has moved on. Eventually, I close the curtains to the Twilight Window- I cannot watch this any
longer.
Months pass by until a cold wind pushes its way past my curtains under the drumming of icy
rain. I cannot help but shiver as I stare at the closed and curtained windows as an arctic draft
wafts through cracks, producing an echoing creak.
Night after night, I keep company with The Story I fruitlessly pursue, and hour-by-hour it evades
me with layers of sleet and delicate hoarfrost on the windowpane. I can no longer bear to open
the curtains on the Twilight, for I cannot bear its truth.
Days pass me until I seize my courage and whip open the curtains on Sunrise. Before me, I find
the crisp chill of a bright winter morning, and relief floods my heart. My fear was for naught. I
cast my eyes over the frozen ground once covered with birds. The sparrows have flown south to
warmer climes, their stories unfolding before them.
And then my eyes catch on dull blue on the hard frozen ground, cold and outstretched on the
frosted grass.
Grief seizes me, where moments before I felt free. She is dead.
I feel the familiar twinges of desire, to catch her, posses her beauty. Where once I thought to
protect her, I find my failure on all accounts. The essence of the blue sparrow has taken wing
and I own her corpse only in death. My heart aches as I put her into the ground for her final rest.
As I hold her frozen body in the palm of my hands, her soft feathers sway mournfully in the cold
breeze like a colorful anemone in an icy ocean current. As I place dirt over her, I know the colors
I once admired at the height of the sun will now only survive in my most exquisite dreams.
The day drags on as I resign myself to a reality without Blue Sparrow. In desperation, I turn to
my gaudy Sunset Window for comfort. I draw back the curtains once more and find the
playground empty. The creep of the graveyard caught up with the wild youths while I was not
looking. Graves spill out into the foreground, forbidding boys from coming to play.
And finally I turn to Twilight. A single tear wells in my eye as grief and hope battle. I muster
the courage to look deep into the indigo night, searching for the bazaar.
The Storyteller’s dim lamp is no longer there.
“Well, that’s it,” I resign myself. “The Story Teller has no listeners and no money. He has gone!”
The next morning when I wake up, I know I need more than the light of Sunrise shining into my
home, so I open the curtains to all three Windows.
My eye is caught by Twilight; the marketplace is bustling in full daylight, alive with noise and
sound. There are colors, laughter, spices, and smiles. The loud hum of haggling is tossed over the
matters of goods and wares.
Then, just there, out of the corner of my eye, I see a familiar sight, The Storyteller’s shadow.
He is in his usual place, but above him his sign reads, “Vegetables for Sale.”
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