Illustrated Fantasy and Realism
Every sunrise, the beastie buddies habitually rushed to greet Prince, pecked on his cheeks, like a flock of wild doves swooping down to snatch a bite, and let him take the roll call, so the girl followed their practice. The beastie buddies loved Prince, and so did she.
“What should we do with Bulb?” whispered Bass to Prince.
The girl kept thinking about Rocky’s story and turned to Bass, “Rocky told me his myth of endurance to overcome the fear of the unknown. I was surprised that it took years to develop his unique features. That’s a long, long time.”
“It took a hundred years to grow that giant oak in the Hofgarten in Bayreuth. There are no shortcuts for beautiful things, although we naively expect a quick fix in this world,” retorted Bass.
The beastie buddies left the Freistaat Thüringen and journeyed south. Tired and half-asleep, they arrived at the station interchange and switched to the connecting train to Bayreuth in the Freistaat Bayern. It was cosy inside the regional train. The girl found herself a seat by the window, comfortably settling in the hard seat furnished with faded greyish blue upholstery. She watched the unfamiliar greenery pass in a hazy blur and soon dozed off during the ride.
Prince blinked back tears. He had searched five castles high and low in two days but remained empty-handed. He was beside himself with rage.
“Could time efface the unwanted memory?” Prince murmured.
“Huh? Could memory be unwanted?” the girl was confused.
“Do you feel anxious about following Prince’s lead without knowing where he would take you?” asked the girl, “or constantly expecting more magic without knowing when, or searching for the enchanted spell without knowing why and how?”
Prince was a headstrong fairy-tale castle chaser and Bass was a dreamy, yet obdurate idealist demanding precise details of everything about sound. They were not the only two. There was a stubborn pride inherited in each and every magical creature on earth.
The girl decided to bid farewell to Prince when the train reached the Potsdam Bahnhof. She liked her new beastie friend, but she did not like his lectures as much.
When she was alighting from the train, she was distracted right away.
“Guten Tag. Ist hier noch frei?” a seven-foot-tall hairy green beast asked politely in German as he approached an empty seat on the InterCity Express train heading towards Berlin.
“Guten Tag,” the girl returned without much thought about it, “ja.”
Fancy a short story before Christmas? Have you ever wondered what it’s like to travel with magical creatures in our no-magic world? This is a story about believing again… and of course, lots of selfies with the beasts while travelling in the beautiful Deutschland…
