Time: Between moments
Location: Where castles are built
A grand masked ball was held every night in a palatial ballroom where men and women, knights and Queens, princes and princesses came to frolic and dance. It was the custom to start at midnight and end at dawn and no one was to reveal their true identity.
Skirts swished in velvet, silks and satins and boots clicked on marble, tinkling laughter and chatter was heard all throughout the night.
Men and women from far and near came to attend the ball.
However, the star of every night was a young lady who never failed to come to the ball. She danced with few, and was a reserved woman, not very beautiful; but there was something in her eyes, in the way she held herself that attracted everyone and intoxicated. No one knew who she was, or where she lived or what she did. Her very presence carried mystery and intrigue. Her smile was laced with aphrodisiacs and when she danced, it was as if a nymph danced from the heavens.
And she was never out of requests to dance, to frolic.
She was the famed Belle of the ball, with whom the one who danced, remembered forever what it was to be with her.
Just on the other street of the ballroom, there was a small cottage where a poor weaver girl lived. She was a lonely creature, always sad, who weaved clothes for whoever asked.
She weaved by day and her cottage was dark by night.
There was no one to inquire for her, to ask for her, except her customers who all visited the ball at night.
Nights passed in this manner, and the dance went on.
One night, however, everything changed.
Belle walked out of the ball, weary, her shoulders drooping, her dress in rags, her face in shadow. She walked, never looking back and stopped before the weaver’s cottage, and looked to the heavens. Just then, the moon looked out from the clouds and spotted her-
It was the weaver girl, eyes filled with sorrow, face cold and streaked with tears, gown in tatters. She was no longer the Belle, but the poor weaver.
Before the moon could gasp, she went inside the cottage and slammed the door and he clutched the clouds and cried, raining the whole earth with its tears.
And she never went back.
The woman and girl locked herself away in her home and never came out or went to the ball again
She worked harder, forgetting everything and everyone and her house soon transformed into a mansion
She had everything she wanted now.
A home, security, peace.
But sometimes, the moon still peeped to see, she would walk bare-footed on the roof of her mansion, wearing a simple gown and a mask and leaning on the rails gaze at the twinkling lights at the ballroom far away.
And the clouds growled to see a look of utter anguish, longing and sad resignation fill the eyes in the mask.
She had shut herself away with too much passion too tightly to ever open her wings again. Her doors were forever sealed shut. And the ball never saw the mysterious woman again.
But just as the woman looked out of her roof sometimes, a knight looked back from the turrets of the ball. Looking for the woman who he had seen from afar, never from near. Looking and searching for her, he wanted to dance with none but her. Not just dance, but fly, fight, be with her, know her. Just dancing wasn’t enough for him, as it had never been enough, that’s why he had never asked her to dance, only saw from afar. He wanted so much more.
He hadn’t danced with anyone since she left but he came every night, looking for her. Waiting for her. Searching for her.
Two gaze at each other unaware, the clouds wonder and cry at their fate…. Wanting to bring the two soul mates together but helpless in the wake of human will.
Can their story have a happily ever after?
(to be continued…….)
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