Rischa – Rainbow.
This is fairy tales canon. It features Rischa at about 14 years of age.
Reading Time: ~5-10 minutes.
The springtime always brought joy to Rischa’s heart. In part because it was her birth season and marked her growing another year old, but even more because of the joy it brought everyone else. The cold of winter melted away and brought with it warmer sunlight and longer days, which the wood sprites of Wellwood celebrated heartily.
One particularly shining spring day, the forest was full of the smell of the previous night’s rain in the soft earth. The sweet fragrance of maple was tinged with the sharp scent of grass and wildflowers, and many sprites were busy collecting fallen pine needles from the ground around the home trees.
Rischa did not plan to join them for once. Instead, she slung a loose cloth bag over her shoulder and headed out the door almost before her mother could call out a “be careful!”
Rischa knew to be careful. She’d gone out just like this many times before, after all. Bowman had been sneaking out in the middle of the night since he was fourteen. Rischa could manage some daytime flights at the same age without any issue, she was confident. She opened her dainty, leaf-colored wings and took flight with her twin braids swooping behind her as she went.
Not ten minutes away from the village, Rischa found exactly what she was looking for. She grinned widely and drifted downwards in a slow, graceful spiral and enjoyed the smell of the flowers wafting around her. An entire patch of wildflowers opened their faces to the dappled sunlight, all of them looking even more vibrant after the rain.
Splashes of every color greeted her eyes as if a rainbow had fallen from the sky and landed in a soft tangle on the ground. Rischa brushed her hands over the petals as she flew past them, until she landed among the happy flowers.
Underneath the cheerful heads of the flowers and ferns, many petals and leaves had fallen to the forest floor. The softest of these petals Rischa gathered up and placed in her cloth sling carefully. She rubbed her thumb over the velvety texture of each petal before stowing it away.
While she worked, Rischa began to hum to herself, her lilting voice filtering out of the flowerbed as if the flowers themselves were singing to the sun. As she passed, she brushed her hands over some of their stems, and with the smallest effort of a Prayer, a glow reached up into the flowers over her head. The flowers marked her path through them with their shining.
It was one of Rischa’s favorite passtimes. She loved being near the others in the village to feel their joy and share in their pain to help them just like she was always taught to do with her empathic gift, and yet there were times Rischa needed to be on her own. Out here, with only the flowers exuding their fragrance and their simple joy with the sun and the rain, Rischa’s mind could truly clear.
Out here, she could feel her joy on its own, uninterrupted until she needed to return again.
Writerly Things 