It’s time to stop being a victim.
The prompt is:
JULIE IS NOT JULIET
The season was Green. At least that’s how it seemed to Julie. The leaves on the trees and the undergrowth were green, of course, but the moss covering the ground and clinging to the tree trunks, competing with the vines that climbed up and around them, turned everything into a green blur. Even the fog that hid the sky above had a sickly viridescent tint.
As the day faded into twilight, Julie found the object of her search. It was barely more than a wooden platform with a thatched roof set on poles above it. It, too, was covered in the ever-present moss. But it would suffice. It was, after all, simply a place for Julie to die.
Lighting her lantern, Julie lay down and drew the dagger from her bodice. With its point tickling the hollow of her neck, she spoke for the first time since leaving the village.
“Now you will see the consequences of your betrayal, Prince Stefan.”
She jerked in surprise, though, when a voice whispered, “But will he? ‘See,’ I mean, way out here?”
“Who’s there?”
“Just me.” The strangest creature Julie had ever seen climbed onto the platform. “Jack Green, Warden of this forest.”
Standing but three feet tall, Jack’s skin was as green as the moss, and all manner of leafy vines grew out of his head.
“Why punish yourself? The Prince is the betrayer, or so you say. Make him pay.”
“But my heart is broken,” Julie wailed.
“Broken?” Jack eyed the blood welling where the dagger had pricked her neck. “It still pumps, does it not?” He plucked leaves from the vines that were his hair. “Water Hemlock. For his tea.”
Julie stood and wrapped the leaves in her kerchief. “You are right, Sir. I am a Princess, not a victim.”
THE END
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