Paradise (**One-Shot** - Comp Entry)

And Dreamed of Paradise

                  

Thanks to _Tally_the_Total_, hastagyouwish and pfrancy23 for being the first people to vote for this :D

A girl sat in her mother's arms, listening to Grimm's tales, and she imagined the world, just and fair, where everything came to good ends, where evil was always vanquished, where she sat on a throne of glass, a crown atop her head, and danced on a thousand silver stars in paradise.

The girl read every night, immersing herself in her paradise. She danced with a princeling, and waved away shadows with a flick of her hand. She wished upon a star, and the star talked back.

The girl sat in her backyard, in the gorgeous glade where her parents had finally let her wander alone. The brook gurgled at the bottom of the yard, the shallow water black and capped with clumps of moss, though she always imagined it as crystal clear, the sunlight that ever-glowed in her glittering world dancing off of it like fire.

Pond skaters spun across the water; in her mind, a dozen faeries darted to and fro, skating on the water like the brook was frozen.

She'd cross the little bridge—a tiny wooden thing with cracked peach-and-cream paint, but which in her eyes was a huge pavilion adorned with wide, marble balconies and three hundred spiralling pillars and glassless windows above massive sluice gates that tamed the roaring water when the brook overflowed in rain – across the brook and she'd sit on the hill on the other side beneath the old oak tree and look around at the backyard with an awestruck gaze.

For her, amidst the layers of fronds of ferns, the curls of ivy, the trunks of trees, the beads of lavender, the heads of daisies and hydrangeas, the explosions of glistening spider webs, a million creatures lived.

Dragons soared across the sky, chasing flaming phoenixes that left her messages in the clouds. Sprites' laughs carried to her on the wind; she could see their lights glimmer, hidden, in the shadows.
When she was offered apples, she cast them away, crying they were poison.

She brandished a wand and brushed and brushed her hair, which she imagined was so long it dragged on the ground. She tucked flowers behind her ear and accepted the prince's welcoming hand as he rode to see her every mid-afternoon, and they would wind through the garden together.

Her mother watched, smiling, from the house, and the girl's father yelled that this couldn't go on. The girl, on the times when she was heading back to the house and saw her parents arguing, turned away and went back to her paradise.

School almost crushed her. All the science and mathematics, of deep-thinking and socialising, confused her and hurt her, but she always had her paradise to retreat to when she lay in bed in the evenings and let her thoughts carry her away.

After failing marks and long days, she learnt how to survive at school. Her grades changed from the worst to the best as she realised that the way to succeed was to pretend—and she had found by now that she was rather good at pretending. It was still hard, though, and her imagination was her haven.

Finishing school finally was a relief, and she took a year for travelling before university as an excuse to immerse herself in her imagination, in her paradise.

She struggled with money and found herself back at her parents' before half of the year was gone. There her father forced her to take up a job, and while she sat at a desk, tapping the keys of a plain black keyboard that she imagined to change colour every day, she found herself drawing. She drew the fantasies that always lingered in her head, in startling, realistic detail from the hours of sitting and dreaming.

A woman recognised her talents, and she was hired as an illustrator. She started to write books, as well, pouring her heart into her stories.

As she became older, and life beat at her like waves upon an already-weathered cliff, her paradise changed.

There were no longer princes and princesses and mythical creatures, but rather an alternate world to her Earth, where every choice was right, where there were no mistakes, where a real boy with the face of her prince loved her, where nothing could touch here: where she was invincible.

Her dreams were now blurred images taken from real life: talking birds and coloured clouds, the sun setting over the ocean and painting the sky with pinks and reds and golds.

Her mother died, her father ignored her, her money dwindled, her books were rejected, again and again, but no matter how many times she cried herself to sleep, or ate Chinese takeout that tasted like it had been made days ago, she always had her paradise.

She'd go back to the garden behind the house where'd she once lived. The yard was overgrown, the brook nearly hidden among reeds, the bridge broken and crumbling. She'd lie at the roots of the crooked old oak tree and pity herself, until one day, the realisation came upon her as she stared up at the greying, clouding sky: It will get better.

She met a boy, one day, and he astounded her as he entered her paradise, understanding the wishes she made. He danced around her dreams with her, and gently pulled her out of her paradise, into the world.

The world is not paradise, but it is still your world, he would say.

She left her paradise, and went with him. She found a publishing house which accepted her books and dressed them in silver and gold, sweeping them with gentle eyes and showing them to the world. She met a girl, who became her best friend, and one day the boy pulled out a ring for her, a ring bejewelled with tiny rubies. My prince.

I woke with a start, putting my hand to my heart. Realising that I had been dreaming, I let out a sigh and lay back against my pillow. Breathing evenly, I looked up at the dark ceiling of my bedroom. It was nowhere near morning.

I closed my eyes and then opened them again. Raising my hand in front of my face, I admired for the millionth time the ruby ring adorning my finger. Smiling, I put my hand down. I closed my eyes with an anticipative grin.

I had a little time for my paradise.

Two birds floated, high above, high enough that they were soaring through star-spangled, midnight-blue sky. They left a trail of sparks as they danced in flight, tearing holes in the velvet of the night's cloak to show the glimpses of golden light beyond. The birds' laughing voices carried down to me, speaking words that sounded intelligible but when focused on were in a strange, lilting language.

A hot air balloon burst into my vision, glowing with hot reds and oranges as a rising sun shone behind it, illuminating its canvas. The balloon floated up and ripped a hole in the stormy clouds, which were stained with colours from the sunrise as well, as it floated through. Rising through the clouds after the balloon, trailing my fingers through starlight, I soared upwards.

I drew in an awestruck breath as I looked across space: a rolling, thrashing Forever full of swirling galaxies and pinpricks of stars.

The two birds shot past me, startling me, and I watched as they faded and disappeared. It occurred to me that the hot air balloon was nowhere in sight.

I smiled, and looked down. The clouds seemed to have vanished, and I was looking down on Earth, on the world, at the reality waiting for me to wake the next morning.

But I looked up, and raised my arms, twirling, dancing on a thousand silver stars in paradise.