Why The Rose Has Thorns

• Bella Clarke, Grade 8, Matthew Flinders College
• Short Story
• 2015

Excellence Award in the 'The Write Track 2015' competition

As the goddess wandered down the extensively long hall of the palace, the dim light pranced around the hall making her long golden hair gleam. Her smile was pearly white and the train from her scarlet dress flowed exquisitely behind her delicate footsteps. The men were seduced by her beautiful and petite face and the women were envious, jealous and desirous of her looks and charms. Her name was Rozalia named after a flawless flower; the rose.

One of those envious women was Asvoria, a goddess barely half as beautiful as Rozalia. She was a powerful, dark and mysterious sorcerer, spending her life in the shadows of the enormous and bewildering palace. Potions and spells were her life’s work and no men enjoyed her dull and boring company. Asvoria persisted so hard to accomplish beauty like Rozalia but always seemed to fail.

Rozalia had bullied Asvoria for being different, mismatched and unbelonging compared to the other goddesses. Some nights, Asvoria would cry myself to sleep, making pools of tears around her bed wishing that she could make Rozalia mean and ugly with her dark potions. With all this negativity, Asvoria’s heart was twisted and turned dark creating a sense of revenge on Asvoria. Thoughts began to ramble through her mind, suggesting that Rozalia was maybe using powers to make her beautiful, but Asvoria had never caught her using dark magic.

While the sun was just awakening from it’s beauty sleep, Asvoria quietly tip-toed down the palace on her way to complete a potion she had yet to finish. Dew droplets stuck to the small, narrow and curved windows like sticky tape and Asvoria happened to notice that Rozalia’s milky white door was slightly opened. The curious hawk eyes of hers peered into the clean and tidy bedroom and spotted Rozalia spraying her ‘perfect self’ with a strawberry scented perfume.

Becoming suspicious, Asvoria bolted into the room like a speeding car and snatched the small glass bottle out of Rozalia’s elegant hands. On the label of the bottle it wrote “loves spell” in pink cursive writing. Asvoria was furious, raged and wrathful! The men were only seduced by her because of this toxic perfume. Asvoria threw the bottle down on the white rug below her scrawny feet and it shattered into millions of tiny pieces. The pink liquid gushed out and seeped deep into the now ruined rug.

Using her potions, Asvoria destroyed Rozalia keeping her pretentious spirits with her. Asvoria then transformed them into hideous brown thorns and begun placing them on each beautiful green stem of every gorgeous rose that ever existed, turning it twisted and evil like Asvoria was once .

The beautiful and flawless rose now became a plant of beauty on top and evil underneath.