Okay so this is just a short story thing based on the fairy tale 'The Snow Queen' I wrote a while back and yeah.. Enjoy, I hope. (The two characters are Kellin and Vic if it's not clear, and the whole thing is basically a personification of all the shit they go through for being together..)
They had been friends for all of their short lives: babes wrapped in swaddling clothes in matching cots, grown up to sweet children with attic bedrooms joined by a wooden bridge over the bustling street below. This bridge was their playground, their safe haven, where they would come every day to escape into the realms of imagination, to which only the young have the key. He planted garden boxes overflowing with crimson roses and subtle pink baby's breath, which became faerie gardens, through which imps danced. Hanging baskets the other boy had made were thrones for regal sparrows and returning swallows, welcomed back to their utopia after the passing of the long winter months.
It was one such month. Cold, cruel, and callous, Old Man Winter had swept in. Trees dropped their leaves in fear; the river froze over in submission. They hurried indoors, hushing children, pulling the door tight shut. The old man blew ice through the fireplaces. Rattled the timbers. Attacked the windows. Fires flickered uncertainly in his wake. Each day they woke to put a still blue child out in the snow. Each day they went to bed with numb fingers and numb toes and numb hearts. When the first rays of summer tiptoed through the meadow, there would be time for mourning. For now - there was one less mouth to feed.
Dark were the times. Dark were the stories: tales of werewolves ruling the streets when the village had snuffed out its candles and mirrors bewitched by goblins to only show the bad and ugly in the world. A favourite perhaps was Old Man Winter's accomplice, a frosty queen who resided in an enormous castle carved entirely from snow. She ruled over an army of snow bees - the small snowflakes that seem to skulk in the shadows of others, darting out and striking with a mind of their own. Then the children would be rushed to bed and shushed with a promise of another story tomorrow.
That night the other boy didn't sleep. His mind whirred and ticked so he got up and for want of anything else to do, looked out of the window. Frost obscured the glass so mindlessly the other boy opened it. An icy blast hit him, chilling him right to the bone and sapping away the little bit of heat that resided in his blood. Snowflakes swirled around him in their hurry to enter, bombarding him. Among them, unbeknownst to him, several shards of a certain glass mirror.
The other boy struggled to force the window back to its original position but it was already too late. Had you looked closely enough, you would see a miniscule shard of glass lodged in the corner of his eye and another lodged deep into his already frozen heart.
When he got up his vision was clouded with a blanket of frost, tainting his sight like coal dust. It wouldn't do. That drink was too hot. There was no beauty in things which had once delighted him. No he didn't want a hug and a kiss. That porridge was disgusting. His gnarled ebony heart rejected every kind and good thing offered towards it. That jumper was too scratchy. No he wasn't going to help.
"Get out! Maybe when you come back you might learn to be grateful!" They cried exasperatedly.
"I hate you." He replied nonchalantly.
His sledge dragged two deep troughs in the ermine blanket covering the town.
"Come play!"
"No." came the answer.
"Want to come sledging?"
"No." came the answer.
Once more sleep escaped the other boy. Again he peered into the snowy void that was his window. The delicate crystals danced and jumped in excitement. Oh how his heart wished to join them! So free and careless they seemed - so happy. Slowly, flake by flake, a finger materialised in the haze, beckoning him, enticing his taciturn heart. The other boy's eyes glazed over, his mind emptied; his fingers crept towards the handle.
The boy was heartbroken when they told him of how the river had swept the other away. Five minutes later his new black toms were slipped onto his dainty white feet.
Presently fathoms of deep indigo lapped at his canvassed toes.
"River! River! What have you done with him?" he lisped.
But the water kept flowing, murmuring gently how it did not take him.
And so he carried on, one neat foot in front of the other, over hills and mountains, through rivers and forests, and still his love burned bright, warming his blood even when the sleet beat cruelly down with its iron fists. A crow tells him that his friend is with the princess, a princess tells her he is with the queen. Thus he stepped on, pretty eyes set on the horizon intent on finding him, for the mere thought of him makes his heart swell.
At last the gates of the Snow Queen's palace stood threateningly above him. However before his eyes had time to drink in the sheer size of the structure, colonies of perfect white snow crystals flew towards her. Sharp, piercing, and glacial they attacked. The army of bees stung repeatedly, over and over. Relentlessly they came, wave after wave, torrent after torrent. His hands did not offer sufficient protection against the onslaught. Thus soon enough his feeble resistance was exhausted and the bees lifted up the subdued frame.
They dropped him carelessly down in front of their queen, retreating to await orders. In the centre of a vast frozen lake he felt alone, so alone. Hot tears spilled over his porcelain cheek bones at the unfairness of it all. Why couldn't he just find him and go home? Isn't that what happened in fairy tales?
"Get up." a very familiar voice rung shrilly.
A hand grasped his hair, yanking him up to the other's eye level.
The streams coursing over his cheeks became rivers.
"You don't recognise me?" he whimpered to the other boy, his other boy.
But he was cut short by what could only be described as the vocalisation of a glacier itself.
"Back to work."
As if by some invisible rope, the other boy dragged himself over to a pile of ice shards, dumping him back down in the process. Frantically - feverishly almost - the other boy began piecing them together like puzzle, with frightening urgency.
"Look at me child." The glacier queen continued.
So he did.
"What is he doing? What have you done to him?" he sobbed.
"He, my child, is trying to spell the word eternity as I have promised to let him go if he does." She cackled "As for what I have done to him, I have shown him the truth."
"The truth?"
And with that the queen slashed out with her right hand, a shard of glass mirror clenched tight in her fist.
A boy lay limp on the ice, fingers of vermillion tentatively exploring out from his breast. Had you looked closely enough, you would see a miniscule shard of glass lodged in the corner of his eye and another lodged deep into his static heart. His other boy sat hunched over himself anxiously piecing together a puzzle with no success.
If you hadn't already realised this shit is hella weird so yh I hope it was vaguely understandable XD
