One Word Prompts 2020

Hope - A Dark Night

She lay curled up under the blankets, the tears finally subsided but her eyes still wet. It was warm, beneath those heavy comforters. Almost peaceful.

Almost easy to forget the world beyond them.

Easy enough to be a princess. To be reigning princess, beloved by her people. Elegant and beautiful. Brilliant and peerlessly clever.

Easy enough to be everything she wasn't.

Tonight, perhaps she'd be kidnapped. Perhaps they'd knock her out as she rode her dragon mount along the crystal beaches of her kingdom. Perhaps she'd wake up surrounded by armed goons, swords in their hands, crossbows trained on her. They'd be a real rough group. Bandits with better options, perhaps. Dark knights with allegiance to her kingdom's sworn enemy. Undead minions of the lich king. Enemies of her kingdom, for sure.

They wouldn't stand a chance of course. Whoever they were, she'd take them out in a flash with her magic. With a single word, she summons up sparkling threads of magic. They'd twist about the room, knocking out her would-be-kidnappers before they had a chance to threaten her.

Magic swirling around her, she'd stride with confidence from the closet they'd kept her in. She'd take down wave after wave of enemies. She'd be force incarnate, not the sniveling child they'd expected.

Laughing through the maelstrom of arrows, she'd walk, hands spread wide, welcoming their resistance. But they would fall before her.

With ease, she'd return to her palace, her enemies defeated, her people just that much safer.

They'd be waiting for her there. Her friends and advisers. They'd be relieved that she made it back safely. Relieved but not surprised. Because as much as they worried, there would have been no doubt in their minds that she was the strongest and most dependable person in all the kingdom.

If only.

If only life was like that.

Reality assaulted her plush fortress. Tomorrow's worries whispered through her dreams. Reminded her she was no princess. Reminded her she wasn't even a child playing princess, no matter how tightly she clutched her stuffed bear to her chest.

Some cruel part of herself whispered she was too old for stuffed animals. Too old to pretend the fluffy creature over her heart would listen to her fears and her anxieties whether she voiced them or not. Too old for toys like that.

That same cruel voice recounted her every failing of the day, the week, the month. Of her life. Recounted them with grim certainty that none of it would be forgiven or forgotten. A perverse satisfaction that she was worth nothing.

The night's silence resounded in her ears. Loud. Incessant.

It was better than the screaming which had preceded it. Yet somehow, simultaneously worse.

She took a deep breath, trying not to let her senses completely overtake her. Trying not to feel every pour of her face, every crack of her lips, every crease of her sheets. Trying not to let her thoughts race away as her body moved through thickened time.

She took a deep breath, wishing sleep would just come and take her if it was going to. Wishing she'd wake up tomorrow feeling better than she did at this moment.

She curled up tighter. Curled up around the stuffed bear in her arms. Pulled the blankets around her tighter around her shoulders.

Tomorrow was coming. It was coming with every worry and anxiety her mind could invent. Coming with fire and ice and calamity.

They said it was darkest before the dawn. But what was she supposed to do if that dawn brought no salvation either?

She knew it did nothing to worry this way. It did nothing to stew in fear and hopeless despondency. If she had any control over the matter, she'd make herself stop.

If only it were so easy.

All she could do was close her eyes and be someone else, if only for a moment. If only until sleep took consciousness on a welcome diversion. If only until her swirling thoughts pulled her back into the inky blackness of the very real night.

So she closed her eyes and let another stand in her place. Someone smarter. Someone stronger. Someone she could hope to be.