Romantic Short Story

So the Creative Writing Club’s prompt was to write a prologue to the Grinch. And so this was what I wrote or, at least, the basic outline of it. Below is a bit of background.

Yggdrasil is the tree of life and upon its branches rest nine realms. Midgard is the realm where humanity resides. Asgard is where the home of the gods, Valhalla, is located. Jotunheim is the home of the frost giants. Vanaheim is the home of the Vanir, a sister race of the Asgardians. Nidavellir is the home of the dwarves. That’s basically all the realms covered here.

Ragnarok has many names such as the “cleansing” or the apocalypse or armageddon. It’s basically the end of the world as advocated by all the religious folk. Such optimistic people yeah? Anyway, in the Norse version, a wolf called Fenris breaks his chains and swallows the sun. This is basically the start of a war between the Vanir and Asgardians and a bunch of other races join the fray. Midgard gets totally screwed over in the crossfire. First it gets scorched, then the floods come in. And when the floods recede, two people are left alive and the world is supposed to be all fertile and great. Good thing there’s no birth control yet.

I took dryads from Greek/Roman mythology. They’re supposed to be these beings of nature. The reincarnation stuff came from me reading too much xianxia and wuxia cultivation web novels.

Here’s the story.

In a meadow in the mortal realm of Midgard, the summer dryad leaned against a tree. A woman sat in his lap and rested her head on his green, furred shoulder, her long hair- reflecting the starlight of the heavens- cascading down his side with a complexion which the Valkyries can only envy. A cool night breeze swept through the meadow causing the flowers to dance to an invisible tune. The dryad smiled and slowly lifted up a hand. With that simple movement, a small flower within the long grass reached for the skies. The two watched as it grew and grew- as it took its place with the stars. They smiled at the twinkling lights welcoming the new arrival. And under the Heaven’s watchful gaze, they swore to forever be together.

And so it was. Every night, they would sit together watching the night sky. And every summer, when the dryad would bring his season to another place, the human girl would follow. Years passed and when the girl finally departed from the world of Midgard, she did so with a smile. The summer dryad would patiently wait until her soul passed through the cycle of reincarnation. And then he would find her again. Without fail. Reincarnation after reincarnation. Lifetimes after lifetimes. Their love was sung by the traveling bard. And legends were told of the blessings of the summer. For no wars were fought in that season.

Finally, her soul was reincarnated in Asgard, the realm of the immortals, and she ascended to godhood. And yet, their love could not be broken. Even when separated by a whole plane of existence, her hand still reached through the rift to take his. And Heaven and Earth was linked through their bond.

Hundreds of thousands of years passed and their love never wavered. They spent their days in happiness and joy and the two realms prospered and told stories of their everlasting warmth.

And yet, all good things must come to an end. Yggdrasil shook with the flames of war. The wolf, Fenris, had swallowed the Sun. Midgard was ablaze with the fires of armageddon. And Valhalla was split down the middle in a battle between gods. The fire Jotuns crawled out of seclusion to join the fray and the summer dryad took refuge inside a cave. The Ragnarok had begun.

It lasted three years. Every day, the dryad would stand at the mouth of his cave. He would look at the devastation around him. At the charred earth and the red sky. And he would pray to god- any god- that this war would soon end.

One night, a sharp pain in his chest jolted him awake. Gasping for air, he rushed out of the cave to see the world flooding. He quickly stumbled upwards the mountain and at the top he finally fell to his knees and howled. Midgard was gone. But all he could do was grasp at his heart as it throbbed with a mysterious pain so intense and ferocious that he cried tears of morning dew. The dryad spent the rest of Ragnarok atop that mountain. It was only when it was over, that he realized what that pain meant.

The floods receded, and a new Sun shed its light on a desolate world. And then the dryad realized that he could not sense her soul any longer. Frantic, he scoured the world for any traces of her soul. Finding none, he did not give up. Blazing with a determination rare to dryads, he went through the other roots of Yggdrasil. He wandered through the world of Jotunheim. He scoured the defeated realm of the Vanir. He traversed the mountains of Nidavellir. Each time taking 5,000 years for he must wait for the convergence. Finally, he reached Valhalla where the surviving gods were rebuilding their home.

There, he learned that her soul was shattered by a Vanir’s blade and the fragmented pieces scattered outside of Yggdrasil. Broken and defeated, the summer dryad returned to Midgard- after 25,000 years of earnest searching- where the humans were slowly populating the earth with the absence of the gods. For the first hundred years back on earth, the dryad would weep everyday. He went back to that meadow and used his powers to rebuild it exactly as they left it. And he would lean against the tree and imagine her with him.

Yet as the seasons changed, the tears stopped flowing and he stopped visiting the meadow. Slowly, his heart changed to ice and he found solace in the cold of winter. And so he lived in a cave on a wintry mountain- isolated and detached from the world.

One day, he heard shuffling at the mouth of the cave and a little girl’s yelps as she stumbled down the icy slope. The summer dryad that could no longer feel the warmth of the sun stared as she stood up in front of him. Squinting, he looked at her and felt a sense of...familiarity. This soul aura...it can’t be. Dusting herself off, the girl smiled at him and asked a question.

“Hello mister, are you the Grinch?”

The End...or... a new beginning?