A Christmas gift for an old friend.

Once upon a time, in two parallel universes, there were living two fairytale creatures.

One of them, a very short elfish witch; she had big brown eyes, long hair, round lips and very tiny fingernails. She wasn’t of royal blood, or of angelic lineage, but she was respected for her wisdom and a playful arrogance towards the others. She lived in a tall stone tower, surrounded by many books and magic tricks of all kind, but not so many friends. She would very rarely come down to the ground and that was only to walk the streets of the village, buy food, gain knowledge and ride her little carriage from one place to the other. But as much as she enjoyed her life among the earthlings, she always had the feeling that her place was somewhere else and that she was destined to an adventurous life. Every day, coming home, she was climbing the stairs to the room in the top, up there in the clouds. And every night, when all the earthly creatures went to sleep, she would open a magic book and begin to cast spells, for her true nature and her greatest passion was to hunt the most fierce dragons and tame them, as she, against her minion stature and the child-like smile, was a lady of the darkness.

The other one lived in a house on the ground, surrounded by a small piece of secluded heaven. Bushes of the most beautiful flowers enlightened his garden, filling the air with the scent of never-ending summer holydays. He, for one, was very tall, curled dark hair and perfect hands, with rings showing he was a creature of class and style. And he was a sort of magician himself, as only he could charm so many people and have so many friends, coming to him, if not for words of wisdom, but for moments of true happiness and peace of mind. He was a dreamer, and everything he dreamt by day, by night he would draw in paper and canvas, in dark crayons or sparkling colors, for he was an image-speller and a scholar and he was good. And anytime somebody would ask him for his help, he would jump in the saddle and ride his horse to save any creature in distress. He loved to mingle with all kinds of co-inhabitants, trusting them all and giving them all his big heart, believing deep down inside in beauty, and truth and human kindness. And in spite his imposing demeanor and his deep voice, he was a hedonistic child embracing life with all its goods and bads. But he had too a secret favorite sin, and that was chasing and taming creatures from hell, who dared and managed to invade his realm disguised as human innocent teenagers.

So, once upon another time, after accidentally crossing paths once or twice, the little dragon-hunter and the big dreamer slowly begin to capture each other’s attention along the way. Of course, each had to embellish its own features, to become more likeable for the other one, but they both still kept their true nature and were honest to each other. They chased themselves for some time, passing through one realm to another until they fell in love. Tired of chasing dragons and wanting to taste something else than her perpetual walls of silence, she felt that she found what she was looking for, another creature to complete her. He, on the other hand, untamable and impossible to be held down from his thirst of life, thought that she was the one whom he can share his lust for everything with. They were complete opposites and believed a love story was all they needed. She lived in the clouds, but walked the ground. He lived on the ground, but his head was in the clouds. At a first glance, it was a match made in Heaven.

But even if physics would have indulged the attraction between these two different magnetic poles, at some point, reality caught up with them, and even with science and fairytale.

She could make and repair a mess in three seconds, he could keep the mess for three months. She was pessimistic and didn’t believe in her own shadow, he believed in hope and the full side of the glass. She was obsessive, cold, cynical, genius, insane, loud and played only with shades of dark. He was alive but silent, humorous, light at heart, imaginative beyond anybody’s comprehension, colorful, reckless and took everything easy as feathers. She had commitment issues, trust issues and family issues. He had issues larger than life but he believed in his heart that he could ease up the dragon hunter, as well as she believed she could bring a mage with his feet on the ground. And for a while, they did. They could stay and talk for hours, listen to the beautiful sounds of nature, sipping red liquid poetry and share their vision about the arts and the earthlings. They shared passions and tastes, memories and sins impossible to mention.

And everything seemed to work just fine. But as she was beginning to pull right, flawed by her ever-challenging nature, he was beginning to pull left, as she wanted to run free and he wanted to just stand still for a while. The love they shared, slowly started to shutter piece by piece, as one’s heaven began to become the other one’s hell, always switching places, always confronting, always on the verge of becoming something they were not.

Therefore, one day, they realized the story in itself was very good, but they were not the right characters to play it. Tearing up all Universe’s gates and crevices, they split destinies, tears streaming down their eyes, only to find themselves back in the places they truly belonged to. She went back to the tower in the upper mists and he went back to the kingdom of flesh and eerie gardens.

They still cross paths. And while she started chasing dragons again, he started chasing beautiful witches too, proving once and for all that this was what they were meant to do and to be, even if not together.

And at this point, the story – teller shuts up and closes the curtains.

Advertisement