Someone had held him on their knees.

He had been a child, a small child of few summers; but he could not remember the time. Light shone through the drawn curtains of the room, flooding it with blinding radiance, reflected off the bleached walls like the echo of a sound; and he often had to blink though he could not see very clearly. Someone was sitting on a bed and held him in their lap, both arms, strong, gentle arms around his waist, he leaning back into their embrace and staring at the odd shapes the light curtains took when moved by a breath of wind; and someone whispered words into his ear that he did not recall. He was not listening to what they said, and it was someone with the voice of his father, but he could not see their face, and he could not remember.

He had been told again the story of the Lady who went to sleep, in a beautiful garden surrounded by willow-trees, and did not wake up again. He had been told again of her silver tresses, and her snow-white skin, and the leaves that fell upon her body like the tears of trees, rain from the mourning heavens and soft petals carried by the wind: a statue caught in endless sleep upon her pedestal of stone, a marble semblance of life.

"Is she happier where she is?"

It was the question he had been asked, a child, half-listening and hand toying with long locks of sable hair. If it could not make her happy, why would she have gone? The blinding light created an interesting effect on the raven-black hair, it gleaming so that strands of it appeared white. The arms around his waist slightly tightened their hold, and he was vaguely aware that something was expected of him, and it made him feel uneasy; he could remember having been taken to that beautiful garden and trailed a tentative finger down the lady's cheek, smoother than anything he had ever touched and likened to the surface of a polished gem. Colour had been retained in her face, her cheeks slightly pink, and her bloodshot lips parted so that she appeared to be gasping for breath, and he had pretended that she was a lady statue, made perfect, maybe by his father or mother because they were the only ones who could make things so perfect, a statue made so lifelike that she had a soul and a heart; that her parted lips were gasping for breath, burning with unquenched thirst, ever begging for the gift of life.

Sulky and restless, he had squirmed out of the embrace, and began running towards the door. And he had said, "She chose a beautiful garden to sleep in."




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