Dear Readers,
Here is another random inspiration of mine. While I was writing it, I was suddenly reminded of the poem I reference below by John Keats (it really is a beautiful poem--confusing, but beautiful), and so I alluded to it in the story. The title itself is an allusion to another beautiful poem by Keats. The connection between Keats in the fic is that the fic is quite tragic and yet hopeful, and Keats, who was sickly and died at 25, had a tragically short and painful life, yet he remained hopeful that there was a purpose to his pain, as evidenced by much of his poetry. I hope you enjoy, although I am sorry for submitting you to more angst on my part. Thanks for reading (and reviewing)!
Best Regards from a Bookworm (and SAVE SGA advocate),
Miss Pookamonga ;-P (and her muses)
"'Beauty is truth, truth beauty,' –that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know."
--from "Ode on a Grecian Urn" by John Keats
Bright Star
"Daddy!"
The child ran to him, blonde hair billowing behind her in the wind, sky-blue eyes sparkling like two little stars on her peach-blushed face.
He still couldn't fathom the fact that this tiny creature running towards him, a picture of complete and unblemished joy, was his. He still couldn't fathom that this...this girl...was his daughter, his own flesh and blood, their own flesh and blood. He still couldn't fathom that there had really even been a "them" in the first place.
And he still couldn't fathom that just when it had all finally fallen into place perfectly for them, after broken hearts and searching in places for things that weren't there...he still couldn't fathom that she was gone.
It had been so difficult to gain her. But it had been oh so easy—too easy—to lose her.
He had never thought that that kind of thing could happen to her. That the one tragic moment would be theirs, that it would be she who would be taken away from him and not someone else's beloved being stolen. But when you worked between two galaxies fighting off alien forces that were sometimes more powerful than your own, it was sickly simple to be there one day and nonexistent the next.
In another timeline, he had lost her to something eerily similar. But in that timeline, there hadn't been so much hanging in the balance. There hadn't been a girl, running towards her father in sheer delight, the mirror image of she who was no longer present.
However, no matter how much it pained him to wake up each morning and find the bed half-empty, he knew he would always choose this reality over the other.
In the other, all potential had been crushed, all that could have bloomed was cut short, and the only ray of light that still existed in his world had never existed at all. What was painful about his reality was the one thing that made it beautiful. What had never actualized itself in one reality had come to its perfect fullness in this one, no matter how agonizing it had been to lose a part of it. And even if it had been for such a short amount of time, it had been worth it, simply for the fact that they had gotten a chance to make it work. And it had.
She clambered down the steps towards him, jumping off the last one with a flourish and leaping straight into his embrace as he met her halfway between the stairs and the 'gate. "Daddy, I missed you!" she exclaimed, her voice muffled this time by her father's shoulder.
He picked her up gently, this little angel, this living memorial to the one woman he had truly loved, and wrapped his arms so tightly around her that it would have been impossible for her to escape his grasp. "I know, honey," he barely whispered into her ear, "I missed you too."
