a bedtime story

There once was a girl who slept upon feathered pillows each night. She would rest her head, heavy with her regrets and unspoken words, until she discovered a lightness that eluded her in wakefulness. Each morning, as she awoke from the dreaming, tears would fill her eyes. She closed them as hard as she could hoping to go back to the peace she found, but when she opened her eyes again she realized the world she created was not there anymore. The tears would run down her cheek onto the pillows that laid beside her silently. She didn't feel happy but she wasn’t sad. She was alive and the world weighed upon her shoulders once again.

As she prepared herself for her day, she gave no thought to the feathers that filled her pillows; laying white and as pure as snow inside of the pillow cases that were strewn across her bed. They had been destined to carry the weight of imperfect creatures against the oppression of reality since their creation. Each of the quills represented a reparation to the Earth, allowing whichever mortal form possessed them to attain communion between Dream and Reality. Before her there was the bird, so free and without sin, gliding across the clouds that rolled beyond where the eye could see. But as is his nature, Man became jealous of the transcendence of the bird and had to punish it by taking away its feathers and binding them in cloth.

A long time ago they found themselves in the girl’s care and each night, as she slept, the feathers would take on the heaviness that the girl accumulated over the course of the day without bearing a grudge or finding fault in her soul. Each smile she would cover up, each song she’d leave unsung, each breath she held, and each idea she kept secret would pass from her dreaming mind into the care of the feathers. Days went by and, soon enough, months also came and went. Each night the feathers would change and the burden they carried would slowly turn them heavy, brittle and gray.

The girl soon realized the feathers were no longer soft and lovely. Without remorse or even a second thought, she threw them away for she was young and beautiful while they were old and humbled. This was a world of vanities and passion. She did not realize the sacrifices they had made to keep her happy, if only during her dreams, and so they were gone.

The pillows now sit underneath other such possessions that have been used up and thrown away like trash. But unlike them, they still did not blame the girl, nor those like her for what they had done. Although the pillows now lay heavy with the stains of forgotten tears and what-might-have-beens, they have found a new lightness in their own naive dreams.