Come, listen to a story...

I've been thinking about fairytales, because of this guy. I've been thinking about being the wide-eyed child, the tumbling fool who wears his heart on his sleeve and carries his sentimentality as proudly as his old violin. The story is his, a pure expression of his adventurous spirit and good humor.

I was thinking about being the enchantress, the crone sometimes, sometimes the woman in the red dress, every ripple of movement around her soaked in mystery and seduction. She sees potential, and sets it on fire, drives the hesitant into becoming a hero, sets the challenges and makes the requirements, and with relish she plays the villain. My tale belongs to her, my stage manager, who gets things moving backstage, turns on the lights and whispers all the well-memorized cues to herself. She is in love with only the story, the characters as they will come to be.

I've been dwelling on being the reader, whose secret sorrow is the wonderful book she holds in her hands, the barrier between the worlds. She feels the bookcover in her hand, not heavy but significant, she counts the pages between her and the moment when they run dry, her currency the tears shed over beautiful things all too brief. It is for her, this story, and she can love it more deeply than anyone else could guess. She knows that the price of reading is to arrive at the endpages and be cut off from countless worlds as she shuts the cover, as she must. And still she must read, risk that loss, seek out her own suffering in exchange for the golden ball, a pair of shoes, the talking fish and a night at the ball. These things are tiny rivulets that run down into deeper, wilder undercurrents of myth. In the mutable void of story, she is cradled, she is home, for a while. Come deeper into the forest, child. Come, listen to a story...

I am considering playing a part, playing every part, but only if I let myself forget that I am the author. And that is the best game of all.