Once A Tale (MXM, BXB)

Diamonds and Toads

warnings: depicted herein is a bit of throwing up, especially of snakes and frogs/toads

Once upon a time, there lived a widow and her two sons. She was a mean-spirited woman and gave her elder son everything that his heart could desire while giving nothing to her younger son. The elder son grew up to be much like his mother, nasty and vile, while the younger son was sweet and beautiful.

One day, the younger son was ordered to travel his way up the steep hill to fetch them water.

It was a thankless and grueling task but he did so and, at the crest of the hill, he encountered an old woman by the well. She begged him to draw her up a drink of water and he kindly did so, asking her if she needed anything else.

She did not but, so touched by his gentleness, she revealed to him that she was a fairy and bestowed upon him a gift. "I am grateful for your kindness. Let this be your reward: whenever you speak, pearls and diamonds will flow from your mouth."

"Oh," said the son. "That's— well, thanks. Um. Yeah, thank you very much."

When he returned, his mother was furious, for he had taken quite a time on the hill.

But when she found out what he could now do and that a fairy disguised as an old woman had bestowed it upon him, she greedily plotted. She turned to her eldest son and instructed him to go to the well, draw water from it and to wait for an old woman to appear. The eldest son griped about it while shooting his brother hateful glances, but in the end he obeyed.

What was waiting for him after he had drawn up the water was not an old woman, it was a beautiful noblewoman who begged him to draw her a drink from the well.

"What? No. Get your servants to do it," the eldest son scoffed.

As soon as the words passed his lips, the woman's face grew stormy. And, in a flash, she revealed herself as the fairy his mother instructed him to find. "What terrible manners you possess. I curse you: from here on, when you open your mouth, snakes and toads will spew from it."

The son scoffed at first but, when he returned, when he attempted to tell his mother what happened... a snake slithered from his throat. He screamed, choked, clawing at his throat as he turned and fled into the forest...

And here is where our tale begins.

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For how many days and night had Rolf desperately scrabbled his way through the forest, cheeks scraped raw by brush and thorns? He had lost track, fleeing something with a desperation that he didn't know he had in him. Eventually he stopped, slowed, resting his sweat-soaked body by a river as he shuddered in the cold. When he opened his mouth, to say something (even to himself), a croaking frog landed on the ground and he retched, coughing up bile into the grass as the toad watched him placidly.

Cursed, was he? Cursed never to speak without this unholy punishment?

Rolf rocked, clutching his throat as the night fell around him.

From that day onward, he could only describe his life as hell.

He had fled from his mother, but now he thought he ought to have gone back. That damn Verde, they could've bought so much with the diamonds and pearls he coughed up. But he had lost the way, knew not where he was. It was a fault of his upbringing, he being spoiled and uneducated to Verde's cleverness. He knew his younger brother had always snuck off to read and study and whatever else.