THE GREEN FAIRY - Η ΠΡΑΣΙΝΗ ΝΕΡΑΙΔΑ

THE GREEN FAIRY

Paris 1898

I spend my evenings here, in this cabaret. I don't predict anything about my future. I have learned to work hard to earn an honest living. After my marriage to the most beautiful girl, fate hit me badly several years ago.

A girl whose innocence and youthful skin made me blush. As a blacksmith, I have a good income. Everyone wants some repair to their ironwork and horseshoes. So, her parents gave her to me. Her dowry was not large, but her beauty gave me chills.

I worked hard to set up our household, and when she got pregnant, I was doubly happy. I wanted a son. With the beauty of my wife and the work of a blacksmith, he would become an honest man. I expected no better fate for the name my father gave me. But my wife died in childbirth, along with my heir.

Since then, I have started this bad habit. Every night I die among the prostitutes of this cabaret and drown in absinthe.

<<Why are you sad?>> I heard a tender, thin female voice. A woman sat next to me, elegant in her airy green dress. The green aura that shimmered around her emphasized her presentation and silhouette. Her face was almost the same as my dead wife's, except her eyes were bright green. Her mysterious gaze, fixed on me, hypnotized me.

<<Who are you?>> I asked, confused.

<<I'm the green fairy.>> her melodious voice flooded my ears, blocking out any commotion in the cabaret, from the reveling men and the giggling women clinging to them for a few francs.

It's a hallucination, and it's playing tricks on my mind. The woman in front of me doesn't fit the image of this lineage. She looks like an elf from another world. But why does she seem so homely to me? Her tender gaze fascinates me.

<<I don't have to expect anything from life.>> I answered and took another sip of the absinthe. <<The world's end is coming in two years.>> she laughed.

<<You expect me.>> her laugh like an octave from a piano. She rose airily from the old wooden stool. She seemed as if she was not touching the earth. <<Come.>> she held her hand with the bright skin, calling me.

Without thinking, I swallowed the rest of the absinthe. I followed her aura as it receded, leaving a veil of green moondust among the bohemian drunkies and spilled drinks.

I went up the stairs to the private rooms. I expected her to be there, but she was nowhere to be found. I searched desperately in the rooms, but the few women I found did not look like her. They were the inferior women of Paris, no relation to the magical woman who had been beside me a moment ago. She disappeared. Was she real?

I walked back to the overflowing bar stool alone. I ordered another absinthe. I wished this green liquid would bring back my green fairy.

Created by Diana Chemeris

https://dianachem.com/2022/10/10/the-green-fairy/