Mid-Week Flash Challenge - Week 278

This week's pricture prompt is by Cyril Rolando, a French digital artist over on Artstation, and they make some incredible art, the surreal but yet understandable art I love, worth a look. They call this one 'You Belong To Me'. 

I didn't want a standard fairytale, so I twisted this one slightly. 

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Legend

‘Legend has it he lifted the lid on all those bell jars that night, killing the lot of them. He believed that if none of them belonged to him, he wouldn’t let anyone have them.’

‘But they were just roses, Gran, surely they needed the air to help them grow?’

‘Oh no, my dear Michael, you misunderstand, they were far more than just roses, and they needed the glass to protect them. They were fragile and precious and full of magic. Exposing them killed them.’

‘But they’d grow back, wouldn’t they? Like all roses on a bush, they die off and then they grow again the next year.’

‘But these roses weren’t ordinary flowers. They represented a different woman, one with knowledge beyond that of any mortal person, a woman with gifted powers.’

‘Witches, Gran?’

‘Hush boy! Don’t be using that word around me! I’ll not have it! Just because a woman is gifted with more power than a man could carry in his little finger, doesn’t make them bad – the opposite in fact. Men liked to use such names to belittle and demean women, making them out to be monsters, to incite the killing of them – which they did plenty of on their pyres later.’

Michael was surprised by his Gran’s reaction, but still smirked. She was getting quite carried away with her tale, one a simple picture he’d found in an art history book had inspired.

‘Like the Salem Witch Hunts?’

‘Oh that was the tail end of it, my dear, far worse had gone on centuries before all over the world, but especially in Europe. That last showdown in the Americas was the start of the awakening.’

Michael frowned not quite knowing what she meant and was about to ask when she tapped her long fingernail on the page.

 ‘Oh no, women holding their power and themselves in flower buds went all the way back to long before the crusades – maybe centuries before that, no one knows anymore; books were not a thing back then, only word of mouth. And him,’ she tapped the page again, ‘he was the one that began the downfall. Before him, women were in charge and things were balanced and harmonious.”

‘You talk like you met him, Gran.’ Michael wondered if she had drifted into the land of make believe which she did sometimes.

‘Oh I never got to meet him, no; he was way before my time. But I met many like him. They made the world a dark place for many a century they did.’

‘And it’s not dark anymore?’

‘Oh no, dear, it’s been on the rise for a good couple of centuries now.’ Michael gave her a disbelieving side look. ‘I know your generation might not think so, with all this uproar going on and all this corruption coming out into the light. I know it seems like they don’t care and have all the power, but that’s not true. We have to see it all, you see, to be able to do something about it.’

“But no one is doing anything about it, Gran.’

She tapped the side of her nose. “That’s what you think, but we are.’

‘Who’s “we”’?

‘The roses that have been in hiding and gathering; they’re on the up rise again now.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘Who do you think is keeping them safe?’

She winked at him and he stared at her, his mouth dropping open.