Fairytale Part 2

I have just spent almost three hours at a McDonald's so I could catch up on one of my favorite shows, "Once Upon A Time".  And oddly enough, I found it to be far more encouraging than I expected.

Curses can be broken.  We know this.  Or, at least, we once knew this.  All our modern fairytales call this world a "world without magic", when in fact it's just a world full of incredibly boring, and blind, people.  Science is the new magic.  But science does not produce results as effective as the greater powers in the universe mankind has chosen to ignore and forget.

Some turn to the darkest corners of existence for the power.  I grew up in the arms of the High King, effectively raised and parented by God Himself in the absence of my blood father.  And in the metaphorical absence of my adoptive father.  Friends have called me blessed, favored by God, chosen for something great.  And while I may not have gotten a pony for my birthday or a Ferrari for my first car, God has always taken care of me.  When I need food or shelter, it is provided.  When I was stranded in Texas with neither, and no money, some mysterious person no one had ever seen before showed up and handed the hostess $200 cash which was then given to me.  I've driven a car that for all intents and purposes should have never been able to run in the first place.  And I've been given not just a husband, but a prince, as the love of my mortal life.

So then I ask Him, I ask my Father, why it seems His favor is only given to me and not to Tristan.  I ask while I sit beside him, holding his hand, feeling helpless in the midst of the turmoil in his mind.  And while people may say it's ridiculous to take blame for something that I have no power over, the truth is I can and do take blame for doing nothing about it.

Curses can be broken.  This world has curses, and it has cures.  God provides the cure for any ailment, and any cure, but it's not a free handout.  Not because He doesn't love us, but because we wouldn't appreciate anything He gives us if we didn't have some form of involvement in getting it.

It amazes me how people in this world, on this planet, can believe in God but refuse to believe there is a physical, living darkness.  Dark beings.  Demons.  And the worst part is, they aren't all obvious.  As someone once told me, if Satan was an ugly, terrifying beast of a demon, who would fall into his trap?  Like moths to a flame, we are lured by beauty.  And like so many similar creatures, we are unable to see the danger in the bits of joy just sitting out in the open....on top of a trap.

Who knows how Tristan got his curse?  Nicks said it was the oxygen levels, the change from living as a toddler in a high-oxygen environment to growing up in an atmosphere blended with so many other gases.  The doctors say it could be his epilepsy, which could be from the car accident, which he was never really in to begin with.  It could be the kink in his neck, or it could be that little device that Mom thinks is either malfunctioning or being manipulated but all the same is in the base of his neck on the spinal cord.

Deep down, I truly, fully believe it is something much more, something much darker.  I've already been scoffed at by so-called "friends" who think I'm some religious fanatic.  At first, long ago, Tristan also scoffed, but not so much anymore.

"I don't think all of it is a hallucination," I told him once, while we sat in the commons of the mental ward in the hospital.  "I mean, maybe some of it, but....I don't know.  I think....Actually, I really believe, you can just see what no one else can see.  You can see the invisible."

Tristan didn't scoff then.  He actually mulled over it, gave me a soft nod, and we continued our card game.  That was back in December, when we worried about his discharge timing up with Christmas.  Now, if I bring it up, he brooks no argument and on a good day, he asks me what makes me believe it so fervently.

I dare not tell anyone else why.  Only he knows, and perhaps maybe you, dear reader, have already figured it out.  Because while I do not have to deal with the horror of physically seeing, tasting, and feeling the "invisible" world that has become so much a part of Tristan's life, I am fully aware of it's existence.  I always have been.  It's part of being a Seer.

And I know who, or what, it is that threatens to rip the last shreds of Tristan's sanity away before we have a chance to bind together in marriage.

Curses can be broken.  And dragons can be killed.  It's just a matter of believing that not only can it be done, but it will be done.