Every so often, you meet a faery. A dragon. A wizard. Someone mysterious, and impossible, and precious. Someone who can take something as ordinary as a word and transform it into a magic spell that could carry you through a thousand deaths and bring you out alive. The problem with creatures from myths? Eventually, they will disappear, and with them they take a part of you. You wonder sometimes what they do with you. Are you something treasured, hoarded, stored in a box without a key? Are you paraded, exploited, laughed over a cup of coffee? You don't want to entertain even a passing glimpse at yourself lost, or forgotten, neglected like so much rubbish growing dust at the edge of a memory. So you forget, until you're not sure it even happened.
Every so often, you lose a bit of yourself. Every soul is raw and rough and has at least a little bit of ugly, like a great craggy rock growing from a cliff side. With enough wind and rain and salt and sand, the rock is worn smooth and warm to the touch. They say, it's what you do when things become difficult that shows your true character. It's when you've been broken so many times there's nothing left to do but split down the middle. Uncut gems are often nothing more than a fleck of color in an expanse of grey, and one man's treasure is nothing but a bag full of tiny grains of gold swept down an unforgiving river. When enough of you has chipped away, you're left stunning and luminous, but completely unprotected. The world is just as eager to wash away something beautiful and bright.
Every so often, you remember. It starts as a tickle in the back of your mind when you see something else that just bleeds magic. When you hear a child laugh, or the elusive strain of a lullaby long forgotten. It's when you catch a glimpse of yourself and see someone else. It's when you see the light before you even realize you're in the dark. That's when you remember that piece of you somewhere, from another time, and another place. It's when you remember a secret whispered in a flurry of other sweet murmurs, sweet nothings, sweet melodies. It's easy to be afraid to give yourself up to someone else. But when you've lost so much of yourself you don't remember who you are, it's those pieces of you, away from you, that bring you back.
Every so often, you remember.
