On Their Last Day:

(a chapter from a larger story…“The Princess and the Ogre”… a working title)

It was one of the ways he would joke with her… sometimes, when they were alone, referring to her in the formal speak, “Her”, or “She”. 

Often, she feigned dislike for this, but he knew better. Sometimes he would say, “Today I am the Her”, or “Today I am the She!”  This would generate a laugh from her because he would almost always get the tense wrong, and also because the ogre would do his best “human-in-charge” impression, much to her delight.

She was, after all, the Princess of the humans that lived in the hills above his woods. He knew, thinking about it now, that part of her delight with him was that he was not of her world.

He hadn’t seen or talked to “Her” alone in a long time.
During  the past year, each meeting generated longer and longer intervals of separation. He found this to be strange, for it had not always been so between them. He knew that her people made many demands upon her. He knew that she loved and cared for them and accepted being their sovereign. 

She sent word to him that she was coming today. He began preparing, as he always did, except this time her messenger told him that the meeting was to occur in a portion of his woods far from her village, a place they had never been to together before. He was there waiting and watching long before her arrival. 

When she arrived, he instantly knew that something was wrong. He was, after all, an ogre. Immediately fearing for her safety, he scanned all about. Nothing. Nothing was out of place. All the woods was as it should be. 

Now he was afraid. As he came near to her he knew that whatever it was that was wrong, it was something wrong with her. In that instant, when she laid her hand on his arm he was filled with dread. “What is wrong”? he asked. “What is it?”

During her time as Princess, many bad things happened, and he had learned, over their time together to read her expressions and mannerisms. He could almost always tell that something was amiss, even if not exactly what. 

She also had a large human family that occasionally generated worry and pain for her. He sorted through all of these possibilities as he studied her countenance. ” Just tell me”, he said softly. “Just say it. What ever it is, just tell me”. Funny thing, looking back now at that exact moment, he remembered thinking, what ever it was, he could fix it.

Just then she began speaking. To him, it was as if she were recounting a story about some mundane event of the day. But the words were shards of pain. Each one in turn a white hot spike stabbing his chest anew. Then simply, swiftly, she stopped talking.

He gasped, trying to make air go into his lungs. Had he heard this? Did he understand her meaning? Her whispered words had not taken the time to speak that it takes a bird to light on a branch or a frog to jump into a pond. 

Ogres do not know panic. It is a human emotion. But now, his brain was on fire. Ogres are by design aggressively protective. Territorial defenders designed by the Mother to protect other creatures. All of his instincts, all of his abilities were, in that moment, useless. He asked her to explain again, please. This made no sense to him. Why? 

When she finished saying the words again he watched her leave. She was sad, she was crying, but she did not hesitate or look back. 

As she left the woods, now completely out of his sight, the ogre knew that he would never again enjoy her company or even be able to look upon her without sadness. Yet he also knew that he would forever remember his time with her and for that at least, he was grateful. In his ogre mind, even in their very early days together, he knew that there was always going to be this day of pain tearing at his heart.

He did not immediately return to his cave, that place where she had so bravely confronted him on that first day. He knew there were too many memories there. Instead, he walked in his woods and thought about all of the moments that occurred on  this, their final day. He wished he could have known of its finality, that this day would contain the death of them. So much of the day he would have done differently. 

Eventually the rhythms and sounds of his woods made themselves known to him again as he walked. He wondered what would become of him. He was not sure if he could return to his life as it had been before she appeared, he was not sure he wanted to. He knew that she had changed him in some ways and for this he was both grateful and sad.

For all of his life, alone in his woods, he had watched and listened to the humans and the way they went about their lives, laughing and crying, sometimes at the same time. 

Prior to her, he had known that their laughter was paid for with their pain, and always he watched, as over and over they would repeat that trade, joyfully and sorrowfully. He never for a moment envied them. He really never understood them. She had changed that in him forever. Now he understood, if only just barley, why these creatures would choose to live in this manner. This knowledge angered him, yet he could no more regret knowing this than he could regret his own strength. 

The price for this knowledge was now going to be paid by him, every time he thought of her, or caught a glimpse of her or heard her voice.

 All of this thinking made him tired. He listened to his woods, and understood that this place, with all its magics, was just as it had always been and would forever be. It was he that was changed. He wept. Before her, being an ogre, alone in these woods, was a wonder, a magical adventure that was limited only by his imagination. Now, in this moment, all he felt was loneliness and loss.

In a little time his tears stopped. He shook himself and with that, all the forest around him grew quiet, waiting and watching to see what he would do. He walked towards the valley where the stream laughed and splashed and gurgled and was not at all impressed with him. It was not their first place, but this valley, this stream, was their favorite. 

As he listened to the water he looked around him, they had spent so much time together here, so many memories. In his mind he saw them all play out.

He could recall everything. He smiled occasionally, thinking his thoughts. She had called him her “water baby”. This always made him laugh. That this little bit of a human girl called him a “water baby”. He had explained to her, the natural connection between ogres and water as he had explained the solitary nature of an ogre’s life. This immediately made sense to her as he was always happiest when he was near water of any sort.

So many of their talks occurred right here in this place.  There was so much history here. And now he sat here alone, knowing she was never going to sit here next to him in this place again. 

He wished he could turn off the pictures in his head, but everywhere he looked she was there. Wadding in the stream, sleeping on the bank, walking by the water’s edge, talking to him. She spent hours untold, answering his questions, explaining how humans did things, understood things. He learned most of what he knew about them right here next to these waters, from her. 

Everything he knew of her life, the private parts and secret things, he learned from her in this place. She was everywhere around him here, and she was gone. 

As he thought about it here, in this their favorite place, he recognized that he felt like death had visited him. He tried to shake it off, tried to pretend it was just the local magics of this water, but he knew better. Death had visited him. The worst kind of visit because it had only killed “them”. She yet lived, as did he. He could still look at her and on occasion hear her voice, yet they would never again be here in this their private place together. 

He recognized death’s cruel irony in this as he, an ogre, was by nature solitary, never knowing a permanent mate. Ogres are not inclined in that way, as he explained to her on their second or third meeting. These feeling he had for her were not at all how ogres conducted themselves. 

Here, now, in this moment he wished she had never entered his woods. So fearless. So strong. So beautiful. Yet he immediately regretted that wish even as it still lived in his mind. 

They had, many times, talked about that first day. How she walked right into the mouth of the cave, knowing he was there, bravely speaking directly to him. How she held out her hand to him and bid him come out, out to the daylight so she could look at him. How she knew of his mistreatment by her village, of their betrayal and deceit. How she had heard him and even seen him in the woods. How all the other humans of her village feared him even as they counted on his protection even after betraying him.

Today seemed to generate endless amounts of pain for him. He wondered if this was the reason his kind remained solitary. He wondered many things, not the least of which was what was he to do without her? How doubly hard it was, having the only creature he could talk to about his pain being the cause of it. 

His pain took him to the water’s edge. As he took a long drink from this cold fast stream he knew he would never again come to this place. He could not. Yet another goodbye, another death. 

As he left the stream he didn’t look back, just as she had not. He asked the magics, with respect, to please permit some other creatures to find this place and share its quietness and peace as they had for so long. 

For a moment, he thought he would follow her path out of his woods towards the hills where her village began. He tried to convince himself that this was, as always, just to ensure that she arrived back in her world safely. But just that, the convincing himself of the act, was what spoiled it. He would not walk that path and he knew why, yet another change in him that she had caused. 

Instead, he went to the cave and slept. The forest and all its creatures took a deep breath and paused while the ogre slept.

Once upon a time…..there lived a beautiful princess who was from a village near a deep dark forrest where an ogre lived.

 Everyone in the village loved her because she was kind and full of light and life. One day she went for a walk in the woods to meet the ogre. She was not afraid. She felt no guilt.