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A mysterious cloaked figure bumps into you on the streets.. Checking your pocket you find an Envelope addressed to.. you?
Read the Letter:
Welcome to The Grimm Ball! An Avatar Contest fit for Royalty.
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Posted: Fri Jun 30, 2017 5:37 am
Welcome to our Multimedia Talent Show!
Theme: Fairytales/Grimm Fairytales {Happy/Sad/Funny your choice!} -Retell/Draw your favorite Fairytale or write your own! -Draw your Team Grimoire Avi {Or A Teammates avi}
Rules: ▶ No entries against Gaia's Terms of Service and NSTG rules! ▶ You are allowed one entry per category! However, you may only win once overall. ▶ Please keep Videos/Recordings under 5mins ▶ Please do not use stolen/traced/old Artwork! Your entry must be new/original. {Collabs allowed only if mutual and credited properly} ▶ Bloody/tragic entries are allowed but please, nothing too extreme or gorey! ▶ Please 'Link' your entry! Do not post images! If your entry is poetry or in writing, please use Spoiler quotes! ▶ Please submit your entry by filling out the form below.
[color=#BE2B31][size=13] [size=18][u][b]Under your Spell Entry[/b][/u][/size] [quote="Aeris Dysnomia"][/quote] [u][b]Username[/b][/u]: {My name is.. Slim Shady} [u][b]Media[/b][/u]: {Art/Poetry} [u][b]Entry[/b][/u]: {Please post a 'Link' to your entry here! Writers use spoiler quotes} [u][b]Description[/b][/u]: {Describe your Entry} [/size][/color]
Entries:
▶ Emalthya
Once upon a time, in a pretty land far away filled with different kingdom there was a beautiful, rainbow-petalled flower.
This flower grew in a place in the land which was not owned by any particular kingdom as it was wild and scary and filled with curses and animals that ate meat. The flower was very special because once every fifty years it closed up for one day each month, and the next day it opened up in the morning with a different kind of jewel. The jewel flower could only perform its wonder when it was in its own safe environment, and it would not take root in inferior soil.
Legend told of it across the kingdoms and one day, a brave young man fought his way through the sacred land and found the flower, and while it was not the year that the flower closes and gives jewels, no-one had been there for a very long time, and many jewels had fallen around the flower from earlier times.
This young adventurer carried away all the jewels, which were more than he could cup in his hands, and went home with them, swearing never to tell a soul of the flower and its special powers.
It was strange to him that he noticed that the jewels were of different sizes. In fact, the larger the flower grew, the bigger the jewels were, and every time the flower bloomed the jewels it dropped grew in size and beauty.
The man sold the smaller jewels and started a business with the gold from them. He became a successful merchant and made his fortune, married, had children, and he gave them each a jewel to start their own fortunes with. He never told his wife or his children about the jewel flower, to keep it safe and hidden. Most men would have gone back for more, and exploited the flower, but the merchant had enough respect, or superstition, that he should not slight his luck, because surely it was luck which lead him to the jewel flower in the first place.
There came a day when the merchant took one of his last flower jewels to a jeweller to be made into a pendant for his daughter. The jeweller had never seen a stone like it and asked where it had come from. The merchant said he had it as inheritance from a dead aunt and took the jewel away and didn’t return.
The jeweller was annoyed and wanted to have jewels like the one he had seen for his own. He wanted to make a whole line of jewellery out of it and become rich because he would be the only one who sold them, making them rare and costly. He felt that the merchant had a secret vein of the jewel which he mined himself, or had stolen it from someone who had. He hired some scoundrels to kidnap the merchant and take him to a place where they could interrogate him about where the jewel had come from.
For a long time the merchant held out, but finally he told them about the jewel flower. At first the jeweller didn’t believe him, but the captured man would tell no other story but that one. At last, the villains rolled their eyes at each other and the jeweller said;
“Fine, we will go out and test your story, but if we come back and find out you lied, we’ll kill you and your family.”
The merchant was terrified. The villains let him go and he scuttled home, bewildered and hurt. He wouldn’t explain what had befallen him as speaking the truth to his dear wife would betray the secret of the jewel flower twice.
The jeweller and his men went into the sacred land and found the jewel flower, though the garden around it had been picked clean of jewels. The jeweller noticed that it looked odd and wondered in fervent hope if it were not the fiftieth year and the flower was readying itself to close and bear its jewels.
The jeweller and his men went back home to gather the supplies they would need to spend a while in the sacred land and wait for the jewels to drop. Before they could start the journey back they were arrested for the attack on the merchant. The merchant’s loving wife had reported his injuries to the police and witnesses had seen the jeweller’s men attack him.
The wicked men were taken to prison. Because the jeweller was so rich he was taken in chains to the king’s palace. The king might have been convinced to take a bribe from the jeweller to keep him out of prison, though the scoundrels the jeweller employed had no such fortune.
Once the jeweller was before the king, he fell to his knees and declared his innocence. The king disagreed and told him that witnesses were sure he had been with the merchant. The jeweller saw his chance; if he went to prison, he would never get the jewels from the jewel flower, even if he bought his freedom with gold, people would watch him for many years and he would not have a chance to travel into the sacred lands. So he decided to tell the king about the jewel flower in trade for his freedom.
The king listened with doubt to the jeweller’s story, just as the jeweller had listened to it with doubt when the merchant had first told him.
“You will take my men there,” said the king. “If they come back with no sight of it, they will kill you and you will wish you had spent your life in prison!”
The jeweller sobbed his thanks to the king and was taken by a troop of palace guards to the sacred lands. Still wearing his chains, he lead them to the flower. It was much darker than it had been; instead of being all the colours in the rainbow, it was now almost the deep blue of a bright sapphire … it was about to close.
The king’s men took the jeweller back to his home and told him to keep himself out of trouble. The jeweller said to all his clients that he had in fact helped the king in a sting operation against the scoundrels he had hired and the clients praised his heroism. The scoundrels stayed in prison for a long time.
The soldiers returned to the king with news of the magical jewel flower. The king decided he would find the flower and take it. He did not know that the flower could not be moved from its sacred soil without destroying it.
The king was trying to court a princess from a nearby kingdom. The princess was being courted by lots of kings and princes and dukes and wealthy men from all around because she was very beautiful, rich, and had a very good lineage. She was almost of the age at which she would inherit half of her father’s glorious kingdom, which was also the age at which her father would consent to her marriage. Until that time she could not marry, so none of her suitors asked for her hand, and so she had to entertain all of her suitors whenever they visited.
The princess had many admirers but the king wanted her for himself. He was a proud man and he hated to be rejected, but he feared that another suitor might swoop away with her and he wouldn’t have that. He thought he might have a good chance to marry her, but an exceptional gift would surely increase his favour in her eyes. The most amazing gift of all would be the jewel dispensing flower.
The king set off to meet the princess to appraise if he was in her favour and if it was worth going and getting the jewel flower. He greeted her with beautiful words and praise and she sighed deeply because it was all things she had heard before. The king promised to get the jewel flower for her and set it at her feet as a gift to honour her loveliness.
The princess was interested in the flower, but didn’t really believe it would drop out jewels. She told her handmaiden about it after the king had left her, expecting to make her laugh but instead the handmaiden threw her hands up to her face in horror.
“What is it?” asked the princess.
“I know the story of that flower, your ladyship!” said the handmaiden with a quaver to her voice. “But the king has it wrong, oh so wrong! The flower cannot be taken from its ground or it will die and the miracle will be lost forever!”
The princess was aghast at this terrible news. She was resolved to stop the king and run after him and tell him not to go to the jewel flower, but she realised the king would not believe her, or might think he knew better. In truth, the flower was under no kingdom’s protection; it could be destroyed by anyone who wanted to do so.
The handmaiden, who loved stories, had once heard of a princess changing places with a maid. She proposed that the king, who had never seen the jewel flower before, be tricked with a false flower and this flower should be given to the princess. That way, the true jewel flower would be safe.
“But how would be trick him?” asked the princess. “We don’t know where the flower is, nor do we have a way to get there before him!”
The handmaiden caught sight of a young man. He was the younger brother of one of the princess’s suitors. She beckoned him over and suggested that this man be sent ahead to conduct the ruse. After all, the king did not know exactly where to find the flower, either.
The young man spluttered. He felt he could not do such a thing as he was here to help his brother. The princess said, with annoyance, that certainly proving to her that his brother’s family was not full of cowards was certainly to his brother’s favour. With that, he accepted the quest and made ready to leave.
This young man was only recently made a knight under his brother and was ready to do his duty in his first solo quest. He was sworn to secrecy by the princess and could not tell his brother about his journey, though he wished he were doing it with his brother, or with his brother’s approval.
The knight followed the king and his men, listening to the same stories as they did and he worked out the clues of the location of the jewel just ahead of them. The knight went ahead, as one person can travel faster than a whole group, and he had in his grasp the most beautiful flower from the princess’s garden, willingly sacrificed for the cause. He planted it in a beautiful glen in the path of the king and his men and tried to make it look secret and mysterious, and then he hid and listened.
He heard footsteps and cries of triumph: the king’s men had found the flower. Then he heard the king say that he had expected the flower to be blue, not pink. The knight felt his stomach fall to his feet. If the king were to find out he was being tricked…
But all was well. The king decided that perhaps the men who had told him of the flower being the colour of a sapphire had meant a pink sapphire. He had his men dig it out gently and put it in a golden pot. He was feeling very smug at this point; he had a gift none other could give or surpass.
The knight was disposed to return to the princess with the news of his success, but the second part of his quest now awaited.
If the king could not be shown the jewels said to come forth from the flower, he might think he had made a mistake and come back for the real one. So the knight had to find the true flower, collect the jewels it dropped each month, take them back to the princess each time, and then come back for the next month.
The knight searched for the flower day and night, braving beasts and dangerous land, and he found it. It was beautiful, and the deep blue of a sapphire. He did not have long to wait until it closed completely and then, the next morning, a small tumble of beautiful, perfect sapphires fell to the ground around the flower.
The knight gathered the sapphires up and travelled with all haste to the princess’s castle, where she was keeping the king at bay. He was becoming annoyed that the flower would not release jewels and the princess by now could not show him the flower as it was wilting. Another flower was fetched from the garden but all of them would die; they were not everlasting as the jewel flower was.
The knight gave the princess the jewels in secret, in the dead of night, at the darkest, most derelict hallway of her castle before he immediately journeyed away again. She was so relieved to have them and bid him good luck in his travel and return next month.
Now with a date on which the flower apparently released jewels confirmed, the king was more relaxed and praised the sapphires the princess showed him. He exclaimed that they were just like the princess’s eyes in beauty. The princess nearly rolled those eyes at this comment because her eyes were yellow. The kind had obviously never looked at her face, and had only seen her beautiful tiara, her fine earrings, her costly necklace.
The king came again at the next month and asked to see the jewels from the flower. The knight had delivered them two days beforehand and had told the princess that the jewel flower turned clear like ice before dropping a handful of diamonds.
The king was well satisfied with this. The other suitors were very angry and imagined that the princess would marry the king.
The lordly brother of the knight was worried as well for the sake of his brother and hoped he had not been mixed up in anything too dangerous. He loved his brother and trusted that his quest was just, but the knight was not the strongest knight, nor the best in battle, nor the best at anything which made knights important.
The next month brought horrible storms which made travel hard. The knight was very late with the delivery of stones and the princess had to pretend to be ill to avoid seeing the king and showing him jewels she didn’t have.
Fortunately the knight showed himself, sodden, dirty and exhausted, with a bag of rubies in his hand. The princess kissed his cheek, careless of the grime upon it, in gratitude and hurried away to show the king.
And so it went on for more months, with the king arriving every month to see the new jewels for the princess and the knight going away and collecting the jewels from the jewel flower in the sacred lands and delivering them to the princess.
Over the months, the princess grew closer to the day when she would be queen of her own kingdom and the suitors began to court her more ardently. She was hard-pressed to know how to discourage them all, or at least not to encourage any suitor above the others. The kings, princes, dukes, and wealthy men were jealous of each other and would argue and fight if they believed the princess to like any of them over the others. Her father advised her to simply make a choice and be done with it, but none of the princes or lords or kings suited her, certainly not the king who had brought her the flower.
She wondered if she thought any of them handsome. Yes, some of them were handsome, and some were smart, and some appeared to really love her, but there was one man who had proven himself to be devout. She wondered if the knight had ever thought of her in a different way than as a princess to be served, perhaps, instead, as a princess to be married.
When the very last jewels were brought by the knight and passed into the princess’s hands, the knight held one of the emeralds out to her and said in the formal way he habitually used when speaking to her:
“It is beneath myself to ask for payment for this task you have set me, which I have done. But I ask a boon of you, my lady; please allow this wretched knight to have the pleasure of this one stone, to remember you by.”
The princess was shocked. Did he mean not to see her any more? She agreed to his request and he went off with a single emerald for all of his hard work. She watched him go with a sad heart.
When she showed the emeralds to the king, she told him that she had given an emerald to a long-serving knight, and that was why there were fewer jewels this time. The king accepted this and at once he bowed to her and asked her to marry him.
The princess looked at him in the face and saw no love for her. She saw only greed. He was so much unlike her knight, her brave, noble knight, who looked at her as though she were the only reason in the world to live. She refused the king’s proposal.
The king did not like this answer and took the princess hard by the arm, ready to make her accept him by any means necessary. The handmaiden ran out of the room with a scream, dodged the king’s guard, and ran down the corridor to find aid. She passed the knight on her way and told him the princess was in terrible danger. He told her to tell everyone she could and ran into the princess’s greeting chamber, shoving something deep into his pocket as he went.
The king looked up when the knight came in and laughed. What would a knight do against a king? The knight loosed his blade from its scabbard and told the king to get away from the frightened princess, who clawed at the king’s grasp on her arm to no avail, or face his blade. The king laughed again and refused. The knight was then set upon by the king’s guards and he fought them off until he had all their swords at his feet and they had no weapons; his time alone in the wild had hardened him and improved his strength.
The knight came upon the king now and ordered him away from the princess. The king let her go but would not surrender. He said he intended to have her for his bride no matter what and nothing could stop him.
The knight turned to the princess, backing away from the king and approached her slowly.
“My lady,” he said, “I had hoped to do this at a more auspicious time. When you granted me the favour I asked of you, I had hoped I had earned your approval from this vast enterprise.” He pulled out a box from his pocket. “My lady, though it be proposed with your own jewel, please accept my offer of marriage.” He opened the box and in it sat a small ring set with an emerald. “Will you marry me?”
The princess stared at the knight and accepted; she cared for him very much and he for her. The king was thrown out of the palace by her many palace guards, who also escorted out all the other suitors who were not happy about the match. The knight’s brother was his best man, for he had not loved the princess and could now marry the lady he wished to without fear of disinheritance. The knight may not have been a king, but he was kind and loyal and brave, and the princess had enough money and titles that she cared nothing for not having one from her husband. They married on a spring day the next year and lived happily ever after.
The princess used her power to claim ownership of the sacred land where the jewel flower grew, so that none could harm it. Its location was discovered and lost many times over by many different people who knew that they could take jewels if they liked to, but that to damage or steal it would be to invite the wrath of the princess. The jewel flower grows in its sacred glen to this very day.
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