A Modern Fairytale

The cursed crown

The day Venethema became Venethema was the last time Tallis's family ever saw him.

Even as he flew away from his house, the environment around him was changing constantly; one moment, he was flying above a creek, and the next, it was a bed of flowers. It was as if the land was trying to decide what to be—and for the first time gaining the agency to decide for itself. Tallis realized that wherever he'd seen his sister through his spell was probably not very accurate, especially with the landscape changing the way it did. Nevertheless, in the end, he had no trouble finding her—amidst the unstable environment, one thing in particular remained the same: a pillar of dark purplish fog in the distance. Not quite certain what it meant, he still flew towards it.

Tallis arrived at the sight of a man lying unconscious on the ground, a crown on his head. Standing over him was Berenice, the fairy he recognized as his sister despite the years. She looked down on the man on the ground until Tallis hovered closer; then, she turned to him, her grin growing slightly wider—yet her deep blue eyes remained eerily hollow.

"Wow," said Berenice in a honeyed voice, "Tallis, my brother, you seem to be in such good health."

"Berenice." He kept his distance in spite of the myriad of emotions swelling in him. The woman standing before him now felt much too foreign. "You...don't seem well."

"I don't?" The flash in her eyes suggested he'd just said the worst thing he could have. "You are quite right, I am not well. I wonder if your heartless soul has any clue as to why."

Berenice advanced toward him; he retreated. Their pace matched each other as if they were dancing. Gold and silver sprinkled onto the ground around the unconscious man as they inevitably circled around him.

"What happened?" Tallis asked. He had backed away from his sister originally for no particular reason other than a feeling of impending doom, and this remained his situation now—she had not launched any sort of attack. She chased him only because he was running.

"Father died. Mother died. Before all of that, you disappeared," she said lightly, almost in amusement. "Time passed, I thought you'd died too—killed in a mishap, a fight, a natural disaster...so many possibilities. So many possibilities." There she paused, even halting in her tracks. In response to the sudden stop, Tallis slowed as well until he, too, was only hovering. "So many possibilities, Tallis," Berenice repeated again, and...again. "So many possibilities. So many things in this world and every other could kill you, and yet you float here, alive, healthy, with a family."

"I..."

He had no excuse. He knew he had no excuse. He discovered a whole new land, enchanted by it and the people he met in it, and he stayed, having lost track of time. He had been relieved, free at last from responsibilities he never wanted to carry. Oh, that's right...he ran away. That was the easy way out. Looking at her now, Tallis began to understand why Berenice seemed so different, why the light in her eyes had hollowed into a blazing glare—the responsibilities that he'd shed, she picked up.

A cold chuckle left through her nostrils.

"If dying was all you'd done, it would have all made sense. That was the version of the story my kingdom believed. That was the grief that I grieved. I don't have the time to mourn all over again for your betrayal. Let's just say..." She squinted, shaking her head slightly, as though she was only looking at an apparition of her brother—the brother she still missed sometimes but had long learned to do without. "...that you died, years ago. People always are far lovelier in our memories."

In her hand, a staff materialized. Tallis widened his eyes in shock, immediately rushing for his exit. As he flew, she landed. When her staff touched the ground, a dark purple fog enclosed the space. He almost rushed head-first into it; when he drew close, it suffocated him. Left with no choice, Tallis summoned a silver-colored citole into his hands.