“Damned it! Where do that thing go?” A grumpy middle-aged farmer complained and impatiently tossing his belongings around, searching for “the thing”.

“Does,” a man who wore more refined clothing than the farmer, replied sarcastically.

“What?” The farmer asked roughly while continuing his search.

“Does, Bernard, Where does that thing go. Not do. Grammar.”

“For God’s sake Curt, losing that creature means losing the contract means losing money! Damned it, five thousand million! It's slipping through our fingers and you care about grammar?” Apparently, he was irritated.

“Don't curse. Bernard, calm down. There are two things in the world which can hurt my ears. One is wrong grammar, another is cursing.” Curt spoke out of a high manner, filled with a pretentious air. If his clothing suggested him a more gentle and humble manner, his words proved it wrong.

“Sh*t pissed off Curt! I'm not one of your students. Professor! If it wasn't you who……”

“Quiet! Listen!” Professor Curt, not as friendly as before, interrupted quietly with a serious tone.

Farmer Bernard immediately obeyed. The sense of class still had an effect when one acted it out.

“You hear that?” The Professor asked in a whispery voice.

Some noises passed by. Not clear for how it was made but it was outside the farm cottage.

Fearing that they might be spotted, little Aurora immediately regretted her careless move at the back gate.

“Rosy, we have to be careful,” Hubert, again, instructed patiently. Being as patient as he was, his capacity of manner would not prepare him for what he would see the very next moment.

“Ah!” He exclaimed at the creature next to his feet, a lady with skin in grey colour. If the skin was not peculiar enough for its colour, the pair of wings at her back would make the peculiarness more significant.

“Berty! It’s a fairy!” Aurora’s excitement of her fairytale coming true was immediately crashed after realising the fairy was actually eating a rabbit, rawly, with blood-stain at her lips. One would not care about what to eat and how to eat when one had been suffering from starvation for more than a month.

“Step back,” Hubert pulled Aurora to his back quickly when he sensed an unpleasant aura from that creature. He saw evil within her purple pupils burning like angry fire.

Shivering because of the ruthless weather, she glared, “If you don’t keep yourselves quiet, I’ll let you all taste…..”

“You are hurt,” Aurora noticed the abnormal of an ordinary fairytale character, instead of covering with glitter and pastel sleek, she covered with blood and scars. Gently, she caressed the wounds on her arms and asked, “What is your name?”

“Maleficent.” Coldly, she replied and slipped her hands away from Aurora’s.

“The evil fairy from Sleeping Beauty?” Hubert asked while judging her entire appearance, with his eyes measuring.

“Can we help you?” Aurora smiled, a smile that reminded her of Aunt Fauna.

If there was still a righteous part in her heart, it shimmered a bit at that moment, at those four simple words.

However, time wouldn’t permit a peaceful moment to stay long, it was gone with the sign of farmer Bernard’s shout, “There! I see her! There at the rabbit fence!”

“Why are they finding you? Why do they seem angry?” Aurora wasn’t aware of the urgency, continued asking questions she never planned to answer.

“She is evil and that’s why they’re catching her!” Hubert, though didn’t quite understand the whole situation, pretended to be an expert just because of remembering one of the bedtime stories Mrs Amadeus used to tell him - Sleeping Beauty.

Never did Maleficent place her fate in others’ grips and this time was no different. She didn’t care to defend herself in front of Hubert or even to say goodbye to the little girl who was the only one showing her kindness in this Realm. With only the hope to survive, she flew up to the air and fled.

Springing wide her wings, some fairy dust fell onto Hubert’s head which he later instantly grabbed a piece of dry leaf on the ground to catch the fallen magical dust. As they all once said, “Wish quickly at the fairy dust before it dusted away by the rushy wind.”

Of course, Hubert believed the folktale as every child would have. But it seemed rarer and rarer for such dream to be possessed in a child’s heart during those cursed years, after the cursed war…….

***

December 1941 (Berlin, Germany)

Snow was falling, the wind was howling, people were quivering and their heart was trembling. War was like a cyclone, it left and it came back. But this time it returned with an even mightier power. Humans created wars and now they were eating the fruit. Some might find it sweet, some might find it bitter, while the One and Only found it sour.

In the world of madness, right became wrong and wrong became right. You would not want to do the right thing because the cost was high. You might do the wrong thing as the right thing but nobody cared for the answer had long gone, gone with the ashes of bombs and bullets. Everything became chaotic and confusing and these became the excuses for mankind to blind their conscience.

Inside a luxurious black vehicle with the little-crooked cross sign that showed it was government owned, Hubert was staring at the window pondering something that was difficult to be read by others. At the glass window, his face was reflected with a shimmer of pride in wearing that uniform, a uniform of a Lieutenant Colonel, a uniform of the fallen. People, especially those hiding from their "wrong" identity, were holding their breath as the car drove past and relieved when it was gone from their sight. For Hubert, his heart could never be relieved from what he was pondering.

He believed there was a fault that he could never mend, it was from a miserable long past, a very dark and lonely and painful past…….

“What are you thinking this time? Don’t tell me it’s the musicality of that sonata again. I won’t hear it. You know how those classics bore me. I am not yet sixty so don’t make me.” Armond, his beloved friend ever since they joined the Hitler Youth, finally broke the silence with the sentimental soul sitting next to him. He just couldn’t stand him when he was being all mawkish and poetic inside his mind.

“Do you believe in fairy dust?” Hubert, now fourteen years older, asked a question that would surprise his peer fellow.

“Why, of course,” a sincere reply but his tone changed dramatically with a slight despise, “when I was four.”

“Well, I saw the dust once.” Hubert looked at the window again and sighed.

“You never told me this before. What did you wish for?” Casually cooperating in their conversation, Armond tried to respect his friend by continuing the topic he started, though the topic was quite ridiculous.

“I guess it doesn’t work. It doesn’t grant me what I wish for.”

“What did you wish for?” By now, his patience was revealed.

“I wish for her to come alive. I didn’t mean to bring her to the farm. It was my fault.” His guilt made his head bend down a bit, the pride that once seen on the reflection of the window was gone. Hubert continued, “Instead, it granted me a wrong wish. My sister came to pick me up from the orphanage that day and I could live with my family again.”

“Well, isn’t that great! It does grant you a good wish.” Hubert had to admit it, his best friend’s blue diamond eyes shined even brighter than his when he was smiling delightfully.

“But it granted me the wrong one. It traded my happiness with her life.”

“Come on, Hubert! You didn’t shoot her. The farmer did. Just get over it and stop being sentimental. The Fuhrer needs a man for our fatherland, not a woman.” Armond shoved at his shoulder firmly.

Of course, Hubert didn’t tell his only best friend for the entire story. Beloved readers, you have to understand, almost no lads wanted to be around him because he was a parentless child with a strange character. By strange, they meant quiet, cold and almost-never-smiled. On the first day of their Hitler Youth meeting, only Armond approached him and chatted with him. And only he performed Hubert his faithful promise as a friend.

As reasonable as it might seem, Hubert couldn’t scare away his only friend. So, he decorated his story by erasing the fact that they went to the farm to steal and the real fairy they saw and how Aurora suffered a bullet for him in the gunfight between the farmer and Maleficent.

“The farmer thought we were thieves and he shot us. He failed to shoot me but he shot Aurora, my only friend in the orphanage.” was the improved version he told Armond the day when they were playing truth or dare in a training camp.

The vehicle now had reached the slope and going into the forest that soon would end with a small trail road that connected with the doorstep of the Sebastian Bach’s Mansion. Its glamour beauty was the evidence for the splendid history of the family’s noble past. The shadow of the aristocratic family still covering the air around and within the property. To call it a mansion might sound a little off appropriate. Castle would sound better.

Given the knowledge of how grand the house was, both individuals had no excitement to the place they were heading to at all. But it would soon be understood that it all made sense. For lieutenant Hubert, his excitement was diluted by all the years living there. On the contrary, for lieutenant Armond, his excitement was taken away by constant similar comparison with his own family house after all those years of visitation.

“Does Mrs Bach know you are coming back from the station? Oh, and does she know that you are staying for the post in the office, in Berlin?” Armond asked patiently, trying to recall Hubert’s attention from the glass window back to himself.

“No, she doesn’t. Only papa knows. We are trying to surprise her.” was supposed to be his response when his words were stolen by a sudden encounter of his past. Outside, it was chill and bitter cold. Yet, on the snow laid a maiden who possessed a familiar face known by Hubert deeply, rooted with his guilt.

“It’s Aurora! Stop the car!” Hubert’s abrupt dramatic reply really gave his fellow a shock.

“Come on, Bert! It’s not our job to check on every fainted lady!”

However, his comment failed to stop Hubert from rushing out the car and getting to the answer he wanted for so long - that she was still living.

There, a familiar countenance was proving him that the fairy dust did work. Though it had been years apart, her grown features would not disenable him from recognising the one who saved his life, the one who was his only friend in the darkest period of his life. If his recognition was not enough, the necklace around her neck would give him an absolutely accurate answer which he wanted. That wood crafted rose charm, the necklace he made for her, was the iron proof.

“Aurora, Aurora,” Hubert recalled her name with gratitude that you wouldn’t understand unless you had seen a resurrection of the one you dearly loved. In his arms, warmer, but not warm enough to wake her up. Quickly, he brought her with him into the vehicle. With a new excitement on the way back home, he hoped that his wish would really come true this time.

“Bert, I think she’s dead. Her lips are pale and so as her face. She seems…..”

“Nonsense, driver please go faster. No, Armond, I’ve found her now and I’ll make sure she’ll wake up again!”

It was surreal and impossible. It happened in a way that was too sudden and without any logic. But it was exactly like what life had installed for him. Perhaps having endured all the peculiar and nonsensical moments in his life, prepared him to accept this peculiar and nonsensical moment.