Letters On Petals of Black Roses

The setting sun cast a blood red light on her black. Black silk dress, loose and flowy around her marble white skin. Black leaes of dried up roses. Black petals of dead flower wreaths clinging to the front of an abandoned mansion. Black as soot was her domain against the ageing grey marble that was the main house of the abandoned estate. Beyond her realm, was nothing. No other faerie for miles and miles: just the frosted peaks of mountains and the sun's lazy eye shutting between them.
She frowned, her rust-coloured hair twinkling in the half-light. Something troubled her, and she stirred. High she was perched, right in the middle of a south-facing rose, bundled up, curled comfortably and with her legs elegantly bent beside her: amidst dark petals. Her wings tickled the inside of the flower, their flowing curves framing her small body. Faerie of the Black Rose. Yet her Rose was Black no more.
That very morning, a tiny bud had opened. As was her habit, she tended to him kindly; the shock came when she noticed that in the small new orb two identically small gold petals had appeared.

"That cannot be."

The rose was facing - almost pointing - South, and so had she all morning, perched on a black baby-thorn. Something out there sung to her, and she longed to leave the black, grim prison of her flowers. She wanted to shake off the shadow off the dying house that pressed upon her back. Her thorny cage she was sick of; eating ashes in reward for her care had turned so horribly quotidien she choked on the bush's offer. No more kissing black petals, no more tossing dead leaves, no more smoothing thorns. She wanted to be rid of the responsibility of keeping alive something that was not destined to live. Frustration flamed in her onyx eyes: she was the Black Rose, and the Rose was her. They were one and the same, living through and with her. Should she leave the decrepit bush, it would die.

But what use was life to either one?

Still, she had not the courage to answer the voices of the twilight song. Her rose bed would do for now - it had been enough for her since the beginning of time.

There is something South. South.
Why care now?

Dead Transparency

My bones are made of glass
The transparency of which has
Undoubtedly paid its due.

Too long, too lonesome have I been crystal clear
I should towards mystery my charms steer
Hide furtively that I hold dear
The quality of your dew.

But should I to you act a dream
Of the lowest morality will I seem:
A deceitful merchant giving you for free
What in others you'll find is plenty.

Yet true, to you, were I
That will not your eyes satisfy
And my own graceful song, unheard

Will die.

Letters from under the Juniper Tree

The faerie of the Juniper Tree was a lovely old soul. She had inhabited the world for many thousands of years, and seen how man's arched back was straightened into the ploughing, pillaging plank it istoday. With a small bush of curly dark hair and a green silk frock, she danced and pranced from twig to twing all day long, perchance pruning her home-tree of its dead leaves and scavenging worms. The life of
a worker is never dull, nor can it be entirely devoid of action and emotion. Our faerie felt happiness seep through the little veins in her glittering lace wings as if she were tossing worms off her own white marble arms. She had so much to love on her juniper tree, and so little to hate. The only thing she feared about her tree-child was his singular black thorn, like an apex of malice pointing north. Every morning she would sit on one of the berries surroinding the thorn and gaze in that direction: only twilight lingered there in ill mornings and lazy evenings. Cross-legged on the black sphere, she would feel the pus pulsating under her: she would stir. Something drew her to that apex, like a whirlpool of mystery on the line of the horizon. At times, she felt sick of the faerie catharsis she had been living in for so many millennia. Her pouted red lips pursed with desire, she would resolve she had experienced enough lust for the day, and move away to face the other side of nature from the more welcoming quarters of her Juniper. The shade of its prickling thorns was the mountain brook to the thirsty climber. When the gentler winds blew, the tree gave off a flavour of vanilla sticks and lemongrass.
That was the magic of faerie trees. This was the magic and curse of faeries: being bound forever to a flower of their soul, who could only flourish as long as she remained there. The tree was a twin soul of hers, lifting and lowering its messy leaves as her mood lifted or sunk. It would give her the berries she needed to eat as she got hungry, and shade her sliver skin from the boiling sun. An oasis of quiet, a spring of delight.

Except for the mystery of the thorn, pointing towards a forbidden fruit she sought to fly after. She let her soul leap where her body could not, and saw in her mind what treasures she could find North. North.