Fairy Reverse Story {RW}

The day was for monsters. The sun was for the beings that crashed through the forests, and controlled the waters. They thrived in the light, and used fire for protection and destruction. They were children of the heat, and inhibitors of the world. Their children, copious. Their actions, malicious. Their ignorance, incredible.

And the day was theirs.

There was a time, the elders told us,  in which we traveled upon the earth in the day. When we did not have to fight for our lives, and cower in abandoned corners of the world. A time when our people sang bright songs, and guided the monsters. We had thought the monsters incapable of harm, like a child. We had believed them of us, but other in a way. Their otherness was far more than we expected.

And the day was theirs.

I had heard stories of the day. Of the colors that lit the world. Of the way the sun hit the rivers, and how trees danced in the wind. I had heard stories of colors I had never seen but in dreams, and were those true colors at all? For all I knew was muted darkness, the colors of night.

The monsters told stories of us and our kind. Of our nature and our figures, so said the elders. To them we were enticing. To them we were seductive, powerful, and for that reason they wanted us to be destroyed.

All I knew was the chill of the moon, not the caress of the sun. All I knew was the lull of a night wind, and the howl of a wolf. I knew the adrenaline that came from the breaking of sticks. The feeling of breath against my skin, that I feared was not my own. I knew of the scratches and grunts that were their voices, mumbled, jumbled, distorted.

Monsters.

But tonight there were no monsters. Tonight  was just for my friends and myself, for our coming of age ceremony.

I thought back to the words we were given and the way we were taught to spin our gifts. The magic could destroy the monsters, but we had to learn to get to that level of greatness. 

“Are you ready?” Rose asked.

I tossed the wind between my hands. “Yes.”

With a whistle Aryn called out to us, and signalled for us to move. The night was ours and ours alone. For this night was one of our power and awakening. With the wind in my hands I called the world to move. Aryn signalled the animals to move. The air was spinning, moving, crafting a new world of its own. 

We were running, flying, soaring through the woods singing our melody into the air when I heard the cracking of the sticks, and the rumble of the leaves. The monsters were here and it was time for us to kill them.

Rose continued to sing, lifting her voice into the trees, as a serenade to draw them towards us, begging them to come to us. Aryn had wolves at the ready as I bent the trees and the winds to guide them towards us, deeper into the wood, deeper into the territory that we held.

And when the monsters appeared, pale, small, large doe eyed but accompanied by fire, we knew they were younglings. Younglings of the monster species, speaking to us with garbled voices, not as harsh as their elder counterparts, but nonsense all the same.

Rose could speak their language, and so she spoke to them. Telling them how they could come with us, to our home, deeper into the woods. Where the wolves lay waiting for the feast of monster flesh. They were weak despite their fire and their control over day, and we were enticing.

I refused to let the fear consume me as we led them deeper and deeper into the woods away from their monster parents. Away from the keepers of the land. And into the heart of the forest where they were to be destroyed and their blood given to our kind, to help protect us. But first we would sing and we would feast and dance, and they’d never want to leave us. Perhaps one would be chosen to stay with us but the others would bleed.

For only monster blood could protect us from monsters.

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