Glass

by artemisathene

Author's note: Wow. I'm new at , and I got my first reviews and... whadda rush! :) Thank you, whoever reads this! Thank you so much! :)

Everything is... falling down,

Falling down, all around...

My reality is crumbling bit by bit...

And the streets are all deserted.

Mariana on her feet,

Her wits about her she should keep.

For as she wanders the bazaar,

Many things suspicious, are.

Mariana at the square,

The buildings look deserted.

In the still and silent air

Her thoughts hang quite inverted.

"Are you tired now?"

"Yes."

"Is there anything you want?"

"Tell me a good story, a nice story."

"Alright. Then you will go to sleep."

"Thank you."

"There once was a little girl with a glass heart who lived in a tower all by herself. There were no doors to the tower for it was magically sealed. The little girl knew she had been put there because of her fragile heart.

Locked up in a single room on the highest floor of the tower, the little girl could do nothing by peer out of the window and wish for freedom. She would watch the birds fly off into the horizon every night. At times she would even spot a hunter or two stalking through the nearby woods.

The little girl was very sad and she often cried for help from the little square of her window when she saw the hunters, her little voice carrying out over the tops of the wild tangle of trees which grew around the fortress, but never escaping the confines of the small steel gate encircling the area. One day the little girl stopped calling for help, as no one answered them.

The little girl even ceased to weep, as tears did not alleviate her loneliness in any way, nor help her find freedom. She learned to occupy herself by playing games of pretend, in which she was the princess. Princes would come and save her from her wretched incarceration. They would fall in love and be wed.

One night, something went terribly wrong. A terrifying beast snuck into her chamber and smashed her glass heart into shards. No matter how loudly the girl cried or wept, no prince came to save her. It was then that she realized there were no princes in her world. The beast left. Sifting through the crystalline dust which was all that was left of her glass heart, the little girl did not weep. Years passed and she became a maiden. Although she had given up hope of ever escaping the tower, there remained dreams of freedom. She still wished a prince might come and save her, but as she sat looking out her window one day, she knew that no prince would come.

"Then I will have to be my own prince," she said to herself. "To protect the little girl with a glass heart and the lost maiden who has no heart at all. I shall guard them forever.

This was how the prince was born."

"And she lived happily ever after?"

"I would think so."

"That's good. I'm sleepy now."

"Then go to sleep."

"Bad things might come..."

"I'll protect you."

"You'll never leave me?"

"I will never leave you."

"Thank you."

Slipping... slipping... slipping away...

As my eyes close... I'm on my way...

To... somewhere else... and you'll come too...

With me... with me forever.