With a yawn Annette put down her embroidering and stared longingly out the window. Her gaze trailed along the edge of the forest and she felt a twinge of sadness.

Herrmann had entered there not long ago to battle the Lord of the Forest. Were he to succeed, he would be given her hand in marriage, and if he didn't...

She shook her head, trying to get rid of the thought. Her father had forced Herrmann to do it even though she wanted to marry him. It was simply a matter of hierarchy.

She looked back down at her embroidery. A handsome yet rugged man with golden hair and sapphire eyes stared back at her fearlessly.

A tear began to form in the corner of her eye. She noticed the dawn breaking. The sounds of battle had ceased.

The tear turned into a flood in a matter of seconds and soon she was sobbing loudly.

She cursed her father for forcing him to “prove his worth”. She cursed Herrmann for accepting the bait. She cursed herself for not stopping it.

After a minute or so she got up from her simple chair and went to the door. She put on her coat of wool and left the small cabin on the edge of the small village in a hurry.

She may not be able to stop him, but she at least wanted to collect his corpse so he could have a proper burial and be relieved from the pain of being digested by the forest. The Lord of the Forest didn't eat humans and never had. That was her only comforting thought.

She brought to mind where she had last heard the sounds of battle and realized with a short wail that it had ended in the White Clearing. She hastened her steps, making sure not to trip on any roots. She should have taken more care and she should have at least brought her brother, but she was too much in grief for thought.

In a matter of minutes she had reached the infamous White Clearing.

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It was named after the multitude of white flowers growing there. Its infamy was derived from the fact that if you died there, not even bones would be left. There are even legends that people who have attempted to defeat the flowers there would be overwhelmed by a storm of roots and deafeated in mere seconds. She hesitated to enter.

However, what caught her eye was not the multitude of white flowers and the beauty of them, no, what she noticed was a hole.

Upon a small hill, she noticed a small space void of any flowers. The flowers close by had been crushed by something and they were dyed in a crimson red.

She gasped and fell to her knees, tears flowing down her cheeks. She was too late, she thought. He was dead. Dead and devoured by the crimson flowers.

For a few seconds, she simply bawled her eyes out, not making a single sound.

When she lifted her head and opened her eyes, she noticed, once more, the hole. She hadn't noticed it before, but... in the hole, she saw a flower.

Her first thought when she saw it was “white...”.

The entire flower was white. The stem, the leaves, the petals... every single part was white. All but one. On each petal, a small, almost unnoticeable pink stripe ran down the middle. In the center of the flower, where all the petals originated from, was a small, bright red spot. If she looked closely, she could see it was almost in the shape of a kiss.

She breathed deeply and felt a most desirable scent enter her nostrils.

Immediately, warm tears flooded her pretty face.

It was the scent of Herrmann.

She gave a wail and leaned in closer to smell it further.

Yes, unmistakably, it what the scent of him.

Her finger ran along the petals and she knew what she was looking at.

Herrmann.

She knew he must have died here, right here, and in his place, this flower bloomed.

Without any further thought, she let her frail and soft fingers dig into the earth beneath the flower and soon she was holding a clump of dirt upon which the white flower grew.

She smiled faintly and left the White Clearing, holding her love in her hands.