My life as a fairy tale

 

Bold, fearless and a bit naive, she walks up to the ancient stone wall full of power, charm, bluster and no conceivable idea of pause. There's a rope hanging hundreds of feet from a rock face dangling before her, begging to be tugged. There's also a steep staircase, a formidable challenge to even the most fit athlete or most confident star.

Assumptions are made.

Instantly.

No double-thinking; no hesitation in the slightest. She was 19.

+++++

Next to her lies a calming influence. A good man with keen intellect and an unconventional pause. He assesses the same wall, the same stairs, the same rope. He reacts differently. He was 39 forever.

Wild thoughts tumble in her mind. The ex-Dog; a real mongrel. What would he think of the wall? He wouldn't even come to the jungle. He wouldn't come out for a bone. What would he think of the wall? How would he climb? But he wasn't there. Again. He was trapped behind his other walls. Deep, fortress walls around his heart. His middle. He was a cave-dweller older than time.

In two small steps she near-leaps at the rope and tugs with back-ripping ferocity. Because that's what she does. She's a Captain. You pick a route/you go. Her feet press stone, one/two. Toes straight up, heels pressed wide in a stance of authority. She knows the way. Like this. Just like this.

One/two.

Sail.

Next question.

+++++

The man with the calm is unmoored.

Stoically, with composure and control he allows for little, disgusted guffaws. This woman/this brat. She has topped the absurd.

"Who ARE you?" he means.

In a poetic and sparse sequence of words that she half-heard through the wind of her own making he defines her, her essence, the monstrosity of her world view as unacceptable. Impossible.

He says she is not human. He says, more accurately, that SHE views HERSELF as mythical and he hates her for it.

He says she can not defy gravity, common sense, or rules the way she does. She WILL NOT.

He is not laughing. He is consumed with penetrating derision. He questions - at a core level - if she actually believes she is a mortal woman. She tastes the acidity of his judgment. It hurts. She can't ignore the way their story - their FRIENDSHIP will end.

Fairy tales are lovely when the princess and the pea smash together in a brilliant jam. A jam untasted. A green, untasted jam.

+++++

Hours later, she's on top of the wall looking out over hundreds of miles of jungle tree-tops at hints of river water snaking to a red-line horizon. He is there next to her, but closer to the cur. She didn't know they were the same. 19 and 39. End dates to old decades - a generation apart. Their dual climb completed in silence and struggle, one of pride and one of definite prejudice.

She judged him too. She learned that men are fragile too.

After a pause, a long drink of breath wheezing across the chasm between Venus and Mars, they both exit stage right with little fanfare. It was about to rain. The sky became dark, and the wind demanded due respect. She ducked like a criminal in shame from the promise of their love, and watched it become trampled into brown-brackish water. Not beautiful. Gone.

+++++

Lifetimes later, she stands before a tree. A wide, old, Virginia white oak. Left like an Ansel Adam's legacy with arms akimbo, proud and outstretched, full of leafy imperfection in a field of modern sparseness.

Outstanding!

She is so thirsty. She is so tired. Her legs ache from climbing mountains.

One/two she remembers. Like this. Just like this. A rope swings down to meet her grasp and she tugs with heart-wrenching desire. She is real. She is human. She wills her toes straight up. Like this.

From behind a strong and tender man embraces her in total. He lifts her. He lifts her.

He loves her. She is not old. She is free.