Illustrated Fantasy and Realism
“What should I call you?” the mage paraphrased the question and asked again.
The girl pondered deeply. Stubborn in the face of reality, she was unconsciously determined to hold on to what she used to believe. Her attitude softened after a brief, awkward pause.
The mage interrupted the girl in reminiscence, “Second question, why do you choose my identity to project for yours?”
The girl’s voice was suffused with fervour, “You are mysterious, respected, free to do whatever you want, and capable of all kinds of magic.”
“Technically, I am not a witch as I have no formal witchcraft training or practice, but I do perform some sort of magic,” the other girl in the hooded cape tried to calm her down.
“You stole my face!” whimpered the girl pathetically as she mummified her head with her scarf. She was paralysed with fear, unable to run away from the source of danger she imagined, and started to choke for breath.
“Where’s she going?” alarmed Bass as the girl’s silhouette vanished in a swirl of snowflakes at the cul-de-sac. He sprang to his strings and leaped to the residual image trying to fetch her, but to no avail.
The girl elbowed through the circle of bystanders and knelt down beside Prince’s motionless body. Her blinking lashes were clutching salty droplets to where they started, as she shook his right shoulder as hard as she could, “Wake up, wake up…”
The girl was huffing and puffing by the time she climbed up the slope, down the splendid curved staircase and up again another to reach the other side of the garden. She saw Prince leaning against the bowling-shaped balustrade. She run fast to give him a big, big bear hug from behind, even the girl was not as big in size as the Green Beast. She could not wait to tell him her latest findings about symmetry.
The train ride from Bamberg to Würzburg took less than an hour, but the occasional piercing shriek was a bit annoying. It was misty in the early morning when they arrived in Würzburg, the northern end of the popular Romantische Straße.
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.
