Romantic love story

Chapter Thirty: Butterfly Wings

Comfort eased her into consciousness, a security that had come from holding Terry's hand as she tumbled into sleep. She had reached for him and he had been there, a firm, steadying hand that had let her rest while struggling with all that exhaustion. The lack of sleep had worn her down to nothing, left her with so little to work with that her thoughts had centered around kissing turning on Terry, and not on what had really mattered most last night.

As Madison's eyes flicked open and the darkness of the living room came into focus, she settled down to do some early morning thinking.

A solid night's sleep felt good, for a change. Her thoughts felt like they had feet under them, that if she put them on the ground they could stand and not topple over. And that was good, for after Terry's news about having to wait longer to get married, she had a lot on her heart.

She wanted to think.

Why was it the deeper she plunged into these unknown but happy waters, the more lost she felt?

All those years with the Dragon, she'd learned to crawl inside herself to survive, and it had worked. She'd waited, endured each moment as it had come, and yet, sometimes, the hardest thing to take hadn't been the Dragon, but the knowledge that the world was going on without her, and wasn't missing her at all. For her, time had mostly stood still, not really growing up, not really doing anything but surviving her existence, and the world wasn't missing her, it wasn't noticing that she wasn't there. It was going on without her like she didn't matter. It had been the loneliest feeling in the world.

She didn't want to survive anymore. She wanted to live.

The more she saw of this family, the more she understood there was a difference.

Crawling inside herself had worked when she'd been chained to one spot and she couldn't go any farther than she could reach, but here, she could reach as far as she wanted. The only thing to hold her back, was herself.

After all those years of wishing she could be somewhere else, here she was-- she WAS somewhere else, and now she needed to become more. She needed to be more. She needed to reach as far as she possibly could, or else she still wouldn't be free.

If the Dragon saw her right now... Madison shuddered.

He'd be so angry, and yet, he'd probably tell her she was stupid for thinking she could ever exist without him, and that the way he saw it, she wasn't. Look at her, she was a grown woman carrying around a doll. Did Izzy carry one, or Abby? The triplets did, but they were four, going on five. The Dragon would've loved that.

Yet who cared what the Dragon would have thought? what he would have wanted?

This was her life now, not his. He had no say. Not anymore. God had taken that chain off her, and now it was up to her to free herself.

The clarity of her thoughts was startling, and it frightened Madison. She didn't want to think, she wanted to coast, and to not have to deal with what it meant to be free. There was a responsibility here that she was beginning to realize, a responsibility to God, and to that eight-year-old child who'd lost everything when her momma had walked away and never looked back.

She remembered last night, when Terry said they'd have to wait longer than he'd thought for them to get married. Last night she'd been relieved, but now she wanted to take it all back. She wanted to go forward, not stay the way she was.

The problem though-- and it was a very big problem-- was that going forward meant even more change. Change wasn't easy, it meant stepping outside herself and learning even more new things and that wasn't going to be easy. It already hadn't, but more was needed. It made her want to stay on the couch with her Terri doll and watch the world go by... but Madison caught herself.