Once upon a time, there was a magnificent phoenix that lived atop a cloudy mountain. It was a large and majestic bird. It had feathers of all the colors of the rainbow with barbs that shimmered in the light like made of gold. It had bones made of gold and eyes carved from diamonds. Every time it went out to fly, it left behind a harmless trail of fire that faded into rainbows.

One day, the queen of Remotad had fallen ill. She had turned deathly pale, and the blood that flowed within her vein had degenerated to a grey fluid. The queen had been weakened severely, that she could barely chew the food brought to her. The king had asked doctors, physicians, and apothecaries from all over the king, but to no avail, none of them were able to remove the queen's ailment.

At the moment the king was about to give up, the very minute he was about to surrender the queen to the grave, a sage appeared in his court in a flash of light that temporarily blinded him and his servants. The sage was a wizen man, with a flowing white beard and pointed green hat. In their hand was an oak staff.

The sage pointed to the king. "Do not despair, my liege, for I have found the cure to your partner's ailment. I have searched many tomes for the answer, and so I have found," the sage declared.

"Please tell me, great sage," the king asked. "Tell me, and you shall be rewarded much silver."

"My liege, the cure to the ailment which your queen suffers is the sight of the magnificent Colored Phoenix. Prolonged sight of the beauty this creature bears shall extricate the germ which troubles her."

And with the statement of the ailment's cure, the king arranged a crew to find this bird. They marched to the foot of the seventh mountain to find it. The tippy tops of the mountain were foggy and cold, but they persevered in the search of the bird until they found it roosting upon a bed in a grove of bamboo.

The majestic phoenix slept soundly within its bed of hay, surrounded by green towering bamboo that shadowed over them as surely as the trees. This sound sleeping had made it unaware, of the danger that so lurks nearby. One of the hunters that wished to acquire the bird had almost succeeded in the capture. Were it not for the snapping sound of a twig that he stepped, the Colored Phoenix wouldn't have woken and flew from his grasp.

The Colored Phoenix fled from the scene. The bamboos it called home, abandoned behind in haste. Though it flew fast and swift, it couldn't escape them so. It left behind a trail of fire that the hunters could follow. They followed its trail to a grove of mahoganies. The bird had hidden in the hollow of one of the trees. The hunters couldn't find it, no matter how hard they looked, so they devised a trick to lure the phoenix out.

They created a large fire to draw it out. They readied a trap once the bird flew out. Smoke filled the grove. The phoenix was tricked into thinking the woods had caught fire. It flew from the hollow in which it had hid, and flew straight into the net, which the hunters had prepared. It wings had been tangled in the ropes of the net, chained to the ground to the men's merriment.

They happily brought the phoenix to the castle, expecting a great reward for the acquisition. They presented the bird they had caught to the king, and the king was delighted. The king had placed the Colored Phoenix in a cage made of gold, and put it in the room, where his partner lay in ill. Though the bird was in the room, in full sight of the queen, for seven days and seven nights, it seemed the queen wasn't getting better. In fact, the queen seemed to be getting worse! She should be getting better from the sight of this bird.

And so the king called for the sage for a consultation.

"Are you sure this is the right bird?" The king asked.

"Yes, I'm positive, my liege. It seems that something else may be interfering with the healing properties of the bird," the sage stated.

"What could possibly be blocking the curative from taking effect?" The king replied.

The sage approached the caged bird and lifted one of the wings of the Colored Phoenix. Upon closer inspection, it became immediately clear why it wasn't working. Where there were once magnificent brightly colored feathers, there were dull grey feathers coated in soot and ash. The sage rubbed a finger upon the barbs, and the shiny hues had been preserved neath the dirt.

"The Colored Phoenix is simply dirty. A wash should return its former glorious colors," the sage advised.

And so the king's servants carried the dirty bird to the river where they washed and scrubbed it. The water washed the ash away, and the servants scrubbed the dirt away. However, the dirt wasn't the only thing to be scrubbed away. The colors faded from the feathers of the bird. The magnificent golden shine its barbs once twinkled had dulled and disappeared. Its diamond eyes and golden claws had lost their luster. What once was a magnificent bird that stood out like a glowing lantern was now but a poor creature with bleached feathers.

Seeing what his servants had done, the king had become furious. The beauty of the beast had been discolored irreparably. Flames failed to lick with its flaps, and no rainbows fell after its flights. The king was ashamed to show it to his partner and lied to her, "While our servants were washing it, the phoenix escape and couldn't be found by the hunters."

The queen had been saddened by the news and resigned to ongoing sickness.

The colored phoenix was secreted away in a hidden cellar in the castle. It was dark and dank. Servants came day by day to feed the phoenix, but they fed the bird a disgusting slop the phoenix detested. As the days went by, more of the bird's beauty faded from the form of the bird. The sadness and depression of its situation leached all the color from its being.

One day, the phoenix became fed up with all of this and began to crave freedom. It had wished to have a taste of high air and to see the sights of expansive forest. The people that had inflicted this atrocity to it should be punished, but in its current state, it had no power to enforce judgement upon these folk.

So in the middle of the night, it orchestrated an escape. It opened its cage and exited out a basement window. In the morning, the servants had found its cage empty. The king had told them to hush about the lost bird and kept the ongoing secrecy of the existence of the bird under the castle.

The phoenix flew very far away. It abandoned the mountain it once had called home. It looked for another home where it would be alone or won't be seen, but it couldn't find anywhere adequate enough. All the creatures of the woods gasped at the condition of the phoenix. Its once-majestic plumage had fallen into a pale discolored mess. Its once plump body had thinned to an unhealthy degree. While some had pitied the phoenix of its plight, just as many had pointed at the bird's poor appearance and laughed. It flew from place to place in shame and anger.

Until one day, it came upon a gnarled tree. It was ugly just like it, and all the creatures of the woods avoided it at all costs. Its boughs were twisted into displeasing shapes, and its branches were bare of lush leaves. The phoenix could see its present appearance upon the tree's ugliness. And it was here that the bird had stayed for a very long time.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

The painting knight was out to paint a landscape by a lake one day. The sky was overcast, blanketed by grey clouds, but they weren't deterred by the threat of unpleasant weather. They placed their easel upon the bank and began to paint the scene before them. It was a dreary scene that featured a lot of dull greys, blues, and greens. As they continued to paint, they began to feel emotions attached to the picture forming: sadness and resignation.

Halfway through their painting session, a strange creature landed upon the branches of a tree centermost of their painting. It was an ugly discolored bird with black eyes and leaden talons. Initially, they thought that the appearance of the bird had ruined the scene, but upon further contemplation, the appearance of the bird had completed the picture. It added further texture to their picture.

They felt ashamed to exclude one of the keystones of the scene before them. Now the dreary picture that formed before them didn't exude emotions of sadness and resignation, now it told a secret story as brought by the ugly bird. It standing upon the ugliest tree simply reinforced the idea of its ugliness. A feeling of shame and loneliness now intruded upon their work. The painting knight wasted no time to complete the painting before them.

The phoenix only noticed the painting knight the moment they're already leaving. It was enraged that a creature had intruded the sanctity of its privacy. The stealth that it had committed against the modesty of the bird was not to be left unpunished. No stolen sight of it should be taken away from it.

In the nascent evening, the phoenix discretely followed the knight. Its graceful flight enabled it to follow quietly without arousing suspicion from the knight. Their clinking mail and clanking painting supplies provided enough sounds for the phoenix to follow whenever they disappeared from sight.

Eventually, the phoenix found the painter disappear into a quaint shack. While it abhorred appearing in the open where its ugly visage could be witnessed by many, the house was built sufficiently away from the nearest town to be confident that no creature would be able to see it sneak into the painting knight's home. It approached one window and snuck into the painter's residence. There the phoenix found itself in a studio.

The bird fell into a tub of red paint. The sticky substance stuck to its feathers and glued many of them together. It wouldn't be able to fly after this ordeal. However, this event had been quiet as the knight's attention hadn't been attracted. Their punishment had to be intensified for the trap they had set up, regardless of whether it was intentional or not.

The phoenix looked around and examined the items within the room. It could see canisters of paint haphazardly stacked in one corner. There were multiple easels scattered with little rhyme or reason. Upon these easels were windows to other worlds, of green forests, of sad rainy lakes, sunny fields, and bustling town squares. Though strangely, the worlds beyond these windows appear to be frozen and unmoving. Perhaps it should examine them much more closely.

Wait! The phoenix tilted its head as it tried to comprehend these objects. They were not windows, they were pictures painted upon a sheet of cloth stretched upon wooden frames. The substance used to color these objects smelled like the substance that now coats the bird's feathers. whatever appreciation the phoenix had of these objects evaporated immediately.

However, the thing that truly ignited its fury was the painting that hung from a wall. It could see with full transparency the tree upon which it had been perching. Centered upon the painting was the gnarled tree with the ugly twisting branches that were aesthetically offensive. There was a bird perched upon one of the branches, an ugly bird, painted unto the canvas with dirty white paint. Its ugliness matched the tree's aesthetic sensibilities. There was no doubt in its mind that the bird portrayed within the painting was none other than itself.

It was incensed. Intense fury bubbled within its veins. The more it looked upon the picture, the more it felt its blood simmering. The phoenix shrieked. It jumped and attacked the artwork, raking its talons upon the work, but its gummed-up wings prevented it from being graceful in its motion. Its claws missed the painting, sparing the object from destruction. The bird flew backwards, hitting an easel that started a chain reaction. Easels began toppling, hitting one another until only a scant few were left standing. Dull thuds sounded in the room as canvases fell onto the floor.

Paint buckets and cans tipped over, adding more to the chaos. Some had loose lids or none at all that their contents were spilled onto the floor. Puddles of their colorful contents pooled on the floor, and the flailing phoenix happened to fall into some of them. The phoenix was now thoroughly enraged. The phoenix had begun attacking everything in the room. Canvases, easels, and cans, the sounds of their woe rang within the room. In its frenzy, paint was sprayed everywhere, and now the middle of the studio was now a massive mess as though a hurricane had swept through the room.

Despite all its furious frenzy, the painting that had wronged it had been undamaged.

The painting knight charged into the room with a billhook in hand. Their body was adequately protected by mail armor. They looked around, searching for the aggressor amongst the mess, and lo and behold, it saw the hideous bird, covered in paint and having difficulty breathing. Its feathers had been glued together by the sticky nature of the paint, and some of it had dripped into its orifices.

The knight was overcome with pity and let go of their weapon. They knelt before the creature and began assessing its state. The poor bird had its wings glued together. Its nostrils and mouth were clogged by the paint. Its plumage was colored now in garish colors; patches and spots of different colors stained its feathers.

The painting knight left and returned with a towel. The bird attempted to resist the knight's approach, but it was in no state to fight back. The knight gingerly wiped the wet paint soaking the bird's feathers, and then carried it to their washing room. There, it began washing the paint off the bird. Reds, yellows, greens, and oranges flowed with wastewater, and what was left a stained sopping avian.

The knight tied the bird outside to drip and dry in the open air and sunlight. There the bird seethed and shrieked. Thankfully, there was no one to see or hear the bird seize in madness.

==~~~==

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to the king, the queen gathered some men to search for the Colored Phoenix. The king wasn't searching for the bird, so the queen took it into her own hands to search for the cure to her ailment. For seven weeks, her knights combed the countryside, but found no sign of the missing bird. The hunters were about to give up.

One of them stumbled upon a shack in the woods. It was a homely little shack, belonging to an equally homely knight. The hunter approached the house to ask some questions regarding their quest.

The hunter knocked upon the wooden door, and shortly, a knight in dirty mail with a brush in hand answered and opened the door. The hunter took off their hat and asked the person: "Sir, have you seen an exotic majestic bird passing through these woods?"

"No," the knight answered.

"Please, wrack your mind. Maybe you've forgotten or something," the hunter begged.

"Hmmm. Why don't you come inside and describe the bird in more detail? Perhaps I really have seen it," the knight invited. "So, what does this bird look like."

"It's a bright red and yellow hawk that leaves flames in its wake. When the sun shines on it right, rainbows bounce off its feathers. It had gilt talons and ruby eyes," the hunter answered.

The knight combed through its memories, but they could not remember finding a bird of that description. They had seen many birds and animals, and they were sure that any creatures that looked that distinct would pop to the forefront of their mind, but nothing came up. Maybe there really wasn't anything to recall. They hadn't seen it before.

"I'm sorry," the knight apologized. "I don't remember seeing that kind of bird. Why do you need to find it anyway?"

The hunter sighed. They guess this was a good try as any. "Our k - mistress had been sick. The physician had said that the cure is the sight of this bird's beauty," confessed the hunter.

"I suppose it would be bad for you to return empty-handed," the knight remarked. "Perhaps I could interest you in something just as beautiful."

"What?"

"I make paintings. If it is beauty that cures her ailment, maybe the beauty of something else might just as well revitalize her."

The knight brought the hunter to their studio. There, painted canvases hung from the walls and placed upon easels and some were simply laying upon the floor. Scenes of nature were painted upon these canvases; of trees, of lakes, and of deer. These picturesque images captured their thoughts as they browsed among the items. Until the hunter stumbled upon one that utterly captured it.

The hunter picked it up and examined it closely. It was a rather colorful picture of a yellow bird with red spots. It had green talons and black beady eyes that they simply found adorable, and it stood on a puddle of green. The bird pictured certainly wasn't as beautiful as how it pictured the Colored Phoenix, but they hoped that this painting would be just as effective as having the bird itself within the queen's quarters.

The hunter turned to the knight and said, "I'll be taking this."