Fiction
5 min
My favorites
No Longer Hers
Kestia Durant
You are the world. Within you is absolute absence. No time. No space. No life. Until...
One day, there are suddenly days. And on that day, she arrives, falling from the newly christened up. A curious little girl with frills upon frills in her dress and oversized spectacles barely gripping to their place. You know her. You are hers.
She smiles up at you, and with a giggle and a twirl, you burst with creation. Deep plum seas cut into twisting and curling landscapes of lavender grass. Snowy mountain peaks rising to kiss the shining coral sky and its garnet clouds. Your breath is now the cool breeze rustling in the butterscotch leaves of chalky trees perfect for climbing.
Her glee infects everything you are, as you become the perfect playground. Each time she visits, you find something new within yourself. When she dives into the water, the oceans are filled with mermaids and when she leaps into the sky, wise dragons perch in the clouds.
On one such visit, she does not come alone. The ground shivers with your apprehension. The newcomer is small, barely able to walk. But he looks almost like a smaller version of the girl. His tiny fist clings to her dress as she pulls him along, pointing out each of the wonders you present. Her love for him seeps into you from the beaming sunlight of their laughter.
Eventually, you are warped by his perception of you, just as hers does. Their ideas for you amplify one another exponentially. And as the children grow, so too do their ambitions. You facilitate great battles between good and evil. Tales of triumphs and lessons learned. They slay the greatest monsters of their imaginations. You are theirs.
On the boy's last visit, he soars on a dragon with his sister to finally defeat an evil cloud giant. One known for pouring toxic rain from his floating castle. During the climactic battle, he falters. His tiny body wracked with coughs. You pause everything. This isn't how it is supposed to go. The girl runs to his side, and they fade away from you.
When she eventually returns, she looks different. Her spectacles look just a little less oversized. And worse, she looks at you with a cold gaze, with no hint of its characteristic spirit. Your landscapes begin to warp, reflecting a pain of no bounds. The truth shatters you. Volcanoes wipe out entire forests in your fury. Your tears fall as ash and endless rain erasing sunlight and choking flowers. Your breath, the very air, freezes over.
You remind her of him. Or rather, his absence. It's too much. You must be wiped clean. For her sake. Where peaceful meadows once flowed over rolling hills, there are only barren dunes. Empty ocean basins. Flattened mountains.
She comes less frequently now. When she does, her heart pours tragedies into you. But you don't mind. With each, you understand her a little better. With you as her conduit, she explores the depths of despair. Of confusion. Yearning. Panic. Fear. Guilt.
As time passes, you slowly let out more sunshine. She learns to smile again, and as she does, her glasses finally fully fit. Whimsy finds itself welcome again. Flowers push their way through once-dead soil. New stories form in the intersections between your shattered world and this new one.
But in each, the note of seclusion persists. The young woman becomes protective of you. You sometimes struggle beneath her white knuckled grasp. You can feel others at the periphery of her life. Each is denied entrance. You are hers. And hers alone.
Her visits slow all over again, but this time as she drifts into the minutia of life. You are hidden away. Especially as a new presence in her life patrols the threshold, large and domineering. Only when he is gone, she visits with rushed and brief adventures. The echoes of him calling you frivolous echo through your sky. She starts to believe him.
Each time you see the woman, her face is more creased with stress. She rarely adds anything new anymore, often just strolling through old tales. Especially the tragedies. Her belly grows, as do her fears of inadequacy and regret.
Her child comes, and during the utterly sleepless nights with no support, she finds you. You cry with her, new rivers carving the land. Mountains break off into floating islands, drifting aimlessly in apathy. Your landmasses painfully crash into one another, subsuming one other out of guilt. Her compositions are hazy and vague, quick to be forgotten.
The fog that fills you threatens to leave her more lost than ever. You can't let that happen. You pull the moons closer. You urge fireflies to guide her. You twist the reflections to show the beauty and brilliance that she disregarded about herself.
The woman gets better as the fog recedes. In its place is a new confidence. A new fury. The father's shadow beyond your borders fades when she leaves him. Both you and her are left brighter than you have been in a long time.
Her visits remain rare, with a daughter to raise alone. When she does, though, you find yourself bursting with more complexity and nuance than ever before. In your landscapes that were once just landscapes, you now manifest militaristic borders and the brave souls crossing them. You host tales of broken social contracts and those who dare to replace them. Yet you are still just hers, with no one to experience these new offerings.
Occasionally, some stray into yearning love stories of self discovery. You feel the woman realizing what she had ignored all her life. Yet, hints of it were always present within you. As she yearns for a true and healthy love, you yearn to be shared again.
Your waters ripple in reflex when you feel a new presence on the threshold. Someone becoming a second mother to the daughter. Her soon-to-be wife. The woman is giddy, able to visit increasingly often, encouraged by her new love. You sing through the songbirds in celebration for her.
Yet, deep in your mantle, sorrow churns. The sorrow that you will always carry for her brother. For the joy of being entrusted with other perspectives. The woman ignores this. With a habitual fear, she still hides you from anyone and everyone. But her family works to break you free. They approach her with unfamiliar kindness, grace, and patience for a genuine curiosity to experience you.
The day the woman's wife and daughter visit, your sky fills with dark clouds. They agitate the air with intense static, waiting for release. The woman's breath catches in sync with your anticipation. Upon their arrival, though, you see her wife, more beautiful than you ever could have pictured. And her daughter, in a familiarly frilly dress, bouncing with the same unapologetic creativity you saw so many years ago.
The tension within you breaks. Thunder claps and lightning streaks across the sky. You release a torrent of rainfall, as does she, tears streaking down her face. They hold her for a long moment. When their comfort turns to laughter, you clear the sky and the sun shines again.
The family visits regularly, as the woman tentatively shows shares parts of you with them. She crafts new love stories for her wife. And eventually, she even recreates some of the adventures with her brother for her daughter. Their perspectives, just like his, change you for the better.
She doesn't stop there. Over the coming years, you find yourself with more and more visitors. Some friends. Other strangers. You're overwhelmed at first, but each brings something new to you. A new way of experiencing you. They play in her childhood fantasies. They cry at her tragedies. They relate to her struggles. Their views broaden with her commentaries.
When the woman dies, with a face full of wrinkles of a life of smiles and laughter, you expect to fade with her. You don't. You still have visitors and new sentiments to explore. You are no longer hers. You are all of theirs.
Despite this, you still carve out a small corner of yourself, for the silvers of that little girl and her brother to forever play together.
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