She spoke in the wrong metaphors.
Her words moved in directions she had neither planned nor imagined. As if by using the tools she had been given to build formed a structure whose shape was yet to reveal itself.
But it’s not that she had not come prepared. In fact, she obsessed for millennia in the confines of the shadows. Waiting, watching and planning. Mastering every move and countermove in every book. When it came, she told herself, when it came she would be ready. Fortified. Unbreakable.
These are the stories she told herself.
These are the stories they told her.
These are the dreams they sold her.
And now. She spoke in metaphors that moved in unrecognizable ways. Patterns that were once discernable, reliable and predictable now seemed to ripple away in every direction except the one that they were meant to.
And then a restructure
And then a resctructure.
(a writer intervenes: the following scenes may be disturbing to those who would rather not be disturbed and comforting to those who would try to seek solace in the perpetual passing of time).
What did she expect? That somehow half baked research by those who knew less about what they were doing than anyone else would help? Or maybe, as one tends to, it was the hope that killed her. That somehow, because of all the lives and patterns she had studied it would be easier; somehow lighter to deal with. That somehow, having knowledge would make it more palpable.
This, though, this was nothing like any story they had ever told her. There were no simple character patterns, not predictable moves. It was like a thousand butterflies were flapping their wings halfway across the world. And she was at the intersect of the tornadoes.
(look right, look left)
Any attempts to create a form of balance would all end in assault from all angles.
(look left again, dammit! Look left again!)
But hope, hope must be held on to. Hope refuses to be broken, even when it should be. Hope drives us up the wall in ways we couldn’t even imagine. We hope because we must, we hope because we want something to happen, we hope because we don’t know what else to do wehopebecausewewantto. Wehopebecausewemustwehopebecausewehaveforgottenhownottowehopebecuaseafterallthistime…
…even hope will fail us.
A lesson from somewhere, in the middle of the loosely bound internet pages from a dreamer who tried not to calm the storm, but to be the butterfly.
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