fate

The ruins are the talk of the town. No one who has gone there has come back. Rumours spread. Some say they hear screaming, others insist they hear whispering amongst the crumbling walls. Perhaps it’s just the wind blowing through, rocks falling. But why does there have to be a logical explanation? Maybe the ruins are haunted. Maybe ghosts don’t exist; but maybe they do. Who’s to say? Regardless, people steer clear of the ruins. They whisper that they’re ruins peopled by ghosts who dwell there to taunt us.

A long time ago, the ruins were a magnificent palace. The princess used to live there with the man she had married until she ran away with the local witch. There were rumours about that too. Perhaps he abused her or perhaps she never truly loved him. After all, love works in strange ways. And it’s not as though she had much of a choice to begin with; her destiny was written long before she was born. Marry some fancy prince either for an alliance or for money. She never had the choice of loving another. Until she ran away.

No one really knows when the castle was abandoned. Most likely the princess’s husband left and never returned after she ran away. Then again, maybe he died there and it is his and his servant’s ghosts haunting the ruins. The only thing that was certain was that the ruins remained outside our town. And no one ever returned from them.

Or so the townsfolk think.

There is one person who decided to go to the ruins one day. She was bored of living the same monotonous life day after day after day. What was the point of life if not to explore and take risks?

Not to mention that her parents had her future all planned out. Finish school, marry “that nice boy down the street,” work in the fields and tend to the house, eventually become a mother in order to provide them with grandkids to spoil rotten. And, at the end of it all, Death would be waiting with his scythe in hand.

Of course, she had heard the stories. The streets of the towns were full of whispers; there was no escaping them. As a child, her parents had told her cautionary tales. Children are curious creatures by nature and the ruins pose a challenge, something new. A place to explore. But the cautionary tales worked, for children are also very impressionable. 

But as a teen, she was struck by a desire to know everything. The world seemed so vast and the town seemed so small and how was she supposed to find all the answers if she was stuck in the town? And the ruins were so close by. The rest of the world could wait; the ruins were a logical place to start. Perhaps she believed she could write her own destiny. Escape the chains of fate.

So she left.

There wasn’t one clear path to the ruins. Very few people had ever gone there, after all. The adventurer had to force her way through bushes, jump over puddles. She had thought that walking to the ruins wouldn’t take long because they were so close to the town, but it took hours. Perhaps it was some sort of enchantment; maybe the ruins didn’t want to be explored. Or maybe it was just a bad estimation of time. It’s hard to account for the obstacles that you can’t see at the beginning of the journey.

Eventually, though, she made it there. The sun was just starting to set, and it was the kind of sunset that made people stop in their tracks and look up at the sky with wonder, whispering to themselves or the people around them, “Wow, look how beautiful the sky is.” 

The ruins were right there.

They looked so much bigger up close than she could have ever imagined. It made sense, since the ruins had once been a castle, but the stories and whispers never really mentioned their size, leaving that to the imagination. What would’ve been the first floor of the castle seemed to be mostly intact, although there seemed to be some cracks and holes in the wall. Vines clung to the stone, as though they were the only thing holding up what was left of the castle. The pieces lying around the clearing where the ruins stood must have, at one point, been the upper floors and towers.

The adventurer walked up to one of these piles, feeling excited yet apprehensive. She couldn’t yet hear any screams or other noises that would indicate the presence of ghosts, but she wasn’t sure if this made her feel better or worse. In the pile of rubble, there were some pieces of metal and some pieces of stone that once upon a time had been intricately decorated. All that was left of these details were ghosts of markings. Since there was nothing really interesting in the pile, the only next logical thing to explore were the ruins themselves.

She walked into the ruins.

The room she walked into must have been grand, a long time ago. High ceilings, beautiful columns, intricate details along the walls. At one point there must have been art and carpets and a myriad of lovely things, but they were no longer there. Stunned, she stood for a few minutes, trying to take it all in. Never before had she seen something so huge. It seemed that the whole town could fit in this one room and there would still be space.

Then, the whispers started. Indiscernible, but it was clear that they wanted something. The adventurer was drawn from her trance, and, shaking her head slightly, decided to continue exploring. The whispers seemed to be coming from within, so she headed towards the door on the opposite side of the room. 

As she walked, the whispers got louder. They seemed to be speaking in a different language, though. Was this part of some sort of trap? Or were they whispering warnings? Who knows. The language of the olden days was long gone.

The next room contained a small table. Unlike the rest of the castle, this table was in pristine condition. Dust had not covered it and neither had vines. It was made out of some sort of wood and intricately carved. Bordering the table top were what seemed to be words, not words that the adventurer knew though. On top of the table, there was a vase, containing a single rose.

The rose was absolutely stunning. It was a gorgeous shade of blue, like the night sky had been captured and infused into the petals. The stem and leaves were almost an unnatural shade of green, but on the rose it looked stunning. Small water droplets covered its surface and its scent filled the whole room, reminding her of the flower fields in the spring. 

The whispers had gotten louder, almost deafening.

But the rose was gorgeous and she was curious, so she reached out and grabbed the rose. Immediately, she sank to her knees, limbs shaking, a scream emitting from her throat. Her vision filled with images. A man sobbing as he stabbed his wife. A woman crying at the table after finding out her husband had cheated on her. A child being slapped by his mother. More and more images flashed faster and faster. There was no escape.

It seemed as though all the agony and pain that had ever existed in this wretched world had been stored in this one blue rose.

Eventually, after what might have been minutes, or might have been years, the images slowed, and then stopped completely. The adventurer’s voice was hoarse from all the screaming and she lay on the floor, crying. When she realized that she was still clutching the blue rose, she threw it as far away as she could and, using the little energy she had left, started crawling away.

The whispers came back, filling her head, forcing her to stand up, for she couldn’t stand the noise. She wanted to run, far away from this place and from the terrible rose but all she could do was put one foot in front of the other. Slowly, oh so slowly, she walked out of the palace.

Night had overtaken the world, and the only light was that of the moon. Even in the darkness though, the adventurer immediately noticed the unmistakable blue roses that now covered the ground. The scent of the roses filled the air and she screamed. She tried to run, she really did, tried to get away from these cursed roses. But as she ran, the ruins didn’t get any further nor the town any closer. It was as though she was trapped. 

It would’ve been so easy to stop.

But she didn’t stop. And eventually, whatever enchantment had kept her running in one place seemed to give in. The town grew closer, the ruins farther. Yet even as she ran, the scent of roses remained. The adventurer looked back and saw that the bushes that had been empty on the way to the ruins were now filled with blue roses. She sobbed and ran faster. 

There was no escape from the scent, from the colour, from the perfect petals.

She made it home, somehow. No longer did she want to explore the world. It was a cruel place, what more was there to know? Perhaps fate had played this cruel trick, making it seem as though there was an escape, when in reality, there was only one life for a townsperson. Finish school, marry “that nice boy down the street,” work in the fields and tend to the house, eventually become a mother in order to provide her parents with grandkids to spoil rotten. And, at the end of it all, Death would be waiting with his scythe in hand.

At home, it seemed that almost no time had passed. No one had noticed that a person had left and came back. And it would stay that way. There wasn’t any reason to tell anyone about the ruins. The townsfolk wouldn’t have believed it anyways. So, once again, destiny had won.

To this day, I can’t stand the sight of blue roses. For I was the one who went to the ruins.

Image Sources:

featured image

castle

blue rose