[fic] Wisteria: Chapter I
Title: Wisteria
Notes: Original characters belong to me, foolishy@gaiaonline, minsuil@gaiaonline, and anyong kim@gaiaonline.
Summary: Childhood is grand, but everyone has to grow up sometime.
Chapter I
The princess lives in a world of glass, carefully wrought and forged from sand and fire, suited to the flash of light, sparking up in tiny bursts of white-hot brilliance. Her walls are patches of exquisite colors, made to imitate life and fantasy. She does not mind this daily dream, drifting to and fro without ever taking steps upon the ground, but she has been raised to live and thrive in this sparkling cage of impossibilities.
It is not until she is asked one day, "What do you want to be, my dear little princess?" that she begins to think. She tries to see and follow her father's eyes, for all say that he is wise and good, but even though most people smile back and pat her head, something in her heart lurches when she goes on parade. She sees the dirty alleys her parents will never let her explore, the thin, water eyes of children her age - children that could be her friends! - looking up from their filthy rags to watch her.
That is the first night she cries without knowing why. There are many more times after.
She cries at night, when her kind companion is gone and she is all alone. There is no sun to set the glass to flame and tonight the moon has flown to a far away place. Her hair is smooth and neat as she obediently braids the silken length, but her eyes begin to water before she is done. The princess is used to company, to people laughing and playing around her; it is their joy that lends her world its arresting charms. Sometimes she thinks she sees something sad in her friend's eyes, something sad and not right festering away with every deliberate movement when he polishes his gun, so she promised him that she would be a good princess and one day she would have him smile all the time, because that is just how happy he will be.
It doesn't change the fact that she cries at night, softly and unmoving as the tears slip down the curve of her rosy cheeks and darken the silk of her pillow. Maybe this is how those children on the street had felt and suddenly she wants to leave. She wants to leave this place and do something about their sadness, right now, without waiting. But she cannot do it alone - it is a shocking realization to find that she is so weak by herself, unable to do the simplest of things.
Sadness begins to take root in her smile, in the light of her eyes, but she is saved by him.
He kicks in the door and shouts her name; his eyes are frantic and driven, the most intense color she has ever seen. They leap from corner to corner before he sees her and her heart stutters to a halt. The grin that curves his mouth - the pure, undiluted focus of his passion - suddenly brings all her dreams rushing back, lighting every shadow and every frame of her mind. I can do it, she thinks; she can do it because he is here. It is illogical and irrational and now he is pulling her into his arms and she thinks she is going to melt away because the dizzying fever of hope has finally come to fruition. She did not know she had been missing him until this moment. "You will be safe now," he whispers into the shell of her ear and they are the words she has been waiting for.
The princess clutches lightly at his shoulder, unable to ignore the press of his hand at the small of her slender back or the steadiness of his arm beneath her stockinged legs. She will cry one day because of him and because of herself. She will cry one day because the world will say that they must never be.
That is the day that the princess who lives in a world of glass shall take her beating heart and shatter those walls.