This ficlet is not connected at all to my main story, or my one shot series', but it's been in my head for a while so I thought I'd get it down on paper. I own nothing - not the Chronicles of Narnia and not Mrs. Dalloway, although I wish I did. Enjoy.


The Utter Disappointment of Living

"So on a summer's day waves collect, overbalance, and fall; collect and fall; and the whole world seems to be saying "that is all" more and more ponderously, until even the heart in the body . . . says too, That is all."

-Mrs. Dalloway

How does a heart break? Susan asks herself often.

She wonders if you can lose something you've never had, if possibilities can hurt just as much as actualities; if they too, can keep on living like ghosts of dreams in our hearts and minds, making us remember.

She wonders what faith means when having it doesn't hurt you any less; when it hurts you more, actually, than you ever thought it would.

She wonders about fate, sometimes...about destiny. About why things happen and who gets to decide. She thinks about the unfairness of it all, the harshness of it all. She wonders why love and pain must always go hand in hand, why joy must always be measured by disappointment. She remembers the things she has done (a lifetime ago), and wonders why they were not enough to buy her some happiness in this world...why she, out of all of them, had to lose more than she gained.

She wonders about the epic scope of the universe...wonders where she and her problems fit into the grand scheme of things, where a lost love, or just the idea of a lost love, might fit in between the stars and the planets and the suns...if they mean anything at all, outside her memories.

And sometimes she wonders just about him, in those misty quiet moments she has all to herself. She wonders if he ever thinks of her as she still thinks of him, if he regrets their ever meeting, as she sometimes does; if he loves his wife, that fallen star without a name, and if he thinks her beautiful.

But at the end of the day, she thinks, it does not matter what you wonder, because there is only this.

There is only the utter disappointment of living; of knowing that it makes no difference how much you dream, or how much you pray, or how much you wish, because dreams are just dreams, and prayers are just prayers, and the things that we wish for are already behind us, left behind somewhere, in a castle by the sea.

~fin


R&R is lovley. Thanks for reading!

-JB