What Is Love?

After a marathon of opening doors and entering dreams, Angie was a little more comforted at seeing her friends again, but she still wasn't sure what they would do to find a key.

"So…where do we find the key?"

"Well…the actual process of finding a key isn't hard, it's just tedious. All you have to do is just open a door marked as a closet, and inside there are cabinets full of keys of all kinds."

Angie couldn't believe her ears. She was expecting some sort of adventure like she read in fairy tales, or in an epic.

"All we need to do is look in closets and rummage for keys? How hard can that be?"

"That's what they want you to think. There are so many closets around here and so many cabinets filled with thousands of keys, it would be like finding a single needle in a whole hayfield. If anything, that's the genius of the people up there," said Alexander, with a discernible stress on the "up there," "There are always going to be plenty of gutsy people around who are going to fight and battle and risk their souls to get back. But patience is such a rare virtue; true love and commitment is so uncommon that it's the perfect plan. Do you get it?"

Angie nodded, biting her lip. For once she started to feel the pangs of doubt gnawing at her. Did she really love Derek that much to search for that one key to salvation? Or would she give up midway? She pushed aside those thoughts as she walked over to the nearest closet.

"Let's get started."

Silver. Gold. Brass. Pewter. The dazzling piles of keys in the cabinets had mesmerized Angie. It seemed that she had spent several hours pouring over the keys, looking for that skeleton key, but she had not even finished examining one cabinet. Keys were everywhere; wherever she looked, even when she closed her eyes, all she could see was an image of a key, burnt into her eyes. Alexander was next to her, also pouring over a cabinet of keys. They had been silent for the whole time, but he broke the silence.

"Do you really love Derek?"

The question caught Angie off-guard. It revived the guilt in her heart that had lay dormant, buried by keys.

"Well, y-yes! I do! Why would you ask me a question like that?"

"Your face shows doubt. I can see it. I asked you if you truly loved Derek. What is love?"

Angie didn't know how to reply to this vexing question, a question that many a philosopher has attempted to crack.

"Or let me make it easier. What do you think is the ultimate expression of love?" asked Alexander while looking over the keys, examining all the ones that looked golden. Angie remained silent as the doubts swam through her head, even to the point of distracting her from examining the keys.

"Umm…sex?"

Alexander chuckled a little. "Funny how everyone down there thinks that sex is love and love is sex. How people think that if you feel horny when you see someone, or you have sex with them, that means you're in love with them. But in all seriousness, it's not what I've seen staying here in the waiting room. Sure we can physically have sex here, but all our loved ones are down there, and there's no point of it. But if I've ever learned something here, it's that there's something greater than sex, and that's just holding someone that you've lost or thought was lost. When you finally embrace someone that you've been separated from, you forget everything. You feel joy you've never felt, but you also feel something indescribable. And that's divine love. You can't describe it, but when you feel it you won't have a single doubt in your mind that this is it."

Something curious happened at this point, and it was that Alexander started to sing. His voice wasn't the best, he wasn't a professional or anything of the sort, but the tune was otherworldly. It had some sort of pure harmony in it, full of dissonance and yet without any at all. The words seemed so familiar, yet they seemed to be something distant as well.

"Love is patient, love is kind. It is not rude, it does not boast, it is not proud. Love is not rude, it is not conceited, it is not provoked, it forgets all transgressions. Love takes no pleasure in evil, but rejoices with the truth. Love protects all, trusts all, hopes all, endures all, sustains all. Love never fails. But while prophecies will be fulfilled and pass on, but while tongues will speak and fade away, but while knowledge will know and yet forget, love conquers all and will never pass away."

Alexander finished, and a long silence stilled the air. Then he disturbed it yet again, but this time with a quiet, placid voice rather than the passionate voice he had used. "If your love for Derek is like this, then continue on."

And at that moment Angie forgot her doubt and her guilt, because she knew that it was capable, she knew that she could love and continue on, because anything was possible, because love conquers all.

I apologize if my moralizing disagrees with whatever you believe in, but I feel like I had to hit towards the theme in a more serious manner than it just being a title. I basically copied this sequence from a dream I had some time ago, so it felt natural to write. Kudos to you if you can identify the source of the song. I also hope my reasoning also helps to explain why there isn't a giant adventure for a key; I always think that patience is a much rarer virtue than courage.

UPDATE (8/12/2010)