Understanding

She wipes at a stray tear rolling down her face.

She meets the eyes of the tiger beside her. They give nothing away, only stare, unflinchingly, back at her. They are more ice than sky, a shade too light to be pure blue.

“I understand now,” she says. He does not reply.

She kneels before him, putting her hands one either side of his great snowy head. He feels more solid than even the ground beneath her feet. “I know what I have done,” she says. “I understand now.”

He does not look or move away as she puts her arms around him. He is as still as a statue.

She pulls him so closely her arms plunge through fur and skin and into his very essence, and the feeling of realness, the coalescence of her two diluted states, makes her gasp. There is no contrast, no expected dichotomy that makes her withdraw. But it is hard. Harder than diluting herself. It is so simple for salt to disappear into the vastness of the ocean, yet to disappear into the vastness of the real world is another thing. Her limbs feel heavy, the pain in her head increases. She does not open her eyes to see the castle changing around her. Elements she has seen as thinly as gauzy veils become hard and real. There is nothing transparent, though time has still passed and its passage has changed much about her once-upon-a-time-home.

She does not open her eyes until she is sure she is herself. There is no tiger in her arms, and her body aches with exhaustion and effort.

It takes a significant amount of bravery to open her eyes.

Text by Lucie MacAulay