It Is the Mynd That Maketh Good or Ill

The fey folk fled as men felled their forests, damned and drained their rivers, made midden heaps of their mountains. Infinities traced upon snowflake edges melted in their hands. Gossamer twilit worlds suspended in the dew on spider-web threads were torn apart and cast to the wind. 

Their queen retreated into the bowels of the earth, bowed and shrunken by the weight of rage and sorrow. Crushed and compacted as each ancient and irreplaceable realm came crashing down, until her soul imploded inwards, a black hole that sucked all mystery and magic into it.

And there beneath the bleached bones of the world, she called down a curse, one so terrible and complete it drained the world and left it forever cold and dry. 

“If they hate beauty so, let their lives be filled with it,” she said. “Let other fields be greener, other mountains more graceful, other lives happier, other faces more beautiful. And let the knowledge of it devour them. Let them feast on it and never be full.”