A Fragile Girl and a Boy

This is a story about a Fragile Girl and a Boy, a Man and a Woman, and a Dream within a Dream.

The Man and Woman were married, and they had been for a great many number of years. They met when she was a Fragile Girl and he was a Boy. The girl was terribly fragile, and she had no defenses. When she was hurt she felt as she would die, and she was always hurt, and unable to defend herself she only thought of escape. Death would save her, surely it would, but then she met the Boy, who loved saving things and he saved her instead.

Even though the Fragile Girl had been saved from Death, the need to escape never really left her. The boy saved her, but he also hurt her, for she loved him in a way only fragile people can: full of need and dreams of Love with a capital “L”. This kind of love takes the energy of two people who both know the idea of Love so intimately that is part of their soul. A definition doesn’t exist, because the magic of it is so mysterious. Like the mixing of two colors. Two colors combined are no longer known by their separate names, but a new one. It is a whole new creation that cannot exist without two separate colors, and once combined cannot be separated again. And although you can name Blue and Red, and combine them to make Purple – you cannot take Purple and make Blue and Red. That is the kind of love the Fragile Girl needed. The Boy didn’t know about that kind of love, but he wasn’t the type to need it. He was practical and dutiful and ordinary to those that were close to him. He knew about Loyal Love. This kind of love is special, but not magic. This is a love whose greatness lies in that it is not exclusive. The more it is shared, the more content the loyal person is because they are fulfilling all their obligations. People who know this kind of love only know how to bestow it equally on all people. This kind of love is great, but common, and has as its companions Responsibility and Duty. Loyal lovers are irresistibly drawn to people who need saving. Loyal Love cannot be reciprocation to Love, because magic cannot come from worldly ideas of obligation and duty.

Although the Boy and the Girl had such different ideas about love, they were very young. To a girl that needs saving and a boy who needs to save, they were for a time, exactly what the other person needed. The girl, never knowing anything but hurt, was saved by the boy and Loved him, and the boy was happy, having saved the girl.

Years passed, and the Boy and Girl grew up to be the Man and the Woman. They had a daughter. The man was happy, for he had a family to which he could bestow his Loyal Love. He was content that he could Provide, and provide well. He didn’t bring magic into the lives of his family, but also did not see the need for it, as he was very practical. They had what they needed and more, and so he did not see or feel the need for anything else.

The Woman however, was terribly unhappy. While she knew that they had everything they needed, she also knew that they were ordinary. While she had grown out of many childish ways and set aside many immature ideas, she could not forget that she needed magic in her life. She needed Love. She needed the color purple.

The woman felt selfish, for she had lived with the Man for many years and could see that he did not feel bereft or lacking. He was content, so why couldn’t she be? She knew the reason. She had Loved him for so long and it was given loyalty in return. Not his heart, not his soul. There was no magic between the two of them. She tried desperately to win his Love but nothing she did ever reached him. She tried writing letters, but how can you explain the color purple to someone who’s never seen it before, who can’t imagine mixing two colors, who thinks mixing two things and getting one back is wholly impractical? She tried to show him purple, to gift him with examples of how amazing it was, and while the Man was thankful, he did not respond to her in kind. She tried being angry, to see if he would try to win her, to fight for her. She fell into a crazed despair, because she really never stopped being the Fragile Girl, begging and pleading and screaming for someone to love her, and receiving silence in return. She was frantic. She needed him to take charge of this, to grab her and hold her and convince her that she was loved, that nothing in the world could stop him from loving her. She wanted him to grab her to him, to comfort her. He would never do that, never think that she would need it, would never feel the need to do so. Her old companion death visited her again then, to offer his hand, to save her from her suffering. And when death returned, so did the Man, because he was doing what he always did, which was to save the girl. And this terrified the girl. What would happen if death came to visit her, and the boy chose not to save her? She knew that she would die.

And although she wanted Love, she was more afraid of death. Why? Because of her daughter. Her strange, beautiful, loving daughter who was magic. She couldn’t leave her. The Woman knew how broken it made her to live without magic. She couldn’t harm her daughter. So the woman tried to be strong. She leaned on the man less, to be her own person. She thought maybe the man would love her more now, to see her as someone worth giving his heart and soul to. But he didn’t. He was too busy saving everyone else, doing what he needed to provide, making lists and crossing off lists. As long as he crossed everything off, what else could be asked of him?

His indifference scared her. She knew she could not give anymore of herself to him, or she would become nothing. Her Love couldn’t be his, because he couldn’t Love her. So she stopped. She became angry. She couldn’t understand. She pushed him away. She said ugly things to hurt him. But he wasn’t deep enough to hurt. And he was angry too. Maybe because she made him feel inadequate. He was indignant that what he had given wasn’t enough, that she was always wanting more. That she always needed something he couldn’t provide; it wasn’t something that could be put on a checklist and that was all he knew how to do. And because he was angry he hurt her, saying things that he knew would call her old friend death back. Maybe that’s what he wanted after all; it seemed the only way to get her to leave him alone. She threatened to leave; he didn’t try to stop her. She drugged herself to sleep every night to protect herself, and he made sure that he wasn’t around for that so that he didn’t have to pretend to try to stop her. He halfheartedly went through the motions of being loyal, so that he couldn’t be faulted for not trying. He deliberately made weak motions of trying to “fix” things, ones that he knew she would deflect in her pain so that he couldn’t be accused of not trying.

The woman was sleeping poorly, even with the drugs and the alcohol she used, each night taking a little more, wondering (hoping) that she wouldn’t wake up. If it was an accident, then maybe her daughter could be ok. She didn’t know. She only knew that she was not, and had never been, strong enough to be in the world alone. She went to sleep fitfully at night, her head full of anger and sadness and hopelessness. This went on for several nights. One night the woman had a dream. In this dream, the man and the woman were fighting and saying all manner of ugly things to each other. The woman, wanting the arguing to cease, to stop the madness and the fury, threatened to kill herself. This always put the man in saving mode. But in the dream (nightmare?) the man called her bluff, and the woman’s greatest fear came true. He didn’t care if she died. He told her to get on with it. He didn’t have time for her, he told her. His list of things he needed to do was too long, and she was something he needed to be able to cross off, once and for all. She crumpled to the floor and he left, off to finish Important Things.

Despondent, the woman knew it was finally time to let death collect her. She looked about her on the ground and noticed strange, red, glowing cubes. They looked evil and even though she did not know what they were she knew that if she ate them, they would kill her. She scrambled about the floor, grabbing at them until she had a handful. She looked at them, glowing red in her palm, and lifted her hand to her mouth.

As she did, she looked up and saw two children watching her - a young boy and a girl. She knew immediately that they were her children – her daughter, and the son that she had wanted but never had. She had never become pregnant again after the birth of her daughter, but she had secretly always wanted a second child. While her daughter favored her father in looks and manner, she had always wondered what it would be like to have a son that looked like her. She always felt like an alien in her own family, without anyone that tied her into their group. Her daughter and the Man got along so well, and she was an outsider. She knew her daughter loved her, but she didn’t feel like she belonged to these people. With every passing year after the birth of her daughter the feeling grew and after a long time she knew that she would never have that son. The man, who was always content and practical, did not know to wish for a son, for he was happy with his daughter.

The woman looked at the children, and as she did, she saw them looking at her hand holding the evil cubes glowing with death within it. Then one of them (she isn’t sure which) said, “May we have one, too?” in a tone that made it clear to her that they also knew what ingesting one of the cubes would mean.

It was too much. Should her children die too, because she suffered? At that moment, the ground crumbled beneath her. Because it was a dream, the ground was literally crumbling beneath her body until she was riding on a sea of grey rubble. She looked around and she could see artifacts from her life with the Man tumbling around in the whirlpool of the ground: unimportant things, symbols of domestic life, laundry, toys, their material trappings. She scrambled to find purchase but she was drowning in detritus. Then, she spotted a man. This man had a shovel over his shoulder. And this man was Magic.

He said to her, “I can stop this. I can change this. I can change the past, but it will also change the future. Do you want my help?”

Of course she did. She was lost, spinning, being tossed and beaten by her life crashing around her.

“Yes”, she said.

“I will help you. When I begin to dig, I will change the past. But remember, it will also change your future. A warning, once the magic begins, do not touch any of the items you see from your past life or things will be as they are now, and nothing will ever change.”

The man lifted the shovel from his shoulder, and began to dig.

As soon as the blade of the shovel broke the surface of the rubble, everything began to shoot straight up toward the sky in a vertical column. The rubble, the detritus, their worldly trappings. She was shooting upwards as well. She could barely get her bearings as she was tossed about in the tornado. As she spun she spotted her son, who was reaching for an orange shirt that he recognized. She yelled at him to stop and threw her body over him to stop him from grabbing it. They stayed frozen in this horrible whirlwind for an eternity until suddenly it was completely silent.

The woman opened her eyes. All was calm. Everything had disappeared and she was standing alone in a room that looked like a warehouse. All she could see of it was one corridor. She began to walk down the corridor, and as she did she felt that she was becoming younger. Although she could remember her past life, everything that she knew was beginning to fade the further she walked.

She didn’t know how she knew, but she felt like she was making her life’s journey again, from the beginning. As she walked a little further she met the Boy. And they walked together, and they fell in love. And although they weren’t doing anything but walking, the memories of their lives together were de-constructing and reforming. They understood as they walked along that they were falling in love – Love, this time. And it was wonderful. They were so overjoyed; they enjoyed life together, or had the memory that they did. They had the children they wanted, did the silly romantic things they wanted. They built the memory of an extraordinary life. The life they could have lived.

As they neared the end of this corridor, they approached a wall. And at the wall they turned right, and then right again, and began walking up this corridor, which ran parallel to the one they just walked down. Again, they didn’t know how they knew, but it seemed clear that the first corridor was the beginning of their journey, and they had just passed the middle section and were now continuing on with the second half. They walked up quite cheerfully, their newly formed memories making them excited for what the future held for them.

But as they walked further this path, it became clear that there was a hint of sadness to the memories being made here. They still loved each other, and were living extraordinarily, but something was permeating these events with sadness. They couldn’t see the end of path from where they were, and so continued on walking. As they came nearer to the end, they became sadder. It became apparent that there was a sign at the end of this corridor, as well as a set of doors.

When they got close enough, they could see the sign. It had a date on it. The date was the current date in this dream, and it had their names on it. Underneath the date there were the words “Marriage Terminated”.

Because this was a dream, and dreams are strange, the man and woman knew what they needed to do next. They had to walk out of the doors, and go their separate ways, with their new memories of a happy life led to accompany them. They looked at each other and were sad, but in this dream they had no choice but to walk through the doors.

The man and woman walked out the doors, turned in separate directions and left. The woman began to come out of her daze, and the gravity and strangeness of what just happened hit her all at once. She grieved for the loss of the happiness and joy she felt walking down that first corridor. She wondered what would happen if she walked back through those doors and walked backwards. Could she do it all again and somehow avoid the ending? Make a new one?

She walked back to the doors, pushed through them and was surprised to find the man already there! He was looking at a collage of pictures that had appeared in a long border above the door. She could tell that they were pictures of the journey that they had made in here, from beginning to end. She hadn’t noticed it when they passed through the doors on their departure, so it must have appeared after they left.

She looked at the long line of photos, travelling it with her eyes from start to finish. When she looked at the end of the border, she could see that the end of it was disintegrating. The ends were tattered and rolling up like old wallpaper, and it was peeling away from the wall. The photos were losing their color. And the damage was spreading further to the left, closer to the beginning of the photos. As it did, she noticed that the man had already seen that this was happening and was trying to stop it. He reached overhead and smoothed the ends with his hands. As he did, the damage was reversing itself. But as soon as he lifted his hands, the deterioration began again. He tried again and again to smooth it, and again and again it would continue to crumble to dust. The woman knew that the man was trying to stop the end from happening - that he had come to try to reverse things too.

But just as in real-life, the man’s efforts did nothing to reverse the damage. The woman wondered why he didn’t try harder; try something else, fight to stop it. Instead, he just kept smoothing and watching the damage fade and re-form, over and over again - never trying anything different, never fighting harder to make it stop.

Then the woman broke completely. Even in her dreams she ended up alone. And although she was completely undone by this reality, she didn’t cry or scream or fight. She was blank.

The man must have sensed something was very wrong, because he took one look at the woman and grabbed her in a fierce embrace against his chest. And he did everything that she always wished he had done in the waking world: fought to hold her when she pushed back. Didn’t let her speak. Fought to keep her with him. Only in dreams.

Then she cried. She cried so very hard, and he held her, and stroked her hair while she sobbed. And as she cried she knew these tears wouldn’t keep him with her. She felt that their purpose was in lubrication, to make the separating of their lives together easier.

She cried and a strange thing happened. She woke up. Only the crying in her dream had been real. But unlike the dream, the man did not embrace her. He let her cry.

Are dreams truth? Is Magic? Was the dream proof positive that the man and woman had to live apart? The magic man did say that his magic would change the future. It didn’t in the dream. In the dream, despite all the extraordinary things that happened the man and woman still parted. But the dream tears did become real tears. The magic man said that his magic would change the future.

Will this part hold true?