Pandora — Garden of Broken dreams

Once upon a time,

Five lit­tle lass­es were play­ing in the gar­den one sun­ny spring morn­ing.  They were qui­et­ly sit­ting in the grass mak­ing daisy chains out of sweet smelling flow­ers. As they sat there sur­round­ed by the tiny lit­tle petals, they began to chat about what they want­ed to do and what they want­ed to be when they grew up

The first lit­tle lass spoke up and said when she grew up, she want­ed a bright red car and the biggest man­sion in the entire king­dom.

The girls all sighed as they dreamed about the glit­ter­ing gat­ed man­sion with the bright shiny car parked out­side framed by a mag­nif­i­cent gar­den and ornate gold­en draperies in the crys­tal win­dows.

The sec­ond lassie soon spoke up, wist­ful­ly say­ing she want­ed to be the most beau­ti­ful girl in the whole king­dom when she grew up. The most beau­ti­ful boy in the king­dom would take one look at her and fall deeply in love with her sweep­ing her off to his palace.

The oth­er lit­tle girls all ooh’ed and ah’ed as they day dreamed of the hand­some prince rid­ing up to sweep their lit­tle friend off her feet and take her away to the land of hap­pi­ly ever after.

The third lit­tle girl did­nt have to think about her dream, she already had it planned. She want­ed to be a star on tv and in movies and have every one in the king­dom adore her and love her. The oth­er lit­tle girls excit­ed­ly thought of fame and for­tunes and sign­ing auto­graphs for wor­ship­ping ador­ers.

It was the the fourth lit­tle girl’s turn next and she announced with a smirk that she want­ed to rule the world and own dia­mond mines with slaves and min­ions at her beck and call.

The oth­er girl’s eyes all sparkled as they imag­ined maids in stiff starched white linen uni­forms wheel­ing pol­ished sil­ver ser­vice trays full of delec­table temp­ta­tions with hand­some men offer­ing their friend rich­es beyond their wildest dreams.

The four lit­tle girls then turned to the fifth lit­tle girl and wait­ed expec­tant­ly to hear what her dream was.

The fifth girl thought for a moment before she spoke.
“I want to be wise” she said qui­et­ly with a gen­tle smile on her face.

The oth­er girls looked at their lit­tle friend. There was silence. The only audi­ble sound was the steady drone of the bot­tle green blowflies gath­er­ing and buzzing around four lit­tle mouths that had by now fall­en gap­ing­ly open. Four litle faces in shock, after lis­teni­ing to their lit­tle friend’s rather bizarre and hor­rid sound­ing dreams.

The first lit­tle girl smiled. Then she gig­gle and then the first lit­tle girl start­ed to laugh her head off, while she turned to the oth­er lit­tle girls. One by one the four girls start­ed laugh­ing. They all laughed, and they laughed and laughed.

Those four lit­tle girls laughed at the fifth lit­tle lass until tears welled painful­ly up in her eyes.

Then they laughed some more when they saw her tears of dis­tress.

The fifth lit­tle girl scram­bled up from the ground, wip­ing the hot tears that were pour­ing down her face in twin water­falls away on her sleeve, as she took one last glance down at all the beau­ti­ful flow­ers in her hand.

She turned and tossed the pile to the wind and then turned and ran home as fast as her tiny lit­tle fae legs would car­ry her.

Arriv­ing home, she raced into her bed­room, slam­ming the door hard behind her. She threw her­self on the bed and sobbed.

She sobbed and sobbed until she had no tears left to sob.

Pick­ing her­self up off the bed, she walked sad­ly up to the dress­er and sat down. Her eyes rose to face her­self in the mir­ror.

She picked her music box up from her dress­er and turned the key before set­ting it back down, with the sounds of Puccini’s La Boheme now sooth­ing her tor­tured soul.

Glanc­ing down at the remain­ing daisy chain entwined around her wrist, she slow­ly brought her arm to her face, nuz­zling the tiny petals and draw­ing the sweet aro­ma deep inside her soul.

She removed the flower chain gen­tly from her wrist, tak­ing care not to dam­age the tiny ten­der petals then soft­ly placed it inside her music box.

She looked down in silence at the heart shaped music box, watch­ing the pur­ple faery danc­ing mer­ri­ly and proud­ly around her cir­cle.  a sin­gle tear run­ning from her left eye and dropped into the box.

Sad­ly she closed the lid of the music box on the bright and beaut­ful pur­ple bal­le­ri­na, crush­ing her and forc­ing her to fit  down in the dark­ness of the box.

The echo of the  lid slam­ing down bounced soft­ly off the wall before slow­ly fad­ing out. Until that moment she had been danc­ing mer­ri­ly around on the dance floor, hap­py, bright and beau­ti­ful.

Now there was silence in her still­ness.

The silence grew. She nev­er told any­one her dreams again. She kept them locked deep with­in her heart along with that ever for­got­ten daisy chain in the music box.

Her dreams were hope  and she didn’t want to share them when there were so many of those four oth­er lit­tle princess­es just wait­ing with hatred in their hearts, to crush all hope that grew.