There was once a time in a distant land from another time a kingdom.
In that kingdom was in it’s core, a magnificent and exuberant castle.
And in that castle, there lived for a long time a king that lived by honor and by being in service to his people, and a queen that shined by her enthusiasm, compassion and kind spirit.
Years have passed and seasons went by and nothing seemed to disturb the prosperous time in that idyllic land.
Some time later however, if you could have been a fly on the wall in one of the chambers of that castle, you would for once no longer see optimistic royal couple. Sadness was in the air. Both the king and queen seemed to be missing something and both were feeling like they were letting their kingdom and their elders down. They had attempted to have an heir to the throne but somehow, it was not happening.
Further months went by and the queen’s sadness turned into desperation and then into depression.
One day she went into a part of her kingdom where the woods were a river and a cascade was loud enough for her to feel she could open her heart out and cry as loud as she could without fear of getting heard by anyone passing by. The Queen found a spot by a rock pool where the waterfall was the loudest and started to feel her heart filling up with sorrow. Her heart felt heavy, the back of her throat felt very tight, and her face became almost unrecognizable due to her despair and pain.
At that moment, the queen caught some noise coming from behind her. Someone was approaching and she tried to wipe the tears of her face and regain some composure when she finally saw the silhouette of a elderly woman smiling and walking with a stick. The old lady kindly asked the queen what was the reason behind those tears? The queen answered that the king and her wanted to have a baby more than anything in the world but, that it had been now years without signs of that happening and felt she was letting everyone down.
The elderly lady, approached her gently and with a smile and replied that she understood completely and took her in her arms. After a few moments in the embrace, she continued with :
-”You know, what my dear Queen? Tonight is the Full Moon…. and I think I know exactly what you need, and I think I know exactly what you need to do.”
The old lady, noticed how the Queen had frozen in her arms and had stopped sobbing. Therefore she continued taking her hands on her face and looking into the queen’s eyes:
-“You will take a wooden cup and fill it up with the water from this stream and add a few of your own tears of sincerity from today in it. You will take it back to your private room and before going to sleep tonight, you are going to pray to that water in the cup in your hands for a child from the bottom on your heart and present it to the Full Moon and let the cup rest with the water in by the window, where the moonlight can reach it.”
The old lady made sure the queen was understanding and proceeded with the next set of instructions.
-“Then you will go to sleep. When you wake up, the first thing you will do upon waking up, will be to go and reach for the cup that got all the light from the moon overnight. And if you had really prayed to that water from the bottom on your heart, then you will likely see two little flowers right next to that cup. One white. One red.”
At that instant, the tone of her voice started to sound much deeper, slower and dark.
-“ My beloved queen, you put the white flower in your mouth, drink the water containing some of your tears and your prayers then you swallow the flower altogether and you will have the most handsome, kind, wise and strong son and the future heir to the throne.”
The queen started to lighten up and could not believe that what she was hearing could be possibly true. But she nodded and then thanked this mysterious old lady. Gave her one last good squeeze before getting up and releasing one last sigh of relief, for what could possibly be the most unexpected and magical ending to a long period of guilt and sorrow.
The queen then went back to her castle with some water from the river in a container she had; added some of her tears to it the best she could, and started preparing for her important ritual of La Dernière Chance that very same night.
Pictures taken in Klitmøller, Danmark.