A fairy tale

Once upon a time there was a small girl who lived in a large castle. She did not know how long she had been there or if she had a family somewhere missing her. She shared the castle with her large dog. He was nameless, just like her.

Every morning she tied up her long red hair, leapt out of the huge bed, and went downstairs to prepare her breakfast. She ate eggs that had been laid by her own chickens and cooked in oil from olives that she had picked and pressed. Her tea was from leafs thats she had grown and sweetened with milk she had squeezed and honey she had harvested. The land that her castle sat in the middle of was vast, fruitful, and hers alone to work. She had no knowledge or memories beyond it.

When she was lonely, she and her dog would go into the library where the walls were lined with books and sit by the fire so she could read them stories. The books sat on the looming shelves without any decipherable order. They were not grouped alphabetically or by size or color or content. Their words brought her peace and contentment but like her, they were closer to chaos than order. Like her, they were left that way by a person unknown without explanation or apology. At night, by the warmth of the fire, the voices of the stories made her and her dog almost feel surrounded by something other than silent space and each other.

She did not know how time passed, but she knew for certain that she had been a little girl once and was now something older. The bed eventually seemed to shrink under her and she no longer had to climb onto the kitchen counters to open the cabinets. She felt certain that if she had a Family surrounding her, they would have taken hundreds of pictures to document and remember the change. She had found an old camera and set it up on a tripod to take care of the task herself. The result was one room lined with the portraits she had taken. The change was slow but clear. If she squinted and ran along the long wall it was almost like watching herself grow in a video. Her face changing with whatever mood she had been in as she dutifully took each photograph. Documenting for her own enjoyment, smiling at herself through the lens.

One day, while eating lunch, she heard a knock at the door. It was the first time it had happened so she took a moment to sit in silent confusion before racing her dog to the door. Throwing it open, she watched a young man smile at her with interest. He was taller than her but she felt an instant recognition that his age must be close to her own. He told her his name and when she could not respond wither one of her own he gave her one. When she had no history to answer his story of where he came from, he happily gave her one of those too. He came in and stayed.

Slowly, her once constant routine was altered. For the first time, chores were occasionally forgotten or replaced as he joined his life with hers. They created her past with words and changed her present with laughter and love. He moved out of the empty room he had originally taken and into hers. Watching him age, she knew she was doing the same.

One day she woke to find him gone. If it had not been for the slight changes; his face in her once solitary photographs, notes and drawings they had made each other, a name to call the dog, she would have thought he was just a vivid dream. Maybe the result of a late night snack of tomatoes.

Eventually she was able to find a new life that blended the people she had been with and without him. He left her something new and exciting that she had never imagined owning. He gave her a past full of memories of days that did not blend together in a wave of monotony. He gave her a way to mark time. To prove that it had existed.

She wondered if he would return or if someone else would arrive in his place. Just as she had come to realize when she had stopped being a young girl, she realized she was no longer young at all.

He never returned. No one ever knocked on her door again. Though she had done it occasionally to try to imagine what it had been like for him. Just to stand where he had stood and feel the hard wood under her hands as he had.

One morning she did not wake. Her plants became over grown by weeds and her books collected dust. Her dog never left her side. If she had ever discovered a reason for her existence, it had been whispered to her dog in the corner of the library. A secret used by the two of them to stay warm as they huddled together fighting off the dark loneliness. Long forgotten.