[story] lady, waiting
author: e. winter (xen0glossy)
email: the.xenographer [at] gmail.com
She lives in a dead world.
No, 'dead' isn't quite the right word. In order for something to be dead, it must once have been alive, and this world never has been.
It likes to pretend that it was, with its deserted, crumbling towers and spires. Structures that look as though they must have been lived in once. But she knows, somehow, that they have always been just as they are now, created in exactly that state of partial decay and they will continue to be so forever - half falling down, half rotting away, but never more than that.
Nothing changes in this world. It is always sunset, that moment just before the sun sinks below the horizon. It is always the end of summer - the time when the days are still hot but the nights are cool and when the wind is right you can just barely catch the scent of autumn in the air. Not that there are days or nights there; not that the wind ever changes. It's always just a faint breeze, blowing in the same direction. It would be a perfect evening, she thinks, if only it were a real one. If only this moment ever ended.
She doesn't change, either. Her hair doesn't grow, her nails don't grow, and her clothes don't wear or get dirty. Nothing hurts her. She can jump out of the single window of the tower in which she lives (to which she is confined) and get up and walk away at the bottom, without having to so much as dust herself off. She can walk into the wall of thorns surrounding her tower and come away without a scratch. She never feels tired or hungry - just as well, perhaps, as she's never seen any food here. There is a bed in her small tower room - in fact, it's the only piece of furniture there - but she has never had cause to use it. Everything about her stays exactly as it was when she entered this world.
She can't remember exactly when that was. It's been too long, now. Or at least, she thinks it has; she has no sense of time anymore, no way of marking the days. Perhaps it has been only one day, or two - perhaps it only feels longer. Perhaps she forgot everything the instant she entered this world, instead of losing it bit by bit. But one way or another, she has forgotten who she is and why she is here. All she knows is that this isn't where she comes from, that she wasn't meant to be here.
If she tries, if she strains hard enough, she can catch a few glimpses of memory, a series of still pictures with nothing to connect them. Bits and pieces of summer days, mostly - what must have been the days right before... right before something happened, whatever it was. She can recall a boy her own age, not quite a friend, perhaps, but not quite anything else. He is the only person in her memories - try as she might, she can't call to mind parents or close friends, only this boy. He is tall and brown-haired, handsome despite being at an awkward in-between sort of age, and he smiles easily (at least, he does around her). She thinks they played together as children. She thinks they continued to be friends when they were older, and it was no longer seemly for a young lady and a young man to spend time together. She thinks she was in love with him, but she isn't sure whether she remembers loving him or if this is something she made up later, an explanation for what he is doing there in her memory after everyone else has gone. One way or another, though, she's half in love with the memory of him, the closest thing she has to a companion here. She remembers more things about him as time goes on - or perhaps she makes things up, elaborating on the scraps of memory that she has. His favorite color is blue and he has a secret fondness for bad jokes and claims to be clumsy and terrible at swordplay but he's only being modest, really. All these details, but she can't remember his name. She wishes she could.
Before she knows it, she has somehow begun to convince herself that he will come to save her. With each passing day, she is more certain of it. He will save her, because he has to save her. Because someone has to, and there is no one else. Maybe no one else even exists. But he does, she knows that he does. Or rather, she believes that he does, because if she didn't believe that, she would go mad.
So she clings to this half-remembered, half-invented person and tells herself that it's all right, because he will come for her someday. He'll be there when I wake up, she finds herself thinking, and then wonders why she thought it. After all, she never sleeps, here. Unless, she thinks, suddenly, unless this is all a dream to begin with. But then, people don't usually realize that they're dreaming, do they? And what dream would go on this long? (How long has it been going on? Hours? Years?)
Time passes, or seems to. Nothing changes. No one comes for her. She waits, huddled at the top of her tower, unmoving. The wind blows through her hair exactly as it has been doing all this time; the sun continues to teeter on the horizon without ever setting. Slowly, her conviction that the boy will come to save her fades away, and she has nothing to replace it with. She wonders if he ever existed in the first place, or if she made him up entirely. She wonders if she is going mad, and then thinks maybe she has already gone mad, and that all of this is some kind of hallucination or delusion. She screams, half-hoping that someone will hear her, but of course no one does. Feeling defeated and alone, she starts to cry. (The words "princesses mustn't cry" flash through her mind, but are gone almost before she notices they are there. She doesn't bother thinking about them.)
She cries for a long, long time (or at least, it feels that way), but it doesn't tire her out the way it ought to. Perhaps because of that, it takes her longer than it should to pull herself together, she thinks. But she does in the end, if only because it wouldn't be very pleasant to go on crying forever.
And then, when her head has cleared, it occurs to her that if no one is going to save her and if this isn't going to end on its own, all that remains is for her to save herself, somehow. She thinks (though she can't be certain) that she is not accustomed to doing things for herself, and she really has no idea how to begin - but trying has to be better than doing nothing at all.
So she gets up, and begins looking for the way out.
When she finally awakens, she doesn't realize that anything is different at first. She is still alone in a crumbling tower, surrounded by a wild, thorny hedge, just as she was before. But then she notices the morning light streaming through the window, the pronounced chill in the air, and thinks that maybe, just maybe, it really is over.
Slowly, her memories return - ‘oh’, she thinks calmly, ‘so that's what happened’. (‘Wasn't there supposed to be a prince involved, though?’ she wonders briefly - but she supposes that doesn't really matter now.)
‘Well’, she thinks, ‘time to get up’.
Outside the window, the briars begin to wither away.
the end
email: the.xenographer [at] gmail.com
She lives in a dead world.
No, 'dead' isn't quite the right word. In order for something to be dead, it must once have been alive, and this world never has been.
It likes to pretend that it was, with its deserted, crumbling towers and spires. Structures that look as though they must have been lived in once. But she knows, somehow, that they have always been just as they are now, created in exactly that state of partial decay and they will continue to be so forever - half falling down, half rotting away, but never more than that.
Nothing changes in this world. It is always sunset, that moment just before the sun sinks below the horizon. It is always the end of summer - the time when the days are still hot but the nights are cool and when the wind is right you can just barely catch the scent of autumn in the air. Not that there are days or nights there; not that the wind ever changes. It's always just a faint breeze, blowing in the same direction. It would be a perfect evening, she thinks, if only it were a real one. If only this moment ever ended.
She doesn't change, either. Her hair doesn't grow, her nails don't grow, and her clothes don't wear or get dirty. Nothing hurts her. She can jump out of the single window of the tower in which she lives (to which she is confined) and get up and walk away at the bottom, without having to so much as dust herself off. She can walk into the wall of thorns surrounding her tower and come away without a scratch. She never feels tired or hungry - just as well, perhaps, as she's never seen any food here. There is a bed in her small tower room - in fact, it's the only piece of furniture there - but she has never had cause to use it. Everything about her stays exactly as it was when she entered this world.
She can't remember exactly when that was. It's been too long, now. Or at least, she thinks it has; she has no sense of time anymore, no way of marking the days. Perhaps it has been only one day, or two - perhaps it only feels longer. Perhaps she forgot everything the instant she entered this world, instead of losing it bit by bit. But one way or another, she has forgotten who she is and why she is here. All she knows is that this isn't where she comes from, that she wasn't meant to be here.
If she tries, if she strains hard enough, she can catch a few glimpses of memory, a series of still pictures with nothing to connect them. Bits and pieces of summer days, mostly - what must have been the days right before... right before something happened, whatever it was. She can recall a boy her own age, not quite a friend, perhaps, but not quite anything else. He is the only person in her memories - try as she might, she can't call to mind parents or close friends, only this boy. He is tall and brown-haired, handsome despite being at an awkward in-between sort of age, and he smiles easily (at least, he does around her). She thinks they played together as children. She thinks they continued to be friends when they were older, and it was no longer seemly for a young lady and a young man to spend time together. She thinks she was in love with him, but she isn't sure whether she remembers loving him or if this is something she made up later, an explanation for what he is doing there in her memory after everyone else has gone. One way or another, though, she's half in love with the memory of him, the closest thing she has to a companion here. She remembers more things about him as time goes on - or perhaps she makes things up, elaborating on the scraps of memory that she has. His favorite color is blue and he has a secret fondness for bad jokes and claims to be clumsy and terrible at swordplay but he's only being modest, really. All these details, but she can't remember his name. She wishes she could.
Before she knows it, she has somehow begun to convince herself that he will come to save her. With each passing day, she is more certain of it. He will save her, because he has to save her. Because someone has to, and there is no one else. Maybe no one else even exists. But he does, she knows that he does. Or rather, she believes that he does, because if she didn't believe that, she would go mad.
So she clings to this half-remembered, half-invented person and tells herself that it's all right, because he will come for her someday. He'll be there when I wake up, she finds herself thinking, and then wonders why she thought it. After all, she never sleeps, here. Unless, she thinks, suddenly, unless this is all a dream to begin with. But then, people don't usually realize that they're dreaming, do they? And what dream would go on this long? (How long has it been going on? Hours? Years?)
Time passes, or seems to. Nothing changes. No one comes for her. She waits, huddled at the top of her tower, unmoving. The wind blows through her hair exactly as it has been doing all this time; the sun continues to teeter on the horizon without ever setting. Slowly, her conviction that the boy will come to save her fades away, and she has nothing to replace it with. She wonders if he ever existed in the first place, or if she made him up entirely. She wonders if she is going mad, and then thinks maybe she has already gone mad, and that all of this is some kind of hallucination or delusion. She screams, half-hoping that someone will hear her, but of course no one does. Feeling defeated and alone, she starts to cry. (The words "princesses mustn't cry" flash through her mind, but are gone almost before she notices they are there. She doesn't bother thinking about them.)
She cries for a long, long time (or at least, it feels that way), but it doesn't tire her out the way it ought to. Perhaps because of that, it takes her longer than it should to pull herself together, she thinks. But she does in the end, if only because it wouldn't be very pleasant to go on crying forever.
And then, when her head has cleared, it occurs to her that if no one is going to save her and if this isn't going to end on its own, all that remains is for her to save herself, somehow. She thinks (though she can't be certain) that she is not accustomed to doing things for herself, and she really has no idea how to begin - but trying has to be better than doing nothing at all.
So she gets up, and begins looking for the way out.
When she finally awakens, she doesn't realize that anything is different at first. She is still alone in a crumbling tower, surrounded by a wild, thorny hedge, just as she was before. But then she notices the morning light streaming through the window, the pronounced chill in the air, and thinks that maybe, just maybe, it really is over.
Slowly, her memories return - ‘oh’, she thinks calmly, ‘so that's what happened’. (‘Wasn't there supposed to be a prince involved, though?’ she wonders briefly - but she supposes that doesn't really matter now.)
‘Well’, she thinks, ‘time to get up’.
Outside the window, the briars begin to wither away.
the end