The bard took his usual seat near an open corner of the Hoof and Stew Tavern. His was a well-worn seat, the cushions of the wooden chair well-formed from regularly supporting the bard's rear end. The bard was a man of gnomish heritage. He stood about as tall as a human child and possessed a round nose, big bright eyes, and hair that was as bright orange as it was perpetually unkempt. The bard took his pack, which rustled with the sound of loose parchment and books and placed it on the ground against his chair. As he reached into his pack, a barmaid approached and set a wooden flagon of ale on the small table nearby. A bit of the foamy head spilled over the rim, and instinctively the barmaid wiped it off the table with her apron. The bard placed a scroll he had produced from his pack right in the spot the barmaid had just cleaned.

"Thank you, Mellie," the bard said to her with a smile.

"You're welcome, Mister Badger. I'll be back after your first story with a refill."

"That'll be fine. Also, it's just 'Badger'."

Mellie gave a nod and walked back toward the bar to tend to other things.

Before long, a small crowd began to gather from outside the tavern and take seats on the floor in the corner where the bard sat. Scanning the faces in the crowd, the bard nodded to himself and unfurled the scroll. He cleared his throat audibly, and as if on cue the din and murmur of the tavern’s patrons came to a hush. Badger began to recite a variation of his usual introduction in a dramatic voice.

"Gather 'round and listen, I've a story now to tell

Herein lies a tale older than current nations' swell,

of man and daughter living 'fore their Empire had fell,

the words I weave have truth in them, so listen very well..."

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A man and a child walked down a grand corridor of their tower home. The man moved with placid grace, his deep blue robes swaying in rhythm with his steps. The child held her father's hand, letting it swing gently with her own as she kept pace with him. The girl was young enough to be able to count her years with only her fingers. The man would need several more to count his own. He had streaks of gray running through his dark brown beard like silvery roots. His eyes, at this time, were a soft hue of green which matched his calm demeanor.

The girl's inky black hair had been tied in an intricate braid. Her bright eyes darted about the familiar features of the tower corridor leading to a set of tall oak doors. Though she had seen the doors to her father's study countless times, she never tired of the artfully detailed engraving upon them which depicted a giant tree. Its leaves bore writing, like book pages or scrolls- fluid marks which formed a script the girl didn't know how to read but somehow still grasped at her attention. Seeing the doors again, she recalled a time she had asked her father about the engraving's meaning. He had said the tree represented all knowledge. At the time, she had accepted the answer as a gentle redirection away from the topic.

The man and the child came to a stop before the great study doors. The man turned to his daughter. "Now what was it about this dream that woke you tonight?"

The little girl reached her arms up to her father, and he picked her up and held her. "I dreamed I was somewhere strange. It was a forest, but there weren't very many trees and they didn't have leaves. I felt lost and scared, and that's when a creature came up to me from out of one of the trees."

The father listened until the girl came to a natural pause. "What kind of creature was it?" The girl made a face as if recalling the creature was uncomfortable. "It was like a lizard. It had dull, red scales and two black wings like a raven's." The father cocked his head slightly. "A lizard with feathered wings? How strange and vivid." The girl nodded. "It had horns, too. And one big yellow eye. The eye was the scary part, I didn't like it looking at me." The girl shuddered. Sensing his daughter's discomfort, the man shifted. "What happened then?"

"The lizard asked me who I was and what I was doing in its home. I tried to be polite, I told it my name and that I was lost. That's when it started mocking me." The girl frowned and her tone of voice became shaky. The man looked calmly at the girl. "What did the lizard say?" The girl looked away from her father, glancing at the familiar sight of the engraving on the study doors. "It said I was an ugly and stupid flower. It said that not even my archmage father could save me."

The archmage kept up his calm demeanor. He didn't let his deep concern show on his face. At this point, he knew his daughter was describing something more than a dream. Keeping his voice as steady as still waters, he pressed on. "What happened then, my rose?"

"I got cross with the lizard. Very cross. I was so angry that it got hot and one of the trees close by caught fire." The girl's face twisted with a reflection of the anger she was describing. "The lizard screeched, and that's when I woke up."

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The man knew that the encounter his daughter was describing could have gone worse. Much worse. Not wishing to betray his worry about the child's experience, he chose carefully what to ask next.

"What bothered you most about the dream?"

The girl set to thinking, the anger in her face changing into a look of deep consideration. After a long moment, she spoke. "When it was mocking me, it was like the lizard was insulting me with things I had thought just a second before." She spoke slower now, trying to verbally express a concept her mind had yet to piece together.

Her father already had a guess. "What do you mean?"

The girl paused again, then spoke. "About a moment before the lizard called me an ugly and stupid flower, I was trying to think about our garden." A technique to manage her thoughts and control her emotions. The man felt a twinge of satisfaction that she'd recalled what he'd taught her.

She fidgeted in his arms, a movement that he recognized as a habit when she was wrestling with a new and challenging concept.

"Da, is there magic that can tell you what someone else is thinking?" The archmage was impressed, but not surprised, at how quickly his daughter came to that question.

"Yes, my rose." He himself had used such magic to peer into her mind once. At the time he saw in her bright, swirling thoughts in constant motion like minnows in a clear pool. Then he noted her agitation and sensitivity to his magic. He hadn't peered into her mind since. By the look on her face now, he could guess how many questions were beginning to swim about in the child's mind. He decided to confirm what she might be inferring. "Yes, the lizard in your dream knew your thoughts and turned them against you. A very cruel thing to do." The girl frowned. "That's not what upsets me most, da." The archmage's calm face became ever so slightly more curious. Instead of speaking, he waited for her to continue.

"I got mad in my dream because I didn't know if he was right or wrong about me. I'm upset now because I still don't know- at least about the ugly and stupid part."

The archmage felt a prong of inner pain and pity at her insecurity. The demon's words had cut her below the surface, no doubt as it intended. Only a monster would intentionally do that to a child. He took a moment to consider how to console her. Before long, it came to him.

The archmage adjusted himself so he could easily look into his daughter's eyes. "Do you know why I call you 'my rose'?"

"Because I'm pretty," the girl guessed.

"A rose's pedals are beautiful so that it's admired. A rose's thorns are sharp so that it's respected."

The face of the archmage's daughter twisted slightly into a puzzled look. "I'm beautiful and sharp?"

The archmage smiled warmly, gazing into his daughter's eyes. "Yes, my rose, although you shouldn't concern yourself too much with your beauty. Your beauty comes from within- it's part of who you are and is expressed to the world. Your beauty will simply be. Just as the rose is beautiful simply by being a rose- and not just in the way it appears. The uniqueness of its aroma, the rustling music it makes as the wind passes through the rosebush, and even its role in the ecosystem around it. All of these things add to the rose's beauty whether or not the world notices them."

The little girl fidgeted in her father's arms. "And also its thorns?"

"Yes, my rose, and also its thorns." The archmage shifted his daughter into one arm, and with the other he began to gesture into the air with a flourish. The girl watched her father's dancing fingers intently. She loved watching him perform magic. Translucent color began to coalesce into the form of an illusory rose that remained suspended in the air in front of them.

Looking at the illusion he had conjured, a thought dawned on the archmage. A way to convey the idea. "Do you remember when you were playing in the garden and tried to pick a rose for yourself?"

"It was for the golem you gave me," she gently corrected, "it needed some color."

"What happened when you grasped the rose?" The archmage eased the conversation toward his point with calm paternal patience.

"It pricked me. It hurt me a lot and I cried." The girl glanced at a spot on her hand where a wound had once been.

"In a way, the rose protected itself with its thorns," the father offered with a guiding tone, "so also should your wit be."

The archmage's daughter took a moment to consider those words. "I got angry because I didn't have my wits about me," she remarked.

"Neither did you have a firm grasp on your beauty and sharpness," the man said with a smile and wink.

The girl pulled close to her father and yawned. "I think I do now." Her head came to rest on his shoulder. She felt an inner warmth and comfort, the kind of pure glow that exists in the loving embrace of a parent. Her eyes fell upon the illusory image of a rose her father had weaved. She knew her father wielded powers that were difficult for her to fathom, a power that seemed wild and beautiful to her- but also dangerous and fascinating. She didn't fully understand that the man who held her now could bend the world to his will by grasping at the threads of reality. She also didn't fully understand how she bent him, her tender affections and wide-eyed innocence grasping at the strings of his heart.

The child of the archmage yawned again, longer this time. A moment later she was asleep.

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The bard in the corner of the tavern let his last words drift into the silence of his audience's rapt attention. Wordlessly, he furled again the scroll and began to place it in his pack. A girl no older that the child in his story fidgeted, then spoke. "Pardon, master bard, but is the story true?" Her little voice was soft and inquisitive, her eyes wide with fascination. Badger looked up from his pack at the girl. Her brown hair was shoulder-length and pulled back into a messy ponytail. Her face and clothes were dirty, and she wore no shoes.

Badger smiled at the girl. "You shouldn't worry too much about the truth of the story. The story is a part of me, and now it's a part of you as well. The story simply is." The girl looked puzzled for a moment, then her face brightened. "Just as the rose is beautiful simply by being a rose- and not just in the way it appears!" She had recited the line perfectly. In that moment as Badger met the girl's gaze, his eyes were a golden yellow. "Exactly!"

A man stood and spoke. "It's a cruel thing, giving children false hopes of admiration and respect."

"It seems you understand neither beauty nor sharpness."