This is Justice

 Once upon a time, there was work to be done. 

    Of course there was. That is THE story. The ever-present truth, a constant that holds there are things that must be done at every given moment.

    How sweet, then, to throw off the toil. 

    Only, not really. The toil cannot be abandoned. Paused, though. Paused for a moment, and in that moment, just for that moment, ignored. Ever so briefly. Even the sun has had it's moment. Three whole days. And yet, centuries later, still it rises and falls as the world turns. So says the story.

    Zoom in, then. See that woman. The one standing in the field. The sweat dripping down her neck, falling through her lashes, drenching her back. The master's eyes on her, sharp. The whip in his hand holds pain sharper still. Yet, the woman dares. She looks up. At the sky, blue as though a certain kind of sea had switched its place. Even this woman pauses her labor for a moment.

    Of course, there's a cost.

    The whip rises.

    That is when the sprites rage. They cannot bear to see a moment's idle punished. Idle is what they praise, where they live, and, most ironically, what they strive to see increased. They love this woman who dares spare her most precious time.

    The sprites' bite is worse than the whip's. Of course it is. The sprites are made of story. The whip is made of nothing lasting. The woman sees what the sprites do. The master sees nothing. But he's gone now.

    Revenge is not sweet. But this is not revenge. 

    This is justice; that let's the woman thank the sprites and walk away to find another kind of toil that idles from time to time. Without whips.

    She'll leave the sprites milk often now. To thank them.

    Revenge doesn't have a thankful bone in its body.

    Justice, on the other hand...

    

Popular posts from this blog

The Woman in the Tower

Once upon a time a woman sat alone, locked at the top of a stone tower.       When the people who had come to settle near the tower first approached it, they discovered her locked inside, and set about freeing her. The question as to whether she had been put there, or whether she had voluntarily ascended was to become a moot point, for when the door was finally unlocked, she refused to descend. Indeed, so often did those who wished for her liberty come to the door of the tower and try to remove her from the top most room in which she had once been locked, that, after a time, she discovered a way in which to lock herself in—and all others out.       It is unknown how long she remained locked in the tower room, for no one could get inside to see her until a sizable knight who happened to be passing was asked to go up and use his hefty shoulder to beat down the door.       But when he did so, it was discovered that the tower had ...
Read more

The Fae Wood

There were the haunted woods. You know them. The ones you walked through that night when the mists lit up with an eerie light and you knew you’d regret it if you didn’t follow the light to its source.       The source was the moon, of course. There was no surprise in that.       But the twilit pond did surprise you.       Not because it was a pond, but because of the faerie creatures that danced about it with their tiny bodies gliding about on shining wings, all gossamer and glow.       When you stripped off your jacket and dove into the pond, that surprised you, too.       Not as much as the Fae creatures on the other side who pulled you up as you gasped your breaths and told you that you would be there for the next hundred years.      Which was fine, you decided in an instant.        You didn’t mind.      ...
Read more

The Fairest

The whirlwind wasn’t chaos—at least, not quite. Too, the mesmerizing glare from the light around it wasn’t precisely destructive. But there was a rather foreboding quality to it, made all the more so by the woman dressed in black controlling what turned instantly into thick, shadowed lightening that danced in the palms of her hands.    She dressed in black with purpose. Long ago she found that color fades and white darkens. Black it was, to maintain the passage of time.    In her looking glass she sought the Fairest, as she was wont to do in a moment of weakness.    A woman agéd, hair as white as snow, skin as black as night, in a ragged cloak of many colors.    And a soul that glowed colorful, too.    The image in the mirror was a fool. She cared to serve the poor, the sick, those at the mercy of the law.    Haggard. Deluded. Powerless.    At peace.    That last was no more than a split...
Read more