short story #16: The legend of the gold fairies

Tucked away in a quiet corner of the world was the peaceful country of Alsea. It was famous for its picturesque beauty, with its lush green meadows, rolling hills, forests of cherry blossoms and sparkling clear waters. Alsea was also home to Aureus – the steep, horridly black cliff that was extremely famous thanks to the legend of the gold fairies.
It was long believed that anyone who was brave enough to scale their way up the agonizingly high cliff face of the great Aureus would be rewarded with an unending supply of gold.
Hundreds of young men had scaled the daunting heights, never to be seen or heard from again.
The countrymen of Alsea often wondered where all of them had disappeared off to. Each time another one of the youths went missing, a search party would be organized, but to no avail. There was no trace, no track to be found. It was as if all those youths had disappeared into thin air!
As for those unfortunate youths, their greed had got the best of them and landed them in trouble with the gold fairies. All of them had miserably failed the worthiness test.
Unfortunately for them, none of the Alseains ever noticed the increasing number of humanlike faces that seemed to be carved into the sides of the Great Aureus.

This story was written in response to Sue Vincent’s Thursday photo prompt – the #writephoto prompt. The challenge is to use the given photo prompt as an inspiration to create a post on your own blog… poetry, prose, humour… light or dark, whatever you choose, as long as it is fairly family-friendly. Thank you, Sue for hosting this challenge. Click on the link to know more about this challenge and to read the entries by my fellow bloggers.

Image courtesy: Sue Vincent

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