Genre: Fairytale AU 

Characters: Irene as the Elf Queen, Wendy as the Winged-Elf of the Void

She was done, so done. Irene, the Queen of Elves could no longer keep up with the façade. After a thousand years she was no longer able to put up with this curse of having to rule this land while still remaining sane. All these glitz and glamour and overtly courteous manners amongst her elves.

“After you madam.”

“No, no, after you sir.”

“You are too kind, madam, please.”

“Sir, don’t stand on ceremony. After you, I insist!”

The near-inscrutable twitch of their lips. The clenched fists that shook slightly. The almost-indecipherable judgement in their eyes. Irene bore witness to it all. Her all-seeing eyes was yet another curse.

“Why, you have tailored a new dress, how lovely!”

“Not nearly as beautiful as you. I absolutely love the colour of your suit, how smart!”

The unnatural intonation. The soft curses under their breaths. The whispers of jealousies. She could not shut her sharp ears to the world.

Civilisation they call it. Superficiality, Irene termed it instead. Punished for her talents and her beauty, Irene was cursed to rule for eternity. There was a way to break this curse, one way, and that was to find someone more talented and more beautiful than herself. It was cruel, for a thousand years had passed and there was none such individual. Irene began to despair yet there was no ending this for she was unkillable and immortal.  

One day, Irene found a well-concealed pit in her garden, one that people would pass by without a second glance. A pit with such unfathomable depth and wealth of magic that was able to absorb anything. Neither her keen ears nor all-mighty eyes could pick up any sounds or sights from it.

This was perfect!

She could scream into it all day, and no one would ever learn about her feelings nor condemn her. Irene thought. She was Queen and the weight of the crown weighed heavily on her. Her grievances were aplenty, yet her confidantes were scarce. In fact, she had none. This pit, this emptiness, this void, would become her closest companion. And this was how their tale began.

Contrary to Irene’s beliefs that this was a void, there was an individual living at the bottom of it. An individual who had been secluded from the world for so long she could not remember the reason why it was so. Yet, during her long period of isolation, this individual lived in peace and blissfulness all by herself, or so she thought. There was a separate wonderland at the bottom of the pit, a forest land bountiful with magical fruits and springs which glittered like millions of diamonds were scattered in it. It was summer always where the she lived. This individual was Wendy, the winged elf, the last of her kind. In this beautiful wonderland, she had perhaps mistaken comfort for happiness, she had perhaps mistaken nothingness for peace. Yet, it did not matter, for she had forgotten the workings of the world outside her wonderland until that fateful day, when a stray voice travelled into her wonderland.

The ears of the winged-elf’s pricked up. No sounds could have reached her, this much she could remember. This wonderland was blessed with a magical barrier so powerful that contact with the outside world was not possible unless what she known had been false all these while. Curious, Wendy listened. Indeed, sounds had managed to traverse through the barrier. As time went by, these sounds became more distinct or perhaps Wendy’s hearing became sharper.

A hundred years passed as Wendy listened to the sounds, from the same individual, an individual she presumed to be an elf as well. Sometimes it could be as brief as a sharp shriek, sometimes it would take as long as the time she used to finish all the magical fruits in the wonderland and the tales continued as the next batch of magical fruits matured. One day she learnt that the individual’s name was Irene.

Another hundred years went by, and Wendy soon began to realise that, compared to this insufferable ignorance of the world, Wendy found Irene’s tales of miseries much more sufferable instead. Even though they were mostly tales of ire, Wendy was still fascinated and would mutter replies to them at times, of course knowing that Irene would not be able to hear her.

One of the conversations that Wendy was particularly fond of was as follows.

“Hey void… thank you for absorbing my grievances all these times. Tell me if I can do anything for you -”

“No, you know I am not pretending to be polite. I hate pretentious elves!”

“Yes, I really meant to do something for you in return, but I don’t know what would be useful to you. You are a void. Just a void and yet… I don’t know… I feel that s