By Dani Herrera
June 26, 2021
"When the fairies came" by Ida Rentoul Outhwaite,
Australian Illustrator, 20th century
They were told not to go to the “other” side of the Earth. Where there was pain.
So they all stayed still, forever in one perfect place.
But one day a girl was taken.
The people had never been taught the way of hurting. There were no posters, no searches.
Just everyone stumbling, staying,
“Help.”
* * *
First he was still, then poison came out.
It seeped from the king’s heart through his mouth, coming out in white bubbled bile.
Flashes of long dead children’s faces slid through.
The servants cried, looking for the killer.
But it was just an orange bottle stating, “Take for pain.”
There must have been much pain.
* * *
There is screeching as the steel flower bloom reveals an unlucky angel, divinely in the wrong place.
EMTs stop rescuing to ogle the bloody mosaics of her wings that expand the length of the car.
“What are you?”
Nearly dead. That’s what she is.
She will die. And she will be no more of anything.
* * *
There she was, the long awaited fulfiller of the ancient prophecy, in an overbearing hospital bed.
He brushes his fingers through her brittle and thinning hair, letting the strands fall to the floor.
“We’ve slayed dragons. This is just a little cancer,” she says.
He nods, not daring to say, “Just a touch of terminal.”
* * *
He is a warrior but didn’t like the battle in his head.
There were he’s loving him and him loving he’s and in this closed room it’s simple and not a battle at all, not to them.
Maybe if they destroyed this magical world, and just left them two, it wouldn’t ever have to be.
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