sensen
01-04-2010, 04:34 AM
Hi everybody, hope this won't be a waste of your time. I'm not exactly good with grammar but I do enjoy writing very much :)
THE CRYSTAL ROSE
There once was a king who ruled a prosperous country. He possessed the largest pieces of gold, the shiniest of diamond, the prettiest of women and the strongest of soldiers. His people had forgotten the meaning of hunger. His rivers and springs carried the purest water no longer coloured by redness of war. His fields bathed in the golden sun singing green songs. In this kingdom, one suffered no more pain. Untroubled, the king ruled for many years in contentment.
One day, a voice came along.
In his ears, the voice whispered questions to which the king found no answers. “Why do I feel lone in this crowded place?”, “What am I missing?”, “What's out there waiting for me?” Delightful dishes prepared by famous chefs from every corner of Earth gradually lost their appeal for his tongue could taste none but blandness. Beautiful women with faces of angels and bodies of goddesses could no longer please as mere flesh was all his hands could feel. In his eyes, sparkling mountains of gold lost their shines. Night followed by night, the king lay with his eyes wide open as the entire kingdom fell asleep. With every breath taken, the king felt it becoming weaker. One day, like any other mortal, he too would die. “But I am not going to die before finding what I long for”, thought the king.
One day, the witch of the mountain came to speak with the king.
“I can end your weariness”, said the witch, her eyes glowed with wickedness, “but only if you are willing to place a bet.”
“What do you want bet on?”, asked the king.
“I want to bet that once you have found what you search for, you will destroy it. If I lost my bet, I would leave this land forever.”
“And in the case that I lost?”
“Then I would become the ruler of your kingdom.”
“Consider yourself lost, witch! Why would I destroy what I have always longed for?”
“Do not swallow before you chew, your Highness. Or is it that you do not wish to place your bet?”
“I am no coward. You have my words as the king!”
“Very well! In the jungle grows a rose with crystal petals. Whoever finds it finds what he searches for.”
The next day, as the witch instructed, without his soldiers and guards, the king entered the jungle. Excitedly he threaded his way through grasses looking for a rose with crystal petals. Search he did, none he found. By noon, hungry and exhausted, he decided to go back to his palace for lunch and an afternoon nap before returning to his quest.
To his frustration, the king could not find his way out of the jungle. By night, he was lost.
“This is absurd!”, thought the king, “for many years I have been in and out of this jungle with my eyes closed. How has it suddenly become a strange place to my knowledge? This has to be the witch's doing. That witch! Why did I even trust her from the start?!”
Grumbling to himself while desperately trying to find the exit, suddenly the king saw light flashing in the distance. “That must be the lamp of someone's home”, the king spoke out loud and hurried towards the direction of the light. A while later, just as he thought, out of darkness, a small hut appeared.
Knock, knock, the king firmly knocked on the wooden door. A soft voice spoke from inside the hut:
"Who's there?"
"It is I, the king. I am lost. I request some food to eat and a bed to rest for the night. Tomorrow morning, after I return to my palace, you shall be rewarded with gold for your hospitality."
There was a brief silence before the king heard light footsteps. Creaked open, behind the door stood a beautiful young woman with long, flowing black hair. She spoke, voice sounded like water from the purest spring up the highest mountain:
"King or no king, you are welcomed to eat and stay the night. You will not have to repay me with anything. Please, do come in. Make yourself at home while I heat up some soup."
The king thanked her, noticing how pretty she was before stepping inside. The woman brought out warm cabbage soup sprinkled with ground pepper and a large slice of brown bread. Unlike the golden crispy toasts and the pork and carrot stew he usually had at his palace, the bread seemed tough and smelled of old wheats and the cabbage soup looked bland and unappealing to taste. To his amazement, as he chewed the bread and sipped on spoons of soup, the king thought he had never had anything more delightful.
As the king ate, the woman prepared a straw bed in a corner of the hut. “I must apologise for I cannot offer you a proper bed. As you can see, my material possession counts for naught”, she said, smiling at the king as he cleaned his bowl with the last piece of bread. With his savage hunger now tamed, the king ached for a spot to rest his sore back and painful legs. After bidding the hospitable woman a good night, on the hard and cold straw bed, the king closed his eyes and immediately fell into the black hole of sleep.
The next day, the king asked the woman if she could show him the exit of the jungle. “I am afraid I cannot. You see, I have lived in this jungle my entire life. Never have I left it for any reason. Here, Mother Earth gives me plenty of food to eat and water to drink. This is my home, my sanctuary, my world.”
Day followed by day, the king desperately searched for an exit. Night after night, he ended his search at the woman's hut. Slowly, his will to keep on searching weakened as his affection for the woman strengthened. Instead of searching, he often found himself picking the most beautiful flowers of the wild and looking forward to offer them to her at night. He would sit by a spring listening to every sound of nature waiting for nightfall to come so he could hurry back to the hut and see her again. He started to enjoy the fact that he was lost so that she would welcome him back to her hut. Some days, he did not bother with his search and lay beneath an old oak tree thinking of her. He spoke with her about the outside world, about his kingdom, his people and their way of life. Watching her deep green eyes widened with astonishment as he spoke and listening to her mellow voice, never had the king felt his heart beat so fast. How extraordinary he felt sitting by her beneath the silver moon! How he desired to kiss her soft lips, caress her porcelain skin and embrace her blossoming body! How he yearned for her to know that she gave him something he had never known before, something that made his heart grow fond and his stomach churn, something called love!
And so with love, one night, he timidly offered her his heart. And she accepted.
Together they lived blissfully for a number of years. No more had the king to walk the jungle for an invisible exit. He spent his days catching fish, hunting rabbits, chopping wood and fixing their shelter. She grew vegetables, prepared meals, washed and cleaned. On warm nights, they slept under the stars. On cold nights, their bodies morphed into one. Never had sleep been deeper and food tastier. Never had the king felt happier.
Until one day when the voice came back.
This time, it urged him to continue his quest. His undisturbed sleep tardily became broken with dreams. “What course has run through my kingdom after I left?”, “Has someone else taken over my throne?”, “Do my people still remember me as their king?” Letting these questions drive his thoughts, the king had become frustrated yet once again. He began to miss the softness of his bed, the taste of rare food, the feel of silky clothes, the shines of his gold, the admiration from his people and the power that he once had. “The witch wanted to keep me hidden inside this jungle. That explains why I have not found an exit. But what explanation is there for the existence of my lady in this place? Foolishly I have never asked myself such question as my body and soul have not thought of anything else but her. Could she be the witch herself in this body of a goddess trying to hold me back all these years?” The thought scared him to death. He struggled to fight it off but the harder he fought, the more vivid the thought became.
“I have to find my way back”, said the king one day.
“Do you not wish to be with me any longer?”, asked the woman, eyes shadowed by a sky of sadness.
The king did not want to reply. What would he say? He wanted to say that he would like to take her to his palace and make her his new Queen, but looking into her deep green eyes, eyes that once dominated his world, the voice said to him “They are the witch's eyes”.
“Will you help me find the exit?”, continued the king, avoiding her question.
There was a long pause.
“The truth is, not long after you confessed your love, I found the exit.”
Her words shook the Earth.
“Why did you not tell me then? You knew how much I wanted to get out of this place yet you lied to me! After all these years!”, shouted the king, his eyes burned with anger.
“It was never within my intention to lie to you, my love!”, pleaded the woman.
“How dare you pull tricks on me, on the king!”
“Please forgive me, my love, for I could not let you go back. For so long I have been waiting for a man with a golden heart to arrive and at last you came. From the moment I first heard your voice, my body felt warmth and my heart felt love. I did not have much but with what I had, to you I offered all. I smiled when you smiled. I wept as you wept. You have become what I see, what I hear, what I love. A lonely life I led, lonely tears I shed. You came, and for the first time I could see brightness of the sun and feel solace from the rain. In this jungle, you are mine. If I went to live in your palace, to everybody else you would belong. Your body and soul I would no longer possess. You would share your bed with other women including myself when in my own bed, the lonely life I'd continue. Must you still ask why I could not let you go?”
“Liar, liar! You do not love me. You just want to keep me here, let me rot away slowly before taking over my kingdom. Is that so?”, screamed the king.
“I ask that you trust in me. I was selfish and I apologise. But who is not selfish when it comes to love? Have the years spent together not shown that my love for you is true? Do not let doubt control your sanity. What we have is beautiful as roses and pure as crystal. Do not let doubt destroy our crystal rose for once it's shattered, back to being grains of sand it would be.”
His body shaken with wrath, the king shouted at the top of his lungs:
“How did you know about the crystal rose? How did you know? I have never breathed a word about it to you. You're that witch! I command you release me from this prison at once or eternally burn in Hell!"
Having witnessed no such disgraceful manner from the king before, the woman stood in silence. Hopelessly watched as the king screamed and destroyed everything he built around their hut, her small shoulders shook as she buried her beautiful face in her soft hands and cried. But her tears only drove him madder. He could no longer see the woman whom he passionately loved. The witch was all that he saw. She stood there crying her crocodile tears but he would not fall for her trap again. He had to end his nightmare there and then. Drawing his knife, quickly as a fox, the king ran towards the woman and drove the knife into her heart.
The woman fell to the ground.
“Crystal rose... was what you whispered every night sleeping next to me. That was how I knew. Here with me, would you ever stop dreaming about something else that does not exist?”, she struggled with her final words. Drawing her last breath, the woman closed her eyes, black lashes dampened by tears.
The king stood still as if roots had grown from his feet.
“You have lost, my king!”, a familiar voice sounded.
The king's heart almost stopped beating. Before him, the witch appeared. She looked down at the woman's lifeless body on the ground and smiled. “Such beauty! Such waste! How could anyone brutally murder this angel?”
The king spoke through grinding teeth:
“Stop with your tricks! You and I, we both know you were inside that body all along!”
“Tsk tsk tsk, you have a rather wild imagination, my king! That girl is flesh and bone. Hiding behind her skin? What sort of power do you think I have? All I did was hiding the exit from you and using my little voice to talk with you once in a while, that was all. The rest, you thought of them yourself, your Highness! Do you know who you are? You're a dreamer forever searching for a new dream. Once you are tired of a dream, you'd excuse yourself to move on with another dream. Bored with life, you have stopped listening to your heart. All that this poor girl wanted was to be with you and just you. Have you ever noticed how she had never addressed you as Your Highness? To her, you were not a king but simply a man, a husband, a lover. She had no lust for your diamonds nor gold, exquisite cuisines nor extravagant parties, elegant gowns nor pretty horses. She knew the price she would have to pay for all those, and that price would have been your heart. She loved you enough to reject those which you will never let go of. Obviously, you were her heart, but she was never yours!”
Before vanishing into the air, the witch said her final words to the king:
“I am now the ruler of your kingdom. I shall re-open the way out of this jungle for your eyes but I don't see the point for you to leave this place. You have left your previous dream for too long that it has forgotten who you are. If you want to regain your throne, find yourself another crystal rose. My bet is once you found it, you would destroy it again. Don't blame yourself. You're only human.”
Nobody knew if the king was listening to what the witch said. Dropping on his knees next to the woman's body, he gazed at her face. He remembered how green her eyes were.
The king whispered. Like his heart, his voice broke:
“Open your eyes to me!”
Forever they were shut.
***
Myths told deep in the jungle green like the eyes of a goddess, there once was an old man who never stopped searching for something that he himself called The Crystal Rose.
THE END
THE CRYSTAL ROSE
There once was a king who ruled a prosperous country. He possessed the largest pieces of gold, the shiniest of diamond, the prettiest of women and the strongest of soldiers. His people had forgotten the meaning of hunger. His rivers and springs carried the purest water no longer coloured by redness of war. His fields bathed in the golden sun singing green songs. In this kingdom, one suffered no more pain. Untroubled, the king ruled for many years in contentment.
One day, a voice came along.
In his ears, the voice whispered questions to which the king found no answers. “Why do I feel lone in this crowded place?”, “What am I missing?”, “What's out there waiting for me?” Delightful dishes prepared by famous chefs from every corner of Earth gradually lost their appeal for his tongue could taste none but blandness. Beautiful women with faces of angels and bodies of goddesses could no longer please as mere flesh was all his hands could feel. In his eyes, sparkling mountains of gold lost their shines. Night followed by night, the king lay with his eyes wide open as the entire kingdom fell asleep. With every breath taken, the king felt it becoming weaker. One day, like any other mortal, he too would die. “But I am not going to die before finding what I long for”, thought the king.
One day, the witch of the mountain came to speak with the king.
“I can end your weariness”, said the witch, her eyes glowed with wickedness, “but only if you are willing to place a bet.”
“What do you want bet on?”, asked the king.
“I want to bet that once you have found what you search for, you will destroy it. If I lost my bet, I would leave this land forever.”
“And in the case that I lost?”
“Then I would become the ruler of your kingdom.”
“Consider yourself lost, witch! Why would I destroy what I have always longed for?”
“Do not swallow before you chew, your Highness. Or is it that you do not wish to place your bet?”
“I am no coward. You have my words as the king!”
“Very well! In the jungle grows a rose with crystal petals. Whoever finds it finds what he searches for.”
The next day, as the witch instructed, without his soldiers and guards, the king entered the jungle. Excitedly he threaded his way through grasses looking for a rose with crystal petals. Search he did, none he found. By noon, hungry and exhausted, he decided to go back to his palace for lunch and an afternoon nap before returning to his quest.
To his frustration, the king could not find his way out of the jungle. By night, he was lost.
“This is absurd!”, thought the king, “for many years I have been in and out of this jungle with my eyes closed. How has it suddenly become a strange place to my knowledge? This has to be the witch's doing. That witch! Why did I even trust her from the start?!”
Grumbling to himself while desperately trying to find the exit, suddenly the king saw light flashing in the distance. “That must be the lamp of someone's home”, the king spoke out loud and hurried towards the direction of the light. A while later, just as he thought, out of darkness, a small hut appeared.
Knock, knock, the king firmly knocked on the wooden door. A soft voice spoke from inside the hut:
"Who's there?"
"It is I, the king. I am lost. I request some food to eat and a bed to rest for the night. Tomorrow morning, after I return to my palace, you shall be rewarded with gold for your hospitality."
There was a brief silence before the king heard light footsteps. Creaked open, behind the door stood a beautiful young woman with long, flowing black hair. She spoke, voice sounded like water from the purest spring up the highest mountain:
"King or no king, you are welcomed to eat and stay the night. You will not have to repay me with anything. Please, do come in. Make yourself at home while I heat up some soup."
The king thanked her, noticing how pretty she was before stepping inside. The woman brought out warm cabbage soup sprinkled with ground pepper and a large slice of brown bread. Unlike the golden crispy toasts and the pork and carrot stew he usually had at his palace, the bread seemed tough and smelled of old wheats and the cabbage soup looked bland and unappealing to taste. To his amazement, as he chewed the bread and sipped on spoons of soup, the king thought he had never had anything more delightful.
As the king ate, the woman prepared a straw bed in a corner of the hut. “I must apologise for I cannot offer you a proper bed. As you can see, my material possession counts for naught”, she said, smiling at the king as he cleaned his bowl with the last piece of bread. With his savage hunger now tamed, the king ached for a spot to rest his sore back and painful legs. After bidding the hospitable woman a good night, on the hard and cold straw bed, the king closed his eyes and immediately fell into the black hole of sleep.
The next day, the king asked the woman if she could show him the exit of the jungle. “I am afraid I cannot. You see, I have lived in this jungle my entire life. Never have I left it for any reason. Here, Mother Earth gives me plenty of food to eat and water to drink. This is my home, my sanctuary, my world.”
Day followed by day, the king desperately searched for an exit. Night after night, he ended his search at the woman's hut. Slowly, his will to keep on searching weakened as his affection for the woman strengthened. Instead of searching, he often found himself picking the most beautiful flowers of the wild and looking forward to offer them to her at night. He would sit by a spring listening to every sound of nature waiting for nightfall to come so he could hurry back to the hut and see her again. He started to enjoy the fact that he was lost so that she would welcome him back to her hut. Some days, he did not bother with his search and lay beneath an old oak tree thinking of her. He spoke with her about the outside world, about his kingdom, his people and their way of life. Watching her deep green eyes widened with astonishment as he spoke and listening to her mellow voice, never had the king felt his heart beat so fast. How extraordinary he felt sitting by her beneath the silver moon! How he desired to kiss her soft lips, caress her porcelain skin and embrace her blossoming body! How he yearned for her to know that she gave him something he had never known before, something that made his heart grow fond and his stomach churn, something called love!
And so with love, one night, he timidly offered her his heart. And she accepted.
Together they lived blissfully for a number of years. No more had the king to walk the jungle for an invisible exit. He spent his days catching fish, hunting rabbits, chopping wood and fixing their shelter. She grew vegetables, prepared meals, washed and cleaned. On warm nights, they slept under the stars. On cold nights, their bodies morphed into one. Never had sleep been deeper and food tastier. Never had the king felt happier.
Until one day when the voice came back.
This time, it urged him to continue his quest. His undisturbed sleep tardily became broken with dreams. “What course has run through my kingdom after I left?”, “Has someone else taken over my throne?”, “Do my people still remember me as their king?” Letting these questions drive his thoughts, the king had become frustrated yet once again. He began to miss the softness of his bed, the taste of rare food, the feel of silky clothes, the shines of his gold, the admiration from his people and the power that he once had. “The witch wanted to keep me hidden inside this jungle. That explains why I have not found an exit. But what explanation is there for the existence of my lady in this place? Foolishly I have never asked myself such question as my body and soul have not thought of anything else but her. Could she be the witch herself in this body of a goddess trying to hold me back all these years?” The thought scared him to death. He struggled to fight it off but the harder he fought, the more vivid the thought became.
“I have to find my way back”, said the king one day.
“Do you not wish to be with me any longer?”, asked the woman, eyes shadowed by a sky of sadness.
The king did not want to reply. What would he say? He wanted to say that he would like to take her to his palace and make her his new Queen, but looking into her deep green eyes, eyes that once dominated his world, the voice said to him “They are the witch's eyes”.
“Will you help me find the exit?”, continued the king, avoiding her question.
There was a long pause.
“The truth is, not long after you confessed your love, I found the exit.”
Her words shook the Earth.
“Why did you not tell me then? You knew how much I wanted to get out of this place yet you lied to me! After all these years!”, shouted the king, his eyes burned with anger.
“It was never within my intention to lie to you, my love!”, pleaded the woman.
“How dare you pull tricks on me, on the king!”
“Please forgive me, my love, for I could not let you go back. For so long I have been waiting for a man with a golden heart to arrive and at last you came. From the moment I first heard your voice, my body felt warmth and my heart felt love. I did not have much but with what I had, to you I offered all. I smiled when you smiled. I wept as you wept. You have become what I see, what I hear, what I love. A lonely life I led, lonely tears I shed. You came, and for the first time I could see brightness of the sun and feel solace from the rain. In this jungle, you are mine. If I went to live in your palace, to everybody else you would belong. Your body and soul I would no longer possess. You would share your bed with other women including myself when in my own bed, the lonely life I'd continue. Must you still ask why I could not let you go?”
“Liar, liar! You do not love me. You just want to keep me here, let me rot away slowly before taking over my kingdom. Is that so?”, screamed the king.
“I ask that you trust in me. I was selfish and I apologise. But who is not selfish when it comes to love? Have the years spent together not shown that my love for you is true? Do not let doubt control your sanity. What we have is beautiful as roses and pure as crystal. Do not let doubt destroy our crystal rose for once it's shattered, back to being grains of sand it would be.”
His body shaken with wrath, the king shouted at the top of his lungs:
“How did you know about the crystal rose? How did you know? I have never breathed a word about it to you. You're that witch! I command you release me from this prison at once or eternally burn in Hell!"
Having witnessed no such disgraceful manner from the king before, the woman stood in silence. Hopelessly watched as the king screamed and destroyed everything he built around their hut, her small shoulders shook as she buried her beautiful face in her soft hands and cried. But her tears only drove him madder. He could no longer see the woman whom he passionately loved. The witch was all that he saw. She stood there crying her crocodile tears but he would not fall for her trap again. He had to end his nightmare there and then. Drawing his knife, quickly as a fox, the king ran towards the woman and drove the knife into her heart.
The woman fell to the ground.
“Crystal rose... was what you whispered every night sleeping next to me. That was how I knew. Here with me, would you ever stop dreaming about something else that does not exist?”, she struggled with her final words. Drawing her last breath, the woman closed her eyes, black lashes dampened by tears.
The king stood still as if roots had grown from his feet.
“You have lost, my king!”, a familiar voice sounded.
The king's heart almost stopped beating. Before him, the witch appeared. She looked down at the woman's lifeless body on the ground and smiled. “Such beauty! Such waste! How could anyone brutally murder this angel?”
The king spoke through grinding teeth:
“Stop with your tricks! You and I, we both know you were inside that body all along!”
“Tsk tsk tsk, you have a rather wild imagination, my king! That girl is flesh and bone. Hiding behind her skin? What sort of power do you think I have? All I did was hiding the exit from you and using my little voice to talk with you once in a while, that was all. The rest, you thought of them yourself, your Highness! Do you know who you are? You're a dreamer forever searching for a new dream. Once you are tired of a dream, you'd excuse yourself to move on with another dream. Bored with life, you have stopped listening to your heart. All that this poor girl wanted was to be with you and just you. Have you ever noticed how she had never addressed you as Your Highness? To her, you were not a king but simply a man, a husband, a lover. She had no lust for your diamonds nor gold, exquisite cuisines nor extravagant parties, elegant gowns nor pretty horses. She knew the price she would have to pay for all those, and that price would have been your heart. She loved you enough to reject those which you will never let go of. Obviously, you were her heart, but she was never yours!”
Before vanishing into the air, the witch said her final words to the king:
“I am now the ruler of your kingdom. I shall re-open the way out of this jungle for your eyes but I don't see the point for you to leave this place. You have left your previous dream for too long that it has forgotten who you are. If you want to regain your throne, find yourself another crystal rose. My bet is once you found it, you would destroy it again. Don't blame yourself. You're only human.”
Nobody knew if the king was listening to what the witch said. Dropping on his knees next to the woman's body, he gazed at her face. He remembered how green her eyes were.
The king whispered. Like his heart, his voice broke:
“Open your eyes to me!”
Forever they were shut.
***
Myths told deep in the jungle green like the eyes of a goddess, there once was an old man who never stopped searching for something that he himself called The Crystal Rose.
THE END