Tragic Trees

Prompts: Fate & Fairytale

Once upon a time, a soldier met a fairy and they fell in love.
They met in an evergreen forest, in a clearing protected with branches, the trees surrounding them like a fortress of brown with emerald leaves shading the light into celadon.
For weeks the two met in this place. When it was day, the sunlight filtered through the leaves and painted the clearing green. When it was night, the fairy called fireflies and showed her magic, lighting the space with golden specks.
These meetings were filled with talk, with conversations about life and death and family, about the soldier’s ambitions and the fairy’s failings, about their dreams and their hopes and their fears. The soldier soon grew to desire not a life of battle but instead a life of peace, perhaps traveling the world dwelling in a simple cabin with his love. The fairy wished now to have a family, to not remain alone with only her thoughts and the few fairies who remained.

But despite their love, the kingdom the soldier belonged to hated the fairies for their magic and planned to make war with them. When the soldier heard the news, he rushed to tell his lover. As the words tumbled out of his mouth, the clearing they had spent so many hours talking and kissing and loving in grew dark and cold. It no longer seemed like a safe refuge, but instead a place that heralded a tragedy.
The two agreed to settle their affairs and meet later that night in the same clearing to run away together. They were tired of the fear and the anger, the hatred, and the judgment. They would leave their people and make a new life for themselves.
The soldier went home and said goodbye to his friends and his family. He told them he was called to a life of travel, that he would wander and learn about the rest of the world. His parents gave him their blessing, but his friends were suspicious. These untrustworthy men told his superiors they suspected him under a spell and suggested the army follow him.
The army agreed. Unbeknownst to the soldier, a group set out after him to the forest. They did not need to go far before they overtook him and followed his old footprints to find the clearing where he was to meet the fairy.
The soldier entered the forest and sensed that something was wrong. He rushed to the clearing with no care for his clothes or his bag and burst into the circle of trees in time to see a sword pierce the heart of his lover.
The soldier fell to his knees before the fairy woman and cradled her face in his hands. The clearing around him was dark and silent, no lights dancing in the air or songs drifting through the trees.

by Lilliana Casper

Blood soaked her dress and spread out over the soft grass. She gazed up at him, her eyes brightening with love, and whispered his name before the life faded from her body and she went limp.
The other soldiers murmured and scoffed, jeering at their compatriot for falling under the spell of such a horrid creature. The soldier laid the fairy back and stood up, drawing his sword and slaying the murderers without a word. He pulled a book from his bag and wrote a short passage, laid the book open next to the fairy, and pushed the sword into his chest.
When the rest of the army found them, they took the bodies with them. Upon reading the words their son wrote, the soldier’s parents took his body and that of his lover and buried them far away.
The violence between the kingdom and the fairies did not end for many years. When it did, the king who ended it held the book the soldier wrote in as peace was made. He pledged to never harm a fairy again and honored the memory of the two whose love, although doomed, surpassed the hatred of their people.
Their tale might have been fated to be a tragedy, but they would inspire a new era.