The Mirror and the Pendant
May. 29th, 2006 10:31 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
quigonejinnAlas, not back yet, but there are hopes! There are hopes! HH-style fairytale based on a Hans Christian Anderson story.
Once upon a time, there was a very bad hobgoblin -- which is to say that he was actually a very proper hobgoblin. He was mean, and he was wicked, but the worst thing about him was that he had a mirror which had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever. The hobgoblin took great pleasure going about, here and there, there and here with his mirror, looking at everything in its terrible surface and congratulating himself on how awful the world truly was. That beautiful landscape, for example, was nothing more than boiled spinach. That lovely woman, for another, was nothing but a harlot, and so on, and so forth. At one point, he even decided to fly up to heaven to look at the angels with it, but as he took the mirror up, the higher he flew, the more slippery the glass became until he could no longer hold it, until it slipped from his hands and fell to the earth, break into millions and millions of pieces.
One bit flew into the heart a kind king, and he was never kind anymore. Another bit flew into the mouth of a truthful politician, and he never spoke of good things after that. A third bit -- out of the millions and millions of pieces, and it was a good sized bit -- flew into the eye of a little boy who was playing in a pig trough.
He could never see any good after that. The fragment of mirror drove him out to sea, in fact. It worked at him inflexibly and made him into a great captain, bringing him treasures and love and adventure, but none of it ever made him happy, for he could not see the good or the beautiful in any of it until one night, when he was a commodore and sitting in the inn, waiting for the morning. Tomorrow was to be his first night, really, aboard the ship, and the commodore was fighting a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, of worry and dread before what ought to be the happiest day of his life.
His best friend, his flagship captain came in with his hat and coat, and saw his commodore sitting in the half-dark.
The flag captain blinked and said, "Sir, I believe you have something in your eye. If you'd permit me the liberty -- "
He leaned forward, brushed his fingers over the commodore's eye, and to both of their surprises, out popped a fragment of glass, fully two inches long. The flag captain gaped at it, shining in his palm like that, and the commodore gaped, too, but not at the bit of glass -- he was seeing his friend's face for the first time. Swarthy and scarred, true, not bearing the marks of learning or study, but nevertheless shining and beautiful with goodness and kindness and worry for this man that he had followed around the world and back, into the worst places of human nature, always without a single complaint. They were to go out tomorrow to a place where ice locked the seas for half the year, where there was a hostile army of millions gathered almost within cannon-shot.
At that point, the commodore could do nothing but kiss his beautiful friend.
ETA: Hopes are dashed. Will continue to be out -- the fuckfaces want me to pay $900 to fix my computer. We shall see.
Once upon a time, there was a very bad hobgoblin -- which is to say that he was actually a very proper hobgoblin. He was mean, and he was wicked, but the worst thing about him was that he had a mirror which had the power of making everything good or beautiful that was reflected in it almost shrink to nothing, while everything that was worthless and bad looked increased in size and worse than ever. The hobgoblin took great pleasure going about, here and there, there and here with his mirror, looking at everything in its terrible surface and congratulating himself on how awful the world truly was. That beautiful landscape, for example, was nothing more than boiled spinach. That lovely woman, for another, was nothing but a harlot, and so on, and so forth. At one point, he even decided to fly up to heaven to look at the angels with it, but as he took the mirror up, the higher he flew, the more slippery the glass became until he could no longer hold it, until it slipped from his hands and fell to the earth, break into millions and millions of pieces.
One bit flew into the heart a kind king, and he was never kind anymore. Another bit flew into the mouth of a truthful politician, and he never spoke of good things after that. A third bit -- out of the millions and millions of pieces, and it was a good sized bit -- flew into the eye of a little boy who was playing in a pig trough.
He could never see any good after that. The fragment of mirror drove him out to sea, in fact. It worked at him inflexibly and made him into a great captain, bringing him treasures and love and adventure, but none of it ever made him happy, for he could not see the good or the beautiful in any of it until one night, when he was a commodore and sitting in the inn, waiting for the morning. Tomorrow was to be his first night, really, aboard the ship, and the commodore was fighting a vague feeling of dissatisfaction, of worry and dread before what ought to be the happiest day of his life.
His best friend, his flagship captain came in with his hat and coat, and saw his commodore sitting in the half-dark.
The flag captain blinked and said, "Sir, I believe you have something in your eye. If you'd permit me the liberty -- "
He leaned forward, brushed his fingers over the commodore's eye, and to both of their surprises, out popped a fragment of glass, fully two inches long. The flag captain gaped at it, shining in his palm like that, and the commodore gaped, too, but not at the bit of glass -- he was seeing his friend's face for the first time. Swarthy and scarred, true, not bearing the marks of learning or study, but nevertheless shining and beautiful with goodness and kindness and worry for this man that he had followed around the world and back, into the worst places of human nature, always without a single complaint. They were to go out tomorrow to a place where ice locked the seas for half the year, where there was a hostile army of millions gathered almost within cannon-shot.
At that point, the commodore could do nothing but kiss his beautiful friend.
ETA: Hopes are dashed. Will continue to be out -- the fuckfaces want me to pay $900 to fix my computer. We shall see.
