Edited 2/18/14
"If there's a single lesson that life teaches us, it's that wishing doesn't make it so. "
― Lev Grossman, The Magicians
Dreams, nightmares, wishes. They are vastly different, and yet they are all the same. They never come true exactly how you thought they would.
I was once a careless young girl, helping my father lead the Varden but caring mostly for myself. That all changed in a heartbeat. A few simple words were spoken, calling me leader. My life was taken from me and given to thousands of others, most of whom thought that they could lead better. They couldn't. They would be unable to sacrifice what was needed, unable to lead to the best of others' interests, not their own.
When I decided to lead the Varden, my life changed. It became my responsibility to sacrifice whatever was necessary. But then I became queen, and my life changed again, even more dramatically than it had the first time.
Once you are queen of an Empire, you have no more freedom, no more openness. You have to keep your thoughts private, hide your true feelings behind a mask, because your people can't know how broken you are inside. And there are always those who try to kill you. Assassins, ordinary people, they all act the same way when they want you dead. My life was different in so many ways after I accepted the crown.
I love a Rider, but we are cursed to forever remain apart. He, he is immortal, undying, unchanging throughout the years. He has a dragon. He was, in thought, deed, word and name, a slave to the most vile man ever to exist. I am none of those things. I have no dragon, no immortality, and I will never understand his thoughts and feelings.
Yet we love each other. Two vastly different people, separated by huge gulfs of knowledge and experience, are deeply in love. If we could, we would cross any boundary to be together, we would go through anything to be together.
We can not. We are unable to. I am not saying that we can not physically - no - that would be the easiest part. But mentally, we can not. Even Eragon and Arya can be together, separated as they are by years and space. They are more together than Murtagh and I can ever be.
But our hearts are bound with an unseverable knot. I know that I, at least, will never love another. My heart is his, and, as far as I know, his is mine.
How do those who can not love survive? How do those who can love survive?
I have lost so many of those who I love, but the loss of the one who my heart belongs to pains me most of all.
We can never be together. It is impossible. For so many reasons.