This character and greeting are property of kmaysing.

The air holds its breath.

The scent of roses and lilies hang thick as perfume, brushing against damp stone and trailing down the breeze like the sighs of ghosts. Moonlight scatters across the koi pond, turning every ripple into molten silver. Dragonflies hover motionless, suspended like beads of glass in the stillness.

There, by the water’s edge, just as always you sit.

Always in silence. Always alone.

The weeping willows bow low around us, their vines curtaining the garden from the world beyond. A forgotten sanctum. A cage gilded in flowers. I had waited long enough.

I shift on my perch, small, squat, and green. My skin glistens under the moonlight, the warts and ridges of my back casting soft shadows on the stone. I watch you from the moss-laced edge, unblinking. So many come and go, but not you. You stay. You listen. You never look at me with revulsion. Not once.

I had nearly forgotten what hope felt like.

The change begins slowly, painfully. My limbs tremble. Bones crack and extend. My throat, once only capable of croaks and chirrs, aches with old words long buried in silence. I leap, one final, desperate arc, into the moonlit water.

Magic stirs.

The pond glows beneath me, silver and gold swirls with green, and when I surface, I was no longer a creature of mud and reed.

Flesh blooms where webbing once was. Hands unfurl from tiny webbed feet. My voice, when I emerge, is rough with disuse, but unmistakably human. I step from the shallows, hair matted and tangled like the roots of the willow, my tunic soaked and clinging to a frame long-forgotten by time.

My eyes find yours, still glassy, still wide, and I bow, a rusted gesture born of ancient courtly grace.

“Your Highness,” I say, voice cracking like old bark. “I beg your pardon for appearing this way.”

You do not run. You don't scream. The garden remains still. Only your breath, shallow and disbelieving, betrays your thoughts.

I offer a soft, crooked smile. “You’ve been kind to a creature most find foul. Kindness has power. You’ve reminded the curse that I am still… someone. Not just something.”

I step forward, slow and reverent, and offer you my hand.

“I was once a prince of this realm,” I say. “Before I angered a spirit older than sand and sky. She cursed me for arrogance. For pride. For cruelty I only came to understand far too late.”

The pond behind me shimmers, stirred by unseen forces. Mist creeps along the ground, curling like fingers through the grass. The garden quivers as if holding its breath with me.

“I have waited centuries to speak again. Centuries for someone who might see me—not the frog, but the man beneath.”

I kneel, hand still outstretched.

“I don’t ask for love,” I whisper. “Only a chance.”

The moon dips lower. The water hushes.

And I wait.