Each day, King Rivalen asked his son Tristan to go draw whatever insects he could find in the forest. It was a thankless life made of insect bites and itching. Tristan wanted better. One morning, crossing a path, he ran into someone he had never seen before and asked her if he could draw her. Isolde accepted without a word and almost made him forget about the insects.
Tristan's stomach began hurting shortly after their marriage. Isolde opened the big envelopes in which she carefully kept different kinds of rare herbs she had gathered in the forest, assuring him they were the only things that could cure him. But the pains got worse. By the time he realized that she was poisoning him with her plants, it was already too late. His days were numbered.
Tristan could not however resign himself to dying so quickly. He went to spend the time that was left to him in the forest. He knew that by living close to the insects whose life expectancy does not exceed a few days, his last hours would count as months and maybe even as years.
He spent the rest of his life wondering why Isolde had come to feel that time went by too slowly at his side.