Beyond the understanding of love and life, there lived a troll beneath an old stone bridge.

He had not always been a troll who hated the world.

Once, many years ago, he had loved a woman. She was beautiful — not only in her face, but in her heart. She was kind, gentle, and everything he believed he could never have. The troll knew he could never be a part of her world, so he kept his love hidden. He wanted desperately to tell her how he felt.

But he never found the courage.

Years passed.

And then, one day, the woman died.

The troll never got to tell her that he loved her.

That regret broke something inside him. He wandered for days, arguing with himself about life, love, and what the world had done to him. Eventually, he came to a bridge in a distant land. He sat beneath it, staring into the darkness and wondering whether there was any reason for him to continue living.

He was angry.

He was lonely.

And most of all, he was hurt.

So he stayed beneath that bridge.

Years became years.

But something unexpected happened.

The troll began to remember the love he had lost — not just the pain of it, but the beauty of it. He began writing poems beneath the bridge. At first, he wrote only for himself.

Then people began coming from miles away.

Couples heard about the mysterious troll who lived beneath the bridge and wrote beautiful poems about love. They would sit near him, listening to his words, and ask him to write poems for them.

The troll became known throughout the countryside.

He was still lonely, but at least he was giving other people something he had once been too afraid to give himself.

Then, one day, a blind woman came to the bridge.

She came alone.

The troll heard her footsteps and called out.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m well,” she answered.

“Are you here with someone?”

“No.”

The troll chuckled softly.

“I usually write poems for couples.”

The woman smiled.

“I’ve always wanted to hear one of your poems.”

The troll looked at her. She was blind, yet there was something peaceful about her.

So he wrote her a poem.

She listened quietly.

When he finished, she thanked him and walked away.

The next day, she returned.

And the next.

Almost every day, the blind woman came beneath the bridge to listen to the troll’s poems.

Eventually, the troll began looking forward to her visits.

One evening, she said, “I want to come down there and meet you.”

The troll became nervous.

“You don’t want to do that.”

“Why?”

“Because you might not like what you see.”

The woman laughed.

“I’m blind. It doesn’t matter what you look like.”

The troll was silent.

Finally, he said, “All right.”

She carefully made her way beneath the bridge.

When she reached him, the troll held out his hand.

But she stopped him.

“Before you touch me,” she said, “can we talk?”

“About what?”

“About why you became the person you are.”

The troll had not told anyone his story in years.

But something about her made him trust her.

So he told her everything.

He told her about the woman he had loved. He told her how he had been too afraid to confess his feelings. He told her how she died before he could tell her. And he told her how he had carried that regret beneath the bridge for years.

The blind woman listened.

She did not judge him.

She simply reached out and held his hand.

“You loved her,” she said.

“Yes.”

“Then perhaps your mistake wasn’t loving her.”

The troll looked at her.

“Then what was my mistake?”

“Not telling her.”

The words stayed with him.

From that night forward, the woman remained beneath the bridge longer and longer. She listened to his poems. He listened to her stories. They laughed together. They argued. They dreamed.

And without either of them realizing it, something began to grow between them.

Love.

One evening, the woman said, “I think I’m falling in love with you.”

The troll froze.

“You can’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you don’t even know what I look like.”

She smiled.

“I know exactly what you look like.”

The troll was confused.

“You can’t see me.”

The woman touched his face.

“Not with these eyes.”

Then she told him something she had never told him before.

Her sight had begun returning. At first, she could see only shadows. Then shapes. Then colors. Slowly, day by day, her vision became clearer.

She had been afraid to tell him because she didn’t want him to believe she was staying because of what he looked like. She wanted him to know that she had already fallen in love with the person beneath the face.

“I see you,” she whispered.

The troll’s eyes filled with tears.

“You really see me?”

“I do.”

She looked at him — not as a monster, not as a troll beneath a bridge, but as the man she had come to love.

Then she said the words he had spent his entire life wishing someone would say.

“I want a family. I want a life. And I want it with you.”

The troll had spent years believing he was unworthy of love.

But now, for the first time, he understood something.

Love had never been about being beautiful.

It had never been about being perfect.

It had never even been about being able to see.

Love was about being seen.

The woman took his hand.

The troll leaned toward her.

And beneath the old bridge, where he had once sat alone wishing his life would end, they held each other and kissed.

For the first time in many years, the troll was no longer hiding from life.

He had finally found his way back to it.

And perhaps that is the lesson of the troll beneath the bridge:

Sometimes we spend our lives waiting for someone to see our beauty, when what we really need is someone who can see our heart.

Sometimes love is blind.

Sometimes love is ugly.

Sometimes love is unexpected.

But when it is true, it sees what the eyes cannot.

And sometimes the person waiting beneath the bridge isn’t waiting for someone to rescue them.

They’re waiting for someone to remind them that they are still worth loving.

—

A Xhale Chronicles Story

By Kendrick Howard | Letters From Xhale

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Author’s Note

The troll’s greatest mistake was not loving her. It was staying silent. Fear convinced him his feelings were too heavy for anyone to hold — and so he carried them alone until they became a bridge he lived beneath. Sometimes the bravest thing we can do is simply say what we feel before time takes the chance away.