A new story always begins with the spirits of hopes and dreams. Leaping and flying, spinning and whirling, the tale is bound to go anywhere. In a fictional world of no consequences, the story can take shape any way the spirits lead. Creative heights, unthinkable depths, there are no boundaries where she can go. Soaring away from reality, another world is unveiled where deepest desires and questions are allowed to surface. But silently driving the distant words of story, truth and reality press her upon unsuspecting souls.
A good storyteller knows this. He will expose her with enough detail to let his story breathe, live, befriend you in your everyday life. He will paint a picture of her in a world that you can recognize in any place, something common, yet specific to our mundane experience. He has fantastical things to say with this story for you. She is free to search out the dark corners of existence. She is uninhibited in stirring up the emotions your ordinary life avoids. And his story whispers her into your life, seducing you with possibility.
He awakens her, and she is unleashed. A craving for resolution. A yearning for satisfaction. A story that infuses meaning and purpose into the ticking minutes of your day. She looks like a dream that begins to materialize into reality. You catch a glimpse of her shadow in your bedroom. You sense her fingertips across your shoulder at the dining room table. You can almost touch her, pull her close, cling to her soft warm body. She tantalizes you by her angelic song when this new story-universe is created.
She is beautiful, this fairy of bright visions. But something happens when her delicate feet reach out to touch the ground. Something changes when her unbound freedom meets the material reality of chains below. She tries to dance in a prison, freshly bruised by constraints of time and space, people and responsibility. Her voice materializes as a face with smile lines and sunspots. Minutes tick between the pauses in her paragraphs. Dust settles deeply under her chipped fingernails. The story attempts to put on flesh and live beside you.
Her calming words turn to arrows. Her gentle touch prickles and scrapes your skin. The hope of what she could have been tortures your thoughts and churns your stomach. Yet, the story has not changed, that carefree spirit of fantasy. Rather, her descent into your dirt refines who she is. The beauty you once loved is locked away by truth and reality. The rational routine of breakfast, lunch and dinner will not allow her to speak. Desperately you need her and desperately you want her to leave you alone. No longer is she the muse of hopes and dreams. She became the demon of time and circumstance.
She cannot quietly slip back into the night. The story wraps her majestic fingers around your throat, ever hanging, lightly squeezing, reminding you she will never leave. A good storyteller knows this. He conjured a demon which haunts your thousands of steps from this point forward. This story was never just about her. He had more to say to you. He made you face the struggles your ordinary life avoids. And his story now mocks your life with her, desiring the demon of impossibility.
