[Story] Ivy Rosebud

[Nixey]

So I’ve been writing this story for awhile and this will be my first time posting this somewhere that a lot of people can see it so I personally may start worrying after I post it so if I’m offline or constantly hopping online for a bit that’s why.
Anyway, on with the story!

 

Watching the young elven children playing in the grass, the others exploring the woods, reminded Ivy of herself when she was a young girl. Ivy normally stayed glued to the hip of her mother unless her older brother decided to drag her away to play with the older kids or explore. Though, like most children, when she was younger she never understood many things. “The Jury” was able to send spirits that lingered in the woodland to guide lost children, travelers or hunters before they got too close to the village. Yet if you wandered too close or into the square you’d either be executed or have your memories whipped of ever arriving there. Normally, they had a way of deciding which one you received, but the other elves could never be certain the Jury was speaking true words.
Running her fingers through her silver hair, Ivy wondered how different their life could’ve been had she been born human. She was most certainly out of her glory days, around seventy now. She had been silently awaiting the sweet embrace of death, to join her husband that had passed peacefully in his herb induced sleep. Her husband had left the Jury after he met Ivy, even with the offer of protection and less harsh punishments, he had fallen head over heels for Ivy in her young years, and that was a feeling that was hard to fight. Their two children, both boys, were being trained and schooled for joining the Jury. They had a decision to make soon, join the Jury, the highest honor in this small village of the unseen or be allowed to love. Their oldest had already stepped up, agreed to his duties. While the younger one was more hesitant, having a lovesick gaze whenever a certain young elven woman padded by.
Her innocence and ignorance as a child had been stolen away when she learned what happened to possibly innocent souls that wandered too close, how elves that left the Jury were treated and so many more things that had been pushed back. Slowly, with her thoughts plaguing her, she stood up and made her way towards a clearing where they kept and honored their deceased. Crouching down in front of a grave, Ivy ran her hand along the marker, cleaning it ‘the earth takes back what it gives’ her thoughts reminded her of that saying ‘love can be a dangerous and deadly thing, than again, what isn’t dangerous or deadly here?’.