Once upon a time in a land where the sun
seldom shone, there lived a woman who dreamed of better things. She longed for
storybook flowers to bloom outside her window. She yearned for just a tiny
glint of something warm to seep into her room, for just one ray to break
through the glass. She hoped upon hope for a visitor. But every day was dark,
and every night was the same as every day.
As time passed, actions were drowned by
thoughts. She ceased bothering to sit at the table or change the linen. She stopped
even intending to polish the silver or vacuum the rug. No one ever called. No
matter how hard she wished they would.
Then one day, one dark day in January as
she sat illuminated by the bright gleaming notes of her favourite song, she
had a thought. A new thought. Not one of those ideas that bumps around forever
until its corners are worn and its edges tatty, but a sharp pointy thought.
‘Maybe it’s not here.’
You see she’d never been beyond. She came from a family that had never
dared. They were safecollectors, generations of them gathering up sameness and
security to pad the walls of their lives as the darkness grew around them. And
because of that, she too had been no more than a dreamer — an imaginer of
otherness for so long that she had become lost to herself.
And so, fearfully, she set forth for the uncertain with
only the music in her head to light the way.
