*sigh* Okay, okay, you got me. I've been holding out on a Narnia-inspired short story I wrote the other night. It doesn't have a title, and it's at least as long as Mercury's name description, so I'm just warnin' yall. It's pretty wierd that I wrote this, because I don't consider myself a very Christian-ish person.
She couldn't stand it anymore. No matter what she said, no matter what she did, it never seemed to be right. Half the world would still hate her; changing herself would only mean a change in which half wished her dead. It used to be that everything was simple, perfect, wrapped up in a nice little package: right was right, wrong was wrong, an you were always loved. Even if things were bad, they made sense. Things worked.
Then Fifteen came.
At Fifteen, she got blows. Every day, she had to walk out the door with her shields raised, sword drawn. Her way of life wasn't safe anymore. People always attacked it, picked it apart, told her exactly what was wrong with it and then cut off her head for it. She'd never had to use shields or swords before, so they were thin and broke easily. She was wounded. Why? What had she done wrong?
So she listened to what they had to say, and re-adjusted her life. It didn't feel right, no, but if it meant relief from constant battle, what sacrifice was comfort? So she set out again, armed with inverted words, tailor-made to her attacker's standards.
They killed her again. Not only he sides she'd left, but also those she'd tried to please. They told her that the armor she'd made was false, wrong; she didn;t believe in it, not truly, so it didn't exist. Then they ripped her unprotected body to shreds.
So she couldn't stand it anymore. Coming home, stained with blood and tears, she fell against the wardrobe door. When she was small and things were right, she would climb into the old oak wardrobe with her books and her flashlight and read, and be in the world beyond the wardrobe. The world where things were right. Hours she spent in there, hours under lush trees among new flowers in melting snow, on ships' decks glistening with sea spray flying towards the sunrise, in valleys fresh and warm with the newness of stars. Now she only leaned her crippled, Fifteen body against its dead frame.
She climbed in the wardrobe, wanting the smallness, the rightness, the goodness that used to be there. But her searching hands only met dry wood. Tears came unbidden.
"Why aren't you there?" she screamed, voice choked with the hotness of grief. She beat her hands futilely against the back of the wardobe. Old dresses and shirts stuck to her face where tears had melted it. "Why aren't you there?"
She sank to the wardrobe floor in a shuddering, soaking heap. "Why aren't you there?" she whispered again, with the small voice of defeat. "You're always supposed to be here. Where are you?
I am here.
"Why can't I see you?"
Because you are looking down.
She lifted her tear-sticky, bloated face from her hands, and a grove of trees met her eyes. There was moss under her now, and a soft light permeated greenly though the new leaves around her. Birdsong flitted though the trees. But the thing that drew her eye was the lion.
He sat on the moss beside her, large and golden, glowing with an unseen gold amidst a world of new green. He was bigger, certainly, than a normal lion. He was bigger than a normal horse. His eyes, though, made the rest of his golden body seem like old copper in comparison: so deep, so profound, that they were not like eyes at all but like suns that turned thier lights inward. She cried.
The bottle of tears that had for so many years been lodged painfully in her throat came uncorked. She had thought she was crying before, but that was only a weak imitation of true tears. These came boiling from her eyes, freely and unrestrained by any crude human modesty. She wailed, not bothering to catch cries on her tongue for fear of being overheard. She buried her face in the lion's mane, its softness soaking up her tears without sticking to her skin, its warmth at once comforting and patient. She didn't know how long she cried. Time didn't matter.
Eventually, she stopped, and there was only the sound of birdsong once more.
Are your tears spent, dear one?
"Y-yes, I think so," she replied, her voice weakened. "I'm sorry."
Don't be! It is right to cry when you are sad.
"Not when sadness is unfounded. It's selfish."
Child, you are far from selfish. It is not wrong to cry, whatever the reason, on the shoulder of one who loves you. You cannot burden love.
"How can anyone love me?" she cried, feeling her red, puffy face with her hands. "I am hideous!"
Then my love for you is only stronger. Every imperfection in your face is beautiful in my eyes. Every tear that mars your smile only strenghtens my undying love for you. Surely, child, you did not think I could ever find you ugly?
"That's not what I meant," she said. "I am ugly on the inside. I can't believe anything. I hate, I fear, I am unsure of everything. I am even unsure of you, though I see you here. I say one thing and do another, think one thing and say another. I am hideous."
You say you are unsure of me. But I am sure of you, and I love you. If you are but sure of that, then nothing else matters.
"No," she said, infinite pain in her pronounciation of thesyllable. "It used to be. Once love was all that mattered. Once I was right, I knew things, I knew you. But now, people tell me that I am wrong, that I don't know you or what you want me to do, and that everything I say or do or think is wrong. They say you cannot love me if I am wrong. And how could you? How could you love a wretched Fifteen who doubts you and doesn't know up from down anymore? How can you love something incapable of loving you?"
Because though she strays from me, she only wishes by it to find what is good and right. All humans, and especially Fifteens, must stray. Without doubt there is no faith, and one who has no doubt has no faith either. It is right that you search, my child, but you have been looking in the wrong places for what is right.
"Where, then, is right?"
Do not heed them when they tell you that you do not know me, because you do. You wish to do right, so follow what your heart tells you, and not what other hearts tell you. You will know the right path to take, when the junction comes. But most importantly is this: Know that I love you. You will doubt me sometimes, and you will be confused on many occasions. But always, always know and return to the unalterable fact that I love you no matter who you are, no matter what you think, no matter what they say. You are my child, and I love you.
The lion licked her face, and with his warm tongue wiped the tearstreaks and choking redness from her eyes. His breath enveloped her, and she knew, unalterably, that she was loved. The wounds from swords melted away, never to be cut again. She was healed.
She opened the wardrobe door slowly, and stepped out.