The traditional story has a beginning and an ending. Between these two are strife and conflict and dragons and witches and handsome knights and beautiful princesses. The middle, they say, is the heart of the story, the journey which rises or declines to the ending. This is where the carefully crafted beginning is torn asunder, where valiant heroes attempt to stitch it back together, where most of the time it only ends up flayed further open like a wound.
Or an unread letter. Or a broken fist. Or shattered chains. Or dying stars.
And.
And it is the storyteller's choice how it ends. Whether they all live happily ever after or they all become nothing but windswept ashes. Most of the time the story is just beginning, middle, and end—not necessarily in that order. One will never know how it really ends.
And.
And that is the happiest end to any story. Start with the middle, continue with the end, and end with the beginning. End with the knight on the dragon's back screaming a war cry, or with the princess locked up in the tower, or with the witch falling asleep. End with a sentence cut into a phrase, with an invisible ellipsis, and no 'The End'.
One will look at a universe of different endings. Here is a galaxy of sadness, here is a solar system of bitterness, look, there's a star drawing its first breath, perhaps this is happiness. It will be like looking at the vast expanse of the sky and seeing stories written in the clouds, in the silhouette of mountains with their hunched backs telling a different ending of their own.
You will see a princess in every woman, a knight in every man, goodness in a grain of sand.
Or a drop of rain. Or a blade of grass. Or a pebble in the riverbed.
And.
And they will say you are a dreamer, disillusioned by forestalled endings, but dreamers are the happiest people in the world. They live in captured moonlight, thrive on dappled sunlight, see emeralds in leaves and gold in autumn's touch. They fly in oceans and float on tempests. They walk on treetops and ride horses crafted from twigs to the burning sunset.
This is a world of endings.
And endings are always the best part of the story. And if it remains unknown, all the better.
Look here, at the ink that traces every letter of every word, dancing with utmost gaiety like a raptor in unbound flight. Swooping down, down, down, and spiraling up, up, up, gliding through the clouds, resting in the breeze like an eyelash on the cheek.
Look here. The ending is nowhere.
The ending is everywhere.
But look here, at this words, because this is a story that will never, ever end, only swirl in eternity like ink in water, billowing like, perhaps, a valiant knight's cape as he perches on top of the dragon, roaring a war cry along with the beast, while the witch falls asleep, and the princess waits in her tower.
Look. Or read. Or stare. Or write.
And.
And so they lived…