She was the girl who had always knocked on the backs of closets, pressing her ear expectantly to the wall in the hopes of something—an echo, footsteps, a jingle of bells. Some proof that there wasn't just emptiness there.
She was the girl who'd woken bright and early on her eleventh birthday and made promptly for the window, more than half expecting a huge, tawny owl with big yellow eyes and a letter tied to its foot staring back when she pulled the blind. The girl who'd gone to the mailbox after being disappointed at the window, and who'd continued to go back every day for years after—just in case.
She was the girl who liked to pretend she had a dæmon, and talked to it all the time; even when it meant uncomfortable questions for her parents when company was over. She didn't care. She gave it a name—not an ordinary name, like Sarah or Molly, but something exotic and made-up—and pretended to hold it to her breast as she rode over miles of barren tundra on the back of a giant polar bear.
She was the girl who dreamed. And one day, for sure, it would kill her.
But in spite of this, nobody ever tried to stop her antics—not even when she got considerably older, surpassing the age considered acceptable for such fancies. They smiled at her as she stargazed, telling themselves she was just enjoying the view and not searching for proof of a galaxy far, far away. They pretended not to hear when she spoke Quenya at breakfast, pretended not to see when she watched for tornadoes in the hopes of a passage to Oz. They told themselves they had a normal daughter; therefore, they did. In a household where their word was law, they had come to believe this themselves.
And so, slowly, the girl's fancies for fantasy turned into something deeper—a longing. A feeling no different from that of a caged bird's—a feeling of being trapped. But from this cage, there could be no escape. There wasn't anywhere to escape to.
Frantic, the girl began launching an Experiment. She searched ever more fervently for worlds within closets, checking her own regularly before bed. Yellow rings were crammed onto her fingers without any other thought but of where they might take her. Whenever she saw a puddle, she would leap into it, regardless of what she was wearing or doing; and for hours, she would stare at paintings of landscapes, silently willing them to come alive and suck her away.
And all failed. Naturally. Sinking into an ever deeper despair, the girl withdrew from her life outside fantasy—withdrew into herself.
The birds and trees became her friends; and when they, too fell victim to her own despair, she lapsed into a tradition only the smallest children enjoy: imaginary friends. She called them Harry, Ron, Hermione; Susan, Peter, Lucy; Lyra, Frodo, Elphaba. Manifested them into the characters she knew and loved so well, and pretended to talk to them. Imagined their replies, even, and spoke back.
Her family remained ignorant. It was their fault, ultimately, that she had fallen so in love with fantasy books—they had cultured it within her at a young age. Now, the fruits of their work were being reaped; and they were reaping rotten.
Still, in spite of her great sorrow, the girl was happy. She loved her new "friends" and the adventures she went on with them, and was very content to spend an afternoon within her walk-in closet conversing with them. She didn't recognize her condition as a slipping into madness. Nobody did.
Finally, one day, her mother read her the sermon she had lived her life in fear of—without knowing it was that which she feared. There was no Narnia; there was no Hogwarts. Everything she had come to recognize as true was just a figment of somebody's imagination. It never would be real, and it was time to stop living in a fantasy.
Upon hearing this much-too-late tale, the girl's heart began to scream. The screaming grew to a flaring crescendo that burned her heart, her eyes, her very soul, and drew her to the bathroom late at night. Where the pills were.
In the morning, they found her dead—a beatific smile on her face, as if she'd been given the most wonderful present in the world.
At her funeral, there were many tears, much needless sobbing. Those who supposedly knew her well sobbed for her tragically cut-short life, when in reality—ironically enough—they ought to have smiled. Hers was not a life ended but a life begun. She was still alive, and living forever, in the place she was meant to live in—that beautiful kingdom beyond the moon. Aslan's Kingdom. Where beauty, love, and understanding, brushed with a sprinkling of magic, reigned forever.