She had tried to stop writing but the words just kept coming out. She put down her pen but the ink still shone brightly on her paper. Her story took flight and blossomed into a bird that flew around her room, cloaking her in its transparent thread. Every sentence burned as brilliantly as if it were on fire. The words escaped from her mind, flowing with all her most personal thoughts and dreams.

She tried to keep them in, but the magic of her story still arose from within her and soon became the air that she breathed. The words took her over and she dived head first into the depths of the ocean of thoughts that had dripped off her desk and accumulated in a puddle on the floor. As she disappeared beneath the surface of the glassy lake, she entered into a new world, where dreams became reality and the visions of her imagination arose with the pulse of new life. She inhaled the intoxicating aroma of comprehension and fulfillment that steamed forth from the pages she filled, and with a serene smile she leaped into a new era of hope, adoration, and tranquility that stemmed and ascended from her text.

Her story grew and flourished into a vibrant flower that she nourished and hid away into a clandestine garden of ambitions and daydreams. She alone held the key that unlocked the gateway to her anthology of euphoric memoirs and fantasies. And late at night, under the gleaming moon, she would visit her surreal masterpieces, adding to their splendor and cultivating their inspirational passages and rhythms.

With the drifting clouds as her muse, she spent the daylight lying in emerald fields, in vision, while the metamorphosis of her impassioned story lines took place. With her notebook in hand, she marveled at the lush splendor of the world around her. She would close her eyes and let the sun soak through her skin and ignite something powerful deep within her soul. Her heart, once a locked prism now broke loose from the heavy chains that adorned it, and opened up to the unparalleled beauty of the sapphire midday sky, the jade leaves of the tall trees, and the hypnotic call of the bluebird, his feathers embellished in the finest azure silk. With these things forever imprinted in her mind, she built upon fantasies found only in dreams, worlds of color and light. The opening of her secluded heart awakened her to the surreal world that lay right at her fingertips, beckoning her to the midst of its enchantment.

Her very appearance altered as her magical talent took wing and began to soar. She took long strides, standing taller and stronger. A new depth lay behind her words, ringing all melodic and airy. She laughed more, and soon her troubles evaporated into thin air, disappearing like the traces of dreams that upon awakening, get scared off and take flight, leaving only a faint shadow of the vision on the tip of your tongue.. It was unequivocal that she had found her calling at long last. With this bright revolution she was unstoppable, immovable. Steadfast and sure, she faced each new day like a warrior from a forgotten time, head held high, with the self-esteem and confidence she had lacked all her life. It was as if she had discovered a lost part to her soul and every fiber of her being rejoiced in the completion of her essence, her spirit. Through this unearthing she had finally become whole.

And then, tragic struck.

A death in her family overcame her a drove a jagged stake through her heart. She felt herself split in two and shatter into a million, glistening pieces that slowly faded to black. Everything she had ever known and believed came crashing down around her, and she let herself slowly sink into a cavity of bottomless, murky water full of unimaginable sorrow and pain. As she became completely submerged, nothing seemed to matter to her anymore. Her tears saturated her pillow each night as she begged for sleep and prayed for the dawn. Her garden of stories lay cold and forgotten; each masterpiece, once as brilliant as stained glass windows, slowly died and withered away into unrecognizable lumps of ash.

She laid her pen and paper to rest, vowing to never write again, causing the hundreds of stories-to-be circling in the atmosphere above her to moan in anguish, the wailing of a dying race. But she would not surrender to their pleas for remembrance, and she immersed herself entirely into the misery that surrounded her, giving in, and giving up her dreams.

For an immeasurable amount of time her heart laid solitary, wading in a pool of anguish and woe, while her pen and paper gathered dust, as did the ideas in the back of her mind. Every word she spoke was empty and expressionless, hollow and devoid of emotion. Like the living dead she walked, fading into the mundane world of black and white around her. Her agonizing slumber pained her friends and family, who could find no way to awaken her from the nightmare that she let become her existence. Only one thing could save her from her sickening despair, but yet it was the one thing she refused to touch. The tattered remains of her daydreams were strewn violently about in the harsh wind of her depression.

Until one day, the wounded voices of her stories cried up to her from the dust with such a strangled magnitude that they broke through the thick barricade she had constructed around her mind. She could hear their faint whispers of agony and abandonment, and their silent screams and pangs of desertion. Their tortured cries pierced her to the very core, and all at once, the thick veil she had worn for so long was lifted from her eyes and she could see that the answer to all of her problems lay shriveling in her garden, her decaying oasis.

She ran with the speed of the wind to the gate of her garden, with the terror that she was too late scorching her insides. To her dismay, she found the gate barricaded in a mess of tangled thorns and vines. With tears in her eyes she hacked relentlessly away at the doorway's makeshift armor, the thorns gouging her hands open like shards of glass. With eyes and hands stinging, she finally created a gap in the mess of vines. With tremendous effort she gripped the handle tightly, turned the knob and shoved at the door with all of her weight, for it to only minutely give way. Eyes streaming and her hands flaring in protest, she gave it another shove. Its rusty hinges screeched, but at last gave in, giving her access to her withered haven once more.

What awaited her beyond the gate stopped her dead in her tracks. Before her lay a dreary cemetery, a wasteland of broken hopes and dreams. A smeared canvas of charcoal and gray waited devastatingly for her like the ashy remains of a fire. She fell to her knees, hands grasping at the scattered remains of her forgotten life, which fell through the cracks in her fingers like sand through a sieve. Defeated, she lay her head down in the rubble, among the decaying body of the spirit of freedom.

Time cannot measure how long she lay there drowning in remorse for the beautiful memory of the euphoric stories she once nurtured and held in her arms. Days molded into one, and the sun and moon rose and fell in a whir of light and color around her. Her falling tears became dew that sank through the ground and into the withered hearts of her broken stories, and her raspy exhales breathed new life into the stories shriveled lungs. Line upon line she labored diligently to repair her creations that had lay dormant for so long.

She rummaged through the colorless debris, until she uncovered her archaic pen and paper, all forlorn from neglect. With a sigh of alleviation, she took them up and began to weave a new tale, unlike anything she had ever composed, a shimmering symphony of light and sound. She recited it out loud, every stanza overflowing with poetic Balm of Gilead. Her words skillfully grafted new branches onto the dying stories, the golden thread of her words molding them together as one.

Time passed and her stories began to thrive and blossom once more. Like a proud mother she stood over them, watching as they flourished and bloomed. Each intricate flower rose towards the glory of the celestial sun high above them, casting vibrant colors on the earth below. The uncertainty that lay deep within her had evaporated with the throbbing anguish in her heart. With every beat, bliss and elation swelled through her entire being, testifying of the inner power, beauty and eloquence she possessed. She had found her passion in life and it was now an inseparable part of her soul. She walked through the once somber and dismal world, her precious gems illuminating the path before her, and leaving behind them a kaleidoscope of sparkling color.