The Creek of Remembrance(Charles E.J. Moulton) The Creek of Remembrance

A Fairytale by Charles E.J. Moulton

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The creek she flew to that day was a place filled with sheer magic. It had been there since the dawn of time. The elders spoke of it as "The Creek of Dreams" or "The Creek of Remembrance". A place where dreams came true. A place where guilt vanished.

The creek could not be seen by everyone. Only the pure of heart could actually see it. To get there you would have to find the Diamond in the Rough. And it appeared only when the pure could persevere and believe what their hearts had always known. Mostly when these souls were at their lowest, feeling as if the world was only a foot away from casting it into an eternal fire. Souls that had lost touch with themselves, spent endless days in dark forests speaking to no one but themselves. Sensitive souls that blamed everything on their own hearts. Souls that had been used to hurting from dawn to dusk and from dusk to dawn. Souls that had spent years on end as misunderstood beings. Souls who did not fit in at all.

Aurora was such a soul. Wondering why she never ever felt at home anywhere on Earth. As if her soul yearned to be somewhere else.
Even with the happy goblins by the Meadow of Marvels, she felt as if she wanted something else, wanted to be elsewhere. Wanted to come home. But where was home?

The goblins enjoyed her beauty, seemed to admire her long brown hair, her gorgeous eyes, her rosey cheeks and her glittery wings. They swooned with delight as she sang her violet songs for hours on end. And the goblins drank their Rosemary Romance Runnel, a special goblin mead that made everyone laugh. Aurora tried it, too. But she only giggled.

When she left the laughing goblins, though, she usually smiled shyly that she must visit the Wiley Werewolves of Wicka, who were peaceful brutes. So lonely. Misunderstood creatures. Feared. Mistaken for real werewolves.
She sat with them and dried their tears with halliday honey. An angel drink so liquid that it tasted like air.

Aurora had always been a holy soul. Every fairy man wondered why she brooded. Even when kissing her, they noticed she seemed distant.

"What are you thinking about, Aurora?" they would ask.

"Home," she would answer.

"Where is home?" the unicorns would then whisper.

"If I only knew," she sang. "If only I knew."

And she would leave, wondering why she had forgotten that. There was a feeling of amnesia. Something awful that had happened. Something so awful that her soul had chosen to forget it. But now, oh, now she longed to be there again.

An old norne by the wayside, she lived in the glowing caves of Crealia, told her that if she was pure enough she could recall what she had forgotten. But she would have to find the Creek of Remembrance. It could only be reached by finding the Diamond in the Rough. It was an absolutely unpolished little thing hidden away in the prairie of lost souls inside a trinket of yellow flowers.

But getting there was not the real difficulty. Getting past the lost souls was. They all came there to find peace because they knew they had lost something. But what? The answer was a phrase only the pure would remember.

"Take me home."

The norne showed her a road down a steep and woollen path and told her to follow it to the prairie.

"Why woollen?" Aurora asked.

Because the path is clad by the darling buds of May whose spirits sprout silver wool.

For years on end, Aurora followed the path, living on the seeds of the wool. She spoke to trolls who had been searching the tree stems for lucky eggs. Trolls live on that, you know.

Anyway, one day she reached the prairie. Her magic eyes had never seen so many lost souls. Her heart had never wept so bitterly. Some of them were screaming for years on end. Some of them were laughing for years on end. Some were crying. Some were passive. No one at peace.

"Take me home," the pure fairy soul named Aurora prayed for years on end. She, too, a lost soul. "Heal my fear."

And the lost souls knew instinctively that this was a strong spirit who would be pure enough to find the Diamond in the Rough.

So they followed her to the trinket of yellow flowers. It was guarded by a magic being so small it could only be seen by fairies.

"What are you, little fairy?"

It glowed. "I have waited for you for two thousand years. Ever since the holy man died. He told me to wait here until you came to pick up the Diamond in the Rough. You are the holy man's lost wife, are you not?"

And suddenly the pure soul named Aurora remembered. She had travelled the eons, fought dragons and killed exons, played chess with kinkerbills and cooked for kings. She had ruled countries and slept on cobblestones in the rain. But now she remembered it all. She was supposed to forget in order to see what it was like to be without a home.

"No gold or fortune is worth anything without a home," she whispered to the little fairy who guarded the Diamond in the Rough.

And as she drank the liquid in the trinket, shared the yellow flowers among the other lost souls, she realized they had, all of them, been her friends before her husband, the holy man, had been dragged away, unjustly accused and executed.

So, Aurora had spent the last two thousand years emulating her lost husband's fate, often dragged away, sometimes unjustly accused, but never executed.

Then, thousands of lost souls were transported to the blue Creek of Remembrance among the silver white wings of eternity. They were dashed off to a three masted scooner on a distant shore that once had been Aurora's home.

And as she kissed her holy man, again in his heavenly arms, she knew she was back where she belonged.

Home.

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