Frozen Angel

In a forest, no more than the width of a dream away, there lived a tribe of winged humans; Angels, as they are often called. They had long practiced a method of living in harmony with nature, and killed nothing in their lives; felling no trees and eating no meat, gathering food with an eye to its growth, and creating their homes from the branches of trees bent so that, whilst still providing shelter, they continued to grow.

An easy life it was not; in bad winters children and the elderly often starved. Much of the Angels’ time was taken by a continuous search for food, and more often than not those that fell ill never recovered. But The Forest was beautiful; and in maintaining its beauty the Angels took pride.

But then the Angels’ new King, a forward-looking creature called Azaroth, took the throne.

Azaroth had the Angels’ interests, and no others, at his heart. Under his orders The Forest’s proud trees were felled, its graceful shrubs stripped of food. The homes of bent branches were gone, replaced by huts built of stone, the mining of which left ugly scars on The Forest’s countenance.

A year, or just over, into Azaroth’s reign, a young Angeless named Tahera returned from a pilgrimage she had made to Kalt, the holy mountain of the Angels. She was dismayed at the carnage that had arisen in her absence; though she had heard that the new King had changed life, she had never expected the change to be of this magnitude.

But when she questioned her peers about it, they merely shrugged. “Life is easier now,” one said. “We need not fear the winter,” said another. When she spoke about the ravaged Forest they agreed that it was a shame; but nothing could be done about it now.

Dismayed, Tahera went immediately to the space behind the waterfall in which lived The Forest’s guardian spirits, and knelt at their feet, begging for a way to repair the damage. The spirits obliged.

Each one took a fragment of earth, fire, water, and air; and with them they filled her to the brim with magic; so much magic that it pressed at the inside of her eyeballs and squirmed under her fingernails, insistently painful, barely controlled.

Tahera fled to the middle of the Angels’ village and took flight, falling into the middle of the hollow oak that had for centuries been the King’s residence, spiralling upwards and upwards, mad with pain and magic longing to be released, straining for control against the magic struggling in her.

And then she could no longer bear it.

The power flowed from her; out of every pore, every follicle, streaming from her eyes, mouth, nose, ears, falling from beneath her fingers, finding release even in her genitals. It shot beams of blue-white light through the oak, peppering it with holes like woodworm; and when it was free it wrapped itself around every mined stone and every fallen tree; healing the wounds in the earth and setting back the trees that had been cut down. Shrubs had their fruit replaced; and in every Angel’s head the desire to preserve beauty, and the memory of how easily it is lost, was firmly planted.

When it was done The Forest was at it was before Azaroth’s reign; but of Azaroth himself, there was no sign. Though the Angels searched for him, he was truly gone; and his brother took the throne.

The only other change was of the oak: it had gone, to be replaced by a sculpture of ice that never melts, a statue of Tahera, her arms spread wide, wings open to the sky, head thrown back in an image of total rapture.

That is how the Frozen Angel came to be.