Happiness doesn't come easy for me. You know that. You've known that for a long time. You've known that I could have happy moments and then be dragged back down once I was alone again. You knew that I desperately needed to be saved, but didn't know how to save me. The more you tried, the more I pushed you away. But still you tried, valiantly, slaying dragon after dragon to save me. Little did you know I was the one sending the dragons. My tower, where I was always alone, was all I knew. I couldn't let anyone in my tower, let alone take me away from it, because I was scared. The dragons held me captive and I thought they were keeping me safe. They tortured me and abused me and I thought that was how it was supposed to be. Doesn't everyone have their dragons? Mine were just a little rough around the edges. I know you got tired, fighting an uphill battle that never ended. I know you wanted to give up. I know some of you did. I watched from my tower as you fled from the scorching fire that ravaged the ground. No one could get through.
I tried to leave, every now and then. Sometimes I almost made it out before I was turned around.
"They don't really want you out there," said the dragons.
"Why do you think no one has come to get you?" they hissed.
"Stay in the tower."
"No one wants you."
The dragons, my companions, were right. I listened to them because I trusted what they said. I believed them. Yes Dragon, I don't know what I was thinking. No one wants me out there, I thought as I watched you fall beneath the flames. I belong in here, I thought, looking at all of the burned skeletons surrounding my tower. I belonged with the death, fire, and bones.
Eventually, I stopped looking out the window. I didn't want to see you fail, over and over and over again. I didn't want to see you lose your sword, desperately clinging to your shield, trying to get to me. I turned away, hoping you would give up if you couldn't see me. The problem then was that I couldn't see you. I didn't know if you were still charging your way through my dragons or if you had finally given up. You weren't there anymore because I had cut off my view. Desperate, I turned to the window, but it was gone. The dragons had taken that from me too. I mourned the loss of you, but my dragons assured me it was better this way. Without me, you wouldn't be caught up in the constant battle with my dragons. You could turn around, go home, and be free of this battle forever. They told me this, but I couldn't let you go. You had been fighting for me for so long that the thought of you not being there broke my heart. Sometimes a broken heart is stronger than a broken mind. I grabbed my sword that had always hung on my wall, something to be looked at, but never used, and I stepped out the door.
"This is a mistake," the dragons said, surrounded me, their voices filling me. "You don't really want to do this."
For the first time, their words rang with wrongness in my mind. I did want this. My first swing of the sword missed and the dragons closed in on me. I swung again, my sword plunging into a dragon's heart. It screamed and the other dragons swarmed. The terror and chaos of what I had done was paralyzing. But I couldn't stop. If I stopped now the dragons would kill me. The dragons that had so carefully kept me all these years would rather end me than let me continue. I fought for my life in the stairwell of my tower, sword flashing as their fire burned me. I rose from the fire, a phoenix in the midst of pigeons. The dragons fell one by one at the end of my sword. They wouldn't hold me captive anymore. I escaped my tower and saw the scorched field that stretched around it.
Bones and ashes, ashes and bones.
The bones are you and they are not you. You died for me, you fought for me, and you are still out there.
The dragons still come for me; I didn't kill them all. They come and I fight them. They burn me and I kill them. The dragons still come for me just as I still come for you.
It isn't easy, this road that I have taken. You know that because you've taken a hard road, too. The dragons are everywhere. They come from above, from below. They come in disguise and they come head on.
But we have swords.
Let them come.
"Fairytales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us dragons can be beaten." -Coraline by Neil Gaiman
