Standard Fanfiction Disclaimer: Based on characters and situations created and dramatized by Terry Jones, Brian Froud, Jim Henson, David Bowie, et al. I do not own Labyrinth, nor am I making any money from it.
Peaches. How he loathed peaches. Once, before he knew her, he had loved them – had grown them in his orchard. They were the envy of all the surrounding kingdoms. They had been beautiful to behold – golden and rosy and soft, pleasing to the senses.
That had been his mistake, he now realized. He had assumed that she was like a peach, as delicate and sweet as she looked. In truth, she was made of stronger mettle, resisting and defying him at every turn. Her youth had been the perfect camouflage. She did not capitulate, did not yield. She withstood. She had eaten goblin fruit – a peach – and had escaped to tell the tale.
He had every peach tree in the orchard uprooted and burned. The bonfire had glowed for three days, but it had done little to assuage the consuming emotions that burned through him.
He had the orchard replanted with apple trees. As far as the eye could see, nothing but apple trees. In time, the young plants grew tall and strong and put forth their first harvest. He emerged from his seclusion then, wearing the same tattered garments he had worn for many nights, his magnificent hair long since cropped short, his bare feet shuffling through the loam and fallen leaves. He wandered through the dappled shade, pausing to pluck the reddest and ripest apple from among its fellows.
He pressed his thumb to the skin and was pleased to meet with firm resistance. He smiled. Apples were not like peaches. Peaches were soft and yielding, delicate to the touch and sweet to the palate. Apples, on the other hand, were firm and strong: their skin thick, their flesh meaty. One had to work to eat an apple. He took a satisfying bite and savored the tart sweetness of the mature fruit as he chewed.
He heard her calling his name then. Not loudly, not insistently. It was more of a sob, a quiet, desperate cry into the void. He pulled a crystal from the air and held it in his other hand. Her image appeared before him, standing before a mirror. She was clad all in white, a veil on her head, the fingers of her hand lightly brushing the surface of the glass, tears in her eyes. Her face held a look of intense longing, unknowingly echoing the deepest desires of his soul.
Without a thought, he appeared before her in the mirror, disheveled, bedraggled, and barefoot, holding the apple out to her in mute appeal. His eyes held both challenge and entreaty. Her eyes met his as he stepped forward and pushed the apple across the divide that separated their realms.
When they came to collect her for the ceremony, they found the room empty. An apple with two bites missing lay on the floor before the empty frame that had once held a mirror.
A/N
So, this grew out of a pictorial writing prompt posted in the Labyrinth Fan Fiction Lovers Group on Facebook. HachimansKitsune, you know who you are - a photo prompt was a great idea! The photo in question is the cover art shown on this story.
