Princess

Princess

~*~

She sits in solitude, chin resting against her arms, watching. Scanning
the horizon. Her hazel eyes deliberately overlook the row upon row of
delicate flowers in the garden below, the gentle calm of the rippling
stream, even the lofty treetops. Those determined eyes have only ever
aimed beyond all those things. Because they're too trivial, too near,
and she yearns for what's far away. The horizon is all she's ever seen.
It's all she thought she needed.

Up inside her tower, she dwells. Yet she's no fairytale princess. She
knows that. Princesses are kind, good and innocent. They don't cause
pain. They wait patiently in their towers. Deliberately alone until
that nameless, faceless prince makes his appearence on the horizon,
gold against the backdrop of the rejoicing sky. It always happens that
way.

She wonders why she hasn't allowed herself ever to focus on anything
other than that euphoric moment. Why it has weaved itself like a false
spell around her head, her heart, around her soul until she has become
so sensitive to the conjured notion. Hanging steadfast to that
expectation. Frustratingly stubbon, she digs in her pretty heels. She
will forever wait. Even if it kills her. Even if it kills another.
Because she never believed it would.

She's almost losing hope now. She tries not to admit it to herself.
Gradually. Slowly. Ever so slowly drifting. Once the horizon appeared
so much more intriguing than the garden around her. It held hope, it
fueled her aspirations. He would come, she was sure of it. She could
taste him on the air. Sweet, she imagined. That nameless, faceless
prince would come. He was getting closer by the year. Closer to her
horizon. He's just over the next hilltop, she would console herself in
her bleakest moments. He'll come. He will.

But he doesn't. He never comes. Sometimes she'll see a face from her
window and dare to glance again. Down in the garden. He'll catch her
gaze and hold it for a long, pointless moment. It isn't him. It isn't
her prince. He has a name and a face, that boy. She wants the unknown.
And she turns back to her tower, the prison of her mind. Only for
him.

She can't risk it. She doesn't dare to tamper with the present and deny
herself those future dreams. Those pathetic fantasies. She wants him so
badly, that man she's never seen. And yet she thinks she loves him. She
feels it. She can love him in any way she wishes, because he doesn't
exist. He can fit into her mind, any situation it places her in,
because he's not real. That's why she loves him. She's attatched to the
illusion. Reality is so two-dimensional.

That man. If only he could- if only he would- come to her. Materialize.
She's getting older, not wiser, just more desperate. The boy in the
garden is crying among the flowers that she never took the time to
admire. She turns her head away, and her heart bleeds for a brief
moment. But only a moment. She recognises that boy, she knows his
voice. And she knows his name. He's familiar, predictable and reliable
as the coming of Spring. But she'll never take anyone with a name. Or a
face.

Her tears are bitter on her tongue, she feels herself waning. She
knows she's ridiculous. Her heart becomes heavy from year upon year of
dormant dreams. Is this all there is, she curses. That boy, that
garden. She calls out to the prince, the one with no identity. She
imagines that he's in the universe, she just cannot see him. He isn't
in her world yet. Though she loves him...she loves him so deeply, with
a passion that can never be bestowed upon another before. On anyone in
her garden. Because she wants only the man she doesn't know. The one
beyond the horizon. No-one before him compares. She can't waste her
dreams. Yet she's doing just that.

This loneliness, this hollowness is only temporary, she promises. She
can survive another day, the rest of her life right where she is.
Because if she isn't in her tower, the nameless, faceless prince will
never come. And whenever he does, she hopes she'll speak his name, and
she hopes she'll know his face. Until then, she'll watch the horizon.
And the sun and moon will alternate, the seasons will arrive and pass,
the flowers will bloom and die, then bloom again. And one day she may
steal a glance at that garden, and realize the boy is gone.

~*~