ETHEREAL STORIES

QUEEN OF NIGHT

It was a bright night and the air was awash with the sweet scent of hundreds of The Queen of Night flowers.

I inhaled a deep scented breath and heard the flowers whispering to me in their excited banter of blooming at night, I smiled at them with fondness and in turn they giggled at my happiness. I flipped through the calendar and circled the ninth of June of 1996, the day I fell to earth, three hundred years ago.

I picked one of the flowers with magic so as to not hurt the plant and inhaled the sweet scent of the white petals, I put it in on my right ear and it sighed with happiness "Are you ready?" the flowers asked, I just nodded and lifted my hands in the air, holding the silver bowl.

I could feel all the eight hundred and fifty one flowers drip their essence into the bowl and I felt the bowl getting heavier. After it was done I looked at the milky mist swirling in the bowl, it had a strange purplish colour this time rather than the normal white hue.

One second I was looking at the strange change of colour and the next second, I saw things happening in slow motion, the bowl fell from my hands, scattering the essence right at my feet and even though I had fast reflexes I couldn't do anything.

Instead I clutched my heart which was being wrenched apart with pain, I fell and avoided hitting my face thanks to my palms that came up in time.

I tried to breathe through the agony in my heart and thought maybe, just maybe it was time for me to die, after the three hundred long years.

I am a fairy who has been stuck on earth, among the magic less souls, amongst the grass that doesn't sing, amongst the wind that doesn't braid my hair, amongst the hustle, noise and the clicking of nails and thumbs on screens, I've lost my sense of self in this dimension.

I once saved the wrong person with my magic in the fairy realm and I'm being punished for it, no one cared that it was an accident.

It's been a long three hundred years of surviving this mess of the ever changing earth and its inhabitants, the warmer weather, the noisier places and the everlasting humanity.

I'm pretty sure all trees are slowly dying even though I try my best to heal and revive the ones that have been damaged.

I used to be a guardian of the plants and trees in my world and now on earth, with the little magic left inside me I try to do the best I can. I save trees and when one is cut, I revive it at the same time with its remains, which only makes the humans greedier.

The Queen of Night, on the other hand is my soul flower and they have been protecting and guiding me all these years so I have a big wall full of those wonderful plants in my balcony, which always bloom pretty scented flowers at night and wilt at dawn.

From when I started my exiled life on earth, I have survived by becoming a hairdresser because that is what I'm the best at and that was the best method for me to survive.

Now I have my own line of beauty salons open but faking my own death and becoming a younger heir has been the most painful process of surviving for so long. Humans have a knack of paying attention to details when things seem weird and so it's a challenge to stay away from prying eyes and curious minds.

I still remember the way my powers muted as soon as I fell towards earth and how the remnants of the spell of my exile echo in my ears even after all these years.

Be gone betrayer be gone
For the very world you betrayed will never rescue you
Be exiled and stay that way
Until a kind alien soul frees you
To bring you back from the edge of defeated immortality
To turn you mortal
To save you in a world of death