This Story Has No End

       My earliest memory is of the ceiling in my bedroom. The blank, dark wood with its many cracks and stains was all I could bear to see at the time. I remember feeling like there was a lead weight on my chest making it hard to breathe; I could feel the wetness of the air passing through my lungs. I felt so weak and frail - I was a piece of ceramic just waiting to break.

       My next memory is of a man sitting next to me. He was in simple dress, his long blonde hair was loosely tied in a low ponytail and he was barefoot. His pale skin shown in the moonlight as he read from a leatherbound book, his green eyes twinkling with a deep sadness as he looked towards me. In that moment, I knew that this man was supposed to be my father figure, even if we do not look at all alike. Later, when I grew older, he would tell me about finding me swaddled in the snow in the middle of the forest that we lived in, with no one else in sight.

       My first five years of life were spent wasting away in that bed with my father reading to me and telling me stories of what I came to know as The Outside. I was too weak to even lift my head from the bed, let alone walk out of the cottage and take in the fresh air. The only reference I had to The Outside was the small window in my room and my father's stories. I know now that those stories were somewhat exaggerated for my benefit, but at the time, I soaked in the tales of villians and heros, of adventurers trekking through dungeons, of the sun always being bright in the sky with no cloud in sight.

       I was five by the time I became strong enough to venture out of the cottage in the woods. My first breath of The Outside was as deep as I could do, followed by a coughing fit that left me wheezing for air with tears in my eyes. I remember my father becoming frantic and trying to pull me back inside, but I refused. I was determined to not be beat by the outside elements that caused my condition in the first place. I like to think that my father understood that desire, for he let me be with a small smile of wonderment in his eyes. I remember the green grass was wet under my feet with morning dew, and there was a sound like baby birds only just now waking up with the morning light.

       I met her in that clearing a few days later. I was picking small flowers to show to my father later when I heard a small noise from the trees. My years being bedridden had made me a very curious child so of course I moved closer to where the noise had come from. What I saw was a child much smaller than me. She had short brown hair and these honeycomb brown eyes that glistened wherever she happened to look. I later found out that she was two years older than me, but she was so small that many people mistook her for my younger sister. At the time, I really didn't know any better; to be fairly honest I thought that me and my father were the only people who lived so far from the city. So imagine my surprise when there was someone else here. I remember that she was scared. I remember taking note of her trembling limbs and her eyes widening as I came closer. She might as well have been a frightened rabbit caught in a snare for the way she was acting towards me. I did the only thing a five year old holding a bunch of daisies could, I stopped about two feet from her, and I held out a flower. It felt like years. Even for a small child who does not have that great of a time reference, it felt like years before she finally reached out and took the small flower. Her smile was insecure at best; god, she was so timid. I remember, in that moment, making a decision to help this small child come out of her shell more.

       So in those next few years, me and her became close friends. Every morning I would go outside and pick flowers while I wait for her to come out of her hiding spot. The first time I did this it took her well over two hours to actually come up to me and sit with me. It took her almost a week to actually talk to me. I found out that she went to the Academy in the nearby city and she had been for two years now. She told me that she was learning about magic and all the littlest details that go into something so complex. Of course, she was only seven at the time, so she had not learned as much as she did in the future, but she was getting there.