Beauty is in the eye of the beholder!

"Vila! Stop reading those beauty magazines and get inside and mess up your room like a respectable little troll!" Vila was a troll that had beautiful blue eyes, silky long black hair, and was fairly skinny. She was the kid who got bullied and mistreated. She was the worst troll ever, to top on that! To us humans, she would be the best troll ever, as she was respectable in every way. She ate her fruits and vegetables and took water bathes, while the other trolls ate dessert and took mud bathes. Her greatest dream was to be as fair-skinned as the women in the beauty magazines that she read day and night.

Alas, just like all trolls, 20-year-old Vila had ugly, harry, warty, green skin. But this didn't dampen her spirits, oh, no. She had a role model. It was a troll named Treesa. This troll had wanted, when she was young, just like Vila, to be pretty. Treesa had been a scientist and using special chemicals, she had done the unthinkable. She had made a potion that turned her skin normal color. She looked like an elf (seeing as trolls have pointed ears), but a very warty, harry, ugly one.

Now Vila was a very smart troll, top of her classes, in fact. She thought that she could devise some way to become even prettier than Treesa! but until then, Vila had to stick to being a normal troll. Well, as normal a troll as she would get.

"Alright ma!" Vila ran to her room and shut the door behind her. She turned to face her room and made sure it was as she had left it. Clean and tidy. She shoved a couple of books on the floor, and then went into her closet. Now, you may think trolls are really weird already, but trolls can be weirder yet. Trolls all have their own mud bathes in there closet. Which means their closets are bigger then their rooms. Vila had taken the mud bath out and turned the room into a lab. She was very exited because she thought she was at a breakthrough.

"I am almost there! If only I could get a cherry." She whispered to herself. Don't ask me why she needed a cherry, but she did. Cherries don't grow in trolls gardens, because they are fruits. Vila had had to go out of town to get things she needed. The only fruits she could get were apples and pears. BUT, nonetheless, she was set, and I mean SET to get one. It was all she needed!

So, during the night, Vila snuck out of the house with a pack of apples and pears on her back. She was going to the only place she new cherries to be other then in the human world. to the Elves home.

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If you didn't know, the Elves and Trolls hate each other. They had been at war for centuries. But, nevertheless, exactly one month later, Vila peered through a bush into an elf village. She was staring straight in front of her. Across the street, there was none other than a fruit vendor. And right in her cart, there was a big bucket of cherries, surrounded by other buckets of fruit. All she had to do was wait till night!

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As I have told you, it was pitch black when Vila snuck out on the street. If the elves saw her, there was no telling what they would do. She snuck over to the cart and grabbed a hand full of cherries. She turned around to leave when she heard a voice.

"You know, you should really put that back." Vila whirled around to face someone in the shadows. A tall, blonde elf came out of the darkness.

"Unless you are going to pay for it, of course." He smiled, not a smirk, but a nice, friendly, helping kind of smile.

"I-I-I don't h-h-have any money." Vila was glad she had a hood over her face, because she felt embarrassed of her ugliness seeing him. It was like a truck had hit her. He was so handsome!

"Why are you hiding under a hood?" He asked Vila and smiled his warm smile again. She dropped the cherries and backed away. As she did this her hood fell off. So, away into the bushes she disappeared. "What's wrong?" He looked after her but she was gone. He put the cherries back, looked in her direction one more time, then left. Right then, she wished she were pretty so badly, one would feel a feeling of sadness 10 miles away. Vila sadly started walking away. She did not want to disappoint him by stealing, so she needed money. Just then, she heard the same elf's voice behind hers.

"Why are you leaving? I thought we were going to get aquatinted!" She was so embarrassed and shy, she didn't bother turning around. She just ran. He yelled after her, but she did not stop.  Before we go on, I would like to tell you that during her month in the wild, she kept losing her way. Trolls are strong and don't run out of energy half as easily as we do. So, if she had known the way, she could have ran and got 1 mile away from elves. So she ran and ran, unaware of the silent elf, running tirelessly behind her. ( Elves have more strength, too.)

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It was the morning after the elves. Vila had not even experimented once since then. She only looked up from her bed to look at her mother when she came in. Her mother said,

"Heavens, dear. Don't look outside."

"Why?" Vila asked.

"Nothing. Just don't look." With that her mother left. Vila did not wast a second. She jumped right up and went to her window overlooking the street. There was a procession outside. they had a wagon with bars made of wood on it as its sides. inside, their was someone she never thought she would see again. It was the elf! He had followed her all the way back here! Vila knew that she had to hide at the elves place, and she also knew elves should hide in troll territory to! They were probably going to have a trial, then kill him in some terrible way. He was looking up at her house, knowing she was in it somewhere.( He had watched her go in.) She opened the window and he caught sight of her. He pulled a little brown pouch out of his cloak and threw it up to her without anyone noticing. She caught it and opened it up to reveal a handful of cherries. There was a piece of paper written on in with it. It said,

"I paid for them."

Eron

Vila looked up with tears in her eyes at the passing wagon. Eron was looking at her with a half-hearted smile on his face. He knew his death was near. Vila ducked into her room and sat on her bed. She had the cherries. She did not need to take any side in this. She could just experiment until it was over. Until he was dead.

One minute later, Vila was in dark clothes and had her face covered. She might as well be going to her death, but just in case she lived, she didn't want to have people know her as the troll who did it , or she would be hunted down and killed. She ran through the streets and eventually made it to the rooftop of a roof  next to the town square. Eron the elf was tied to a post on a platform, trolls already piling bundles of sticks around him. She pulled out of her pocket five dark squares. She had discovered lots of smoke in her experiments and learned how to navigate through it. She through the "smoke squares" everywhere and climbed down to Eron. He saw her and smiled. She did not look up from untying him until he shouted "Watch out!" and she felt herself being bonked on the head with something big and hard.

When Vila came to,  she was tied to the same stake right next to Eron.

"Well, I can't blame you for trying." Eron stated, looking glum. Vila looked around at all the jeering faces of trolls and realized with horror that they weren't just jeering at Eron. She felt betrayed by her own kind, and wished that she was never a troll in the first place. She had not chosen to be one! Now it was all her fault, and she was going to cause so many people pain! She silently cried while the torch was thrown onto the pile of wood and the fire started.

Eron seemed to know what she was thinking, and whispered to her,

"You know, it isn't your fault. I didn't even tell my family where I was going." With tears streaming down her face, Vila answered.

"My mother won't know until at least tonight. I let everyone down. I wish- I wish-Oh!" Vila burst into tears again. The fire made it all the way around them and started closing in.

"Well, at least I made a new friend." Eron's blonde hair was matted to his head from sweat. It was really heating up. He tried to smile as the fire closed in. Vila felt Eron reach her hand and grab hold of it. She closed her hand on his in response. They closed their eyes, ready to die, but the crackling of the fire was overpowered by a yell and a giant hiss. Vila was soaked from head to toe and didn't want to let go of Eron's hand, but was to tired to argue as she was pulled away from the soggy wood.

When Vila woke again, she was lying in a hammock with strange clothes -elf clothes- on. She sat up and felt the giant bump on her head from being bonked. The door opened, and in came Eron.

"How are you feeling? Does your head hurt?" He sat down in a chair next to the wall.

"Fine. What happened?"

"My village friends saved us. And they came just in time!" He grimaced and Vila realized that he was a bit more red than usual. She bet that she looked like that, too. "Oh, and I have notified your mother that your here."

"Oh. Alright. But you know what I have decided?" Vila grew more certain as she asked him this question.

"No. What?"

"When I went to get those cherries, that was about the best thing and the worst thing that could happen to me." She looked at Eron.

"Why?" Eron smiled.

"Because I almost caused all that pain to people, It was stupid. I also realize it was stupid of me to want to change how I look on the outside. I know I am just fine on the inside. The only good thing that came of this was that I met you." Eron laughed and pulled out a charred pouch.

"Then we won't be needing this anymore!" He threw it in a trash bucket and stepped over to her. She stood and looked him in the eyes. "You know what I think we should do?" Eron asked her.

"What?"

"Go spread the word that the war is over." Vila smiled. She agreed with Eron. The war was stupid and needed to stop. And she and Eron were just the people-creatures- to do it.

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If I'm right, you're wondering how the story could end this way. But there is more. Legend has it, that those two ended up being wanted by the most deadly peop-creatures. They weren't outlaws or anything, they just spread the truth around. And after about a year or two, they were doing with their children, too. So let this be a lesson to you. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Vila had to learn this the hard way, but she knows, now, that just cause you seem strange or different on the outside, doesn't mean you aren't worth something on the inside.

Author's Note

I took a long time on this and it came out really long. But I hope you like it!