The huntsman had not intended to go that far into the woods. He knew better than to cross the boundary stones. Every human did.

  But Aric was tired of eating soldiers' rations. He needed protein, and a deer would feed his men. Meat to power through the Elves’ latest attempt to dim their spirits. So he went to hunt a deer in the southern forest, well on the Human side of the boundary.

  Deer, it now seems plain to say, do not know when they are on the safe side or in enemy territory.

  Aric loosed an arrow, which struck the deer. But he was weak from hunger and shaking, and what usually would have been a killing strike from an adept huntsman, this time, was not enough to kill it right away.

  He tracked the blood as the deer darted west, and then north some, and then east and north again. Foolishly, he did not realize fully when he was stepping over the border stones that divided the men from the elves. White quartz covered by the yellow and orange fallen leaves.

  As he approached the deer, who had stopped for a while to lick its wound after hours of tracking, he raised his bow again for a kill shot.

  Both were startled by the sound of breaking glass and a cry of some wounded animal. It spooked the deer and huntsman alike. The deer tearing off into the thick woods and the huntsman, thinking perhaps a dying animal might still make a good meal, decided to find the source of the wail.

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  Sitting on a small rock next to a sapling was the smallest child the huntsman had ever seen. She was alone no longer and smiled upon him with a grin that made his lips involuntarily curl upward.

  Not a human, not an elf, but akin to both, the fairy child fit in the palm of his hand. She sat there, pleased with the company, cross-legged, radiating a kind of joy. And they talked for a while.

  Until the huntsman heard the rustling of leaves behind him. Thinking it was perhaps the deer, he spun abruptly, narrowly avoiding the glass sapling underfoot.

  It was not the deer, but an elven woman with her bow pointed directly at his heart. But she too saw the fairy’s smile and it lit up her heart to see such joy.

  Alas in this moment, the sapling was saved. While too weak in its naissance to overpower the fairy’s spark, its dark energy had lured the elf to discover them.

  Saved too was the fairy. And that day as an elven soldier dropped her bow when standing before a human man, the fairy’s spark of joy grew. And they talked a while as she

  escorted him to the border stones. This is how a great love story began between the human man and elvish woman, despite their peoples being at war with one another.

  From then on, wherever the fairy went there seemed to spring a cosmic or kismet luck. While the war did not end all in one day, each time a human child chose not to throw a rock at an elf’s window, or an elderly elf decided not to dwell on ancient grudges, the fairy happened to be nearby.

  But the glass sapling grew also, and darkly twisted its trunk became. The branches looked silvered, or perhaps cracked with ash. The tree’s few blossoms that grew resembling glass thistles, which bore bitter, cold fruit more pit than nectar. Puzzlingly enough, though there was only one who ever knew why, whoever or whatever crossed paths with this tree so too turned to darkness.