Something stirs in the darkness. What it is no one knows. It isn’t the kind of thing that you can see or hear, but feel instead. It’s the kind of feeling that turns your blood and shakes your very bones, as if it lives in the walls and its eye is the unblinking sun. All around it lives and never has it woken. Always it has been asleep. Its power a gentle hum that has forever meant silence to us, a sound that has been ringing for so long that we mistake it for silence. So large it is, so massive we could never wish to see all of it. To see it would be like trying to see all of the night sky at once. So much space it takes up that one eye could never hold it. But it has stirred now…from its sleep that may have been going on sense its very creation. It is leaning forward and stretching. And soon, sooner than one would think, its eyes will open and it will take its first step. I only hope that it feels no anger to us who have basked in this sun all our lives while it sleeps in ever darkness. I only hope that its first step lands on earth and not jagged stone. No pain must befall this creature for that will be the first thing it feels. What a way to know this place.

A boy walks. He takes carful steps as if the ground beneath his feet were made of glass. Each breath he takes is cold and grey like the sky above. In truth even the ground is grey. Such a place is strange and yet the boy does not know why that is. He knows nothing of the past or even what is ahead of him. He refuses to look up. His feet that are clad in grey boots, is where he looks and nowhere else. He may be headed for a cliff that leads to a grey washed sea or maybe he will find himself among a horde of beasts, hungry for blood. But the boy knows nothing of such danger and so he walks. Such ignorance could spell his death. But maybe it is better not to know what lies before you. For fear can kill just as well.

A girl sits. In the darkness where nothing reaches her, arms tight around her knees as if to hold herself together. The sun is a distant dream that she longs for but has not seen in too long of a time. Hair bleached white from the gloom she almost glows but of course no light comes for there is none here. Tortured she is with what she knows. Long ago she danced in the sun where it warmed her skin and made things grow from the ground as if by magic. A longing for such times of old is so overwhelming she does not know if she will breathe the next moment. Her heart is thumping so loudly in this utter silence. Does such a sound call for monsters? Or is the sound only in her head? Maybe the girl has already died? Maybe this is death and she has yet realized it. Still she sits alone and cold in a darkness that is slowly eating away at every thought. She worries for beasts but she also knows that darkness is a kind of beast on its own. Until she is only a pile bones, curled up to protect her from things unseen. As white as the light she longs for, her eyes can no longer know such things.

There’s a ringing in the air. I don’t know what it means and maybe it’s all my head but I love the sound. As clear and crisp as cold morning air it is. I wish to forever hear it but the fact that it comes when I am about to fall asleep is the one thing I love so. In that place between a dream and the still world that is when it comes. As if to usher me to a wonderland that may be filled with nightmares or dreams of flight I do not know. Or maybe this sound is real, a sound that just happens to drift in on the summer breeze as I fall asleep, rung from some faraway place. Whatever the sound is it is enchanting and makes me tried just thinking about it. Maybe the sound is the sound of my own breath coming and leaving. Is it the sound of my own heart slowing down as I enter a new place? It is a place of possibility tinged with fear. For fear makes even the best places a little better. For too much of a good thing can be so boring. Fear is needed just as much as love. I think I will rest now. Too much thought makes this body too weak I think.

This need, such yearning like none other they have. It burns through your body and lights your very heart aflame. A wish that may never be granted that’s what this is. And they look at others, so passive they are, and they pity them. Even though they themselves are working hard enough for ten men, to the point where bones crack and blood runs dry. They are working with a fire in them. What lit it, it’s hard to tell. But one must know that they will work till they die and they are thankful for that. Something to reach for to make them stronger that is what they have. A gift handed to them or maybe it was drug up from the muck of the world. Either way they have this idea this star that they must find and this is what makes them so powerful and so fierce. Their lives will be spent on this and others will think them stupid and odd. Maybe they are, the waste their lives on something that may never happen. Then again they may be spending their lives on the purest of things with the lightest of hearts. Never will they be chained with regret or weakness. For they have done all they could. Truly that is all one can ever do.

Page after page she turns, as if she has time to be idle. Fires burn and screams come but she does not feel the heat nor does she hear the shouts. She is deaf and blind to them in this place. Words keep her safe if you will. Here is her sanctuary. She has escaped and may never be found. She is lost in this place but does not take a step. She is in a distant land of happier times, times of sunshine and warmth, of love and caring. It is the time before this evilness, this darkness that shrouds the world with an inky black mist. Within this mist, within this room, and even further within this girl’s thoughts, we find this safe place. In the entire world this is the only one that wishes to have love and compassion inside. So here she sits, ignoring all, in hopes of keeping that hope alight. She feeds it tinder to let the flame grow and hopes that it isn’t too late. She will be happy here until the very words before her crumbled from burning flames. For it is her job, her duty, to keep that love alive. For she is the only one who cares to keep it and is the only one who knows how to find it when all else it lost.

A baby is born with a heart that does not beat. Yet the child lives and breathes like any other baby girl. Her heart is hard as if made of stone. No doctor knew why this was. One day a witch came and spoke of the child. She whispered of a tale that the father believed. His child, his little girl, possessed a heart of great power. Instead of a heart that beats and lives to keep its body alive, the girl held within her breast that of a jewel. A jewel that could grant any being life, such power was too great to give to any king. The jewel was left with the girl in hopes that she could keep it away from all kinds of evil. So the girl grew into a beauty. Wise she was and still she held the kindness of the baby she was born as. But many people with wicked hearts wished for the stone she held and so thousands came. What could be done? The girl was beautiful and was too soft hearted to kill any living soul. A man who had once been a boy, a boy that the girl had known all her life, he came to the girl in her time of need. With sward in hand he killed them all and drenched in blood he lay at her feet. He pledged his life to her. He would protect her that was his only wish. Years passed and the girl was as safe as safe can be. The evil men had long since given up and there was no one left to fight. The man loved the girl turned woman and so they were to be wed. The day before this should occur…a demon dressed in black came. He was strong and with eyes of red he struck down the man with a single swipe of his claws. The woman for the first time felt the taint of hate and so picked up the fallen sward of the man she loved. With a beating heart she killed the monster and fell to her knees before the breathless body that had been her love. She cried for days and refused to eat or sleep. Then as she was beginning to feel faint she ripped out her own heart. The very stone that had kept her alive sense birth, the very stone that had brought this man to her and killed him so, it would grant him his life. She gave him the stone and its power was given to him. The woman fell dead. As soon as she breathed her last breath the man awoke with eyes startled like an animal. He bolted straight and found the girl. He mourned for many years. A grave was dug by his hands marked with blood. There was no stone that marked her grave, no pretty words to make her death a happier one. Instead the man took his own sward, a weapon that had saved him and her both countless times. Till this day the sward stands, covered with rust and battered by the wind, but it stands as strong as the hands that had once held it. The man left and where he went no one truly knows. Yet every year a dark figure comes to pay its respect to the dead woman. Even hundreds of years later the figure comes. He may be a descendant of the man, or maybe a friend of the girl who helped many in her time. Some believe that it is the girl’s love, the man that died for her. The stone given to him is heavy in his chest but he bears that pain as he should. He will live out his days walking this earth never to die, for that was the wish of the girl. And he will always grant such wishes for he promised her such.

The train moves against the sky. The world passes without notice. As if the train is lost to the world. This invisibility that is caused by something as normal as this, this is what the girl before us needs. She watches the world rush by in colors alone. No wind brings sound to this deaf place. Her eyes are glazed seeing yet not. She sees things that others cannot imagine. She sees the places that our minds try to forget, the places of dreams and nightmares. She walks the sky and swims among stars and yet when you look at her all you see is a lone girl sitting in the back of an old train. If you could see what she sees you may wonder how you never knew. So many people she’s met and places she’s been. Her hand moves without thinking and the words appear on a page wrinkled by her tight grip. Such words may be insignificant to others. She may be writing a letter or a list in order to not forget. In a way she is doing both. She is in a far off place and must write it down in hopes, that when she returns she will be able to know what it was like to be there at all.

The dye has been cast. The curtain has risen. The show will begin and you my reader are about to witness the show of a life time. Wherever you are, may it be in a soft chair under a warm blanket, or a hard bench in the dead of night, know that the cast will not change. The actors are real and will never fade though these pages may. Watch the world fold and unfold, before your very eyes. Every word is my gift to you.