The Sleeping Knight

I used to be full of fire. A candle that set the world around me ablaze. My fire touched everyone and everything near me. I wore my heart for everyone to see, never giving a thought about the opinions of others. One day I met my dragon. I didn't realize it was a dragon, my mind was too naïve to see that deeply. And fought Fate smiled upon me and gave my heart the foresight to see what my eyes could not.
Now being made of fire as I was, when the dragon attacked I blazed brighter and fought back with all I had. Unknown to me my heart was busy fighting too. You see my mind forgot about my heart and if my soul hadn't been strong and confident, if it had already been damaged, then my undefended heart would have surely been shattered during the battle with my dragon. Ah, but my soul was strong, confident and bursting with love for everything I was. That’s what brought me to the attention of my dragon. My dragon fell in lust with everything I had that it did not. As we all know, dragons love shiny, priceless objects and steal them for their collections. While I battled daily to keep myself, my ingenious heart was creating the blueprints to an impenetrable tower to protect itself and my soul was the stone masons and steel workers that constructed its walls.
Now, an inner fire has a weakness. It burns from the fuel of your heart and soul. Since my mind was busy fighting it didn’t give any input to my towers design and the bigger and better my tower grew the dimmer and slower my fire burned. Without my fire my mind was in complete control and it didn’t find fighting a dragon particularly brilliant so it came up with logical reasons to give up bits and pieces of myself to appease the dragon slowly. With my heart and soul secure behind my tower walls, it just didn’t seem so important anymore to keep those parts of me.
As my fire slowly died the dragon claimed me and put me in his room of priceless treasures. The dragon keep me there for a long time never really seeing me and gloating to itself about its newest acquisition.
One day the dragon came to poke at me and see my fire, but my fire was gone. I was flat and dull now. Enraged it attacked and tried to bring me back to life. My mind just ignored it and sat back blinking in confusion. I tried to entertain it and give it what it wanted to no avail. It became angrier and eventually gave up in disgust and left me alone. Now I could still see and feel my heart and soul but it was like looking and feeling through a cloudy fog. I could vaguely see them in flashes of color and light. With the dragon gone with no signs of seeing it again, my mind was free to look closer and explore this fog. My mind had vague memories of what was trapped on the other side.
Everyday the dragon was gone it got closer to seeing and feeling what awaited in the mist. Eventually my mind reached the end and saw a gloriously beautiful tower sitting in a clearing with warm sunlight chasing away the surrounding mist. My mind was always overly curious and with no dragons to fight it started to think of ways to see what was inside. The tower seemed to go upward forever with no end. There were no windows or doors just solid thick cream colored walls. I called out to see if anything would answer back. I waited days but no answer came forth.
I've never been very patient when my curiosity has been piqued so I created a sledge hammer and started smashing on the beautiful thick stone wall. It was hard work that took a long time to finally make that first breach through that wall. With still no sign of the dragon I maintained my focus and soon enough I had made a doorway of sorts into my tower.
I had no real idea what was inside but the mind doesn’t feel fear and this was a sunny, beautiful place so it reasoned that all was safe. I went through my new door and saw a curved staircase that seemed to never end. Up and up it went in spiral, hundreds of steps. After all my hard work to get inside, my curiosity was rampant. I started to climb the staircase one step at a time. With every step from the first I could vaguely feel a warm spark jolt through me. Now my curiosity was running wild.
I climbed for what felt like days and at last reached a door at the very top of that tower. I reached for the handle and tried to turn the knob. I laughed when I realized it wouldn’t turn because it was locked. Silly of me to think a door at the top of a secure tower would actually be unlocked. I sat down on the top step and thought for a while on how to open it. I made this far there was no way I was giving up now. What I needed was a key! I thought that since this was a tower inside myself, why can’t I just conjure one? Surely I haven’t locked myself out of my own tower room? I imagined a key and it popped into my hand. I placed it into the lock and turned the key. Nothing happened, it wouldn’t turn. Disappointed but determined, I thought maybe I should try to make another key. So I thought of a skeleton type key and again it popped into my hand. I tried it in the lock with the same result. I kept making more keys. Short ones, long ones, wide ones, thin ones, curvy and straight keys to no avail. None would fit the lock. Frustrated I kicked the door and a key fell to the floor at my feet. I still don’t know where that key came from, maybe fate smiling on me again, but when I tried it the door clicked open.
I slowly pushed open the door and stepped into my tower room. All I could see was a glow at the far end of the room, but what I could feel was warmth. Not exactly uncomfortable but definitely toasty. The room wasn’t too large and empty but for the soft glow. I began walking toward the glowing light and the closer I got the warmer I became. The light seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere all at once. Ever curious I reached out to touch the light and as I made contact the whole tower started to shake and the walls started to crumble. All that lovely stone fell away from beneath my feet. I started to fall and at the same time I was overwhelmed with a rush of fire that passed from where my hand had touched the light to all of me inside and out.
The fire running through me eventually settled inside me like a happily burning candle flame chasing back the chilly mist and fog. As I opened my eyes, I saw that I was back in the dragons treasure room but it looked different, felt different. With the fire back inside my eyes and in the place where my tower used to stand, everything looked and felt different. It was no longer just a room filled with shiny, priceless pretty things but a cage, a prison cell! As I looked closer I realized that it was still the same room it had always been. The room hadn’t changed. What had changed was how I saw and felt about the room, I had changed. With my heart and soul finally reunited with my mind everything was different. I had my fire back!
Unlike with fairytales that didn’t mean it was the same fire and was strong enough to defeat the dragon and escape to live happily ever after. My mind was wiser now, no longer grieving the loss of my naiveté and innocence. I knew my fire was weak from sleeping for so long in its tower and my heart had to relearn how to deal with long unfelt emotions.
It took many months that seemed to go on for years but slowly and carefully I put what pieces were left of me back together then rebuild what pieces I had lost that I could. I still sat in my prison and taught myself how to mask my newly revived fire from the dragon during its infrequent visits. I had to do this so it wouldn’t find new interest in me. I wasn’t ready to fight yet. I discovered I also had to feel everything I had missed in order to heal, learn and become stronger. Every emotion is like a lesson, you have to feel it in order to question why you feel that emotion and what causes you to feel that way. When you know what you are feeling, why you feel it and how it came to be there, you have more control over that emotion which gives you confidence and strength to heal from or truly enjoy them. Just like with my tower I had to tear every emotion down into its individual parts in order to restructure my fire into one that was stronger, wiser and controlled enough to use and share with purpose. A tool I could wield, at my command, to light the world on fire however I wish too. My fire was all mine now, heart, soul and mind combined into one. At last I was powerful enough, more stable enough to plan my escape from the dragon’s lair.
Timing was important because the dragon was unpredictable so I made sure that as soon as I had an opportunity I was prepared. When my opportunity arrived I took my chance. The dragon had recently acquired a new shiny object and was busy possessing it. I got up and carefully, slowly walked right out the front door. I know it wasn’t a to the death fight and anticlimactic escape but the dragon hadn’t yet realized that I had my fire back, that it was better than it had ever been. The dragon would not miss a fireless dull possession and didn’t really care if I disappeared.
I ran as fast and as far as I could. I built a new life for myself and now my new tower encompasses all of me and my new door has a lock that only those I trust get to have a key to. I can see the dragons now with every part of me and never shall I give a key to any dragon. I still have work to do, things I forgot I lost that I am still finding and my fire will never burn as bright as it once burned but it is so much better than I could have dreamed it could ever be. Now I am discovering new feelings and emotions I always hoped to one day experience and I have learned how to truly enjoy and appreciate them. I might just get my ever after, after all!