Once

There once was a girl.

A girl with short, thick brown hair and a stocky figure.  She was pitifully normal, but her blue eyes flecked with brown swirled like a setting sky or a storming sea.  It was in those eyes that she created something wonderful: a kingdom like none other.

Spiraling minarets rose from the heights of innumerable buildings, each with their own foreign architecture never before created in the world as she knew it.  Towers and edifices reached to marry the sky in perfect harmony while low-lying adobes hugged the earth in a melody of technology and ancient wonder.  Monuments and landmarks to no one and to everyone pocketed the landscape, and willows and redwoods stuck out from the verdant parks that grew out of the organized mess of the city, the kingdom.  In the center of the wonderland stood a quiet cottage.  This is where the girl dwelt amongst her imagined realm.

After the construction was complete, people began to occupy her vast domain.  They came by themselves or in tight-knit groups, but they came all of the same.  Within the walls of her city, they lived peaceful lives in a world of pure beauty and wonder.

At least, until it came.

The monster attacked the girl in the deep of the night, slashing through her defenses, biting, tearing, and scratching.  The girl fought back, however, and drove the nightmare away with a few blows.  News spread around to those in the spiraling towers of a grave threat, but the girl reassured them that the monster was defeated.  

This proved to be a lie.

Each night, the formless shape would come to attack the girl, and every morning she would present herself to her people.  Battle-worn, bruised, and bloodied.  But she still stood strong in the face of this constant enemy.   The citizens of her realm were not so stalwart.  Just as they came, they left…in pairs, groups, or by themselves.  Soon, the life that had occupied the city vanished, and all that was left was the girl and the beast.

She fought eight years against the night terrors.  On countless occasions, she resolved to give into the beast, to die.  But something, something kept her going despite the fact that she could not find a way to defeat it.

On the dawn of the first day of the ninth year, she lost her fight to the monster.  She threw her sword down and waited for the fatal blow.  But it never came.  Instead, the monster laughed, an indescribable, horrid laugh that bounced throughout the empty streets of her dying realm.

“What are you waiting for?  Just finish this feud now!”
“Oh no, my darling.  The feud has just begun!”

The monster stepped away from the girl, and she collapsed, confused and hurt by its words.  The nightmare then expanded and grew, reaching the height of her precious city.  And then, the beast began its true work.

Screaming in such a resonance that the ground quaked in the wake of the sound waves, the beast gathered the shadows and slashed a glimmering minaret in half.  The once-graceful building slid on its foundation and crashed into the rows of towers below, rending a path of pure destruction and despair in its path.  The monster cackled, and the girl wept.

All that she had dreamed of, all that she had wanted was destroyed before her very eyes.

The decimation of the city took several days.  During that time, the girl begged and pleaded to the monster, asking him to stop this nonsense and kill her instead of her creations.  The monster ignored her.  Soon, the entire kingdom lay in shambles and in dust, and all the girl could do was cry.  Cry for her people, for herself, for the loss of everything.

But the monster was not done with her yet.

In the stead of her kingdom, the shadow constructed a new realm for the girl to dwell in.  Instead of bizarre and foreign buildings that displayed the wonders of creativity and imagination, each new structure was identical to the next.  Everything was uniform, plain, and bland.  Nothing was unique or beautiful.  The town sunk into a monotonous, unescapable grey filled with shadow and darkness.

As the new kingdom was constructed, the girl was changed with each addition of scenery.  The ideas pent up in her mind became lost to the shadows; the ocean and sky fell from her eyes and was replaced with grey.  She became a shadow of herself, less than any of those who dwelt in her kingdom.  And when the construction was finished, the bright-eyed girl was destroyed, lost to the drab normality and inadequacy that reflected her kingdom.

And the monster laughed, for he was triumphant.

And the girl was no more.