Rose Elf Stickers

The Rose Elf is a short story by Hand Christian Andersen, that I read as a child. My parents had a couple anthologies of his work, and I really took to them, much to their dismay. The Rose Elf is a particularly macabre story, involving the death of a lover at the hands of a disapproving brother. Our grieving widow plants her lover’s head in a pot with cuttings of a jasmine bush, watering them with her tears until she passes from a broken heart. Her brother claims the now thriving jasmine bush as his own, putting it next to his bed. Upon witnessing all this, our Rose Elf tells the tragic story to the elves of the jasmine, who take revenge on the brother in his sleep.

It’s an awful story, really. But it’s always stuck with me. So I made these. Even if I am the only one to use them, I’m glad they are out in the world now.