Whisper in the Silence

I plan to do a writing prompt every day for the next thirty days...here is number one.

Day 1--January 10, 2017:  "The Sound of Silence: Write about staying quiet when you feel like shouting."

Whisper in the Silence

I want to shout.  But what’s the sense in shouting when no one can hear me?  I’m in a crowded room, yet I’m alone.  Invisible.  It’s as if I’m a ghost.  Perhaps I am a ghost.  I live through books and movies, but seem to have no life of my own.

            I go to school five days out of the week, but it seems the people look through me, and walk through me.  They talk over me, and all I want to do is shout until they can hear me.  But I am silent.

            I seem to see through people as well…but I see things about them.  I see their hurt, their pain, their confidence, their cruelty.  But I don’t know why I see these things, or even what to do about them.  I treat these people with the indifference they treat me with.

            I feel I have no purpose.  Yet every being must have a purpose…correct?  I will find my purpose…and I will find it without shattering the silence with my shout, without bothering another person.

            Finally, in the middle of class, I run.  I run the way I’ve wanted to run since I was a child, sitting on my porch, telling my little brother that this wasn’t my home.  I wasn’t made to be a human.

            No one notices that I’ve left, but that’s okay.  I run to the forest, and scale a tree with ease.  I gaze out beyond its branches, and scan the ground.  Just grass, twigs and dirt.  I lean my back against the trunk of the tree, and close my eyes, feeling the breeze flow across my face.  Cold doubt begins to creep into my soul.  I don’t know what I really thought I would accomplish by leaving.  Maybe I should go back.

            “Welcome, child,” I hear a soft, melodic voice and open my eyes.

            Before me is a small winged creature…if this were a fantasy book, I would call it a fairy.  She is small and dainty.  Soft brown hair flowed to her waist, and iridescent wings fluttered delicately.  Her dress is white, and flows to her ankles.  She is the very image of beauty.

            “Why do you call me child?  I’m eighteen, doesn’t that make me an adult?”  I ask in confusion.

            She giggled, and it was like a tinkling of bells, “Well, when you’re over one-thousand years, eighteen is merely an infant,”

            “Oh,” was all I was able to say as I gaped at her.

            “Are you ready to join your people?”  She asked me softly.

            Wordlessly, I nodded.  I didn’t know if I was truly ready, but it had to be better than sitting through a lesson, wanting to scream, yet staying silent.

            She took my hand in hers, and I saw how big, and clumsy my hand was, when held in her dainty, delicate one.  But she didn’t seem to notice.  Only smiled, as she lifted me from the branch I perched on.

            I flew.  For the first time in my life, I flew.  The wings burst from my back, in a sharp burst of pain, then the pain went away, and I flew.  The breeze was cool against my skin, and for the first time in my life, I felt truly free.

            I felt a fire coursing through my veins that had waited a lifetime to burst through the coolness of humanity.  I knew things I had never known were possible to know, and saw colors that not even an artist could imagine.

            “I’m a fairy?”  I turned and asked the little woman.

            She shrugged and smiled, “Is that what you want to be?”

            “I want to be free,” I told her sheepishly, noting that she hadn’t answered my question.

            “Free from what?”

            “Free from…conformity,” I told her after a pause, “I want to be free to express myself in my art, and music without judgment.  I want to be free to believe what I want without feeling foolish.  I just want freedom.”

            She laughed, “You want the impossible, child.  Even in the fairy realm, there isn’t that kind of freedom.”

            “There isn’t?”

            She shook her head, but offered no other explanation.  In my country, there were many freedoms, yet it seemed like so few.  Perhaps…the answer is that there is no love. Instead of accepting differences, the are mocked.  And at other times, true love is replaced with the warm blanket of tolerance.  Instead of being loved, people are mocked and tolerated.  Then, as I think more, I realize that above mockery and tolerance, indifference is much worse; the silence when others shout their tolerance and mockery.

            “What are you thinking of, child?”  She asks softly.

            With the wind whistling around me, wrapping me in its gentle embrace, I answered so quietly I wasn’t sure she heard.  She said nothing in return, so I was sure she hadn’t.

            We continued to fly in silence.  After awhile, we came across a meadow in the center of the trees, and the fairy beckoned that we would land.  I was not good at the landing, and rolled in the soft grass until I gently hit a rock.

            “There is no love without some pain,” The fairy told me landing quietly on the rock.  “No matter what you enjoy or believe, there will be someone who disagrees…even someone who will mock you for it.  Sometimes what you enjoy or believe is wrong…it’s a rare person who can tell you that lovingly.  It’s easier to keep silent or shout it openly, than to gently, quietly, and lovingly tell someone they’re in the wrong.  But don’t be indifferent; love anyway.”

            I am silent, contemplating her words.  She has turned a wipe-out into a lesson.  And she had listened.

            She takes my hand, and lifts me up again.  I spend the rest of the evening with my people, the fairies.

            We eat together, drink together, talk and laugh.  I am nearly thirty times bigger than them, yet I feel like one of them.  They understand me and I understand them, and by the time the sun sets, I feel…better.

            I think about what the first fairy who found me said…about love.  And I know I have to go back to the human realm.  It’s not my home.  It will never be my home.  But it needs love.  And I can bring love to it.  Before I take my last bite of fairy food, I’ve decided that I will love, no matter the pain.  And I will love what I want to love, no matter the mocking.  If I’m wrong, I’ll accept it…no matter how hard.  If one that I love is wrong…I will do my best to tell them in a gentle loving way.

            The feast we’ve had is over, so I tell the fairies I have to leave.  Strangely enough, they understand.  I fly back home, and my wings shrink and drop off.  I pick them up, and hold them in the palm of my hand.  They’re shining and bright, and quiver in the wind.  I close my fingers around them as if they were a firefly, and go inside.

            I will not shout in the silence…but I won’t remain silent any more.  I will be a loving whisper.

© Katie Holm 2017

Writing prompt taken from: http://thinkwritten.com/365-creative-writing-prompts/