Project W Subject 013 ("Albert Wesker") (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
subject_013) wrote2020-10-09 02:23 pm
subject_013) wrote2020-10-09 02:23 pm
[October 2020 - Library Stories] [Repurposed for Christmas, 2020]
Since we're telling stories tonight, I may as well bring an offering to the bounty. This is both literal and symbolic. Interpret it how you will.
...Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a English Lord who was also a scientist, an alchemist and a botanist for those of you not familiar with the term. He and some colleagues had looked on the lives of the fae folk and envied them, for they lived in peace with each other and in harmony with nature, unlike the humans, always at war with each other over foolish things, and destroying the forests and poisoning the ground and the water with their pointless creating of 'consumer goods'.
Soon, though, they found a flower in a hidden glade in a far-off land, a flower which the local villagers claimed was the secret of the fae, a gift they had received with the charge of guarding it. Their kings were allowed to consume the flower as young men, for it would grant a worthy king the strength and cleverness of the fae, though an unworthy king would die a painful death. The Lord sent his soldiers to drive away the villagers and claim the flower for himself and his colleagues. They studied flower and its gifts, deciding if they had aged too much for the spell to work upon them, then perhaps it would for younger folk.
And so they looked to the families of several wise and learned people, offering to provide for their wisest young child's education and training. Some blithely offered up their youngsters, others, sensing something amiss, refused. In those cases, the Lord sent his henchmen to capture the chosen child and slay the family, lest they came to steal back their child.
In total, the Lord and his cohorts claimed thirteen children, giving them all things that a child needed: secure homes, vigilant caretakers, the best educations money could afford, a certain amount of freedom, but always under close watch from the Lord's web of watchers and informants.
In due time, the Lord and his closest cohorts secretively fed the flower to their young wards. And the gift of the flower revealed its hidden dark side. One by one, eleven of the children succumbed. Some died swiftly, others died in pain, raving and struggling like cornered beasts. In all, eleven were lost. In the end, only two remained, the youngest of the clutch, a young woman who fell ill from the juice of the flower but kept her wits, and a young man who gained the strength and speed of the fae. Perhaps out of jealousy, perhaps in a bid to strengthen him, perhaps out of sheer cruelty and favoritism, the Lord favored the young woman, while the young man he treated harshly, finding fault with all that he did, no matter how hard he strove, while at the same time, criticizing and scrutinizing his every movement, till he felt like a specimen under a microscope or an insect on a pin. One would think this would turn the young man against the young woman. But she was his warming fire, his light in the cold and darkness. The young woman, despite her illness, took herself and her most trusted servants to an island, the better to continue studying the flower and its properties, while the young man sought the means to cure the young woman, a quest he continued, with no success in sight, though the journey of discovery was enough for him, if in time, it gave him the means to save she who was a sister and solace to him.
...Once upon a time, not so very long ago, there was a English Lord who was also a scientist, an alchemist and a botanist for those of you not familiar with the term. He and some colleagues had looked on the lives of the fae folk and envied them, for they lived in peace with each other and in harmony with nature, unlike the humans, always at war with each other over foolish things, and destroying the forests and poisoning the ground and the water with their pointless creating of 'consumer goods'.
Soon, though, they found a flower in a hidden glade in a far-off land, a flower which the local villagers claimed was the secret of the fae, a gift they had received with the charge of guarding it. Their kings were allowed to consume the flower as young men, for it would grant a worthy king the strength and cleverness of the fae, though an unworthy king would die a painful death. The Lord sent his soldiers to drive away the villagers and claim the flower for himself and his colleagues. They studied flower and its gifts, deciding if they had aged too much for the spell to work upon them, then perhaps it would for younger folk.
And so they looked to the families of several wise and learned people, offering to provide for their wisest young child's education and training. Some blithely offered up their youngsters, others, sensing something amiss, refused. In those cases, the Lord sent his henchmen to capture the chosen child and slay the family, lest they came to steal back their child.
In total, the Lord and his cohorts claimed thirteen children, giving them all things that a child needed: secure homes, vigilant caretakers, the best educations money could afford, a certain amount of freedom, but always under close watch from the Lord's web of watchers and informants.
In due time, the Lord and his closest cohorts secretively fed the flower to their young wards. And the gift of the flower revealed its hidden dark side. One by one, eleven of the children succumbed. Some died swiftly, others died in pain, raving and struggling like cornered beasts. In all, eleven were lost. In the end, only two remained, the youngest of the clutch, a young woman who fell ill from the juice of the flower but kept her wits, and a young man who gained the strength and speed of the fae. Perhaps out of jealousy, perhaps in a bid to strengthen him, perhaps out of sheer cruelty and favoritism, the Lord favored the young woman, while the young man he treated harshly, finding fault with all that he did, no matter how hard he strove, while at the same time, criticizing and scrutinizing his every movement, till he felt like a specimen under a microscope or an insect on a pin. One would think this would turn the young man against the young woman. But she was his warming fire, his light in the cold and darkness. The young woman, despite her illness, took herself and her most trusted servants to an island, the better to continue studying the flower and its properties, while the young man sought the means to cure the young woman, a quest he continued, with no success in sight, though the journey of discovery was enough for him, if in time, it gave him the means to save she who was a sister and solace to him.