Every morning is the same. The same stone ceiling, stone walls, these same gray cobblestones greet me each morning, as well as the lark. She's the only one who visits me, aside from mother of course.
I've watched her grow up. She first perched on my windowsill a few seasons ago, a sad and miserable hatchling, with her wings all mangled, near-mauled by a wolf or some other cruel creature of the wood. I nursed her back to health with my mother's help, although mother did most of the work using magic. She can have anything she wants due to her incredible power, but she tells me that the thing she desires the most is something she already has, a beautiful and loving daughter. So she says.
The lark has several children of her own. She spends most of her time doing other things: searching for food, fetching twigs and nest materials, and flitting about the woods without a care. Despite all her daily deeds however, she still takes time every morning to visit me, as if I were one of her own nestlings.
Some days I sit on my downy bed and talk to her for a few hours nonstop. I may not be able to understand her chirps, but I can feel that she understands my loneliness. As little as it accomplishes in the daily routine, I thoroughly look forward to it, which is sad. I should have better things to look forward to. I should have more friends than just a flighty bird.
After a while of course she waves her soft brown wings and flutters off. I am left with no more company than my eight feet of hair. It is a burden to bear some days, getting caught in every nook and cranny of the tower, sometimes encasing me like a butterfly in a cocoon in my sleep, sometimes harboring lost books or hairbrushes. I don't mind these inconveniences though. I have come to love my hair. Mother says she would give up anything to have the beauty I have, especially my golden locks. I wonder...
I wonder what she is doing without me. Is she tending her beautiful garden she always speaks of? I see the resulting harvest, and it truly is something magical to behold. Of course it truly is magical, being a result of magic. Where is she now? Surely she doesn't tend the garden for hours on end, not with magic abilities like hers. Does she forget about me? She does seem a bit lost in her own head some days. Why must she leave me abandoned here? I wish to see her beautiful garden, the woods, the village. I want to see it all but I could never tell her that.
I love my mother with all of my heart, I truly do, even if she sometimes drools or rips out some hair when climbing. Its forgivable. I love her more than anything, but I still wish for more, and I know that's wrong to do. I shouldn't need anything else but me and my mother and my hair. But I feel that I am missing out on something, as if there is more to my life than this cobblestone tower. More than feet of yellow hair, even more than my mother. I could never tell her. No, I couldn't and I never will. She will know because she doesn't need to know. These foolish thoughts do not matter, and she wouldn't care to hear them.
I lean out of the window and stare at the unchanging horizon. It seems as if time is frozen in my tower. Days pass by, each one the same routine, and each one slower than the last. The lark chicks are still quite tiny, and I haven't grown in years excluding my hair. Isn't time supposed to be moving faster than this? I don't believe that there are no other worthwhile people. do not believe that there is nothing important outside my little world. That is one thing that mother tells me that I don't believe.
In the distance, I hear mother calling my name. I sing a generally welcoming call out to my mother, but this time it feels like a cry for help. This time it sounds more like the song of a caged songbird. Mother spots the tower. A lark that will never grow old. I lower down my hair. A baby that will never leave the nest. I feel my hair tug from the roots as my withered mother begins to climb up.
A bird, never harmed by any creature, with magic she doesn't need.
Will never fly.