lina became a duck floating in the middle of the pond.

Old Sanna ran up to the pond, but unlike the servants, she was not fooled. She knew that the pond and the duck were none other than the children she had hungered after all this time. At first, she was angry with them, but once she had caught her breath, she began to laugh in triumph. For they had turned themselves into forms that were easy for her to devour. Old Sanna decided to drink the pond, and then she would grab the duck and roast it over a fire.

As Old Sanna knelt at the edge of the pond and put her lips to the water, Lina realized what she intended to do. If Old Sanna drank the water, she would be sucking away Vogel's life. And that was something Lina could not allow. She would not let anyone take Vogel away, for then she would be alone again.

So Lina swam up to the shore, and with her bill she grabbed Old Sanna by her long, golden hair that trailed into the water. With a mighty yank, she pulled Old Sanna into the water, holding fast even as she struggled. Vogel helped as well, stirring the waves on the pond so they crashed over their heads. As a duck, Lina was unharmed, but Old Sanna could not swim, and so she sank to the very bottom of the pond. And there, surrounded by the children she had longed to devour, she died a painful death.

Once they saw that they were safe, Vogel and Lina transformed back into their original forms. And there, in the hollow of the ground where moments before had been a little duck swimming in a pond, lay Old Sanna. No longer was she a young woman of terrible beauty. Now she was little more than a skeleton sheathed in skin, with hair that turned to dust as a fresh breeze blew past. She looked like a corpse that had lain in a tomb for centuries, and they wondered just how old she had truly been. How many lives had she stolen to sustain her own?

Pitying this woman who had been ruled by her own stomach, Lina said to Vogel, “We must bury her.”

So Vogel turned into a strong man, like the lumberjacks or farmers they sometimes saw around the estate, and Lina became a sturdy shovel. Together, they dug a small grave for Old Sanna, laid her in it, and spoke a short prayer before covering her with dirt.

Then, turning back into their ordinary forms, the children began the long trek homeward. They were exhausted, but they longed for nothing more than the safety and warmth of home, and so they walked all through the night.

As the first golden rays of sunlight touched the tops of the trees, Lina and Vogel came within sight of their home. No sooner did they step out from the shadow of the trees did they see their father alighting from his horse at the gate. He saw them at once and ran to meet them, catching them up in his arms and smothering them with kisses.

For once Old Sanna had shown her true colors, one of the remaining servants had come to his senses and rode after his master, telling him all that had happened in his absence. The landowner had immediately turned around and raced back home, fearing the worst. But now the children were able to tell him all they had endured, and reassure him that they would be safe from Old Sanna's wickedness forevermore. Their father wept for the danger he had put them in unknowingly, and assured them that from now on, he would stay close by their side and care for them himself. Never again would they be left alone.

Taking his son and daughter by the hand, the landowner led them back into the house. And they all lived happily ever after.

#inklingschallenge #four loves fairy tale challenge #theme: storge #story: complete #fundevogel #fairy tales #original writing by griselda banks

[ammistt]

“We will not leave each other. Never, so long as we live.”

Belated entry for @inklings-challenge based on the fairy tale “Snow White and Rose Red” by the Grimm brothers. A sweet parable of offering help to others even when they don’t deserve it <3

#inklingschallenge #theme: storge #snow white and rose red #my art #I need to work more on perspective but ok #artists on tumblr

[lover-of-the-starkindler]

@inklings-challenge Four Loves Challenge: The Wild Swans (Storge)

"Your brothers can be set free," she said, "but have you the courage and tenacity to do it? The sea water that changes the shape of rough stones is indeed softer than your delicate hands, but it cannot feel the pain that your fingers will feel. It has no heart, so it cannot suffer the anguish and heartache that you will have to endure. Do you see this stinging nettle in my hand? Many such nettles grow around the cave where you sleep. Only those and the ones that grow upon graves in the churchyards may be used - remember that! Those you must gather, although they will burn your hands to blisters. Crush the nettles with your feet and you will have flax, which you must spin and weave into eleven shirts of mail with long sleeves. Once you throw these over the eleven wild swans, the spell over them is broken. But keep this well in mind! From the moment you undertake this task until it is done, even though it lasts for years, you must not speak. The first word you say will strike your brothers' hearts like a deadly knife. Their lives are at the mercy of your tongue. Now, remember what I told you!"

#inklingschallenge #four loves #theme: storge #fairy tale #my art #my art 2k23 #in which i am kinder to the heroine than in some versions

[eruanna1875]

Four Loves Challenge: Kate Crackernuts (Storge)

So I was really excited about the Four Loves Challenge, put on by @inklings-challenge, but what with life and sickness and new projects collaring me in a dark alley and dragging me away, I didn't have time to finish the project I was hoping for. I'm still hoping to complete and post it at some point, though.

BUT, I still wanted to do something, so I decided to make a bit of art. In the past week or so, I found this really interesting fairy tale. Since it had such a strong familial element, I decided to pick that!

The story is "Kate Crackernuts", an old Scottish story, and it's about two sisters named Kate and Anne. When the jealous queen enchants Anne's head into a sheep, the sisters go out to seek their fortunes together. They find a castle where two brothers live, and one of them is very sick (whoever watches over him at night vanishes). Kate offers to stand watch, and discovers that he is hypnotized by the fairies into riding out and dancing all night in their rounds. So she has to find a way to cure both him and her sister (it ends up involving a fairy baby and, you guessed it, some nuts).

This one really caught my eye. I loved the fact that it had so much emphasis on these sibling relationships - that would be a huge focus in a retelling for me, deepening those even further, and even contrasting them. Plus, the fact that it's a fairy baby that holds the solution could potentially play into more themes of family.

Well, I hope y'all like it! I wish I could've done some writing, but I'm pretty happy with this moodboard anyway. :)

#inklingschallenge #four loves fairy tale challenge #theme: storge #fairy tale: kate crackernuts #moodboard #collage #fairytale retelling

[atlantic-riona]

Exile of the Sons of Uisliu

A (long! very long!) retelling of the tale, Longes mac nUislenn (“Exile of the Sons of Uisliu”), an Irish tale from the Ulster Cycle of medieval Irish literature. Written for the Four Loves Fairy Tale event by @inklings-challenge.

Notes: I’ve published part of this before, though right now I can’t find the post. I finished it for the challenge, as it fit well with the themes. It was originally intended to be a retelling that made it easier to approach medieval Irish literature for those who felt intimidated by the often more archaic translations. As such, it sticks very closely to the two sources I was working from, though events from both get blended together in a way that weren’t, strictly speaking, present in both tales. See the end of the story for sources (with links!) and further notes about the adaptation process.

Pronunciation: “Derdriu” = “Deer-druh,” Noisiu = “Nee-shuh,” “Cathbad” = “Kah-vuh,” “Conchobar” = “Kon-cho-var” (with the “ch” as in “loch”, though I’ve heard various other pronunciations as well, Leborcham = “Leh-vor-cham, Cúchulainn = “Koo-chull-in”, “Uisliu” = ish-loo, “Eogan” = “Oh-wen”, and “Medb” = “May-uhv”. The other names should be less tricky, but let me know if you have problems with them.

This is the story of Derdriu.

Of beauty in death.

Some say the story begins before she was even born, at her scream from her mother’s womb. This is somewhat true; it was indeed this scream that caused the men of Ulster to rise from their beds and demand to know its origin. And it was this scream that caused her mother to press her hands to her face and deny any knowledge of its origin, despite the fact it came from her own womb. Indeed, it was this scream that caused Cathbad, the great and wise druid, to set the question of its origin at rest.

He said, “It is your daughter, woman. Her loveliness will surpass all others; her green eyes and tall form will cause envy among queens and desire among kings. Men will slaughter for her and over her, and heroes will do great deeds in her name.”

He said, “She will bring great evil to our land.” Then he fell silent and no more was said on the subject.

And some say the story begins when Deirdre entered the world for the first time, innocent of her great power and tragic fate. Again, the druid Cathbad prophesied of the evil that would follow in the girl’s wake, of jealousy and war and exile. And of death, of beloved children and heroes alike.

“Her tale will be famous,” he said, “as famous as the graves of the men who fought for her and the men who come after her.”

Hearing this, the men of Ulster cried aloud, “Kill the child! Kill her!” For they did not wish to see Ulster and its people suffer such a fate.

“Wait!” came one voice from the crowd. It was Conchobar, king of Ulster. “This girl won’t be killed; I want her for myself. I’ll make sure that no man sees her before we are wed, so there will be no fighting. And so that there will be no jealousy either, no woman will see her.”

No man present defied him.

And so Derdriu was taken away and raised by foster-parents. True to his word, Conchobar let no one else see her-except for Leborcham, who was Conchobar’s messenger and a satirist. It was she who acted as nurse and teacher to Derdriu. Besides them, Derdriu had no contact with anyone or anything from the outside world.

A lonely life for anyone, to be sure.

Years passed, and Derdriu, as predicted, grew into the most beautiful woman in all of Éire. Her hair was yellow as a warrior’s cloak, and her eyes were green as the land she walked on day after day; her lips Parthian-red and her teeth pure white. She saw no one but her foster parents and Leborcham, who had grown very fond of the girl.

One winter day, Leborcham and Derdriu sat outside watching her foster-father slaughter a calf for their supper. The blood from the calf stained the snow, and a raven swooped down to drink it.

Derdriu was struck by this, and said to Leborcham, “I'd like a man such as that: hair as black as a raven, cheeks as red as blood, and body as white as snow.”

A familiar story, is it not?

Without thinking, Leborcham replied, “Then may you have success, for there is one close by. Noisiu son of Uisliu is the man you’re seeking.” Then she fell silent, for she had remembered that Derdriu was bound for Conchobar’s bed.

“I want to see him,” Derdriu said.

“You musn’t,” Leborcham said reluctantly.

“If I don’t, I’ll be sick.”

This went on for some time, until Leborcham agreed to lead Derdriu to where Noisiu was. However, she refused to do anything more than that, for although she was fond of the girl, she could see nothing but harm in encouraging anything further.

Noisiu’s habit was to wander the ramparts of Emain Macha, the place where Conchobar and the other Ulaid gathered, chanting to himself. The chanting of Noisiu and his brothers was said to increase the milk of any cow that heard it, it was that pleasing to listen to. And for any man or woman who heard their chanting, they at once felt peace and happiness.

Do not think that the sons of Uisliu were skilled only in chanting or other such arts. Their skill in battle was renowned; they were swift and strong, and if the three brothers had to fight all of Ulster at once they would be so skilled with their blades and so able at defending one another that it would be a long time before their defeat.

And they were honorable, too; it was their honor that would be their downfall in the end.

Having gotten Leborcham to tell her of this tradition of Noisiu’s, Derdriu made a plan.

Noisiu was walking along the ramparts alone, chanting, when Derdriu came up to him. As though she intended to pay him no attention or recognition, she strolled past him, his fine voice making her heart beat faster.

Noisiu stopped his chanting and watched her go by. When she made to pass him entirely, he said, “That is a fine heifer going by.”

“As well it might,” she said, and turned to face him. At seeing her beauty, he recognized her for Derdriu, King Conchobar’s future wife. “The heifers grow big where there are no bulls, you know.”

“You have the bull of this province all to yourself,” he said, not taking his eyes off her. “For you are to be wed to Conchobar himself.”

She tossed her head. “Of the two, I’d pick a game young bull like yourself.”

“Cathbad’s prophecy,” he said. “Have you forgotten it?” When she made no reply, he reminded her: “He said you will bring death and destruction to the men of Ulster. Your marriage to Conchobar is the solution to that.”

“I don’t want the men of Ulster or Conchobar,” she said and looked at him. “I want you.”

He shook his head and made to leave, although he did not wish to.

“Are you rejecting me?” she cried.

“I am.” 

She darted around in front of him and gripped him by the ears. “If you don’t take me with you, may shame and mockery fall upon you!”

“Leave me alone!”

“You’ll do it!”

“Woman, I will not!”

“My name is Derdriu,” she cried, “and I love you, Noisiu son of Uisliu! I loved you before I knew your face or form or voice, and now that I have seen them I love you even more! I will love you until the day I die!”

He reached up and pulled her hands from his ears. “Hush, or you’ll wake the whole of Ulster! Already the warriors inside exclaim and reach for their swords.” But he did not let go of her hands.

“It seems to be their recurring reaction to me,” she said, and they looked at each other without saying anything.

Perhaps Derdriu’s story begins here, where she and Noisiu made plans to slip away later that night when the sons of Uisliu and their company departed Emain, with Derdriu planning to hide amongst the women. Of course Noisiu’s brothers, Ardán and Annle, came with the two, and it was they who suggested seeking refuge with another king of Ireland. 

Whatever the start of the story was, this point was certainly the beginning of the end for all four of them.

They traveled from king to king, from one place to another, hunted by an angry Conchobar and all his warriors. Finally, in order to be free, they left Éire and escaped to the land of Alba.

They had no friends there, and so settled in the wilderness. Despite the fact that she was once again living with only three other people for company, Derdriu was happier than she had ever been. The brothers hunted for game, and when that ran out, they raided for cattle.

It was to be expected that the people of Alba rose up against them. As has been said before, the sons of Uisliu were skilled in many things, and cattle-stealing was certainly one of those things they excelled at. The people of Alba, however, excelled at disliking those who stole all of their livestock and food, and were certainly willing to do something about it. Both sides were well-matched, despite the brothers being greatly outnumbered. But the brothers were sick of fighting, and they searched for an alternative.

So they made an offer to the king of Alba: they would stop stealing cattle and in return, he would hire them as his soldiers. It was a good offer, and the king accepted it.

Noisiu and his brothers built their houses among the other warriors, but were careful to build them so that Derdriu could not be seen from the outside. For they did not wish for her beauty to bring them the same kind of trouble they had tried to escape in Éire. And for a time this worked.

But then, one day, the king’s steward came by early in the morning when everybody was asleep. He saw Derdriu and Noisiu sleeping peacefully, and even in sleep, Derdriu’s beauty struck him silent.

The steward went to the king, who was sleeping. The steward said, “My king, my king, I have found the perfect woman for you. She lies with Noisiu son of Uisliu even now, and she is a woman worthy of any king in the world. If you kill Noisiu now, you can have her to wife.”

The king declined to have Noisiu killed, saying, “Go instead and ask her every day in secret if she will leave Noisiu and wed me.”

And so every day the steward came to visit Derdriu while the brothers were away. And every day, she turned him down. At night, when the brothers returned, she told Noisiu of the steward’s visits.

“This is a bad business,” said Noisiu, “but I can’t see what there is to be done about it yet.” For if they offended the king, they could not return to Éire, and where else could they go? So the visits continued.

As Derdriu refused the king’s advances day after day, the king tried a different tactic. He ordered the brothers into fierce battles and set dangerous traps for them in the hopes that they would be slaughtered. But the sons of Uisliu were so skilled in battle and so clever that they always ended up unharmed.

Finally, the king grew weary of all this. “Try her one last time,” he told the steward. “Then we’ll kill the sons of Uisliu and take her anyway.”

The steward did as the king commanded. He said to Derdriu, “Listen. If you don’t do as the king wishes, he will gather up all the men of Alba and slaughter your beloved Noisiu and his brothers. Is that what you desire? Rather, by going to the king you may save their lives.”

It is not known what exactly Derdriu said to him after that, but it is certain that it was yet another refusal. The steward went away angry, and told the king that Derdriu had rejected him yet again. The men of Alba were called. Derdriu saw that they were many in number, too many for the sons of Uisliu to defeat without terrible cost.

Noisiu, Ardán, and Annle came home and Derdriu told them what the steward had said.

“You must leave,” she said. “If you don’t leave tonight, you won’t live to see tomorrow.”

Ardán, the youngest brother, said, “Will you not be coming with us, then?”

Annle, the middle brother, said, “It would certainly be a waste of all our efforts so far if she did not.”

And Noisiu, the eldest brother, said, “Do you not think we can protect you?”

So Derdriu went with them. They left that very night and traveled over the sea until they reached an island that was between Alba and Éire. The king of Alba pursued them with many men, but the sons of Uisliu fended them off in a series of battles deserving of their own heroic legend.

The news of the exiles’ flight from Alba reached Éire. Everybody said to Conchobar that it would be a great shame if the sons of Uisliu fell to an enemy king in an enemy land by the fault of a bad woman. “Forgive and protect them instead, Conchobar, and let the sons of Uisliu come home,” they said. “It is better to do this then to let them be harmed by enemies.”

“Very well then,” Conchobar said. “Let them come home. I will guarantee their safety. Send for them.”

“Who will take the message?” they asked.

“It is well known that Noisiu son of Uisliu will only come in peace to Éire again if he is brought by one of three people: Cúchulainn son of Sualdam, Conall Cernach son of Amergin, and Fergus mac Roich,” Conchobar said. “I will choose one of them.”

He took Conall aside and asked him, “What would you do, Conall, if I sent you to bring the sons of Uisliu back to Éire and through some cunning and betrayal-not my own, of course-they were slaughtered despite your promises of safety?”

Conall answered, “Any Ulsterman, no matter who he was, would fall at my hand. No man would escape my wrath.”

“That is a good answer, Conall,” Conchobar said. “But I see you will not be my choice.”

Next he asked his nephew Cúchulainn the same question. 

Cúchulainn was more perceptive and answered thus: “I swear that if you were to ask me to do such a thing, and to bring them home to be slain by you, I would take no bribe from you, great though it might be, in favor of taking your own head for such a deed.”

“I see that you do not love me either, Cúchulainn,” Conchobar said, and sent him away.

He called Fergus over to him and asked him the same question.

And Fergus said, “I swear not to attack you yourself, but if any Ulsterman should attempt harm on them, death and destruction will meet that man by my hands.”

“You will be messenger, Fergus,” Conchobar said. “It was you who had the best answer.”

So Fergus mac Roich was chosen as messenger. He sailed to their island, accompanied only by his son Fiacha, but could find no traces of the exiles. He made a loud call for them. Derdriu and Noisiu were playing fidchell, and both heard Fergus’ shout. 

“That is a man of Éire shouting,”said Noisiu, looking up from the board.

Derdriu recognized it as Fergus’ voice, but said, “No, you are mistaken. That is a man of Alba.”

Again Fergus shouted, and again Noisiu looked up from the board. “There it is again, and this time I am sure it came from a man of Éire.”

“You are mistaken,” Derdriu said, “and now it is your turn. Play on.”

Fergus shouted a third time, and this time Noisiu knew for certain his voice was that of a man from Éire. He rose from his seat and told Ardán to go and meet the speaker, to see who it was. For it would make them poor hosts if they neglected their guest any longer.

“I know who it is,” said Derdriu. “It is Fergus mac Roich. I recognized his voice from the start.”

Angry, Noisiu demanded to know why she had concealed this from him.

“I dreamed last night,” she said. “I dreamed that three birds flew to us from Emain Macha, and that in their beaks were three sips of honey. They left the honey with us, but took three sips of our blood in return.”

Noisiu sat down. “What do you think your dream meant?” Dreams might foretell the future or provide insight into the present, and so were not to be ignored.

“Fergus comes from our beloved home bearing a message of peace, but the message he bears is false, for a false message of peace is sweeter than honey. That is the meaning of the honey.”

“And the blood?” said Ardán, for he hadn’t left yet.

“The three sips of blood the bird took from us,” said Derdriu, “are the three of you, who will leave with him and be tricked.”

“I wish you hadn’t said that,” said Ardán. The others agreed.

Then Noisiu said, “Never mind that for now. We’ve left Fergus waiting at the harbor for far too long. Ardán, go and fetch him.”

Ardán, grumbling, went down to fetch Fergus. But he was much heartened to see him and his son, and kept asking tidings of Éire, and of Ulster especially.

“It’s glad we are to see you,” Fergus and Fiacha said, “and we’ll tell you everything when everyone’s there to hear it.”

And when Noisiu and Annle and Derdriu saw the travelers, their hearts were gladdened also; and they also asked for tidings of the land they missed so dearly.

“We bring the best tidings,” Fergus said. “I have been sent to bring you back to Éire. Conchobar guarantees your safety, and I swear to you I’ll see you safe to him on the very day we set foot back in Éire.”

“Don’t go,” said Derdriu to Noisiu. “It will end badly, I’m sure of it.” 

But the brothers dearly missed their homeland, and great was their desire to return.

“We will go,” they said. And even though they longed to return, they were also practical and knew they must put in safeguards. “But only if you yourself, Fergus, accompany us, as well as Dubthach and Conchobar’s eldest son Cormac, and if all three of you swear as to our safety.”

Fergus agreed to this, as it was a prudent request, given what had happened the last time the four had set foot in Éire. 

But Derdriu argued against it; she said that going to Éire would be their doom and that she felt sure their deaths awaited them there. And although the brothers pleaded and cajoled, argued and promised, she would not be swayed.

Finally Fergus said to her, “You need not fear, lady: should all the men of Éire betray you, I will fight and defeat them no matter how great their number. Their shields will be poor protection against the wrath of my sword. Of that you may be certain.”

“Friend Fergus,” she said, “I’ll hold you to that.”

They boarded the ship and set sail for Éire. As they passed Alba’s shores, Derdriu looked behind her at them and cried, “Farewell to you, O land that I loved! O land that was my home, I will miss your shores and hills, and the happy days we spent among them. O land, I will not see you again in this lifetime.”

Then she sang a lament, mourning all the places she had loved and lost. “If it were not for Noisiu,” she said, “I would not have left them.”

Dubthach and Cormac met them when they landed. The sons of Uisliu were so glad to be home that they swore they would not rest or eat until they had eaten Conchobar’s food. So the group started their journey at once.

Alas, Conchobar’s treachery knew no bounds. For he had sent Borrach mac Annte to draw Fergus away from them, and this was how he did it.

There was a geas upon Fergus, and it was this: he could not refuse an invitation to a feast. A geas was a powerful thing, and the breaking of it would lead to one’s doom.

Borrach met up with the group on the road and invited Fergus to several feasts. Fergus grew red with anger and cursed Borrach, saying it was ill-done of him to pick today of all days to invite him to a feast. Borrach would not rescind his invitations and so Fergus was caught between his promise to see the sons of Uisliu safely to Conchobar and his old geas.

“What should I do?” Fergus asked Noisiu.

Derdriu said, “Do what you want, friend Fergus. If you prefer to forsake us for a feast, then by all means do so. Leaving us is surely a good price to pay for a feast.”

“I won’t forsake you,” he said. “I’ll send my son Fiacha on with you and my own word of honor as well. And there will be Dubthach and Cormac as well.”

But Dubthach and Cormac chose to remain with Fergus, leaving only Fergus’ son Fiacha to accompany the sons of Uisliu and Derdriu.

“We give you thanks,” said Noisiu to Fiacha, “since none but our own hands have ever defended us in combat.” They were angry with Borrach, and left quickly. 

Fergus was gloomy about that but trusted that the whole of Éire could not defeat Fiacha.

“Noisiu,” Derdriu said, “I will give you some advice, although you will not listen to it.”

Noisiu drew her closer. “What is this advice of yours, O Derdriu?”

“Tonight we should go back to our island and remain there until Fergus has finished with his feast. Thus his word will be fulfilled and we may continue onward with him as safeguard.”

“That is evil advice,” Fiacha said. “My father has sworn to see you safe home today, and I am duty-bound to carry out his oath. Do you doubt his honor? If you turn back now it will be an insult.”

Derdriu was silent for a long time. At last she spoke: “Great is the evil fallen upon us today because of Fergus, since he abandoned us for a feast.” She was greatly sorrowed, for she had only agreed to come back to Éire because of Fergus’ oath to protect them. And then she chanted:

“Great is my grief that I have come 

at Fergus’ word, that reckless son of Roich.

I will lament and mourn forevermore—

and my heart is bitter because of it.

O sons of Uisliu—

your last days have come.”

Noisiu chanted in response:

“Say not such things,

O woman as radiant as the sun!

Fergus would not have fetched us

if destruction were in his heart.”

Derdriu chanted:

“Alas, I grieve for you,

O delightful son of Uisliu!

To have left our home in strange lands—

nothing good will come of it.”

They came to the White Cairn of the Watching, on Sliab Fuad. There was a pleasant glen there. Derdriu stayed behind and fell asleep. At first they did not notice she was not with them, but Noisiu, turning to say something to her, let out a cry of startlement. 

“What is it?” Annle asked.

“Derdriu is not with us; she must have fallen behind.”

They hurried back and arrived there just as she was waking up. Noisiu knelt beside her. “Why did you stay behind, Derdriu?”

“I fell asleep,” said she, “and as I slept I dreamed.”

“What did you dream of?” he said.

“I saw each of you without a head,” she said. “I grew frightened and woke up.”

“It was only a dream,” he said.

“A sad dream,” she said.

Then they traveled onward to a place known as “the Height of the Willows.” Then Derdriu said to Noisiu, “I see a cloud of blood about your head, and I would give all of you advice!”

“What is your advice, Derdriu?” Noisiu asked.

“To go tonight to Cúchulainn’s place of dwelling and stay there until Fergus comes; or to have Cúchulainn escort us with promises of safety to Conchobar.”

“I am not afraid,” said Noisiu, “so we will not do that. And we have sworn to stop for nothing until we reach Conchobar anyway.”

Derdriu sang a song, then, about the great cloud of blood she saw hanging over Noisiu’s head, but Noisiu ignored this. 

They went onwards through the familiar lands, accompanied by Fergus’ son Fiacha, until they came to the green at Emain Macha.

While they had been traveling to Emain, Conchobar had made peace with his old enemy, Eogan mac Durthacht, the king of Fernmag. Eogan was to kill Noisiu and his brothers, and any who opposed this.

So when Derdriu, the sons of Uisliu, and Fiacha came to the green at Emain, Eogan was waiting for them in the middle of it with Conchobar. Hired soldiers surrounded Conchobar so that the sons of Uisliu could not reach him. Behind them, women sat on the ramparts of Emain to watch the fighting.

Eogan and his men came to where the sons of Uisliu stood. Fiacha was standing at Noisiu’s side. Eogan delivered Conchobar’s welcome to Noisiu with a spear thrust so fierce it broke his back. Fiacha grabbed Noisiu and flung himself over him, bringing them both down to the ground. The second spear thrust through Fiacha’s body ended Noisiu. Then the green came alive with battle.

Ardán and Annle defended Derdriu fiercely. They linked their shields together and put her between them, and such was their skill that they slaughtered all those who came against them.

Seeing so many fall, Conchobar turned to Cathbad the druid. “O Cathbad, work some enchantment upon the sons of Uisliu. See their skill and how many they have slain. If they should escape now, Ulster will never be safe from them. I swear if you do this, I will not harm Uisliu’s sons.”

Conchobar’s words were persuasive in the face of all the dead strewn about the green, and Cathbad believed him. He lifted a hand and suddenly a sea, with great waves that crashed like thunder, lay ahead of the sons of Uisliu and Deirdre. Behind them, not two feet away, were the men of Ulster, waiting for the chance to strike. The sea surged ever closer, threatening to engulf them, and the brothers placed Derdriu on their shoulders so that she would be safe from drowning.

With the sons of Uisliu thus trapped, Conchobar ordered someone to kill the brothers. But no man of Ulster moved, for everyone there had borne Noisiu and his brothers great love.

But Eogan mac Durthacht spoke up, saying that he was ready to behead them both.

“Since that is so,” Ardán said, “kill me first, as I am the youngest.”

“No,” Annle said. “Kill me first instead.”

Then Eogan struck a blow that severed the heads of both on the spot, and all the Ulstermen cried out in grief.

Fergus had been told of the treachery of Conchobar, and came now with Dubthach and Cormac to Emain. They entered the green, and saw Noisiu, lying dead under Fiacha’s body, and Ardán and Annle, beheaded by Eogan.

Furious at how his oath had been broken and his son slain, Fergus gave battle to the men of Ulster. Dubthach and Cormac joined him. All three fought fiercely, and many fell by their hand that day, including Cormac’s younger brother Maine.

During the fighting, Deirdre slipped away to the far side of the green, and it was there she happened to meet Cúchulainn, returning to Emain Macha. 

“Are you here to betray us too?” she said to him. “The sons of Uisliu lie dead on the green of Emain; you may as well kill the daughter of Fedlimid and lay her with them.”

“Dead? Betrayed?” Cúchulainn asked, and Derdriu told him the whole sorry tale. At this a glint came into his eye and he said, “That is sad news indeed. Who killed them?”

“Eogan mac Durthacht,” she said. “But it was at Conchobar’s demand.”

“Let us go and find them,” Cúchulainn said, “and make sure they have a proper burial.” He had not yet realized that his foster-father Fergus was the one leading the fight against Conchobar and Eogan’s men, and so he did not join the fight himself—though if he had, it would not have gone well for his enemies.

They came to the place where the bodies lay, and Derdriu flung herself down on top of Noisiu and kissed him, her lips red with his blood. “Without the three sons of Uisliu, I am not alive,” she said. “A day spent with them was full of mirth; a day without them a day of mourning. A curse on Conchobar, a curse on Cathbad, a curse on me—I wish I had died, that trickery and floods on my behalf had not killed them!”

And she sang a song of lamentation, refusing to part from the fallen brothers, though Cúchulainn tried to persuade her to flee to safety.

There was much weeping in Emain that day; and not just for the many brave Ulstermen who had fallen at the hands of Fergus, Dubthach, and Cormac. Dubthach slew the women of Ulster, and Fergus burned Emain. Three thousand men joined them when they went to Connacht. Ailill and Medb, the rulers of Connacht, welcomed them—not out of any great love, but because of the enmity between them and Ulster. With Aillil and Medb they found protection, but the exiles’ vengeance did not stop there. There was not a single night that passed from that day without the exiles wreaking more destruction and sorrow upon Ulster.

As for Derdriu, she was with Conchobar a year. During that year she did not smile. She barely ate, she rarely slept. She rested her head on her knee and would not lift it, though Conchobar brought musicians to try and raise her spirits.

When the musicians came, she would chant:

“You say the men of Emain coming home 

triumphant is a brilliant sight to see;

I say that more brilliant was the sight

of the sons of Uisliu returning home.

Noisiu bearing mead, 

Ardán and Anle bearing meat—

a sweeter supper by far

than any at the table of Conchobar.

The airs you play today lack the music

of Noisiu, who sang like the sea,

of Ardán, who sang bright as sunlight,

of Anle, who sang like the wind in the trees.

I loved Noisiu, the great hero—

loved him to his death.

I don’t sleep, I can’t sleep—

the son of Uisliu will never return.”

If Conchobar tried to calm her, she would say, “What are you thinking, you who heaped sorrow upon me? I might live a hundred years or more, and yet even then I wouldn’t have any love for you. You took the thing I loved most in the world, and I will not see him until I die. I weary of you—I see nothing but the dark stones of the grave covering Noisiu, once so bright and beautiful.”

And if he persisted, she would say to him, “Fergus wronged us, taking us over the sea to you. He sold his honor for a drink. If all the warriors of Ulster gathered before us today, without hesitation I would trade them all for Noisiu. Do not break my heart further today; I am not long for the grave. My sorrows are higher and heavier than the waves of the sea. If you were wise, you would know this.”

One day, Conchobar tired of this and asked, “Who do you hate most?”

“You and Eogan mac Durthecht!” she said.

“Then go live with Eogan for a year,” he said.

He gave her to Eogan, and the next day the three set out for the gathering at Macha. Derdriu was behind Eogan in the chariot. She looked down, so that she would not have to see the two men she hated most. She had sworn that neither of them would have her.

Conchobar had been watching her and Eogan, and when he saw her look down, he said, “Your glance is that of a ewe between two rams, Derdriu, sitting here between me and Eogan.”

Up ahead, there was a big boulder. When she heard him, she leapt up and struck her head upon it, smashing her skull to bits, and she was dead.

Even then, Conchobar was jealous that Noisiu and Derdriu dwellt in death together, and he ordered that their graves be far apart from one another. Yet every morning, the graves were found open, with the lovers inside one of them. To keep them apart, Conchobor had stakes of yew driven through their bodies, and the graves remained closed.

This was the story of Derdriu. Of beauty in death. Beauty brought Derdriu death: the death of the sons of Uisliu, the death of many in Ulster, and lastly her own death.

It was not death itself that was beautiful. The beauty was how Derdriu lived. Destined for a tragic fate even in the womb, was there ever any escape for her? And yet she chose, again and again, to turn away from the path laid out for her. Again and again, she chose the son of Uisliu.

Perhaps that had always been her fate. Or perhaps not. Prophecies are fickle things.

Years passed. Ulster and Connacht went to war. Cúchulainn stood alone against Medb’s invading army, and was later betrayed; death, winged raven, perched on his shoulder. Conchobar heard of the death of Christ and became so angry at the injustice that blood sprang from his head and he died. His eldest son Cormac was invited out of exile to be king of Ulster, and swearing friendship with Aillil and Medb, returned—only to meet death at the hands of men of Connacht. Fergus met death at the hands of Ailill, who met death through the plotting of Medb, who met death by the patient vengeance of one of Conchobar’s sons. Emain Macha was abandoned for Ard Macha close by, which became Armagh, where Saint Patrick built his church.

Two yew trees grew from the stakes in the graves. They grew and grew, until they became so tall that they could entwine with each other at last, centuries later, over the cathedral at Armagh.

Sources: “The Tragical Death of the Sons of Usnach,” The Cuchullin saga in Irish literature, Eleanor Hull (p. 22-53) and “Exile of the Sons of Uisliu,” The Táin, translated by Thomas Kinsella (p. 8-20).

Additional Notes: Because this was meant to make the medieval tales more approachable, in parts of my retelling there may be dialogue and such that read like simplified/altered versions of the original sources. I highly recommend reading the originals, linked below, for a fuller appreciation of the tale, especially Kinsella’s, as in my opinion his translations are the most readable and beautiful of any I’ve read. I’m happy to provide more detail about the adaptation process, the history behind the literature, and the wider context of the Ulster Cycle if anybody has questions. 

#inklingschallenge #inklings challenge #four loves fairy tale theme challenge #theme: eros #theme: storge #fairy tale: exile of the sons of uisliu #story: complete #my writing #irish mythology #ulster cycle #wasn't quite sure how to tag it properly because I feel that all four of the types show up in the story #but since they're basically all related and the whole mess is started by a romantic affair I went with those two #this is LONG jsyk #like really long #also in case anybody is interested in the academic side of things: #I tried to stick to the older spellings but I was inconsistent #particularly with the fada I think 😅 #(the fada is the little mark above some of the letters) #the ending condenses quite a bit of the rest of the Ulster Cycle #especially the death tales #also also since it isn't really explicitly stated in the original sources #I left out how Noisiu is (I think??) supposed to be a nephew of Conchobar #which tbh would track with the Celtic love triangle (young warrior nephew loves the old king's queen/beloved) that shows up everywhere #Arthur Guinevere and Lancelot (or Mordred) #Mark Iseult and Tristan #Fionn Grainne and Diarmuid #etc etc #(ask me someday about the Celtic love triangle because I have THOUGHTS) #anyway my point is that everybody here is basically related somehow #even Medb is Conchobar's ex-wife lol

[ozthearistocrat]

Mrs. Swan's Three Unfortunate Suitors

Here's my entry for the @inklings-challenge I hope all of you like it, it was quite a challenge to write, as I have been feeling quite sick as of late. I hope you all enjoy this long retelling of a rather short Brother's Grimm story.

Mrs. Swan's Three Unfortunate Suitors

Retelling: Mrs. Fox’s Wedding, with a little bit of the Judgement of Paris hehe

Theme: Storage and Eros

One day Mrs. Swan visited a friend, Ms. Magpie, who’s husband had recently died. She talked after the funeral with the new widow, and a mutual friend, Ms. Goose. They talked and reminisced about many things, and soon their conversation turned to the subject of husbands and marriage. 

“I could talk a great deal about my husband,” said Mrs. Magpie, “Even now as he is buried I must have some guard at his grave to see if his death isn’t some ruse. He was always galavanting around, taking his time hunting and drinking. It is a miracle that he hadn’t taken a second wife with the time he spent away from me.”

“My dear, you must not talk like that,” Mrs. Swan shook her head, “You must trust that he was faithful, especially now that he is dead.”

“You are one talk about having faithfulness Mrs. Swan.” Ms. Goose chuckled a little, “As your husband seems all too trusting to let you travel on your own, what with so many others coveting you. If I had a husband that was as eyed as you, I’d have a guard watching his every move to ensure his faithfulness.”

“Whatever do you mean Ms. Goose.” Mrs. Swan blinked in confusion. “You mean you haven’t heard the rumors? Your three neighbors in the country, Mr. Thrush, Mr. Jay and Lord Owl are all smitten with you. Quite waiting for your husband to shuffle off this mortal coil so they can court you as suitors. I would have thought that you would have noticed by now.”

“No, I had not realized that I had such an effect on my neighbors. How dreadful to think of it. Whatever shall I do?”

“I would think nothing of it dear,” Mrs. Magpie comforted her friend. “At the moment, you can enjoy your husband, and as ages pass when you grow tired of him, one might find your neighbors much more exciting. Well now let us have some lunch, I am dreadfully famished..”

Now Mrs. Swan was bothered a great deal by her friend’s conversation, and she kept mulling it over and over as she traveled home. The dreadful news about her neighbors troubled her so much that she had abstained from dinner and went straight to bed. Her maid, Ms.Finch, noticed this and knew that her mistress was in distress. 

“My Mistress Swan, if it is not too impertinent, may I ask what troubles you?”

“Oh dear Ms. Finch, I have been told that I am being coveted by my neighbors. How unfortunate. I fear telling my husband such news, as he may think me unfaithful.”

“But why Mistress Swan? You have always been a good and faithful wife. Just tell Master Swan and he’ll be on those lechers faster than a jackrabbit.”

“Oh but what if I tell him, and he thinks that I have done something to attract them, or what if I have done something to attract them, and shall do it again and again.” Mrs. Swan dove into her pillows and cried, inconsolable.

Ms. Finch was quite distressed by what had become of her mistress and wondered what she could do to resolve this problem. She had not the slightest idea, as she was not versed in the subject of marriage, being unmarried herself.She resolved to tell Mr. Swan of this, as she was sure that he would understand the problem, and resolve it quickly.

After she had told her master of Mrs. Swan’s distress, he showed no sign of anger or sorrow. What Mr. Swan did was laugh, surprising Ms. Finch. He explained to her that he had no doubts that Mrs. Swan was as faithful to him as they day he married her, but in ordered to assuage her own doubts, Mr. Swan created a plan that would solve everything.

A few days later while she was visiting a friend, Mrs. Swan heard that her husband was gravely ill and was close to death. She went as fast as she could to see her husband in his last moments, but it was all in vain. When she arrived, Mr. Swan was dead. She grieved greatly, and Ms. Finch, in order to help her quickly put together a funeral, with letters being sent out by the morning. By the time Mrs. Swan could compose herself and protest anything, the funeral preparations were already underway.

Within the next day, the funeral was done and many came to pay their respects to the newly widowed Mrs. Swan, including her three neighbors. They made no effort to hide their intentions to marry the widowed Mrs. Swan, and they lingered until the end of the funeral. Mrs. Swan sent Ms. Finch to send them away, but Ms. Finch said that they each desired to give their condolences in private. But before she could do so, a fourth figure appeared, with a traveling cloak and walking stick. No one knew this stranger, but he too wished to give his condolences to the widowed Mrs. Swan, but everyone suspected that he was also aiming to win the heart of the new widow. To grief stricken to argue, Mrs. Swan allowed them all to stay and talk.

The first of these suitors was Mr. Sparrow, small and quite wealthy. He was confident that he could win the heart of the Mrs. Swan

“Greetings Mrs. Swan, my condolences on your husband’s death. The most unfortunate circumstances. I have no doubt that your husband left a sizable will, but if you find yourself in need of substantial material accommodations, I would be more than happy to make a suitable and beneficial contract between us. “You are quite generous Mr. Sparrow,” Mrs. Swan smiled graciously, “But I am afraid that I will remain faithful to my husband. My love has no price.”

And with that Mr. Sparrow left the room with no prospect of marriage and brooded in the parlor.

This rejection emboldened the next suitor, Mr.Jay, who preened himself in the parlor mirror before entering to speak with Mrs. Swan. “My dear Mrs. Swan, I am terribly sorry for the death of your late husband,” Mr. Jay produced a flower with a flourish and presented it to Mrs. Swan, “May you not be cut as short as your husband. With this flower I would implore you to think about things as youth and beauty and how they fade. As the poet says "gather ye rosebuds while ye may.”

Mrs. Swam accepted the flower and placed it on her husband’s closed casket. “I thank you for your condolences and your gift, flowers are remembered fondly for their beauty even after they fade. Will you remember my beauty when it fades I wonder. But even as my beauty may fade, the love I have for my husband does not, for as the poetess says, “That when we live no more, we may live ever.” And so I bid you adieu.” 

And with that Mr. Jay left the room with no prospect of marriage and sulked in the parlor.

The next suitor was Lord Owl, who was of great political prospect, being of land and noble lineage. He was confident that no other could win the heart of Mrs. Swan, as he had been married three times before, and he knew what was desirable in a marriage.

“Mrs. Swan, I must give my deepest condolences, yes, a terrible thing to happen. I’ll have you know that I survived my three previous marriages so I know what you must be going through. Yes, it is quite unfortunate. I do not doubt that your husband left you in a good position in his will, yes. But all that seems quite distressing for such a young widow. Would it not be better to have someone managing your affairs and keeping you from being snatched by rogues and various other ne'er do wells, yes?

Mrs. Swan smiled courteously at Lord Owl, nodding as he spoke. “Lord Owl, you are most certainly magnanimous, but I am not bothered by managing my house nor by the roguish machinations of others. I can stand firm by my husband and the love I have for him, as I still do love him. You of all people would know of a wife’s love for her husband, as you have been married three times, yes?”

And with that Lord Owl left the room with no prospect of marriage and grumbled to himself in the parlor.

Finally the last suitor, the mysterious stranger entered to speak with Mrs. Swan. But before he could say anything Mrs. Swan spoke.

“My kind sir, you are not a guest I recognize and yet you have come to comfort me in my grief. I would like to thank you for your kindness but I do not know your name. Pray, tell me your name.”

The stranger smiled and said, “I can not give my name yet, as I must first give my condolences. You see, your husband was a dear friend of mine and he told me that I was the only man that he would desire to marry his widow, should he die suddenly. I am here to ask your hand in marriage. I promise to be everything that your husband was and more.”

Taken aback by the strangers words, Mrs. Swan thought for a second. “These words…is it true that you are selected to be the successor to my husband?”

“It is true my lady, in both word and deed.”

“So you are everything my husband was and more?”

“Everything and more.”

“Then…I must…still choose to reject you. Even if you are as you say, twice as my husband was, I cannot betray my husband. I am sorry but you must go.”

But as she rejected the stranger, something wondrous happened, his cloak fell away in a flourish and as if by magic, Mrs. Swan recognized the stranger as her husband instantly. She fell to her knees in surprise, but before she could speak, Mr. Swan sprang into action. Flyin out the room, Mr. Swan took his walking stick and fell upon Mrs. Swan's three unfortunate suitors, striking them and sending them flying from the house. Soon all that was left was Mrs. Swan and her husband, seemingly returned from the dead. “Now my dear wife, I have something for you.” And Mr. Swan took his walking stick and lightly tapped her cheek. “As I have struck the covetous neighbors for their wicked thoughts, so I strike you, so that you might leave behind all the wicked thoughts that you have thought of. May you no longer have doubts, and may all fear leave you.” 

And with that Mrs. Swan realized that her husband had faked his death with Ms. Finch, so as to teach her and her neighbors a lesson. She and her husband then left to turn the funeral feast into a new wedding feast. And as for the three would be suitors, they never bothered Mrs. Swan again, and they could never leave behind the shame and embarrassment that Mr. Swan had inflicted upon them. And so Mr. and Mrs. Swan remained faithfully married until the end of both their days.

The End.

#inklingschallenge #four loves fairy tale challenge #theme: eros #theme: storge #story: complete #Fairy Tale: Mrs. Fox's Wedding #ozthearistocrat #ozwriting

[sunblazes]

IMMM FREEEE OF MY10 HOUR ART EXAM

#I FINIISHHHEDDD AS WELLL!!!!! #and Well ithink its funny My theme i chose wass like. Childrens picture books and i literally just wrote like a storg about ylfa becaasue #she was all i would draw at the time i started So really. i won. Ylfa fanart for the art exam

[jonsa-valentine]

JONSA VALENTINE'S DAY EVENT 2024

Hi Jonsa fam! We’d like to invite you to participate in the Jonsa Valentine 2024 event! This year we will be hosting a theme based 2 day event.

💕 Date - 13 & 14th Feb

💕 Theme - Types of Love

Agape ➜ Love for everyone 

Eros  ➜ Passionate or Sexual love

Ludus ➜ Playful love

Mania  ➜ Obsessive love

Philautia ➜ Love of self

Philia ➜ Deep friendship

Pragma ➜ Longstanding love

Storge ➜ Familial love

💕 Feel free to interpret the theme as strictly or as loosely as you wish. You can include more that one love type in your entry for the day.

💕 This event will be inclusive of all types of fandom creations like fanfiction, moodboard, edits, gifset, fanart, manip, playlist, meta, poem, fan video etc based on book as well as showverse.

💕 We will be tracking #Jonsa Valentine and #Jonsa Valentine 2024. You can also tag us @jonsa-valentine while sharing your entries on tumblr. In case we miss out on reblogging your entry, please do not hesitate to send us ask with link to your post.

💕We will be accepting late entries till our master list is shared one week post event so do not worry in case you miss out on sharing your entry during the event.

💕 If you have any questions regarding the event, please reach out to us!

💕  Most Important: Have fun!!! We are excited to see your entries!

#Jonsa #jon x sansa #jon snow #jonsa valentine #jonsa valentine 2024 #sansa stark #jonsa event #actually jonsa

[inklings-challenge]

2024 Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge: Official Announcement

The Event

The Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge invites Christian writers and artists to retell or illustrate a fairy tale that features at least one of the four loves:

Storge: Familial love

Eros: Romantic love

Philia: Friendship

Agape: Self-giving love

All stories and artwork will be reblogged to the main Inklings Challenge blog during the month of February.

For Writers

Writers participating in the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge are invited to retell a fairy tale from a Christian worldview in a way that features at least one of the four types of love. This could involve retelling a fairy tale that features on the chosen type of love or changing a fairy tale that traditionally focuses upon romance, family or friendship to focus on a different type of love. Retellings can be in any genre–fantasy, science fiction, historical, contemporary, etc.–and should retell the original tale, rather than any modern adaptations. There is no maximum or minimum word limit, but because of the short time frame, the challenge is best suited to short works.

For Artists

Artists participating in the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge are invited to create artworks related to a fairy tale. Artworks can take any form–illustrations, moodboards, photographs, crafts, etc.–so long as they are related to a fairy tale. Artworks can feature a scene from the traditional tale or adapt the fairy tale to a different setting or genre. Artists who are also writers can also illustrate their own works if they desire.

Posting

Retellings and artwork can be posted to a tumblr blog anytime after February 1, 2023. Writers and artists are encouraged to post their works by February 14, 2024, but works can be finished and posted after that date. Works will be shared to the main Inklings Challenge blog until the final deadline of February 28, 2024.

All stories and art will be reblogged and archived on the main Inklings Challenge blog. To assist with organization, creators should tag their posts according to the following guidelines.

Mention the main Challenge blog @inklings-challenge somewhere within the body of the post (which will hopefully alert the Challenge blog).

Tag the story #inklingschallenge, to ensure it shows up in the Challenge tag, and make it more likely that the Challenge blog will find it.

Tag the type of love that is featured in the work: theme: storge, theme: eros, theme: philia, and/or theme: agape

Tag the fairy tale that is being retold or illustrated within the work.

For writers, tag the completion status of the story: #story: complete or #story: unfinished

And that’s the Four Loves Fairy Tale Challenge! Any questions, comments or concerns can be sent to this blog, and I’ll do my best to answer them.

#inklings challenge #four loves fairy tale challenge #four loves fairy tale challenge 2024