Beginning
To say that the outside mirrored my mind would be somewhat close to the truth.
From my window I could see it. The cold empty expanses of a world beyond. It could be empty for all I care, just as it looks. It could be empty and I would never realise it was anything different. And even if it glared as clear as the crystal of my glass necklace, just beyond the horizon, I would miss it as easily as a subtle change.
The black iron ridged gate. The uniform spikes of the fence. They mark the borders of my world.
I used to wonder sometimes, about just what it was actually like out there. If there even was, in fact, anything beyond my home. I would think, let my mind walk out through the gates, like a ghost for they were never open. It could be anything and everything, and I went to each place in my dreams.
I never stayed too long. The home I knew was my whole world; it was normal, mine. I never could ignore it for too long. To say I wasn’t happy would be a lie, at times, and very often, I felt my soul could burst from happiness.
And the other times? I never questioned them. I never knew anything different. So I would often and quickly turn away from my wonderings. So the childlike daydreams dissipated and were ignored. And the vague longing was put away, hidden amongst the folds of my heart, to be opened another time.
There were always more enjoyable, and pleasure filled, things to pursue and so I would smile, laugh, feel joy and happiness.
All that is gone now.
It wisped away on the back of a cold wind and can never return.
Instead of possibilities of the future, waiting for collection in a time far away, the outside now only causes sighs to build in my throat while the bare trees of winter show their souls in replace of mine. They tell of the cold and harsh truth of reality. The desolate and desperate plea for the knowledge, the whisper of hope, that there is, that could be, something more. That thing is spring, here in just a few months, something that for me it is dashed and smothered.
The mist, clichéd as the tears that no longer run down my face, traps this house, covers the ground, encircles the trees and is still. It is almost as if I could reach out, touch it, stir it, set it on a journey that I can never follow.
Let me tell you a story. It may be my story. It may be yours. It may be an unopened message of the past, a brief look into the future. But it is a story. Be kind, not harsh. Think. Don’t just read. Let your mind wonder. Let your heart open and listen to the tale I have to tell.
There was once a girl, and her name was Anatolia.
To say she was an ordinary girl would be unkind; as the heroine and princess of this story she can never be ordinary. None of them ever are. Yet in truth she was different. Different from any other soul in this world and the next. As different as night is to day.
Born in any other place, or time, and with different parents, she may or may not have turned out just the way she did. It was perhaps the isolation, the uniqueness, for want of a better word, of her situation that led to the pure laughing girl that grew into the composed young woman she shows the world.
But could anyone else really have handled her past and turned out in just the same way? I cannot say. And, if she had, perhaps, grown up in the conventional way, with a past so completely different to the one she has now. Would she then have turned heads the same way she does now? Again, I cannot answer this, only wonder perhaps as I share her tale with you.
