World of Glass [CW: Short Story/Feedback]

[Raindrop Valkyrie]

I hate how fragile a life is.

I hate how fragile beauty is.

I hate how fragile the world is.

It's as if everything were made of glass. One errant strike, one moment of carelessness, everything shatters. The pieces come clattering down, cascading into the ground shattering further. Swathes of glass become a sea of shards. Something once whole now... a scattering of what it once was. Fractured, broken, battered.

Woe be to those that try and catch the pieces as they fall. At times, you can slink away unscathed, but others, the glass bites into the flesh. A punishment for trying. Another wound, a deeper one. Failure... It leads even deeper. A fresh crimson wound. This wound doesn't sparkle like starlight. There's no illusion that it's pretty. The red runs from it, it festers and it is ugly. It's so easy for damage control to just because more damage. Trying to save some of the pieces only leads to different kinds of wounds. It feels like, when life breaks that there's no good solution. The thought of losing no matter what you do, it weighs on the mind. It's a heavy thought that kills momentum. It tries to drag you down and tries to lure you into being sedentary. The thought that kills momentum, movement, life. Weight, Baggage, a few of the names for it.

"What do I do?" No one answers, all the while rings the sounds of breaking glass. It smacks the ground in a fevered pitch, fast, hot, and never-ending. It crashes about you, the shrapnel threatens to rip you to ribbons, and yet, moving toward the falling glass isn't appealing either. Stand still, be ripped to shreds, move forward, met the same bloody fate. So it feels when everything comes crashing down. Once the glass breaks, cascades, The World of Glass falls apart... what can one do but find razor sharp pain?

Those thoughts are... tantamount to death. Not at first, but if they are kept, believed. For it is thoughts such as these that when held onto, lead down a winding serpentine path. One that you don't come back from if you stray too far. Because, once you walk into the dark, the way back out is nearly impossible to find. In the darkness one bumbles about until they find the shining release. The False Answer. The end of this path. That shining light is a horrible lie. It doesn't offer salvation. It offers something much different. But, at this point, it becomes hard to care. You've forgot why you've even come here, you forgot why you are standing here. All you know is your tired. You just want to lay your head down... and sleep, forever. Your body becomes heavy, as do your eyelids. The weight of it all becomes so much greater in this moment. It sits on your shoulders, pushing you down, with the force of a mountain. When it's been so long in this dark, it's hard to remember what the light really looks like. And, once you've gotten this far... This lie looks close enough. It passes off as the thing you're looking for, the light you've know forgotten. And, you're too exhausted to care. Too weary from the loads you've cared, the hardships... the fragments of broken glass you carry within. While it's the same person you've been, for some reason... it's all the more cumbersome. Whether it is whole, or shards it should be the same weight. But, it's the new shape that is the issue. It's awkward to carry, it shifts about outside of your control, it slips from your so believed "iron grasp". The burden you carry in your heart has just, become this and it's all you can remember.

The days from before, seem so distant. The ones where this load didn't weigh as much as the world. Happiness, anger, sadness. These emotions stopped coming. They were shattered too. The only feeling left was emptiness. The only emotion that wasn't made from glass. For, it was nothingness. It is the only one that wasn't fragile. Because it only existed because nothing else could within you.

This... is what it feels like to stand opposite that Lie. The horrid monster... The one that whispered sweet nothings in the ears of the weary. It promised salvation. All you had to do in turn was break the final piece of glass. Your Life.

"It'd be easy, just... SNAP! And you're done!"

And it would be easy. The temptation would make it so hard to resist. Because a solution was right there. Right at the tips of your fingers. Within your grasp. Your control. Your control? Was it really? Was that... modicum of control, in reality control? Maybe. But, if it was used for that, it'd not be worth it. A permanent solution for something temporary.

After all, Glass can be pieced back together. Stained glass, in crimsons, shades of indigo, and the other many colours of the world. Those fragments now had experience. They weren't clear like they had started. They had been dipped within the font of colour known as life. While they might not be the same as they once were... and that they may no longer fit together as they once had... that doesn't matter. What matters, is that they can be newly arranged. They can create art more beautiful than the starting product.

For when the world breaks down around you... when the glass crashes down... it will hurt. But it's not the end of the world. Pain is only temporary. While it may linger, and it beat dully in one's heart and soul, the day comes. It will always evaporate. That day will always come. Where it no longer hurts. It will forever be with you, but it won't burn, it won't bleed anymore. Some pains cause the pieces to shatter more than others. It takes longer to repair the damage, but, all the more beautiful the reconstruction.

I love how that despite how fragile a life is, it can be repaired.

I love that despite how fragile beauty is, that it can be found in the places you never looked.

I love that despite how fragile the world is, that it keeps moving forward.

[K_H]

[FEEDBACK]: It's... absolutely beautiful, and so accurate. If we were rating these, I'd put this at either nine or ten points out of ten.