A/N oh, by the way… The Storyteller's Daughter is a book.
Each night while we sleep, a tiny bubble filled with hope nurses itself into being. And each morning when we awake, that bubble bursts, filling us with enough hope to last the us the day. In contrast, a bubble of despair forms each night, and pops everything morning, flooding us with hopelessness.
This is balance.
Everything has a balance.
For all the pain we feel, we feel just as much happiness.
For every tear, a smile.
Every word, a silence.
I have told you this before. I have told you all, so many times. And, more times than I have told you, you have not listened.
Some other part of you did.
For every imagination, there is reality.
We live in a world of reality. Stark, cold reality, a place of cracks in concrete and smog in the air. A place where magic words and feathered wings are rarely found. And it is this realness, this stark, cold thing—screaming out, Here I am! This is what I am! I am not perfect, not at all, but love me anyway!
It is that that makes the world, that makes us, such beautiful creatures. The fact that we make mistakes, or that we sometimes bleed. The fact that a knife meant for you can be driven to a wall. It is the cracks in the concrete that bleed out weeds. Weeds that, sometimes, give birth to a flower. In the most unexpected, the most real places, we find beauty.
And it is the beauty that grows from the bruises and the cracks and the dents and the cuts that balances the world.
Balance is a powerful thing.
Reality. It hurts. It makes you either bleed inside or go numb. Maybe, you've all learned to bleed. I hope that, if not, you can learn to do so by the end of my tale.
For, while bleeding hurts, it lets you know that you are alive. Alive and true.
With real, red blood pulsing through you.
Ah, right. Lyrics. I mightn't have told you, but I am giving you a double start in this set of cards. A lesson and lyrics.
A lyrical lesson.
How high would I have to fly,
To lose sight of you, so far away?
If I turn my eyes away, I might feel better.
But I want to be always looking at you from somewhere.
Because there's no way I could forget you.
At my wit's end, I simply keep staring up at the sky.
It's almost as if I were a small bird inside a cage,
Searching for the window…
…if this unseen barrier around me should tear away my wings…
-DNAngel, Caged Bird
pinioned: to bid the wings so as not to fly; to confine.
Truly, she was pinioned.
Mai
I am not going to talk about her story, not all of it, right now. It is long, painful, and full of cages. Nor am I going to try to make you pity her. She chose to be that way, in order not to be hurt. In order not to bleed.
Instead, I shall tell you of her sleep.
Or, rather, her dream.
Every night, she dreamed. Of the past, of the future, but never of the present. The present was something she thought about when awake, for never when awake was she haunted by the future or the past.
That is something to pity, though. Someone weak enough to close themselves off from the world, and to try to forget the past.
That past that makes us what we are.
But also, that is something to admire. To have the strength to close oneself off from the world, to leave everything you felt behind. Everything but a tiny, miserable bubble of hope. One that pops every morning, keeps going, but is nearly drowned out by the bubble of despair.
But, nevertheless, it was there.
You might have expected more from this chapter, but I will give no more.
No more, no less.
I will give what I have.
But more will come. More about this girl, more about the girl with the bloody, torn wings. More about the fire girl of ice, and the ice and water girl of fire. And about the boy with a scar on his heart, one that was so strong that it showed on his face. More from the girl who, even in this stark, staining reality we live in—staining like blood—kept her soul clean and pure. More from the stone girl, in and out, and the boy who glued smiles to his face, and tried to glue them to his soul, but his soul would not let the glue stick. More from a wise grandfather, and a seemingly innocent girl with a horrifying past and a dark secret. More from a sarcastic, lazy boy who, on the inside, was trying harder than them all. More from a boy who had forgotten his past, even after trying so hard to remember.
Because there is always more.
Even when this story ends, there will be more.
I can't talk that long. You won't live that long.
As always, there is more.
And, as always, the bubble of hope inside of you, the one flooding you with light, knows that.
More.
A word that, when spoken, is longer and stronger than it seems in print.
Just like it's meaning.
