The Princess and the Sailor

Once upon a time, in a far off land, there was a beautiful flame-haired princess who lived by the sea. Although she was fiercely intelligent and challenging and had the most wonderful smile and eyes that lit up every room she entered, and put a beautiful song into the heart of everyone who spoke to her, she was sad inside. She could remember the happy person she could be, but she didn't know how to find her any more. She remembered what she did when she was happy, and so she repeated those actions, but deep in her heart she knew she was acting a role and couldn't ever quite convince herself.

In another part of the same land there lived a sailor who was also sad inside; for although he had given his love to his wife and committed to her forever, he found that she was cold and froze the flames that had once burned so very brightly in his heart. His love and need to be loved were spurned and cast aside.

It came to pass that the princess and the sailor fell into a correspondence on some literary matters, and there was much challenging of wits which caused the fire that had all but gone out in his heart start to glow and catch once more. And the princess was surprised to find that there was a tickling tingle in her once more which she remembered from many years before; she was being challenged in an cerebral way that she had forgotten she was capable of and she was gladdened to find that she was still capable of kicking pseudo-intellectual arse when the occasion demanded it.

One evening, some short time later, they were both at an evening reception. Although they had only written to each other, a connection seemed to have been made, and so that short period of anticipation of meeting in person had seemed to stretch into a lifetime; and when they finally were introduced, the sailor found that his usual witty way with words and banter all but dried up. She was so achingly beautiful that he could barely maintain eye contact with her. His heart pounded and he flustered and fluffed his witty comments in a way that shocked him. For her part, she found the sailor to be far more than she could have hoped for and resolved to make him part of her life.

And so there began a swift and tempestuous falling in love, a deepening in love, a non-committal commitment, and a slowly dawning realisation that they had been destined for each other, that they were the two participants in the same dream. That together they could change their worlds, and make fireworks in each other's hearts and be far far more together than they could ever hope to be apart.

But, like all True Love, it could never run so smoothly. There were separations and rejoinings; and losses and reverses and professions of enduring love; and barriers crossed and re-raised. And finally, when they had finally dared to believe that the sailor could find away to be part of her life forever, there was imposed upon them a final brake. A full stop. Permission both granted and withheld simultaneously. They were devastated; both of them.

And so, he was forced out of her life. Daily, the princess would take the fastest horse and ride to the furthest points of her kingdom, seeking word of her sailor. She sent messengers on horseback and in the fastest ships in her fleet. Finding no news of him, she would walk to the beach, no matter the weather, and climb out onto the furthest rocks with the wind streaming her beautiful green silk dress and long red hair out behind her. There she would take her message to the sailor, carefully sealed in a green glass bottle, and throw it into the tide, hoping against hope that it would reach her beloved. It was an act of faith and an act of hope, and a token of her deep love and commitment to him, and an exercise in futility. But she could never be sure. Tides of seas and life are fickle, and don't always follow the proper narrative arc. What she did know was that reply came there none. The winter grew long, and the storms grew vicious and the skies blacker and the clouds the colour of treacle, and still she climbed the rocks, and still she threw the bottles.

And time passed, with her sailor lost to her and the life and love that she knew she still had the capacity for slowly growing smaller and colder in her heart.

One day, as spring approached and the rain cut horizontally through the air, she wearily made her way to the beach, as she did every day at low tide with her bottle in her hand. As she climbed her way across the rocks, barefoot, beautiful and unbearably sad, she noticed a tall ship in the bay and a small boat pulling towards the beach. She paused and watched it's approach, feeling a tightness in her chest and a longing in her heart. She knew it couldn't be her sailor, that she was imagining that it was the right shape, that it was the right hair colour, that it was the same movement in the shoulders. By the time she realised that it WAS her sailor, he was already out of the boat and running for her.

That embrace ... that long yearning, that need, that happiness. They cried, they laughed, and they dreamed of lying in each other's arms that night, anywhere. The dunes, the boat, the bed, they didn't care. As the urgency passed, she asked him, 'Did you get my messages? I sent them every day.'

'No,' he replied, 'But I found a beach, covered in green glass, all beautiful in the sunlight and every glass pebble scrubbed and polished by the tide. I knew you were thinking about me and missing me so deep in your heart, as I missed you.'

'I took one of the pebbles, the most beautiful one. The one that reminded me of the colour of your dress, the one that would be made more beautiful against the red of your hair, but there was a terrible storm and it was broken. I knew I could go and get another, but this represented you and your beauty. I could find another, but it wouldn't be you. I found a Japanese craftsman who was skilled in ancient arts and begged him for his help, and so he repaired it with philosophy and with gold, and this is what I bring to you as a token of my love. When we are apart, or hurt, or in need of each other and cannot be together, look at this glass pebble and know that what has been broken can be repaired. It isn't to be thrown away, it's just another part of life and it can be all the more beautiful afterwards. You will always be my princess by the sea, and I your sailor who will always be with you no matter how far I must go.'

And so they embraced again as the sun cleared the cliff-tops and warmed their skin to match the heat in their hearts. She never allowed that glass pebble to be out of her possession as long as she lived, knowing that it was a symbol of his adoration of her and their eternal bond, and they grew together into a most wonderful, loving, slightly dissolute, and intellectually formidable couple.