A Cautionary Tale of Beauty and Age and Wisdom

  A long time ago, when the woods were greener and the skies were bluer, there lived a girl. She was strange, they all said, for she'd spend every day, of every year, wandering the forest dressed in nothing more than a thin white dress. Upon her feet she wore the kiss of damp moss, on her arms the cold wind knitted dreamy sleeves. Frost gave her skin a natural pallor, and growing wisdom had made her brown eyes deep and beautiful.
  In the middle of the forest, in a place more secret than legend, lay a pond. Its thin and icy surface portrayed more than a mirror - the pond's skin was opaque with both the translucency of truth and the transparency of lies.
  It was on an ashen midwinter's day that the wandering girl found this strange little watery place in the beating valve of the wood's heart.
  Kneeling, she sat beside the pond's waters. The green grass was soft on her legs, and the lonely tears were hot on her cold skin, 'Tell me,' she whispered, 'Tell me, what am I?'
  And the pond replied, its voice hollow with centuries of depth, 'You are the winter hare. Your eyes are alive with caution, your body steeled against the onslaught of the seasons. You have long legs and you can run with the wind, engulfed in rushing colours and suffocating in pure air. You are the hare, and a hare always sprints alone.'
  But the answer wasn't right, it was too true, and she knew as well as anyone that even the most honest man is a skilful liar underneath the layers of pretence, 'No, tell me,' she tried again, 'Tell me what I am.'
'You are an eagle,' rippled the pond, 'You fly high and proud in the skies. Inhaling, you breathe in the ecstasy of flight and pay for it dearly. There is no such thing as a painless narcotic, a painless escape, and the eagle always glides alone.'
  Still though, the answer wasn't right. Behind the pond's old sentences, the girl could taste poisoned dishonesty, 'I do not see the truth in your assumption,' she cried, 'Tell me, tell me what I need to know.'
  Silence knocked the wood sideways.
  'You need to know why you're so lonely,' Sighed the pond, a distant echo of a cascading waterfall.
  Closing her eyes, the girl inclined her head, 'Why am I all alone? Please... Tell me pond...'
  Around her, the trees rustled. But there was no answer. No truth.  In the sky above the clearing, moulded clouds shaped a crowded heaven.
  'Because,' the pond finally answered, 'You see shadows where others see light. You see light where others see shadows. You see life in leaves and hear voices in ponds. You are the queen of the forest and the soul of nature. The hare runs in your heart, the eagle flies in your lungs, nervous mice cower in your gut instinct. You are everything and nothing. Narcissus and Echo, life and death, beauty and age and wisdom.'
  And this time, when she stood up, she felt fulfilled. A golden band rested upon her silken hair. A new truth, a new beginning flared on her frozen lips. She was not alone, a thousand hearts pulsed with hers, a million lungs breathed with her, a myriad of thoughts cluttered and fed her mind. She'd been handed the golden key of heaven, and it was only slightly rusted. Using it, she unlocked her way into a new paradise.
  Blood was matted in her blonde hair, leaking from a crack in her skull. Her lungs were flooded with water. Somebody had hit her whilst she was knelt beside the pond. Somebody had killed her. Death had come the girl's way simply because no one understood her.

And, as time was to prove, nothing is more deadly to mankind than fear of the unknown and misunderstood.