General Story [ The tale about Victor ]

In the middle of the village stood a large dead oak tree, with branches reaching far up to the sky as if it tried to snatch the sun. The leafs had since long ago died and turned into a dusty brown color, but no less, remained clinging to their home. They had no intention of parting with their tree, much like the jackdaws perched at the very top of the oak. It was their home.
The strong pungent stench of fish, eel and wet firewood controlled the air throughout the settlement. The scent of salt from the water that crashed against the smaller shoreline of cold silvery stones battled for the control. But the winds were too harsh and too cold this time to allow it.
Upon the starry skies to come, like every night at fall, most men remained inside their smaller cabins. Most men appreciated the warmth inside the cabin. A warmth not coming from the crackling firewood by the cookingstove, or the dying candles by their windows. But from the love.

Love was something most unfamiliar to Victor. Victor was not like most men in this village. While most men were strong, strapping and cunning hunters providing for their families, Victor was alone. A scrawny slim creature. Ever since he got the little attention he ever got in this village, people decided to call him creature, rather than man. They had never seen a woman caring for him as a child, or adult. They had never heard his voice. They had never felt any scent from the creature. Even though most noses wrinkled at the sight of this rugged scrawny being that thrived at night upon their streets, nobody could recall any form of scent or sound from him. Everybody knew of the creature, but nobody saw any reason to even mention him. To the village, he was as important as the oak. They all knew it was there, they just did not bother with it.
Victor himself, had never noticed how alone he really was. Since the moment his eyes had been cleaned from blood upon his very first moment in this life, they had never glistered with emotion. They had never sparkled for anything. He was stillborn, yet alive. His eyes held the same color as the scales of a dead fish. Silver, black and gray. He could not recall ever uttering a single word. Perhaps he was mute. He was not too sure. His lips had always been clenched together, aside from when he would eat. A paste of peas and old potatoes mixed with saltwater from the shore, every day, three times a day.

How he survived on his own, and how he never got into trouble, nobody knows. The creature had never been approached, spoken to or rejected. He was a nothing of the world. And so far in his life, Victor had not been bothered to change this fact. Until the day, he realized that he was different.
That day, was six months ago, when the spring was still young. The grass was still brown, but eagerly wanting to turn green. Next to him, was a woman on her knees. Her hands had reached out towards the water. Victor had for a moment stopped his dinner to study the woman, who had perhaps not noticed the creature sitting so closely to her. Most never did anyway. The sound emitted from the woman seemed to hurt her very own core. Then something magical happened in Victors life.
A mans head appeared from the waters. And as the man came closer and closer towards the shoreline, more of the mans figure appeared from out of the icecold water. The ice was long gone, but the winds stroking the surface of the waters made everyone aware of how freezing cold the sea was.
As if presenting a great gift, the man hanged his head with his hands wrapped around a child in his arms. The child was small, perhaps four or five years old. Her dress in red and white was drenched and snug to her small figure. Her braids hung like two slim strings of white hair from the top of her head. For a reason unkown to Victor, the woman was not at all pleased with this gift. She let out a sound, that Victor from that day believed was the sound of a human breaking to pieces. She had pulled her hair out. She had been beating at the man, she had hugged the child, so closely she could almost snap the little girls spine in two. Victor studied the little girl and her blue lips. She had been just as vivid as he was as a child.
Tears streamed down the womans face and even the man started to weep at the sight. Victor however, had continued his dinner. Perhaps an outrageous gesture at such a mourning event as this, but Victor did not know better. And nobody cared either way, since he was just a mere creature.
Victor was at this point, still unaware of the impact this event would have on his life. But he slept just as calmly that night as any other.

The following morning, he sat down at the same rock as always by the shoreline, waiting for the sun to rise so he could eat his paste of peas and old potatoes. But he forgot to eat it. As his eyes fixed on the water where the man had crawled up the day before, he started to wonder. He could not remember ever shedding tears from his eyes. He could not recall anything that would even create such a thing. In fact, he did not have the slightest idea of what would ever cause someone to cry.
The thoughts grew in Victors head for each day. Instead of a paste of peas and potatoes, he remained sitting on his rock, pondering over the wonders of life that he never really had cared to notice before. The thoughts born from curiousity and innocence quickly grew into jealousy, and rage. A calm form of anger from realizing what he had been robbed from all his life. A frustration, a hunger to know. What is love?

For weeks, he snuck into the village private bookshop each day, stealing one book after the other that seemed to have anything remotely to do with love. He did not know how to read, but if there was a picture, he studied it for weeks. He did not understand them, but every summers night, he sat by the cathedral with his pictures. Hearts, arrows, broken hearts, death. The great ovens at the cathedrals cellar provided him with bodies of all types. Sometimes families. Sometimes children, sometimes men killed in feuds.

In a burning eager he had never felt before, he had ripped each body open with his bare fingers. Scratching through their clothes, their cold skin and into their core to find what he was searching for. He pressed his nose against their chests. Their insides pressing against his wide nostrils with a sticky clicking sound. He knew there was something in here, that was love. He chewed on their skin, sniffed at their hair and sunk his hands into them. But he could not find what he was looking for. Weeks came and went, the grass turned brown, to green, and back to brown. The warmth from the sun fading more and more.

Come fall, Victors mind was stirring. He had realized he was alone. But he did not know what he was missing, just that he was excluded. He tried to calmly watch the annual spectacle that arrived each fall to the village. The merchants. The auctions of cattle, and the sound of horses clopping about back and forth on the streets. Fishmerchants. And the flowergirls and the many many booths selling fresh fruits from the nearby city. He usually would wait until they all left and pick up the trampled flowerpetals and halfeaten fruit, but something caught his attention.
Long golden hair that danced wildly around to frame this tiny little freckled face. She had been there every fall perhaps, but to Victor, it was the first time he had ever seen something like her. She was about his age,and unlike most women he had seen, she was slim, scrawny and her dress was tattered. She hugged a basket close to her flat chest. The breeze moving from her to his seat against the oaktree whispered to him that she was carrying apples. Red sweet apples.
But a creature like Victor, would not just walk up to a girl. He would not speak, he would not do anything to her. So he sat and quietly and watched her for the day, until the sun finally set against the salty waters on the horizon. He saw her leaving, and without thinking, which was rare for Victor since that was all that he did lately, he followed her.

The sweet scent of fresh apples was so clear through the otherwise fish reeking village that he could almost see the color of the scent floating in the air, leading him closer towards her resting place. A simple tent glowing with a color of sand from a mere candle inside lied straight ahead. The sky had managed to turn into a deep blue as he had creeped slowly after her. Why she had set her little resting place so far outside the village, away from the warmth, lights and people he did not understand. He sat down on the cold dirty ground by the small cloth that was now the only thing keeping them from seing eachother.
For the first time in his long and lonely life, a light flickered in his eyes. Not from the reflection of candles from looking into windows. Not from the glittering stars at the sky, not from the reflection of scales and shiny clamshells from the shore, but from himself. She was not a girl. She was like him. A creature. It all made sense now to Victor. She was a creature just like him. This was his final chance, to find out what love is! Finally he was awarded with a companion that held all the answers. He would finally know what he had been robbed from all his life.
His bare knees scraped against the gravel that lies on top of the cold dirt as he crawled his way into the tent. The small tent oozed of apples, and warm cloth. And against the right thin wall of the tent, she lied peacefully, curled up under a pile of her own clothes. He studied her chest and how it moved up and down. Victor knew this was a crucial moment in his life. The beginning of something big, and his time to feel love. As he crawled closer to her, he felt her warm breath coming out her freckled nose and stroking up against his arm. Her lips were as thin as his own, but more red than his has ever been. And her hair had somehow managed to turn golden, while his was of a dull ashen color.
His hands ached to press against her skin, to feel her closer than he ever had been to anything living being before. But something happened then, that Victor did not intend.
Her sharp green eyes had somehow opened, and were fixed on him. In disappointment, he realized, she was not a creature like him. Her eyes sparkled with emotions from the second she had noticed him. Her lips had spread enough to let out that breaking sound he had heard that spring.

This would usually be the moment where he would feel nothing but curiousity to the emotions. But this time, the impact of what he had seen six months ago, hit him hard. Victors hands lunged for her mouth, trying to save her. He knew that sound, was going to break her. Like it had with that woman by the shore. She scratched at him, and she cried. And Victor knew that she was breaking. But something inside him wanted to save her from it, perhaps her golden hair and her freckles that smelled like apples. But the harder his rough hands pressed against her, the colder he felt inside. She was so soft, and sparkling. She cannot break, not yet. She was going to teach him what love is.

Victor did not know of many things. One of these things had been love. Another was death. But the moment her eyes stopped glowing and reminded him of his own eyes, he knew she was gone. Just like the cold bodies at the cellar of the cathedral she remained silent. He knew that he had failed to save her. She broke. Victor had no idea why she broke to pieces before him, but he blamed himself for not being able to stop that sound emitting from her mouth. And her tears had left her eyes, to stream out from his own. Like a hungry monster from a fairytale his hands started to scratch at her body. Lifting the pile of clothes to reveal her figure to him. He started eating her with his tearfilled eyes. From her toes up to her hair. He tugged at the soft golden hair until it ripped from her head. His hands searched through her skin, scratching it raw until it open like sliding doors for him to explore her. She was still so warm and soft. He pressed his lips against her, his nose against her cheek to savour the sweet scent of apples. She was not a creature like him. He knew this now as he cradled her raw heart in his hands before devouring it. This was love. That night was the first time Victor felt he did something entirely and purely out of good. He ate her lips, her eyes , her sweet freckle-decorated flesh, and did not stop until two days later when there was nothing left of the girl but bones and stray hairs of a golden glow. And each time he had swallowed, he had felt a warm feeling inside of him that he took for granted as love.

That morning many strong hands grabbed the creature and dragged him out from the tent. That morning, they had finally found where their beloved girl with the apples had gone. The creature had taken her. Loudly and violently Victor had become very intresting to the village. He could barely see from the blood on his face. The cries pierced through the calm village at its discovery, but Victor did not hear any of it. As he got dragged away from the remains of the girl, he ached throughout his body. He fought, to crawl back into the tent for her, but the men would have none of it. At the sharp hit of a blunt tool, his world went dark.
As he woke, he was parted from her. He licked his fingers before even looking around the small cell they had captured him inside. He was filled with a warmth, a sweetness he had never felt before every second the taste reminded him of her. The mere memory of her scent brought a peace to his mind and soul that he had never felt. Everything was in color, and raw. As the taste was vaguely lingering on his tongue, he grabbed for his chest.

Victor had finally realized where the feeling came from. It was not from her, it was from himself. It was inside of him. His fingers itched again, this time at his own skin. He felt love, so raw, so violently and so unmerciful. It was his own heart, breaking at the taste of hers. He had love but lost it. The warmth it had brought him was now cold as the sea outside or the stonefloors of the cell he was locked inside. And for the first time, his lips parted. His dirty fingernails sunk into his own chest.
A loud cry had echoed throughout the village that night as a creature found out what true love is.
The following morning, all that was left in the cell was a pile of crudely scratched up flesh that the rats hungrily were feasting upon. Only a heart that had rolled out from its home and to the middle of the floor was left un-touched.

The oaktree in the middle of the village was known to everyone.
And they all knew it was dead, they just did not care.

One of my favourites <3. But you already know that