In the velvet-warmth of midsummer, a young princess awakens from a nightmare. Her gown of gold and fae-spun gossamer had frayed and become spotted with moss. Her crown of starlight and moon lilies had snagged her curls as thorns erupted from delicate twists of crystal. She stood before a faceless court in a ballroom filled with cacophonous laughter that caused her ears and heart to bleed.
The princess creeps from her bed, down the cottage stairs, and out into a garden blooming full with the midnight moon. She carries with her a folded star, a simple note, a plea, that her dream should not prove prophetic. Climbing the boughs of her favourite tree, she tosses it to southbound winds that lift it into the pre-dawn sky. For luck, she blows a kiss to the constellations, and stumbles her way home.
Years pass, the princess grows, and her uncertainties are buried beneath the gentle earth of her still-aching heart. It is now, when she has almost forgotten how to wish on morning stars, that an invitation of smoke and daydreams arrives, carried on horseback by soldiers of a different kingdom.
The guttering flame of hope flares, and her heart burns with the spilled wax of a new ache; one of wishes just beyond reach, of raw wantings drowned in the mercury of a child’s disappointment, beseeching to be cradled once more.
The princess makes a choice… she chases the light of a desperate dream.
Down twisted cobble lanes she flees, to the lip of an enchanted wishing well… into frigid tides and tangles of rivers and rose reeds… across a fathomless lake that swirls, swirls, crashes down to realms where monsters dwell… and sometimes rise.
The princess runs in loops and self-fulfilling circles, sharpening the blades of her teeth and convictions.
At last, on the moonless night of late winter, she finds herself standing in a gown of flowers and starlight, with a crown of gems and braided hair. Her thorns are tucked neatly away as she spins across a floor of polished stone.
Beneath the dark moon, the princess dances and her heart cracks open, spilling the shards of unkept promises across jade-veined marble.
She learns that love is an exquisite, wretched thing and wishes are fickle as wisp light.
She learns that paths of magic have their own sense of poetry, and walking them presses footprints into the deepest sands of self that remain even as the stars and seasons turn.
She learns that home is where you keep your north star.
