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The Lonely Girl and the Goddess

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AliceTheOracle
Dreamer
Posts: 4
Joined: Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:44 pm
Character Name(s): Alice

The Lonely Girl and the Goddess

Post by AliceTheOracle »

The city of which she dreamt had never been named. It was a labyrinth in the true sense: there were no wrong turns, though many places felt wrong; there were no dead ends, though the whole city felt like a corpse. All roads lead somewhere, and if one walked for long enough, one could not help but end up at the city's mouth-like heart. Every house in the city was dark and empty; every library in the city burned forever with white fire, like a flame's ghost; every temple to every god had crumbled.

It rained always in that city. The rain wore down the stone skin of the gods' statues, draining it into the cobble streets as a fine silt, with no gutters in which to run off. As the girl walked through these streets, the rainwater spattered her shins and painted her skin chalky and gray. She was dressed in the ashes of the gods who had gone.

There was one goddess in particular she sought, knowing she had a temple here, in the way that one simply knows something in a dream. She sought her because she knew, like in a dream, that she was a goddess of wings, and wings were more powerful than any symbol to the girl; the finest, most potent emblem of her heart's deepest hopes. The girl had never prayed before. She hoped that she would know how when the time came, if it ever did.

The girl walked and walked, watching the strange glistening ashes of the white fires dance in the rain, imagining all the immolated stories and history that were sprinkling down on her now. She looked into the windows of all the dark houses, seeing the empty rooms that lay within, all full of hanging gauze and portraits with nobody in them. And she gazed upon the towering statues of eroded gods, searching for the one she would pray to. The one she hoped could save her.

She walked for what felt like hours, until her drenched hair clung to her face and shoulders; until her legs were caked in rain and gray silt; until her arms felt heavy from a burden she couldn't name. She had gazed upon every face of every statue of every temple she had passed, but none had seemed to be the one she sought, and she began to lose hope, thinking that she was wrong, that she had been lied to by the dream, or had lied to herself. But at last, down a narrow alley where iron frames draped with purple ivies hung between the buildings, she came to a small, quiet temple, and she saw the statue of the goddess she had sought.

The goddess was tall and slender, all wrapped up in a dress of tattered gossamer. Her wrists and ankles were bound in strange silks. One eye was blindfolded with that same silk, leaving one eye exposed; it was segmented, like the eye of a dragonfly, and it shone like a rainbow. Her arms were covered in creatures-- caterpillars, moths, butterflies, dragonflies, honeybees, beetles, katydids, cicadas, crickets and snails. Creatures that crawled, creatures that flew, creatures that changed. On her back were a dozen different kinds of wings, and they fanned out with glorious indifference to the unending rain. They had not eroded. They never would.

The girl stared at the statue, mesmerized by the goddess' beauty. She found that she still did not know how to pray; no kind epiphany had arrived at just the right moment to teach her. So the girl simply spoke, her voice hoarse and small.

"I hoped that I could ask for your help," said the girl.

"Ask away," said the statue of the goddess, and her voice was kind and warm and lonesome, like that of a mother, or a good queen. "No one has ever come to see me here. All I have ever hoped is that someone would, some day. Tell me how I can help you, little butterfly, and I shall."

The girl was comforted by the goddess' kindness, and so she spoke on. "I am trapped," she said. "I am kept in a room that I cannot leave. No one comes to see me. When I speak, no one listens. When I cry, no one holds me. When I yearn to move, to leap up and dance and twirl, I am told I must lie still. I want to be free."

The statue of the goddess, who felt so well the pains of the girl, was moved to tears. They ran down her stone face like liquid silver, pooling at her ageless toes. "No one should be trapped so. It is well that you sought me here. I will send you a gift. You need only look upon it to accept it. You will know it once you've seen it, and then things will be different for you. You will not have to feel so trapped anymore."

The girl went down to her knees and began to cry, but they were happy tears, and she stared up at the goddess still. "Thank you. Thank you, thank you. I am so glad to have met you. Will I be able to see you again?"

The goddess trembled in her heart, knowing that soon she would be lonesome again. "No, little butterfly," she said. "Your dreams will change, once you've accepted my gift. But accept it you must. They are my wings to wear upon your shoulders. You will be free."

The girl began to feel terribly sad that she would never again see the kind goddess of wings and crawling creatures. She opened her mouth to speak, but found that she could not. She could feel her eyelids burning with the soft heat of sunlight. She was waking. The city vanished, and the goddess with it, as she opened her eyes.

For days, she did not dream again. Her days were cold and lonesome and confining; her nights were dark and dreamless and gave her no solace. She began to fall into a deep melancholy, convinced that the goddess, and all her kindness, had been only another dream, a moment of beauty made painful by its falsity. But then, one day, as she lay gazing at the cloud-streaked sky, a dragonfly landed on her window. Its wings caught the sun as it stretched and fanned them, as though displaying them proudly to her. Each was a different color: one blue, one green, one violet, one gold. They dazzled the girl, and her heart rose into her throat, for she knew the goddess had been real, as had her kindness and her gift.

That night, she slept, and dreamed again. And the dream she had was different, just as the goddess had said it would be.

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"Her feet half-rested half-floated upon the floor; Earth scarcely held her down, so fast was she becoming a thing of dreams. No love of hers for Earth, or of the children of Earth for her, had any longer power to hold her there."
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