Disclaimer: I don't own Hetalia or any of it's characters. I'm also not making any money off of this either.
The Stolen Child
By Cyrelia J
Come away, O human child!
To the waters and the wild
With a faery, hand in hand,
For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.
He had no name but "boy". He was born when the world was young and the rivers were clear and the trees golden. His earliest memories were of the warm hands that held him and the shores of the endless sea stretching out before him like a dream. He remembered wandering, and following a pixie winged creature through the foothills at night, stumbling and cutting his small legs in the brambles. He could feel the earth beneath his bare feet and he could see her in his mind's eye as she flitted away effortlessly and he could feel the air turn chill.
But most of all he remembered the song and the shimmering circle of mushrooms in the darkness. He remembered the soft loam against his back and he remembered eternity encapsulated in one evening beneath the stars and beneath the very ground he walked upon. He remembered singing and remembered the moonlight bathing his golden head and his own pale skin iridescent as the fairies flew around him. He remembered returning breathless and young and infinitely hopeful and innocent.
They said that he had changed, they said that he'd been touched by the fae and they said that he was no longer one of them. They said that his hair had become unnaturally pale and his eyes inhumanly green. They said that his eyebrows had become monstrous and his countenance far too wise. They said he had brought the invaders to their land and they said he must never return.
He didn't understand why they had chased him with curses and fire and he didn't understand why his mother refused to look at him. He didn't understand why the stones hurt and he didn't understand why he bled. He didn't understand why they couldn't hear the music as it called to him and he didn't understand why they turned back when he came to the marshes near that seemingly endless sea. He didn't understand why the world was suddenly lit up and every tree and every flower called out to him as if he had a name. He didn't understand why he could suddenly walk on the cool waters as if they were nothing, and he didn't understand why the wind seemed to call out to him.
He didn't see the small body fragile and broken sink into the unforgiving marshes. He didn't see his mother cross herself and weep on the shore and he see didn't the true darkness of the world around him. He only heard the land call to him as if he were inside the most fantastic dream and he felt as if he were truly home.
Wessex... The world called to him. Arthur...England
