the stories of Juny Juny

Calla Lily For Matjaž Part 3

Stories, drawings and characters by @flolady and @silentiaworld

Calla looked at Matjaž with teary eyes. Her tears were about to fall down. Matjaž looked at her with an uneasy feeling. He was going to kill her, wasn’t he? But now, looking at those teary eyes, he knew had seen them before. Where? Of course, it all went back to the past. The little Calla, who kept following him everywhere, who cried over everything; she was, nothing else, but a crybaby. Matjaž never had the heart to see those tears.

“Don’t cry…” he whispered.

“Go ahead,” she continued, sobbing quietly, “Kill me…”

Her tears were ready to fall down on her cheeks.

“No… No… Please don’t cry,” he said, his voice sounded shaky.

“Then what do you want me to do, Matjaž?” she asked, still looking at him, ready to burst into tears.

“I…” he paused, “I don’t want you to cry…” he said softly.

“Do you… still want me to leave…?” she finally started to cry.

Matjaž glanced at her, anxiously. “No… Don’t leave…”

Calla stared at him in silence. Then she gave him the sweetest smile ever. With no more tears on a sad face.

“Then I’ll stay here with you!”

As she said that, she reached out to Matjaž’s neck, and then she gave him the warmest hug.

Matjaž was shaken. He didn’t know how to respond, yet he knew how soothing that felt. Slowly, his skinny long bizarre arms and fingers reached out to her shoulders. He hugged her close, awkwardly, but wholeheartedly. At that moment, Matjaž had made a decision, he would let this girl enter his life once again, he made a promise to himself that he would protect Calla, and the most important thing, he made a promise to not make her cry again.

Just when Matjaž was going to tie the blue ribbon to Calla’s hair, he sensed that the Legere*6 led by Vampire Viktor, had entered his area, along with Esther, the Red Warden. They were on alert position pointing arrows at Matjaž.

Esther moved a step forward; she didn’t have a weapon with her.

“It seems like you have a prisoner with you Matjaž…” she said, calmly.

Matjaž held Calla closely; he wouldn’t let anyone hurt her. He whispered a spell and within seconds, he shape shifted into a red deer. Matjaž didn’t stop, he kept casting the spell, which made his red antlers stretch out, grew so fast and started to tangle up around them. Esther was startled, she held her breath witnessing this; she realized that Matjaž was making a cage out of his antlers to protect Calla.

It happened so fast; it was like watching a miracle. Standing before the Legere and Esther, were Matjaž the red deer with Calla holding his neck, looking scared, but what amazed everyone was, Matjaž and Calla were inside the red antler-shield.

Esther approached the shield hesitantly. “What are you doing, Matjaž?” she asked cautiously.

Matjaž watched Esther from inside the shield.

“Leave us alone…”

As the Red Warden, Esther could communicate with all the red deer telepathically.

“I’m afraid we cannot do that, Matjaž…” Viktor, the leader of Legere stood beside Esther. He looked at Calla.

“Who are you?” he asked in the most gentle voice.

“I’m not his prisoner…” answered Calla, fearfully.

“Well whoever you are, we will get you out…” replied Viktor.

Calla shook her head and held to Matjaž’s neck tightly.

“You misjudged him…” she said.

But Esther saw the bruises in Calla’s neck. She feared that Matjaž had hurt this girl and would do it again.

“You have bruises… Did Matjaž do that to you?”

“I don’t care what you all think of Matjaž. But I’m staying with him.” Calla replied sternly.

Esther sighed. Both Matjaž and the strange girl were stubborn. Esther turned to Matjaž.

“Whoever she is, Matjaž… You know you could hurt her,” said Esther persuasively.

And Matjaž knew this, he knew Esther was right. What if later on, he would try to hurt Calla again? He would never forgive himself for that! He looked at Calla as if he wanted to say to her, ‘what if Esther’s words were true?’

Calla held him close as if she didn’t want to let him go.

Esther and Viktor could see that Matjaž was in doubt. They kept persuading Matjaž to let the girl go.

“Let her go, Matjaž… We promise we will take care of her and try to find her family…”

Calla was scared. Scared of losing Matjaž once again. Tears started to roll down her cheeks.

“Don’t listen to them, Matjaž…” Calla the crybaby started to sob in sorrow.

Matjaž didn’t have the heart to see that. Right away, his defense was shattered, the red antlers shield started to disintegrate, scattered into pieces, turned into red dust and swept away by the wind. Matjaž had turned back into his human shape again, holding Calla so tightly to stop her from crying.

Seeing that the shield had been broken, Viktor quickly gave an order to the Legere to shoot Matjaž with an anesthetic arrow. But alas, when the arrow was shot, Calla moved fast in front of Matjaž, and the arrow stabbed her shoulder.

Matjaž was shocked to see this. Without thinking, he carried Calla and ran as fast as he could toward the Legere, and he kept running past them. Calla held onto Matjaž’s neck tightly, half awake, in pain from the shot, she summoned the calla lily flowers with an incantation.

In a blink of an eye, calla lily flowers started to sprout fast around them. It’s like the flowers were to trying to form a shield for them. Calla quickly grabbed onto one of the tallest flower and chanted a spell.

“Grow and tall, protect us from sorrow Take us down and below”

Once Calla recited the invocation, all of a sudden, the ground beneath them opened.

“Don’t worry Matjaž, the flowers will protect us…” she whispered faintly.

No one could believe what they were about to see. They startled.

It happened so fast, it was implausible. There before all of them, Matjaž and the girl were devoured by the ground, they fell in to the earth and forthwith the ground closed up again, leaving the calla lily flowers bloomed beautifully above it as if nothing extraordinary had ever happened.

It was like a grave, guarded by beautiful white flowers. Beneath the glowing flowers, Matjaž and Calla were buried deep down, safe from everyone who wanted to separate them, protected from the tainted world that Matjaž was worried about, away from all the doubts. No more sadness, no more tears, no more judging, no more fear.

For they were together, and that what all matters…

END

Calla Lily for Matjaž Part 2

Stories, drawing and original characters by @flolady and @silentiaworld

Matjaž was in shock, he was sure that he had strangled her to death. Nevertheless there she was, breathing, completely alive, with bruises on her neck. Was he dreaming? Maybe all the red deer were right after all, that Matjaž had lost his mind.

The girl inhaled as if she was trying to get her life back. She looked at Matjaž with sad look on her face.

“Don’t you remember, Matjaž?”

Matjaž stared at her with his big unblinking eerie red eyes.

“Why…?! How did you know my name…?!” he yelled in a bloodcurdling voice.

“Remember me, Matjaž…” she replied sorrowfully.

Matjaž looked at her beautiful face closely. He was confused, angry, and irritated.

“I’ll put you back to sleep again…”

“Remember… Remember me…” she kept on going.

Matjaž sat down on the ground, with his hands on his head, trying to think. Then slowly it all came back to him, vaguely, all the memories that were hidden, things that he wasn’t quite sure why he failed to remember all this time.

It was years ago, near the forest’s border; little Matjaž and his twin brother were playing. There was this little girl, with a blue ribbon tied on her beautiful hair… Was she hiding behind the tree? Was she sobbing? Little Matjaž approached her with his angelic face… Yes… That was the same girl who sat before him. He remembered it now, from the moment he approached the sobbing little girl with the blue ribbon on her hair. She started following him everywhere, clinging to him all the time.

“Sshh… don’t cry…” he whispered as he remembered now. Those were his first words to the little girl. “Why did you cry…? Were you lost…?” he kept repeating these questions, whispering, as he tried to talk to the little girl again.

“Do you remember now…? I’m Calla Lily, the heir of the Calla Lily flower… I was expelled and hunted by the Blac J*4…” she sat down and opened her hands. She chanted an ancient spell and slowly, a white calla lily flower appeared on her hands, floating above her palms; glowing.

Matjaž was mesmerized by the enchanted beauty of the flower.

“But how… why…” he whispered in his hoarse voice.

“When that incident happened… When the BlacEvil*5 cursed you… I was so scared… I buried myself under the ground… You see… the Calla lily flower has the power to keep you alive, they give you air to breath… That’s how I survived…” she looked at him with guilt on her face.

“I made you like this, Matjaž…” she started sobbing.

“No… no… it wasn’t you… It was him…” he whispered in voice as if he was afraid that someone could hear him.

Calla shook her head.

“He was actually after me…” cried her. “But you stood up… for me…”

For the first time in years, Matjaž smiled as if he was relieved (yet it still looked very unnatural!).

“But you are safe…” he softly said.

Calla couldn’t say a word for she felt so guilty, if it weren’t because of her, Matjaž would still be living a normal life, Matjaž would still look angelic. The curse that the BlacEvil cast on him had changed his life drastically, it had altered his appearance into this grotesque creature and had changed his behavior into that of an ugly person, resulting in the rejection from the herd of the red deer blac vetrese.

“Sshh… sshh… don’t cry…” he said gently (yes, it still sounded eerie).

Matjaž chanted a spell to summon items. And there, before him, appeared a faded blue ribbon, the ribbon that little Calla used to wear. He tied it on Calla’s hair as gently as he could, his skeletal hands were shaking of course, but he managed to tie it on neatly.

“You gave me your blue ribbon, you said the colors matched my eyes… Except now… the ribbon’s color has faded…”

He remembered more now, little Calla; the crybaby. She would cry over anything that little Matjaž did or said. One time she cried because Matjaž refused to have her blue ribbon to be tied on his hair! He was never aware that he would never have the heart to say no to the crying Calla.

“But a beautiful flower like you… Shouldn’t be with thorny ivy like me…” he said mournfully.

“Then I’ll be a thorny flower!” she answered earnestly.

“…….”

He paused for a moment (maybe freaky Matjaž didn’t really know how to respond to Calla’s idea).

“You should go…” his husky voice sounded insisted.

Calla looked at him with gloomy expression. She untied the ribbon and handed it over to Matjaž with teary eyes.

“Then here… Strangle me again… If you want me to go… You should just kill me again… This time I’ll die…”

An inexplicable quiet followed as Matjaž looked at the ribbon, his twisted mind started to take over. Killing her once and for all seemed to be the right thing to do.

The long silence gave her an uneasy feeling, but she was ready; she had made up her mind…

To be continued….

*4BlacJ is a very large, influential and powerful ancient black magic cult that has been ruling for hundreds of years.

Calla Lily for Matjaž Part 1

It was a bizarre day for Matjaž*1, when he came upon a mat of white calla lilies growing in the forest where he had been isolated*2. These calla lilies were not only growing rapidly, but they also bloomed in a blink of an eye. Every red deer in the forest knew that no flowers would want to grow in the forest where Matjaž was imprisoned. He was known as an eerie and unkind prince of the red deer-blac vetrese*3 himself, at least that’s how all the red deer thought of him. They all tried to avoid him, for he was considered dangerous and emotionally unstable. As Matjaž lay down next to the calla lily, he could not decide whether to destroy the flowers for being too beautiful or to let them grow for a short while longer. That was when he started to hear a beautiful voice whispering, “sshh… sshh…”

It was not until the next day, when Matjaž woke up and found a beautiful girl sleeping next to him. He was startled.

“Who are you…?” he asked.

“I’m Calla Lily…” she answered with a beaming smile.

Matjaž glanced at the flowers, “…..Then… they are yours…”

“Ah yes…. They’re pretty aren’t they?” she answered happily.

But Matjaž’s mind was twisted. For him, something as pure and beautiful as her mustn’t live to see how tainted the world had become. So he replied in a voice, sounding like he was possessed,

“They are… too beautiful to live…. You too… are too beautiful… To live…”

“….. You want me to die..?”

“Do you want to die?”

“No… I have finally woken up.”

“Then it would have been better that you never woke up at all..” he whispered in the most uncomfortable way.

So he started to strangle her, as slow and gentle as he could, to escort her to a painless death. At least, that’s what he thought.

“I’ll put you back to sleep… So you will be safe…”

Fighting for her life, she helplessly tried to free herself. But Matjaž was too strong, so strong that he relaxed a little and took his time to enjoy the beauty of death.

“Sshh… It’ll be okay… This way… You will stay pure and beautiful…” he looked at her with his big sad eyes.

Calla Lily grabbed onto the calla lily flowers as she took one last breath and after all her strength had gone, she finally stopped moving.

“This is for your own good….” Matjaź whispered. In his mourning voice, he started to sing the fawn’s lullaby.

All the calla lilies around them started to wilt. He plucked one and said,

“… I’ll keep you safe…”

As Matjaź kissed the wilted flower, he heard the same whisper again, calling out his name.

“Matjaź… Is that you… “

The whisper came from the wilted calla lilies on the ground. To his surprise, more calla lilies started appearing..

“You’re supposed to be dead…” he said, his voice was shaken.

“Matjaź… Sshh… Don’t be.. Sad…” “Matjaź… Sshh… Its okay…”

More and more calla lily flowers started to sprout and bloom rapidly, like they were fighting for space to grow. Next to him, surrounded by the blooming calla lily, the girl whom he just strangled to death opened her eyes….. To be continued

*1 Matjaž is the prince of red deer blac vetrese who had been cursed by an ancient powerful BlacEvil (J devil) when he was a kid. From that time on he earned the reputation as an creepy, bizarre and unkind prince by the other red deer. His appearance; emaciated with greyish skin tone, was frightening; therefore, all the red deer try to avoid him.