The forrest projects tantalizing wonderment and mystique through the crisp night air. Picturesque trees tower above the earth with branches twisting up to grab the sky. The landscape is frozen and eerily quiet despite the slight breeze. What is the reason the leaves refuse to rustle and no grass sways? The whole forrest is encapsulated in gold.

Over time this special forest evolved into local legend. Fatal Forest allegedly possesses so much treasure that even kings, with all their finery, would turn green with jealousy. Of course, this all strings from legend because everyone that enters never returns, hence the name.

Although the forest carries the blame for these treasure hunters’ disappearance, their greed is their real downfall. As the fortune seekers glimpse the golden interior of the forest, gold fever sets in and they rush to the trees. The irony is their greed completely blinds them to all their gold predecessors. The starlight illuminates their consistently maniacal, greed-twisted facial features, but the gold is a temptation they can’t resist. Then they suffer the same fate as they frantically, and unsuccessfully, claw at the gold in hopes of removing a chunk of life altering wealth. These rags-to-riches dreamers aren’t aware that gold slowly creeps up their legs and ravages their bodies until they are merely gold statues.

Thousands of these greedy adventurers litter the forest and exemplify the all consuming nature of greed, but none more than the young woman with the smile on her face. She was a princess from a different time, the gold encasing her delicate features and enhancing her innocence. She committed no sin to condemn her to this fate. Nothing other than the greed of her own father King Midas traps her forevermore. The princess’s smile commemorates how she felt toward her father so long ago when he’d presented her a golden rose. She stands there with the rose clutched to her heart.

“I’ll cherish it forever,” was her last words which turned out to be true.

The arm Midas placed on his daughter as a sign of fatherly affection was a careless act that subsequently turned her into a statute. After the shock that his daughter was now gold, Midas’s realized that this so called gift was a curse. With his goals so set on riches, he lost what he loved the most.

Midas starved to death because anything he put in his mouth it would transform to solid gold. Midas’s golden touch stole his happiness (his daughter) and his life. Buried in the middle of the beautiful forest, Midas’s curse remains enticing minds and leading the greedy to their deaths.

In the golden night, the echoes of Midas’s sobs for his daughter emanate from the landscape. His absolute heartbreak shrouds the beauty of the forest and the gold sparkles with a melancholy gleam. His life had been enough, if only he remained content. Rays of sunlight begin the day, and more materialistic madness leads men astray.