Everyone wants a fairytale of some kind. To say that one doesn't would be against human nature because we, as humans, only want happiness. And that's what a fairytale ultimately is: happiness. A story of hope, journey, love. Many a time, the fairytale journey isn't ideal and is instead filled with perilous adventure, trials and toil, but what is a happy ending if one does not work for it?
Sitting in a hospital bed with scratchy, cold sheets and minimal cushioning, the end of the world come and gone and all that she once loved destroyed in the blink of an eye, who would have thought her fairytale ending would be found in a heartbreak?
"Are you listening?" he asks, and his voice shatters into a thousand unrepairable pieces every thought she'd been musing over.
She looks up, smiles and nods. He returns the smile and continues reading to her.
No, it wasn't an ending nor was it completely a heartbreak. It was only the beginning, and all that had previously broken her heart was now, unlike her unrepairable thoughts, being mended by things much more valuable.
The world may have ended, but a new one began.
As he read, the words became genuine in his mind, the story truth. "I don't love you," the author had written long ago, "because love is humanly not unconditional; today I could love you and tomorrow I could stop. So instead of drawing a proverbial heart on a proverbial pad of paper, because a heart can break, I will draw you a circle for it is a circle that continues on forever."
She laid her head back, smiling contently, eyes shut. And somewhere between a new world and regaining cancer for a second time, she regained the will to live she never realized she had lost.
"Love without actions is meaningless," he continued, "because you can love somebody with all your heart, with all your mind, but until you show them, what value will that love have? Hope is the underlying source of all things seen and unseen. Where there is hope, there is love, and where there is love, there are actions, and where there are actions...that is where true beauty begins and where happiness is found."