A Modern Fairytale

The witch of memories

Long, long ago in the curse-induced kingdom of Venethema, there lived a witch who always wore a silver-blue cloak. When one laid eyes on her, one would see her lips first—the part of her face least hidden by her hood. They were a healthy shade of pink—nothing out of the ordinary. The hood veiled her from the sun and a little bit of the rain, but not her face from view. The witch had chin-length, dark brown hair curling in at the ends; her eyes were a wondrous violet, and her skin paler than most.

She called herself Liraz. "My secret," she would say, "Is what the name means, hehe."

Liraz was peculiar in various ways. She was petite, almost like a young girl, and yet as children grew into the elderly, she remained young. She wore a pair of shoes made of very thin fabric.

"I can feel the earth better that way," she would say, "But everyone wears shoes, so I should too, hehe."

The witch was a traveler. She always found herself back in Venethema, but before whatever it was drew her back to the kingdom of imagination, she would be found everywhere else. Across lands, the world came to become haunted by two figures: a witch-like fairy and a fairy-like witch. Like the fairy, Liraz was known by name mostly only within Venethema; like the fairy, Liraz was known to a king; unlike the fairy, she called no one her sire.

"Are you sure you want to do this?" Liraz asked a silver-haired young woman sitting across from her, her expression unusually solemn.

"Yes," the young woman answered in a monotonic voice.

"You cannot take it back after you lose it," the witch warned.

"I know."

"By doing this, you are betraying him—and yourself," Liraz reminded further, creasing her brows under her hood. She pulled it down further, determined to hide her childlike features from her customer.

"I know."

"You could simply live with it and let time heal you."

"I know that too."

"Final answer?"

"Yes."

Having given all the warnings she should, Liraz grinned.

"Alright. I will now begin to remove from your mind selected memories."

☆☆☆

Just as the fairy was drawn to all things shiny and sparkling, the witch was drawn to gloom. Liraz walked around King Ulric's throne six times, never taking her eyes off of him. The throne room was all but empty, save for the two of them. At the time, the king had his eyes closed, still as a statue on his throne.

"All this pretty and no one to see it," Liraz complained, frowning with one brow arched. She opened her arms, gesturing to the decorations all around the room. "You're not even going to make some more people? It's so empty and dead in here I can hear my ooown voooice eeechoing!" Towards the last few words, she cupped her hands over her mouth, raising her voice to, indeed, make her voice ricochet off the walls.

At that, the king opened one green eye. "Eh, really? But you're having fun anyway, aren't you? Besides, this isn't exactly under my control."

"Yeah, but..."

She glanced at the crown on his head—the crown of Venethema. The crown itself was all of Venethema, an accursed accessory made by a fairy queen of old, placed upon the head of a person long forgotten by history. From its bearer's capacity of imagination, the crown created an entire kingdom; despite the kingdom being borne of the bearer's mind, the bearer did not themselves do the visualizing. It was the crown that made use of their capacity to invent a nation on its own.