Yesteryear Fiction

Flower Crowns & Unending Love
By Linda M. Crate


It was her birthday and they were simply sitting with one another. It was just the way he liked it. Just him and her. It was almost as if the outside world did not exist.

He couldn't help but chuckle as she clumsily plopped onto the ground. She was slightly intoxicated, and it amused him for he still remained sober. However, he promised her that he wouldn't allow her to do anything too horrifically embarrassing whilst under the influence should she drink a bit too much in her merriment.

Florian snorted as she made a daisy chain and tried to put in his hair. "No, Lucy," he insisted, trying to push it away.

Lucille pouted at him in an innocent, childlike way. "But I made it for you," she pouted.

Florian smiled at her sadly. "All right." He picked the dainty crown from her hands and placed it in his hair, glaring at any of the onlookers that were snickering at him and his queen. She snuggled closer to his shoulder and he pulled her onto his lap.

Except the occasional snigger of onlookers.

"Lucy?" he asked as she mumbled something incoherently into his shoulder.

"You're the best present ever, but thank you for the gifts."

He snorted, though, he appreciated the sentiment. "You're welcome, my dear Lucy."

"Ian?"

"Hmm?"

"I will always love you, how long will you love me?"

He snorted. "Well, I'm wearing flowers in my hair so that means forever," he answered her.

She gave him a crooked smile before passing out into his shoulder, and he just held her there, stroking her long dark brown locks lovingly.

He was simply glad that the war was over. That the counsel was disbanded, that there was a time for peace. That they no longer had to fight goblins, dark elves, evil vampires, demons, werewolves, or any of the like. That he could just sit here with his faerie in his arms and nothing would interrupt them.

He pulled a face, finally annoyed with the onlooking throng of scoffers, giving them his famous d'Ernos death glare before disappearing into his large abode.

When she woke the next morning, he brushed her hair from her shoulders. "Morning, Lucy."

"What on earth are you wearing flowers in your hair for—," Lucille began. She gave pause as she remembered. "I'm so sorry," she remarked, reaching for the flower crown.

Florian, however, tilted his head so she couldn't reach it. "I liked it. It made me look more manly," he joked, laughing.

She blushed furiously. "Oh, Ian," she said, shaking her head. "I love you."

"Not as much as I love you, Lucy," he remarked. He smiled noting her eyes were green, the shade her eyes changed to when she was happy. He was glad that she was content. It made him to feel good to know of all the people in the world that could make her happy it was him that she chose, and he wouldn't trade his swan for anything in the world.

She was the only force in the world that could calm the monstrous side of his vampiric soul.


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Linda M. Crate is a Pennsylvanian native born in Pittsburgh yet raised in the rural town of Conneautville. She currently resides in Meadville. Her poetry, short stories, articles, and reviews have been published in a myriad of magazines both online and in print. Recently her two chapbooks A Mermaid Crashing Into Dawn (Fowlpox Press - June 2013) and Less Than A Man (The Camel Saloon - January 2014) were published. Her fantasy novel Amethyst Epiphany is forthcoming from Assent Publishing.