"Love over fate!"

By Sammy B. Tyrrell

In the kingdom of Eldwyne, nestled between forest and fog, there lived a reclusive magician named Caelum. He wasn’t famous for great battles, excessive fineries, or grand illusions, but for his epic kindness, his quiet strength, and the way he spoke to the wind as though they were old friends. Caelum had one love: a healer named Elira, who lived on the edge of the Silverwood amongst the company of her signature healing herbs and her unforgettable laugh. A laughter that bellowed through the forest for miles and miles.

They were bound not by marriage or spell, but by something older— a soul-level understanding. Where Caelum worked with starlight and whispers, Elira worked with soil and song. The community called them the Moon and the Earth, different but unmistakably destined.

But love, like magic, does not protect against fate.

One spring, a plague swept through Eldwyne, carried on the wings of black moths that withered crops and lungs alike. Elira, tireless in her devotion, traveled from community to community tending to the sick. In one of these communities, she collapsed—stricken by the very sickness she sought to cure.

Word reached Caelum but it was almost too late. He needed to get to her immediately so he performance his greatest magic act yet and he flew—on the wind, having transfigured into the most gorgeous Phoenix…. and all it took was a thought—to be by her side, but even his healing magic could not touch what was inside her. Elira lay pale and burning, slipping away with each passing breath.

Desperate, Caelum turned to the Forbidden Verses—ancient magic etched into bone and bark, magic that asked for more than spells: it asked for sacrifice.

The spell was simple in words, brutal in price. He would become a bird forever—not a man in magical disguise, but a bird in truth. Only in this form could he draw out the sickness and carry it into the sky, far from the world. But once bird, always bird—no return, no voice, no name.

He made his choice just before dawn.

Elira awoke briefly to see a pale bird with storm-grey feathers land on her chest. It touched its beak to her brow. She gasped. The fever broke.

And high above the forest, a great flock of moths rose and vanished into the heavens, drawn by the magic now inside him. The bird flew higher and higher, chasing the last of the sickness until its wings faltered and it fell, silent, into the sea.

Elira lived.

She never took another lover. She grew old in the Silverwood, and when children asked about the paver by her garden gate, the one that read “BIRD Lives”, she would smile gently.

“Because he does,” she said. “In every healed breath. In every sky free of shadow. My Caelum lives.”

And so, he did. In wind. In flight. In the memory of those who knew that to love, truly, and completely, as the Moon and the Earth was worth it all.

A NEVER-ENDING love!