• And he shall be kind and gentle, understanding and…

    “No. No, I shall not think these things…”

    With long, dark hair…

    “No!” I shouted, my hands nearly ripping the twenty pages I’d just printed out. I sighed and slumped back into my computer chair, trying in vain to return my mind to proofreading. The problem was simply that I loved this imaginary man too much.

    I just needed food. Yes. If I just had food, I could then concentrate.

    I went to the kitchen.

    I was chopping tofu into little cubes when sudden desire overcame me. Slamming my over sized butcher knife on the cutting board, I exclaimed, “Good heavens! No more of this! I want meat, and I will kill to have it!”

    I rounded on Lanet-Cari who shrank before the form of my frenzied, butcher knife wielding self. “I am sorry, girl,” I apologized, setting aside the knife and bending down to stroke her black fur. The wolf wagged her tail as a sign of forgiveness.

    “It’s just that I…” I bit my lip as tears began to roll down my cheeks for the fourth time that day, dripping onto my velvet gown. “Am I not good enough? Am I so different from the other women that…”

    Lanet-Cari turned her golden eyes on me, regarding my tear stained cheeks and smeared eyeliner.

    “Yes, yes. I know what you shall say, and you needn’t speak it. I am already aware.”

    She whined, placing a paw on my knee.

    “Lets go check on the painter now, shall we?” I suggested cheerfully despite my still threatening tears.

    I was sure the painter had heard my outburst for, as I entered the living room, his look was more startled than the last time I’d seen him. “Is th-there anything wrong?” he stuttered.

    I was frightening him too. I only stared back blankly as the tears resumed their former course down my cheeks.

    “Miss Edwards--” he began, but I cut him off.

    “You have no need to remind me that I am but a mere ‘miss’,” I spat the title with disgust.

    He seemed not to understand. I didn’t blame him.

    I collapsed on the floor where I was. Lanet-Cari looked on at my pitiful form with understanding. She then barked at our dear painter, scaring him pale.

    “Hush, Lanet,” I groaned. “You are only frightening him. He does not understand your speech.”

    Lanet hung her head and slipped past me, pawing at the kitchen door until it opened, and she disappeared inside. I felt an instant stab of regret. Had I not just discouraged Lanet the same way others had done to me? Just like she, I had not been understood, and therefore not allowed to help.

    “You have no need to fear Lanet,” I tried to amend. “She only meant to explain my current state to you. There was no harm meant.”

    He nodded, but did not resume painting. There was a pause before he asked, “And what is your ‘current state’?”

    I laughed even as the tears ran down my cheeks. Sprawled out on the floor, I pointed up at one of the massive beams that crossed the ceiling. “That, my dear fellow, shall fall in five hundred years’ time, bringing down with it the ceiling just as when he stepped from my life, so did my hope fall.”

    “You…mean your roof is going to cave in?” the man ventured a reply though still horribly shaken.

    “No, dear sir. The builders did a superb job. I was simply trying…” A sob escaped my throat, and when I found my words again, they were much louder than need be. From the painter’s wince, I knew I was hurting his ears. “I was simply endeavoring to place my words together artistically. Did it not sound very much like a poem?”

    He nodded in response, perhaps to appease me, and therefore cause me to lower my obnoxiously loud tone. I climbed to my feet, swaying on them precariously as my grin no doubt turned to something maniacal. The painter’s eyes darted to the door and then back to me, and I concluded that he must be debating his chances of escape.

    I laughed again, stepping towards him with narrowed eyes. “Tell me this, sir,” I spoke as he backed away, dropping his brush to the floor. “Have you ever experienced the pangs of lost, forbidden love?” I stooped to pick up his abandoned brush and poked him in the chest with its handle.

    He swallowed. “Um. No.”

    “No?” I cried, making him jump. “What do you say to livening up this painting? Shall we?”

    With a simple wave of my hand, the freshly painted dragons slithered to life, the white scales of one scraping against the black scales of the other. Their glaring eyes sparked, and their fangs glinted in the light.

    The painter gave a startled cry at hearing his masterpiece growl at him. He stumbled back into Lanet-Cari who had just reemerged. She barked at him, and, once more, he did not understand her explanation.

    The dragons slithered from the wall, no longer bound by the feeble limits of paint and reality. The tongue of the white dragon, which I shall dotingly name Rithmira, snaked from her mouth to lick the nose of her creator. The black dragon, Hethrim, stretched out his massive head for me to stroke.

    By this point, the painter was paralyzed with both fear and disbelief. I thought he should be delighted. Isn’t it every artist’s wish to see their dreams come to life?

    “It brings an entire new meaning to the words ‘living room’, does it not?” I joked good naturedly.

    The painter found no humor in this and bolted straight for the door, tripping over Lanet in the process.

    “Don’t forget your check!” I called after him as he fled down the drive. I was left waving the slip of paper in the air, for the painter did not so much as glance back.

    “Miss Edwards! What on earth was that about?” my dear gardener called to me.

    There it was again, I thought grumpily. That dreaded word ‘miss’. I kept my smile forced to my lips as I turned to her. “Nothing Bertha!” I called. “But here! Take this if you please!”

    The woman barely caught the little trinket I tossed to her. My engagement ring. After turning it over in her hands, she stared back up at me with astonishment. “But Miss--”

    I held up a hand to stop her. “Bury it deep, Bertha, deep as you can. And don’t water it. I shan’t want in growing into anything. Good and dead is the way I like those. There will be no funeral!”

    The woman stared at me as if I were mad. Maybe I was.

    “Also, please call me Victoria. It is my given name, after all.”

    And with that, I returned to my castle. My home.

    Welcome, it seemed to whisper from its lofty heights.

    Yes. Home. I’d come at last.