It wasn’t until the night lifted the moon above her head and shone the silver-yellow rays down atop our heads that I saw her wings; they were hidden under layers of darkness and pain. Yet as she took my freely offered heart from my trembling hands she began to remove the thick bindings of chains that hid them from view. These were long-ago forged in the fire of hatred and bound to her with malicious manipulation. She cast them down from her back, her shoulders stiff but working with a defined purpose.
I watched with amazement as she shed the dark weight, taking one piece at a time and gently inscribing each into my mind, laying it all down my arms. It was difficult for her, to unwind each invisible link anchored to her took time. She would stop every now and then to search my eyes and heart for any glimmer of hidden hurtful intent. But I saw the chains; more than that I perceived her lithe and tough exterior guarding something precious and beautiful. I stood by her through it all, helping ease the weight of some bindings whenever I could and standing a post to watch for danger of any returning demons.
Eventually, after many many hours, she approached me in the dead of night. The tranquil evening air was crisp and cool, stabbing inside my lungs for half a second as I inhaled sharply at the sight I saw before me: The heaviness of her burdens and bindings now mostly removed, the moon and starlight filtered down to alight on the most beautiful, majestic wings that sat hinged upon her back. They were gilded with a shining and shimmering substance that, as one approached, could just barely be recognized as gentle waves of poetic verse flowing down across her frame. And the strength of those wings! The bindings of her burden had done nothing to diminished thier power; rather the opposite. That weight had toned and tempered them into glorious relics of her exquisite soul.
And as my gaze was drawn from wingtip down, a new shimmering light glowed cooly at the center of her being. Shifting and flickering as though viewed from under water was Her heart. This heart was not of this mortal world, yet even as she grew closer I saw in awe that she still held heart that I had given her. She had given it a new covering, one of glowing words and misty light that shimmered and surounded my heart just as the light surrounded hers and her wings. As she placed my heart back into my hands, my trembling immediately subsided. The covering now pulsed with a rhythmic light and faint whispers of music and song could be heard emanating from this new muse. I looked up from her gift and my gaze was met with the sweet soft eyes of the woman before me, and I gazed into the smiling face of a warrior princess.
And glancing down once more, my eyes briefly caught the glint of her heart up close and I was filled with a sense of pure wonder: her heart was shaped just like mine, yet it was not a heart of flesh and blood. She carried inside her a heart made of opal.
UWC 