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Dancing the Labyrinth - fragment?
Oct. 18th, 2010 11:33 amAuthor's Note: So here's the deal. I wrote this a little while ago. I thought there was more to write. But reading it again this morning, I'm thinking, maybe this is it. So. What do you think? Finished? Not finished?
Dancing the Labyrinth
It wasn't that she'd made a mistake exactly. Not when she'd been younger. Just that the choice she made then was not the choice an older woman would have made.
But that was what growing up was about, wasn't it?
Susan put the last box away in her storage unit. One put away childish things, didn't one? she thought, and closed the door. No more costumes, no more lace. Just adult pinstripe and rent, adult responsibilities and the occasional Cosmopolitan to dull the pain when the pinstripes and the responsibilities weighed down to the point of despair.
She chided herself.
She didn't despair. She just... Well, there was no verb for melancholy. And really, she put it aside. Tomorrow, she'd be on a plane heading for Florence, Italy.
So why did her heart hitch in her chest whenever she thought about it?
And why did it make her remember her childhood and the choice an ignorant fifteen-year-old version of herself had made?
* * *
She'd been home alone that night long ago. Just turned fifteen. Susan couldn't push the memory away, even as all her fellow passengers slept the middle of the night plane flight away.
She'd made a wish. Teenagers did that. But she wasn't a normal teenager and her mother had warned her about the perils of wishing. Harped on through Susan's entire life how wishing wasn't something any woman in their family could do.
How wishes had weight and if you weren't careful, the weight would crush you.
She'd not believed her mother.
Until he'd been there and proved her mother right beyond a shadow of a doubt.
She took off the headphones. She wasn't watching the in flight movie after all. She might as well give herself up to the memory.
* * *
In the end, it had been a contest of wills, a game of wits between the two of them, Susan and her wished for company. God, how silly she'd been. Been lonely and wished for unusual company.
And he'd come in all his finery and all his lace.
Gereint.
In the end, she'd won, but the cost had been great. She'd given up the power of her wishes to defeat him, gave up her family lineage. She hadn't thought the cost too high. In fact, it had been only fair.
But that was before she even knew what it would be like to be thirty and wish that a simple wish could come true.
* * *
She'd turned to other things. Found a way to make her luck, the kind of luck the rest of her family just fell into. She struggled with jobs and with life, but made her way. Her mother clucked, but Susan perservered.
And truly, it had paid off. An invitation to a world-renowned gallery in Florence. A stay in a nice hotel for the entire month. Best of all, it was Carnival. It might not have been Venice, but Florence would show her own colors for the festival.
Susan should have been happy.
But she wasn't.
She kept thinking about Gereint and the pizza and chess they'd shared, the fizzy soda spilled on the couch and how she'd giggled and he'd laughed. The Game and how, now, she wondered if she hadn't really lost after all.
* * *
Jet-lagged and ragged, deplaning in Florence didn't chase any of it from her mind.
But the old city of Florence in the dawn light did.
Susan felt her breath catch. The city was beautiful. Old and stately and gracious. She stood outside her small hotel and just breathed in the streets and the smell of baking from a nearby.
"I'm going to gain twenty pounds," she said, but with a smile and went to get the keys to her month-long home.
* * *
Of course it would be the first night of Carnival that would throw to ground any idea that her trip would be nothing but study and sightseeing.
Because she saw him.
Gereint.
Or his twin, but within minutes, Susan knew him to be no twin. Because across the crowded room of the cocktail party she'd been invited too by new study mates, he'd seen her.
Smiled.
And winked.
And vanished.
She didn't fall asleep that night till 4 AM, awake in wonder.
Here. Florence. He was here. And not a day older than she remembered.
Susan fell asleep finally, with a wondering smile on her lips, amazed that such a thing was possible or could have happened.
Dancing the Labyrinth
It wasn't that she'd made a mistake exactly. Not when she'd been younger. Just that the choice she made then was not the choice an older woman would have made.
But that was what growing up was about, wasn't it?
Susan put the last box away in her storage unit. One put away childish things, didn't one? she thought, and closed the door. No more costumes, no more lace. Just adult pinstripe and rent, adult responsibilities and the occasional Cosmopolitan to dull the pain when the pinstripes and the responsibilities weighed down to the point of despair.
She chided herself.
She didn't despair. She just... Well, there was no verb for melancholy. And really, she put it aside. Tomorrow, she'd be on a plane heading for Florence, Italy.
So why did her heart hitch in her chest whenever she thought about it?
And why did it make her remember her childhood and the choice an ignorant fifteen-year-old version of herself had made?
* * *
She'd been home alone that night long ago. Just turned fifteen. Susan couldn't push the memory away, even as all her fellow passengers slept the middle of the night plane flight away.
She'd made a wish. Teenagers did that. But she wasn't a normal teenager and her mother had warned her about the perils of wishing. Harped on through Susan's entire life how wishing wasn't something any woman in their family could do.
How wishes had weight and if you weren't careful, the weight would crush you.
She'd not believed her mother.
Until he'd been there and proved her mother right beyond a shadow of a doubt.
She took off the headphones. She wasn't watching the in flight movie after all. She might as well give herself up to the memory.
* * *
In the end, it had been a contest of wills, a game of wits between the two of them, Susan and her wished for company. God, how silly she'd been. Been lonely and wished for unusual company.
And he'd come in all his finery and all his lace.
Gereint.
In the end, she'd won, but the cost had been great. She'd given up the power of her wishes to defeat him, gave up her family lineage. She hadn't thought the cost too high. In fact, it had been only fair.
But that was before she even knew what it would be like to be thirty and wish that a simple wish could come true.
* * *
She'd turned to other things. Found a way to make her luck, the kind of luck the rest of her family just fell into. She struggled with jobs and with life, but made her way. Her mother clucked, but Susan perservered.
And truly, it had paid off. An invitation to a world-renowned gallery in Florence. A stay in a nice hotel for the entire month. Best of all, it was Carnival. It might not have been Venice, but Florence would show her own colors for the festival.
Susan should have been happy.
But she wasn't.
She kept thinking about Gereint and the pizza and chess they'd shared, the fizzy soda spilled on the couch and how she'd giggled and he'd laughed. The Game and how, now, she wondered if she hadn't really lost after all.
* * *
Jet-lagged and ragged, deplaning in Florence didn't chase any of it from her mind.
But the old city of Florence in the dawn light did.
Susan felt her breath catch. The city was beautiful. Old and stately and gracious. She stood outside her small hotel and just breathed in the streets and the smell of baking from a nearby.
"I'm going to gain twenty pounds," she said, but with a smile and went to get the keys to her month-long home.
* * *
Of course it would be the first night of Carnival that would throw to ground any idea that her trip would be nothing but study and sightseeing.
Because she saw him.
Gereint.
Or his twin, but within minutes, Susan knew him to be no twin. Because across the crowded room of the cocktail party she'd been invited too by new study mates, he'd seen her.
Smiled.
And winked.
And vanished.
She didn't fall asleep that night till 4 AM, awake in wonder.
Here. Florence. He was here. And not a day older than she remembered.
Susan fell asleep finally, with a wondering smile on her lips, amazed that such a thing was possible or could have happened.
