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This is not a fairy tale.
Or maybe it is. Not Disney, but the old world stories, a Grimm tale, a warning and a lesson rather than a sad tale with a happy ending and perfect hair.
Once Upon a Time (not so long ago) there was a boy who fell in love with a trickster, and the boy was a wolf but the trickster wore the shape of a woman and she burned his whole world to the ground. (Didn’t you know, sometimes the scariest monsters are the human ones.) The boy had a sister, whose eyes had turned red when the fire burned them out, and she took him by the hand and they ran and ran until the hit water again. (No matter where you run, you can’t run from yourself, this is what the wolf boy knows.)
Through guilt and pain and anger, the wolf boy turned into a wolf man (what makes a man a man? Oh how he had grown, but inside there is a little boy still, filled with grief.) and his sister heard a calling and followed it all the way home (there is no home, not anymore, just ashes and pain where love and family used to be). She never came back, that sister wolf, for someone wanted her red eyes for his own.
Once Upon a Time (not so long ago) there was a boy, a firecracker, lightening in a bottle, trapped in human skin. The boy had a mother and a father and a friend and it was enough to have them. The mother was a goddess, of the old kind, who knew how to harness lightening and make it sing. But even goddesses have battles to fight, hers was a long and hard and sad, but goddesses were meant for hearts and heavens, not the lives of men.
The lightening boy lost his mother and half his father on a hospital bed on a sunny day in May (she was only human afterall). He was broken but he was strong, he carried on (there is a weight in his heart and flint in his eye and tempered steel in his soul, but you have to look just right, just so to see it, and he knows all the ways to draw your eyes away.)
Once Upon a Time (not so long ago) there was a golden hearted boy. He was a happy child, with a mother who loved him and a friend that made him laugh. There was a man once, who walked out the door and never came back and he loved that man (loves, still, as a son does a father) and never understood. The golden hearted boy learned well (it is good to love, for his mother is a healer and taught him the power of it, for his heart is big and golden and there is room enough to hold the lightening boys sorrow and to help him laugh again, but some things hurt deep, and his father taught him something too) that there are some people who you cannot trust, people who should not have power over you.
Once Upon a Time (not so long ago) there was a fair maiden who was cherished by her family but isolated from the world (for wandering is a form of isolation, never able to grow roots, to thrive) raised to fight but in ignorance of why.
Once Upon a Time (not so long ago) a lightening boy took a golden hearted boy on an adventure in the forest (there is always a forest). It would be simple to say the big bad wolf got them, would it not? (What happened is just as much about a broken man as a feral wolf, for the wolf is not the one grieving.)
This was a pivotal moment, was it not? You could say this was when everything changed (you would be right but also very wrong, because everything is always changing and everything leading up to this point was pivotal and so is everything after, it was a moment, one of many, but that is enough) because the golden hearted boy became a golden hearted wolfboy (this is not a contradiction in terms and to be sure he was very human, as we all are.)
Once Upon a Time (not so long ago) in the forest (there is always a forest) three people became intertwined, fates linked (and in a way, one more, and another and another, we are all connected in so many ways).
Once Upon a Time (not so long ago) there were battles fought. There lies told and fingers pointed and bonds tested and promises made and broken and kisses exchanged and hearts broken and alliances formed. There was a princess who lost her way, a golden hearted boy who fell in love, lightening in the shape a boy trying not to drown, and a wolfboyman searching, fighting, trying.
Once Upon a Time (in the not so distant future) the ground will settle, the princess will forgive and be forgiven, the golden hearted boy will let his heart grow fonder, the lightening boy will use his spark to shine and ground himself in the heart of a wolf who will find his way home (home is not a place but a feeling and pack is another word for family).
Once Upon a Time (as time goes on) there will still be battles to fight and scars to be earned and lives to be lived and storms to be weathered. There is no happy ending, because there is no ending.
Maybe it is a fairy tale, maybe it’s not. This is a lesson. A lesson about curiosity, friendship, trust, bravery, foolishness, heartbreak, pain, healing, rage, fear and forgiveness.
And, well, the princess does indeed have very nice hair.