flickr, random
Once upon a time there was a girl who lived on a cloud.
Her world was painted with light, fairy-tale colors, and nothing was ever taken too seriously.
She laughed, and the world shaked with laughter; she sighed, and rain fell from the heavens.
When she walked, she floated, and when she smiled, the sun shone brighter.
One day, from the distant, tumultuous lands of Iria, came a knight in blood-stained armor with a shining, glittering blade.
"Hark!" He cried, a mockery of himself, stumbling over his own leaden feet. "O! What woe more terrible has befallen my Majestic Land of Beauty....O, what woe!"
The girl ran to him, throwing away her initial precaution and wariness, to catch him before he tripped and fell through the cloudy ground.
"Good knight," she began, gently but firmly helping him upright. "Hear - let us go to the Get Better Well, and after a rest and a drink from it's healing waters, we'll all reune to the Banquet Hall for a meeting. There, healthy and clean, count us your tale."
The knight nodded, but as the two worked their way to the Well, he staggered and slipped more and more, until even with all of the young girl's strength, they could no longer make any progress.
"Woe," he murmured again. "What woe!"
The young girl felt unease rise in her chest, a taste of bile entering her mouth. Suddenly, a vision passed through her mind, and though the moment it was over she already couldn't remember it anymore, she had the distinct feeling that she had to get away from the shadowy armored man, fast.
As she was working up an excuse, she suddenly noticed a glint from behind the knight's head-plate, in the section covering the eyes. It was no particular color, but to her spoke of horrors and fears never before seen.
Without pretension, she lifted herself from the ground, picked up her skirts, and ran, shouting "I'll bring back help!"
She thought she heard a hiss come from behind her, and might have felt a phantom hand graze the back of her long, white dress, but to this, she paid no heed.
After entering the town and gathering help - because, even with her intuition, her book-knowledge of evil, and her vision, she couldn't leave a wounded person to die - the new group made to return to the knight's aid... but he was no longer there.
*
The next morning rose, warm and gently, as was the norm in the paradise of clouds. However, the young girl couldn't swallow the aching feel of discomfort that seemed to be just beyond the reach of her conciousness.
The clouds darkened, but ever so slightly, and nobody took much heed.
The next day, the same thing happened... and the next, and the next. With the changing of the clouds, came darkening moods - people became angrier, colder... and soon, before anyone actually realized, people were falling through the clouds like pebbles in a lake, weighed down by the strange darkness and hatred that had entered their hearts.
Finally, even the young girl was feeling a strain on her heart. Oh, how easy it would be to give into the sadness, the cold abyss of her heart, the black hole of her soul. Oh, what woe! She felt every bone of her being mourn with the loss of her friends, who had disappeared below the clouds, and her family, who had fallen much later, and with the coldness of the very world.
"O, what woe! What woe more terrible has befallen my Majestic Land of Beauty!" she felt herself crying out.
The clouds started to feel less real, and more like...something half-there. It was strange - one moment the ground was solid, a real, hard prescence under her feet, but slowly it was liquidifying, melting into water. She felt herself sliding down into it, but it wasn't quite like quicksand. It didn't fall in around her, crushing her, holding her in. More like...it loosely wrapped around her, caressing her, letting her know that she wasn't alone anymore.
"O, what woe!" she heard herself repeating, but this time quieter, as the grief seemed to fade away into the distance, and a numb empty feeling took over, holding her warmly and yet coldly at the same time.
And she, the last from the land of the clouds, fell from the sky... unremarkably, because it was the way of all the others... and yet so remarkably, at the same time.
PS I made a flickr. Add me to your friends list or whatever? Hehe. Click!