I Swear, This Time, I Mean It.

There was once was a girl - let’s call her K - who had spent her entire life living in a tower, overlooking the lives of her loved ones. She envied their seemingly carefree existence, their ability to let go of what was bad for them and welcome what was good with open arms. When her friends below the tower started to meet princes, she became green with jealousy; she had dreamt of finding a prince and living happily ever after from a young age, refusing to believe that fairytales did not come true.

One day a prince - let’s call him X - saw K looking down at all of her joyful friends, and the single tear that fell from her eye and trickled down the brickwork of the tower. X decided that he simply had to have K, to banish her tears and bring her the same joy she had envied for so long. And so X opened the door to the tower, and climbed to the very top, determined to claim his prize. Little did Prince X know that the door had been locked from the inside, as K had always been afraid of the world that existed outwith her room at the top of the tower. Not quite prepared to give up without a fight, X sat outside her door and begged her to let him enter. When she refused, as she had done to so many others in the past, instead of leaving the tower (as she’d expected him to do) he sat outside her door, and offered simply to keep her company for a while instead.

Over the weeks that passed, K learned that Prince X wasn’t like any of the other princes that had tried to lure her from the tower in the past. He wasn’t sleazy or crude. He genuinely cared for her and, as time continued to pass, K was shocked to learn that she looked forward to X’s daily visits to the tower. She admired his patience, for he had never again tried to coax her into leaving her hiding place. And though she fretted about it day and night, K finally decided that X was worth the risk of leaving her tower.

She waited until X had taken his usual spot outside her door, looked herself over in the mirror one final time, and unbolted the several locks that had kept her shut away for so long. When the door opened, X was momentarily stunned. K had sworn to him that she would never leave the tower, yet here she was standing in front of him in the most beautiful green satin dress that brought out the flecks of emerald in her cool grey eyes. He pulled her towards him in a typical fairytale kiss, and K thought her happily ever after was right around the corner..

Months passed and K started to picture X in her future. She had even begun to make arrangements to move out of the tower and into the lavish castle that Prince X resided in. K had never felt more joyful in all her life, preparing herself for a life that wasn’t shielded by the walls of the tower… That is, until one day Prince X did not come to the tower. ‘He must simply be busy back home at the castle’, thought K, ‘he’ll come for me tomorrow’. But tomorrow came and went, and the prince was nowhere to be seen. Despite the niggling doubts in the back of her mind, K was sure that X would come back to the tower soon. He had to.

Just as K was peeling back her duvet to crawl into bed that night, she heard someone knocking on the tower door. ‘That must be X!’ she cried, ‘but my, he’s terribly late’. She ran to the door and pulled it open, ready to throw her arms around X in welcome… Only to discover that it was not X, but one of the many servants employed within his castle. ‘Prince X asked me to deliver this to you, Miss’, he said, his tone flat and empty. ‘But, where is he? Why has he not called to visit? Is he ill?’, K’s voice had started steadily, but had quickly become shrill. ‘It’s all in the letter Miss’, the servant replied tiredly, and started down the spiral staircase.

With shaky hands, K slowly unfolded the scroll that contained the letter that would smash the life which she had come to adore, into pieces. It read:

K,
Whilst I have grown fond of you over the past few months, I am afraid that this just isn’t working for me anymore. I simply do not wish to be with you any longer and you will not be able to move into the castle, as previously planned.
Regards, X

As she read the last line, the first tear fell onto the scroll, blurring X’s final words to her. Realising this she began to dab at the scroll, desperate to hold on to what she had left of him, but only blotting the ink further, until the words were nothing more than a splodge of ink in the middle of the scroll. Seeing what she had done - from opening the tower door, to letting X into her life, and finally, destroying his final scroll to her - she fled to the window, where she had a clear view of the prince’s castle, and wept. And once again her torrent of tears trickled down the cracks in the brickwork, leaving a small pool of water at the bottom of the tower; it was only upon glancing down at this silvery pool, that K was suddenly struck with an idea which could prevent this kind of suffering in the future.

The next day, K shouted down to her friend S from the tower to ask for a favour. ‘Could you please ask a few people to help you build a moat around my tower, S? With a little bridge of course, to allow friends such as yourself to come and visit if you’d like… I’d appreciated it ever so much’. Without having to be told, S interpreted what had happened between K and X, as the last she knew her friend was due to move into the prince’s castle and live happily ever after. ‘Of course, K. I’ll ask you no questions about this, but if you need me simply call out your window and I will come’.

Later that day S and a few of K’s closest friends began to dig a moat around the tower, believing that K would change her mind after a few moments… She did not. Instead K stood and stared out of her window, watching the people she’d spent years keeping at arm’s length get closer to her than they’d ever been before, just by digging the moat that would help her keep them out. And with each shovel-ful of earth that was lifted from the ground, K shed another tear at the loneliness that plagued her and tried desperately not to think of how she would spend the rest of her life alone, without her prince…

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