When darkness besmirches the human heart, entangling it in its delicate black web, there are precious few things that can break through its dark grip. The light oftentimes is not brave enough to attempt to pierce the dark blanket, lest it too be swallowed up by the black night. Yet every so often, one blazing streak of light dares to try and pierce the veil, and occasionally succeeds. It is so rare, a shooting star in the sky, for the light to win its plight and pierce through the dark, but when it does it is all the more important.
Ever since my family was murdered, the darkness has been my only friend, my constant companion in the world. It wraps around me like a blanket, wrapping it's tendrils around me as it draws me into its grip even further. It comforts me, warms me, though it should only make me cold. I suppose only someone truly mad would find the darkness comforting, but I am very aware that I lost what remained of my mind years ago. What remains of it now is a fraction of who I used to be, but it seems so long ago that I can barely remember a time when darkness did not permeate my life with all-encompassing totality.
I used to think the light could never reach somewhere so dark, that it could never penetrate the dark that had enshrouded my life for so long it seemed to build a wall around me so tall it blocked out the sun. I used to believe that nothing good could reach me or touch me there, that I could never see the light again with the way the walls were structured around me. But I found, to my great surprise, that the walls had cracks that could sometimes let the light in if it was brave enough to try and come in.
She was the first ray of light to breach that wall. She wormed her way through the wall and let a few rays of light in. It was so startling that I did not know what to do. I hadn't dealt with matters of the light in so long that when it came in I was completely unprepared. I didn't think I would see the light again, but that all changed when I saw her smile.
The brilliant white light of her smile triggered memories I did not know I still possessed. Memories of laughter, of smiles, of happiness. It was such a departure from all I'd become accustomed to that it was frightening. I felt fear wrap it's icy claws around my heart and try to strangle it. It was a curious sort of breathlessness I felt, accompanied by feelings of loss and stranger yet feelings of gain.
It was so strange to feel as though I gained a small piece of myself back. Those memories I had tried to bury, those feelings I thought I no longer had… To see them again was an incomparable feeling. When the moment passed, I was left stunned. I did not believe myself capable of things like that anymore. To know that I still could was both incredible and fascinating.
The corner of my mouth twitched in itself. Perhaps it was involuntary. It stopped in the next quarter of a second. My face had become so accustomed to wearing a scowl that the twitch itself was almost painful. It wasn't emotionally painful, however. It was actually… Nice. She walked up to me, the sun coming to meet the moon, her radiance almost painful to me. She took my hand, and she warmed me with her presence.
I've long been used to the cold presence of loneliness. I often do not even notice it anymore. However, in moments such as these, with someone else who truly cares for me touching me, I feel loneliness' sharp sting. Human touch is a strange thing for myself. I do not like being touched because I crave it so much. Her touch is almost unbearable and yet as soon as it leaves me the sting of loneliness comes back even sharper than before. In moments like those, without human touch, Loneliness comes to me like death's hand, waiting to steal me away into the night.
Her antics can be tiresome, her personality almost too much for me to take at times, but that smile… It inspired something in me. Something so foreign I almost could not put a name to it. But that smile was a spark, and it ignited something inside of me. Hope. Hope for finding my revenge, hope for making something of myself when all of this madness was done, hope for possibly finding a happiness of my own, a satisfaction of some kind in the future.
We danced. I never cared for it, nor did I have any interest in doing so, but the way her face lit up, I could not refuse her. Her smile was bright enough to light up the room. In that moment, spinning along the floor of my manor with her, the darkness couldn't reach me. For one shining moment, the walls around me came tumbling down to the ground, and the sun surrounded me. It was warm and bright, flooding me with a kind of heat that chased away the cold that seemed to constantly settle in my bones.
Time seemed to stop itself and become unimportant. For one lighthearted moment, I was free again, as I had been before my parents were murdered and my home went up in flames. The world was suddenly filled with music and laughter, and the joy she had been emanating all day seemed to reach me at last. It moved through my feet, up my legs, settled into my stomach for a moment before flooding my chest with such immeasurable hope, before it finally made it's way up my neck and at last it reached my face.
In that moment, I smiled too.