In Stone

In a beautiful house by a river in a land where the sun was always shining, a little girl lived all by herself. She had always lived there, at the edge of a beautiful forest with the happy little river, she could not remember a time before, and though she was alone she was not sad. She would often sit on the river bank and watch the water gurgle over the rocks and sand at the bottom and wonder idly what was on the other side. She had never left her side of the river, and knew nothing about what lay on the opposite bank. She would spend her day in a curious state of peace. Mostly staring at the sky and thinking of nothing. She would meander through the woods and the house, tracing the route she had taked the day before.

But when evening came, she would leave her house and walk a little way into the forest behind it. In the soft light of dusk she would stand before a marble tomb encrusted with moss and crumbling with age. As she stood there, not really knowing why she had come, the nothingness of the day would desert her, and she would suddenly be over come with emotion. She wondered why her heart felt so heavy and brimmed with so much pain. She tried to remember but the silent cruelty of the tomb banished her thoughts. Every night she decided never to visit the tomb again, but every evening, as the sun began to disappear into the trees she found herself walking into the woods. Something called to her, something that begged to be found, to be returned. To be forgiven.

But in her sleep she walked her life before. She walked along a wooded path dressed in black. She walked behind a train of silent people. She walked behind a beautiful stone sarcophagus. She walked across the river that would be her prison, she walked past the house that would be hers alone, she walked to the marble tomb, gleaming in the late afternoon sunlight and watched as they placed the Sarcophagus inside. She stood beside it before they settled the heavy stone lid. She stared down into the cold eyes, watching as a slow smile twisted the cold lips. Her heart screamed in pain and without a thought she ripped it from her chest and threw it into the stone coffin. Her pain dulled and after a year of fighting for peace and freedom, her mind slept. She stepped away from the sarcophagus and walked to her house, wondering at the cold laughter that followed her, unmoved at last by what lay inside the tomb.

And so she lived alone in her peaceful, beautiful house by the river. She never remembered her dreams and never thought of her future. She knew nothing about her past. She never felt sad, and she never felt alone. She never felt anything.

Except for a few moments every day, in the cool grey light at dusk, when she stood before the marble tomb and tried to ignore the agony that she had paid so much never to feel.