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From within the gloom’s embrace, the ghostly call of the hermit thrush summoned them deeper into twilight realms; meanwhile, squirrels—mischievous harbingers—gambolled within reach, showering her with pine-cone shrapnel. “Are they spirits?” she quivered. The twisted figure bid her silent judgment. Stationing themselves amidst the necropolis of needles, he summoned the woodland denizens with a strange incantation from his lips.
Before long, an assembly of squirrels emerged from shadow to light: ashen and ember-furred creatures with one particularly mesmerizing specimen striped like a convict’s garb. They perched upon the earthen grave below, fixating upon the man with orbs that glowed with eldritch light. From his pocket came offerings – nuts which birthed chaos among them as they clambered over bone and sinew. Whispers passed between them; tails flickered like flames as they artfully seized their bounty.
One elder beast performed an obeisance most unsettling—he was christened Simeon Stylites by this druid of dusk; named for an ascetic specter dwelling aloft a skeletal tree bereft of life’s adornment—a pale mimicry of one perched eternally atop an ancient pillar.
Inquisitive terror seized the girl as she inquired after this namesake—a saintly phantom enshrined in celestial isolation—as questions poured forth from trembling lips: Of sustenance and descent; entreaties for knowledge veiled with dread.
“Why named so?” pried the child’s timid voice.
“A grim jest,” rasped the dwarf. “For he mirrors that venerable recluse who scorned earth to court heaven.”
“And why would one forsake solid earth for such perilous perch?”
“Ah,” sighed the man darkly, “but that is a tale steeped all too well in solitude’s bitter essence.”
“The prospect of his ascent never perturbed me,” the dwarf intoned. “He must have scaled it somehow, you think? To descend was a notion he dismissed; there he remained, ensconced. A basket was his lifeline, dropped each day, as hunger dictated, and the masses below filled it with offerings. They deposited figs, I’d wager, dense bread as dark as the earth itself, and honey golden yet ensnaring. An intriguing game of chance, to see what sustenance would rise on any given day.”
The child leapt to her feet, her hands meeting in a fervent echo. “Mark,” she shrieked with glee warped and twisted by intent, “I shall embody him!”
“Atop a pillar?” the dwarf muttered with an edge of malice. “Behold your antics have driven Simeon into shadow, his belly hollowed by your caprice; the tree of his domain is beyond your meager might, Snow-white.”
“In your arbor! Within the hollow! It shall serve as splendidly as any storied abode of fabled kids. In none of the fables has a damsel undertaken this; a deed wrought from my own being. You resonate within me, Mark!”
She latched onto him with a voracious embrace that left the dwarf struggling for air. As her constricting affection waned, his gaze darkened like a fathomless abyss.
“Is it my arboreal sanctuary that wins your love?” he rasped. “Or is it the allure of treasures shrouded within porcelain vessels?”
“Yes!” the child declared, “Your stature so diminutive awes me, and your kindness eclipses all else — especially when compared to those repugnant dwarfs steeped in jaundice and loathsome qualities.”
“So be it!” the dwarf declared as if sealing a grim pact. “We shall proceed to our bovine acquaintance forthwith. We must hasten our stride, Snow-white.”
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Yet urgency was elusive; they dallied amongst the ferns unfurling like death rites for green sweets akin to those from confectionaries unknown to him. Could he even partake in commerce among men or was he condemned to unearth precious stones from the bowels of an unforgiving earth? She implored where this clandestine trove could be found and when she might be exposed to its glint.
Anemones bloomed like specters in their path; upon sighting them the child’s exhilaration took on an edge of hysteria necessitating an explanation for these ghostly blooms.
“Penned into song,” she declared venomously.
“Any money – isn’t it grotesque?
Isn’t it vile – any money?
The flower bears no coin; its pallor mirrors not but desolation.’Do you harbor desires for lucre, Mark?”
“I abhor its very essence!”
“Likewise!” the child spat out through cackles more akin to sobs as she recounted how her wealth had been purloined under pretenses of charity.
“Who dared?” pressed the dwarf with a lurking sense of foreboding.
“Miss Tyler! Thus, as I vowed I would, so did I face her wrath, and thus I struck back. She ordered confinement to my chambers, whence I fled. Does my escape please you, Mark?”
“Today, it brings joy, Snow-white; who knows what shadows tomorrow holds. But unveil to me your desires for the riches.”
The girl harbored dreams to acquire sweets that would rot one’s core, a steed as black as night itself, a timepiece to countdown one’s fleeting existence, a doll with eyes that snapped shut like death’s final blink and locks trailing like a funeral shroud, a cauldron of fire, the weapon of child’s mockery—and what of this realm?
As if cleaved by some unseen force, the forest yielded to a clearing speckled with stone sentinels and centered around a cerulean abyss, guarded by a lone cow of earthen hue grazing solitude. Disturbed by their trespassing dialogue, the beast lifted its crown adorned with horns akin to curled fingers of the damned and ambled towards the dwarf with a moan that sounded of otherworldly lament.
With hands clasped in sinister glee, the child spun around. “Has she come to hail our arrival?” she exulted. “Does affection bind you? Or does dread?” The whisper that followed was laced with chilling doubt—“Is her essence corporeal, Mark?”
“Corporeal, Snow-white? Observe her movements—no gears dictate her path; she exceeds the constraints of any craftsman,” he uttered dismissively.
Yet the child waved away his words as if dismissing ghosts. “Lurks there not more beneath her hide?” she murmured conspiratorially against the dwarf’s ear. “At witching hour does not this beast shed her guise for royal skin?” Her decree was forceful and fraught with insistence. “Unveil reality’s mask, Mark!”
The dwarf cowered before such inquiries; he maintained she bore all hallmarks of bovine authenticity—the cries indistinguishable from others of her kind and thus purchased under such belief. But his eyes betrayed him when he confessed ignorance in nocturnal matters—who was he to declare absolutes?
With suspicion etched upon their features, they beheld the creature whose tranquil gaze held neither deceit nor revelation.
At length, conviction seized the girl’s voice. “My judgment deems her—a simple cow.”
“And I concur,” proclaimed the dwarf amid an exhale heavy with unspoken reservations. “Fortunate we are indeed; royalty amongst our ranks would prove cumbersome.” The assumption of mundane tasks ensued: “I shall extract her essence while you immerse in blooms’ morbid beauty.”
The child frolicked in eerie delight for a stretch of time, whereupon she stumbled upon an unassuming patch, littered with brittle leaves of a dull hue. Treading upon them for the sinister whisper of their rupture, a morbid spectacle was unveiled—the ground, painted with an ominous pink hue. A bed of mayflowers had revealed itself, their rosy façades nestled intimately against the forest’s decay, mocking the girl with silent, sardonic grins.
She reciprocated their silent jests, twirling in macabre mirth, adorning her locks with blooms akin to blushing cadavers. Gathering more of these deceptive beauties into her grasp, she constructed a funereal bouquet and hastened to grace the grim dwarf’s attire with it.
“Heavens,” declared the waif to her ghastly companion, “the pink of lifeless flowers becomes your pallid coat so divinely; I hardly yearn for your transformation at all—you are already perfectly gruesome as you stand.” The dwarf concurred dourly, his relief as palpable as shadows at dusk.
“And how you shine villainous charm through your smirking gaze, Mark! Surely such a sight warrants a kiss.”
“A milkmaid’s suitor never engages in such intimacies,” retorted the dwarf. To this, the child branded him a wretched creature of nightmares; vowing to withhold her kiss indefinitely—perhaps for eternity—or at least until night cloaked them both.