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Why am I surrounded by suicidals?
I was inspired to write this by one.
There once was a forest rose, sweet of scent and gorgeous of beauty. Her glory was so severe that it would make the eyes of those who looked upon her shed tears of scarlet. And in time, few would tread forth to look upon her, for fear of the pain her glory wrought, and she began to wither. As she withered, so did her world, the trees, the grass, the streams ran dry, the animals turned to cadaverous forms.
Seeing her world decay, those who tread and those who loved faced her thorns. They were cut and slashed and grievously wounded by the thorns that tried to keep them away. Some, hurt too deeply and lacking the love for the love did turn back, but a few pressed on to the heart of the rose's realm.
Facing the terrors of her thorns, those who loved held her close as those who tread gently removed her roots from the soil that could no longer support her – for she was long too delicate for her world. With care from the bleeding and battered ones, the rose was spirited away to a tower with walls of stone and steel, mighty and imposing, and placed within a vaulted, crystal enclosure at the top of its highest tower where the sun shined brightly upon her every day.
She was cared for my everyone, loved and nurtured, but ultimately imprisoned within a room of glass with hundreds of feet of rock and stone between her roots and the open earth. She grew weak, wilted, and ever more thorny as she tried to push away those who loved her – yet imprisoned her to keep her with them as long as they could. But however thorny her branches became, no matter how much those who loved her suffered, they would not let her go. And the rose succumbed to madness.
She tried to protest, to pierce and scratch and cut and slash! But her strength had left her and all she did was harm herself. Her branches tattered, her petals fell, her leaves burned, and her thorns, once imposing and dreadful, softened and waned. The ones who loved and the ones who treaded, blinded by love, pruned the rose's branches back until she was but a shadow of her former glory below a single, blood-red bloom. They took turns guarding her from herself, as she wished to wither and die away, keeping her at bay.
This went on for many years until one day a young man came up from the village far below the tower built by those who loved and those who tread. He wandered the vaulted halls of the tower and finally emerged upon the moonlight bathed pinnacle of the tower where the rose slept. Upon seeing the rose, he fell in love with her, just as those who loved and those who tread did. But the rose refused to believe the young man and asked how anyone could love such a tangled and vile bush with wilted leaves and battered branches and burned petals. The young man told the rose because it was still strong as he pointed to her thick, regal roots; still lovely as he pointed to her hips and entered the enclosure; and still possessed of the scent of the wild roses that once graced this land as he breathed deeply of her perfume.
The man returned each night to visit the rose for many years. He would challenge her doubts and embrace her like none of those who loved or those who tread ever dared. He told her of his love and of how he could not live without her, his life had grown to entangle within the vines of hers, a thorny place that if he was to but withdraw a little from her, it would rend his very soul with the depths of its cuts.
The rose eventually started to grow stronger, her soil enriched by a true love that fortified her own, a soul that reflected the beauty it saw in her back for her to see. And one day, the man came to the rose with tools from his family's farm and told her it was time for her to be free once more. The world outside had finally changed and so had the rose, so against the fears of loss that held the hearts of those who loved and those who tread, the man carefully uprooted the rose. He was not cut, he was not scratched, for he had long become one with the rose and her barbs could no longer hurt him.
Under the moonlight, the man carried the rose away and brought her to a clearing, atop a hill, amidst young and jubilant trees who were all glad to meet her and to be her friends. But there were no roses... The forest roses had all long since disappeared and she was the last.
The man smiled and told her she was wrong. The soul of the forest rose was not something so humble as to lie about in such a floral shell, it was a soul that lived not to love, not to be loved, but to manifest love and passion, sadness and melancholy – it was the soul of a single heart and all hearts.
The next morning, the people of the village awoke to the smell of roses on the air, sweet and pungent. As those who loved and those who tread wept, the villagers treaded out from their homes. Overnight, a thousand, thousand rose bushes, with blooms beyond count, spread out across the hills and through the forests around them. And, on the top of a hill, surrounded by young saplings, stood two rose bushes, forever entangled and entwined atop a sea of unmovable, anchoring roots - growing together ever after.
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