Deep sleep inhabits a world she has been refused access to. Exhaustion jeers at her from his dark corner mocking her fitful rest. Traumatised by the twin gargoyles of pain and confusion Daphne feels like a prisoner in her own living room. She is trapped by ME and by her arthritis. Her only escape is in memory.
Titania rains kisses on the skipping child she had been; a changeling child, adored nonetheless by a doting Mother. They had roamed together through her childhood hunting faeries in the meadow,vaulting gates into bucolic bliss, waging a personal revolution against any farmer who insisted that trespassers would be prosecuted.Blow that. Blow it all. All cares were thrown to the wind like the fluff of dandelion clocks.
These memories of smiles and faded sunshine gave her courage to face what she must; the squid-like tentacles waging war on her senses that were always greedy for more; the game of patience she played with the dark nights always waiting for the dawn. The Doctor told her she had not long, apologised for bringing her the bad news about her weakened heart. Did he not understand what a relief that was to her. He had handed her a shining light at the end of a long dark tunnel. The tunnel took form in her minds eye, a tunnel of trees, leaves greening the light, catkin tassels hanging like skeins of silk and branches filtering sunlight. And between the birdsong echoed about she caught snatches of her own sweet love’s laughter. He was waiting for her there, in the clearing. Together they would dace again into a new adventure. Her spirit would lift with the breeze and the warmth of the sun would shine its honey to her core.
So there she sat, in her cosy burrow. Daphne, 83, in her wing back chair, with a smile of contentment etched on her face as life finally slipped away through the back door of memory.
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