Friday, February 8, 2013

Chapter 29: Once Upon a Time

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Once upon a time, there was a girl who served an evil crone. She cooked for the woman and kept her cottage clean, and in return she was made to sleep on floor and got little more to eat each day than the scraps from the crone's plate. The crone never praised the girl for her efforts, but was sure to beat her if she dropped a dish or failed to keep the cottage spotless.


 But the girl endured her horrible lot in life, because she had the love of the Prince of the Fair Folk, and whenever she got a moment away from the crone, she would run off to the forest to meet with him.


"If he was in love with her, why didn't he just take her away from that horrible life?" Reinier asks, "And kill the crone that dared lay a hand on lady love? That's what I would do."

"I'm getting to that part now," Sterren laughs, "Let me finish the story."


"Do not cry any longer, my true love," The Prince of the Fair Folk said to her during one of their secret meetings, "For I will take you away from the evil crone and make you my wife, and you shall be the princess of all the fair folk."

The girl was thrilled to hear of her good fortune, and asked only to be able to go back to the crone's cottage one more time to retrieve the only memento she had of her mother, who had died when she was born.

"Going back into the enemy's camp once you've made your escape is never a good tactical maneuver," Reinier points out, "She gets caught by the crone doesn't she?"

"The story flows much better if you listen without interrupting," Sterren admonishes him, and softening the sting of her words with soft kisses to his chest.

"Go on," Reinier encourages her, "I'm listening."


As it happened, the old crone had followed the girl into the woods that evening, having long desired to know why it took her so long to do simple tasks like gathering herbs from the forest, and she overheard the fairy prince's plan to run away with her servant girl.


As soon as the girl had run back to the cottage to fetch her things, the crone struck at the fairy prince, ripping into his chest with her bare hands to tear out his heart.

"That was more gruesome than I expected. Also, not very believable, Sterren. How does an old woman tear out a man's, or  fairy's heart, without even a knife?"

Sterren ignores his question and continues her story.


The Prince of the Fair Folk's heart was a beautiful glowing jewel, and with it the crone's own magic would increase a hundred fold or more.


When the crone returned to her cottage she pulled the girl by the hair and said "You'll see your fairy prince no more, for I have taken his heart and left him dead in the forest. You will serve me now and evermore."


The girl was struck with grief thinking she would never see her love again, and she sat by the fire all night weeping while the crone slept peacefully, dreaming of the power she would wild with the fairy prince's heart jewel.

As the girl sat weeping, alone, she hear a tiny voice coming from the mantle, where the crone had left the heart jewel, "If you love me still, then take my jewel and run as far away from here as you can go."

The girl scarce believed it, but the voice called to her three times, and finally she heeded him, and took the jewel from the mantle and ran from the cottage as fast as she could."

"The crone just left the jewel out where the girl could take it?" Reinier asks, incredulous.

"That's the way the story goes," Sterren tells him, "Do you want to hear the end?"

"Please," Reinier says, caressing her hair.


The old crone awakened soon after, and chased the girl. No matter where she tried to hide, the old woman would soon be on her, because the glow of the jewel would give them away. 

"You must swallow me to hide my light," the jewel spoke to the girl with his tiny voice, and the girl did as he bade her, and swallowed. But it was to no avail, for the old crone finally caught up with her, and taking the girl's arms, shook her and yelled, "Give it to me! Give me the jewel!" But the girl could not do as the crone demanded, as the jewel was hidden safe inside her.

Realizing what had happened, the crone cackled, "Your stomach is no safe place to hide the jewel. I can rip as easily from you as I did from your fairy lover."


From inside her stomach the girl heard the tiny voice once again, "Use my power, my love, to drive the crone away." The girl, realizing she now possessed the very magic the crone had meant to take for herself, stood and threw the crone off her with a burst of magical energy.


When the crone laid dead, the fairy prince was brought back to life.


The Prince of the Fair Folk did as he promised, making the girl, his true love, his wife and princess of all his kind, and taking her away to his magical realm, where she yet lives today, and watches over us all.


"And so your people worship this serving girl that ran off with one of the fair folk?" Reinier asks in disbelief.

"Well, it's one version of the story," Sterren says, "There are others, but that one is my favorite." 

"If there's more than one version, how do you know which is true?" Reinier asks, "Or even if any are true?"

"I don't think it matters if the stories are true," Sterren answers with a shrug, "Surely you must have such stories about your Watcher, about who he was and what he did to become the protector of your people."

Reinier shakes his head, "The Watcher always was and always will be, without beginning or end. He is everywhere, in all things, He sees all and knows all, and judges us, punishing the wicked and rewarding the good. We have no stories about Him, just stories about those who have lived by his commands and were justly rewarded, and those who disobeyed and were struck down for their wickedness."

Sterren frowns, "I hope they are at least entertaining stories," she says, though in truth she has little hope at all that such stories could afford even a moment's entertainment.

"They are meant to be examples to live by, or cautionary tales about what to avoid," Reinier explains.

Shaking her head sadly, Sterren sighs and rolls off his chest and onto her back, "It grows terribly late. I should get some sleep, so I can rise early and tend to Taran's daughter."


Sterren expected he would leave her and go back to his room for the rest of he night, But Reinier instead curls around her, holding her as they sleep side by side.


She arose before first light and meant to slip away unnoticed, but Reinier stirs as she sits up on the edge of the bed.

"Leaving me so soon?" he asks.

"I must go pray before I tend to little Elara," she explains.


He pulls her back against his chest, embracing her gently, "You are very kind-hearted and dutiful to your people, " he says, "More noble women should be like you."

"Tell that to my aunt," Sterren laughs, "My mother had to become a commoner to be what she was, and I have followed her path."

"Your uncle, he is your protector?" Reinier asks.

"He's the lord of this village, and protector of us all," Sterren says, "But, certainly, his support of me personally has allowed me to serve the people without having to ask payment of those who cannot afford it."

"But, he's the head of your household? The one who makes decisions," Reinier presses.

"Yes, he's the principal Avendale. Whatever you need, ask it of him," Sterren answers, "I must go now, before the day begins, or my aunt will never let me out before breakfast. And you should slip back to your own room, or face my uncle's pointed hints and eyebrow waggling."


"I will speak to your uncle today, my dearest love," Reinier says, taking her hand for one final kiss before he lets her out of bed.


Sterren gets dressed hurriedly, and leaves with a strange nagging feeling that she's missed something important in her conversations with Reinier.


Dawn has painted the sky a rosy pink by the time she reaches the Lady's grove behind the village. Sterren stands in quiet meditation, asking for a way to heal Elara's sickness, or at least the strength to see the girl to her end.


At first she thinks it a trick of the light, but as she goes to stand closer to the sculpture, she sees it's no illusion, though she cannot say what the glimmering dust that falls from the Lady's stone hand is.


Sterren raises her arms and lets the dust fall over her, accepting it as a blessing, a sign of some kind. As suddenly as it came, the shower of sparkling dust ends, and Sterren makes her way to Taran Madec's farm.


As Sterren raises her arm to check Elara's temperature, the glimmering dust falls from her hand as it did from the stone, falling over the girl as she sleeps her feverish sleep.


Elara wakes suddenly then, energetic and rosy, the fever and sweats gone.


Overjoyed, the girl jumps out of bed to embrace her father. "I'm so hungry," she cries, "Can we have breakfast now?"

Taran is nearly in tears as he promises the make her daughter the best breakfast she's ever tasted.


But first, he must thank the healer who brought his little girl back to him.

"In truth, Taran, I don't know how that happened," Sterren says, telling him about what happened when she went to pray that morning. "Please, keep an eye on her, and if there's any sign of chills or fever, send for me immediately."


"Thank you, Sterren," Taran sighs as he embraces her in gratitude and relief, "You've truly been the best of friends, and a gift to us all from the Lady herself."

29 comments:

  1. yay! Love this chapter. The way you did the story at the begining was brilliant! I love how stories change and evolve as they are passed down.
    He's speaking to her uncle after spending the night with her. Sound like he has more on his mind than a night of fun! tehehe.

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    1. Thank you, Kathleen! I really love fairy tales and that just seemed like a perfect way to get across what the people of this time believe. Stories really do evolve especially through oral traditions.
      it does seem that Reinier is more serious than Sterren realizes.

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  2. I love how the story has morphed more into a fairy tale than the true account of what happened but that it still reflects the truth. Except for the fairy princess wife/happily ever after thing. I wonder what Sterren would possibly think, knowing she is related to the Lady.


    Sometimes, I swear I need a family tree. I can't keep track, aside from last names, who belongs to whom and who begot who (as said Genesis, :P), especially once I start adding Brannons to the mix.

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    1. It was fun for me to rewrite that story with just enough of the truth to make it recognizable. And I like the thought that there are grains of truth in a lot of stories and legends.

      I've been searching Breton Celtic names a lot for this part of the story, since in the Brannon story I identified the old Celtic Burial mound in Champs les Sims as the Lady's Tomb, so I kind of stuck myself in a French Celtic setting. And I discovered that Aven and Avenie are Breton Celtic names, so it actually works out with the Avendales. And now, your legacy family has ancestry in the French medieval nobility, lol.

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  3. I love the story of the lady! I hope you'll do that again as the story evolves! :)

    Aww, I think Sterren had the wrong idea about Reiner, maybe he will stick around ;p
    I'm happy you didn't kill Elara, but I really want to know what all that magic dust was!

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    1. I'd love to do more fairy tales! Maybe I'll even do some in the Brannon legacy, when Iola tells Shadow or their children stories. That would be fun.

      Sterren does seem to have the wrong idea about Reinier. Maybe he has the wrong idea about her too...

      Elara does get to live, I was going to kill her off originally, but I changed my plans, for several reasons. The magic dust won't stay a mystery forever. We still haven't seen what Auberon has been up to all this time, the only fairies we've heard from are the ones living in Aymeri's camp, but the rest of them are still around.

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  4. Loved the story, although I'm not sure Reinier believed a word of it=-).

    He's going to talk to her uncle, this could be interesting, curious what's on his mind.

    Hmmmm, wonder who made the dust fall from the statue? Who ever it was knew what they were doing, it cured the little girl and I think Sterren was just as shocked as the father on that one, interested to know what's going on there as well....edenz~

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    1. LOL, no, Reinier didn't believe her story. We'll get to see what's on Reinier's mind pretty soon. =D

      Who ever made the dust fall did know what he was doing, and it did surprise Sterren that she was able to cure the girl. She has healing skills, but she's not all-powerful.

      Thanks, edenz!

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  5. Moth is dusty. It was moth, right? Lucky Moth was around today! I hope Elara will be okay.

    Anyway if I were hearing that story, I'd share Reinier's complaints, lol.

    But I'd also be taking the piss out of *his* beliefs, so, I dunno, off with my head. Ouch.

    I really loved all the pictures for Sterren's story. And... Auberon has evolved wings in these retellings! Hehe! =D I assume he actually has some by this point, though. I wonder what he's up to these days.

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    1. Actually, no , it wasn't Moth, but you aren't too far off.

      I wanted to make that opening story as much like a fairy tale as possible, including the kinds of details that would make no sense if you thought of them as actual events. I remember being in third grade, we were reading this story called 'Little Two Eyes' or something like that. There were three sister, on with one eye, one with two and one with three. Their mother favored the one and three eyed daughters because they were special, and made the two eyed one live basically like a slave (I actually pulled some themes from that story into this one, with the abused servant girl who has a magical secret. In little two eye's case it was a goat that could produce magical meals from nowhere. When her mother discovered this, she killed the goat. And the goat's bones still hung around to give advice to the girl). Anyway, when I was in class hearing that, I stumped my teacher by demanding to know how many eyes the mother had and why she favored the mutant daughters so much.
      Having Reinier interject with his questions was almost a last minute decision on my part, because my inner third grader kept poking me as I was coming up with this tale.

      I did a lot of filter fiddling for those pictures. I wanted something that looked kind of like fairy tale illustrations (I'm a big fan of Arthur Rackham's illustrations) and that was about as good as I could get without busting out my pencils. And I'm a better photographer than I am an artist, anyway, lol.

      The fairy wings are a difficult issue for me. Fairies don't start being depicted with wings until the Victorian era, and I'm the kind of traditionalist who prefers wingless fairies. But I also like the idea of my fairies being 'real fairies' in the game sense of things. It also helps that they have a few abilities that are good for screenshots, like the one where Auberon is rising into the air as he casts his aura. I've already put wings on Shayeleigh and Ico, and this was a test run for wings on Auberon. I'm still undecided if he'll 'really' have wings, but when he appears in stories told by humans like this on, he will be winged.
      Auberon will be making an appearance very soon.

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    2. Haha, they wouldn't be fairly tales if they seemed plausible. =)

      Hmm... yeah, I can see good reasons for both winged Auberon and wingless Auberon. He could always just have them when he feels like it?

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  6. I enjoyed the retelling, although they got some things wrong heh! Reinier really does like her though, I mean like like her you know? Not just like her but...well you get it! Unfortunately for him though it seems like she doesn't really like him as much as he likes her.

    It's great that she was able to cure the little girl of her illness though! Even if she used a bit of magic!

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    1. Thanks, Aeon! Los of details did get changed through time as the story was passed down orally.

      Reinier does really really like like Sterren, lol. But you seem to be right, Sterren isn't quite as on board with that as he is.

      Magic was the only cure for Elara's sickness, so it was a good thing for them all that Sterren was able to get some!

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  7. First of all YAY!!!! Elara lives!!!

    I'm glad that you picked up where the last chapter left off. I wanted to know what would happen when Sterren left Reinier. So he DOES want to make her his wife. 'Your uncle is the one that makes the decisions?' ummmm. yeeeeaaaaah. Geez, Sterren! How could you not see that?! Oh, you'll see it, but by then it'll be too late and your Reinier will be wanting to claim you. I can't imagine that he'll allow her to go on with her healing duties.

    That blessing from The Lady was pretty cool. I wonder if there was a fairy nearby. (sorry if you've already explained this, I'm terrible about not reading others' comments.)

    Even thought I don't particularly like him because of his family, I still think Reinier is hot. damn!

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    1. Thanks, mypal!
      I'll be getting into this more next chapter, but Reinier's culture is more like what we expect from European medieval culture in our world, a patriarchal culture where the male head of the household makes all the decisions, including brokering the marriages of his female dependents. Sterren's culture is based more on early Celtic people, who were probably the least sexist peoples in the ancient world, at least from what we know of them. In Sterren's culture, if you want to marry a woman, you ask her, not her father or other male head of household. So that's why she didn't pick up on Reinier's clue there. Though something about it did kind of not sit completely right with her, too.

      I have not yet explained what went on there with the Lady and the magic dust, but I did hint at fairy workings there. That will also be more fully explained next chapter. =D

      Reinier, yeah. I always end up loving my Landgraabs, even when they do terrible things.

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  8. Uh oh, I think Reinier's going to ask Sterren's uncle if he can marry her and I don't think she'll like it very much!

    Having read the comments so far, is it Auberon who provided the fairy magic to heal Elara? I really love the re-telling of Uvie's story and how it's changed over the years

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    1. Thanks, Ali!
      Sterren certainly won't appreciate Reinier going behind her back, nor is she in any big hurry to get married.

      I have been hinting at Auberon's being the one behind the fairy magic that cured Elara. I'm really looking forward to bringing him back into the story.

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    2. Something was nagging me last night after I finished reading and commenting on this and your Brannon legacy updates, and I went back and read a couple of the earlier chapters from there which have left me with a very bad feeling about Sterren and Reinier's "relationship"... (I won't say anything more so as not to spoil things for anyone who hasn't been reading the Brannon legacy)

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    3. Yeah, I dropped some really big hints in the Brannon Legacy about what might happen here in Summerdream. It's hard not to have huge spoilers for this story in my legacy, since everything that happens here already history there. People who've been reading the legacy do get the benefit of foreknowledge. In this case, I don't think of it as being a spoiler to know where this will lead, because you won't know how Sterren gets from where she is now to what you see in the Brannon story until I tell that story here.

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  9. I like how the story of "the Lady" has transformed and "modernized" to the new timeline in the story. I wonder what happened to the heart stone?

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    1. Thanks, kittenvampire! You got through the whole story so far. =D
      The heart stone will come back again. Kvornan had it with him when he died, so Auberon will have retrieved it then.

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  10. Loved the fairy tale, great job on the pics. It was like looking at a children's storybook, lol

    The heart from the chest thing---makes me think of Once Upon A Time, I love that show. :)

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    1. Thanks, Nirar! I loved doing those pictures. I'm a really big fan of fairy tale illustrations. When I was young I used to draw my own. Art school really frowns on that kind of thing, lol.

      I caught a few episodes of Once, but it just didn't really grab me. I didn't see the heart thing there, but taking and eating someone's heart is a fairly common fairy tale motif.

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  11. I thought this was a great chapter, I love when we go back to memory lane. Although the story is different the purpose is still there. Reiner loves Sterren and I think he thoroughly enjoyed the "Fairytale". Wow what they hell did Sterren find and what was it that healed Elara? Wow.......

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    1. Thanks, Paula. I loved doing that little fairy tale.

      That was a little fairy magic.

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  12. Reinier!!!!!!! *drools*
    OK. O_O at the fairy tale when the crone ripped out his heart. Eek! Your fairy tale pictures are so cool. I love fairy tales and how they change over time. It's just an inevitable thing. :) The fairy magic from The Lady statue was so fun and mysterious. Love it.

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    1. I love doing nude scenes with Reinier, lol.

      Thanks! I really love fairy tales and fairy tale illustrations, so this is one of my favorite chapters.
      And I also love how they change over time, so you have so many different versions of them.

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  13. That was a very interesting version of the real events. :) Really great adaptation.
    Sterren best believe in her Lady more now and not be swayed by that usurp. heh.
    I worry a bit that now she may be deemed a witch, with those dragon slaying northmen there, no telling what superstitions they may have.

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    1. Thanks, zhip! I really enjoyed turning Uvie & Auberon's tory into a fairytale.

      I don't think Sterren is in any danger of converting to Watcherism, but, yes, Reinier does bring a lot of conflicting beliefs with him, and fear of witches and other superstition about them and the fair folk is part of that.

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