-My Inner Voice

[Words to Image. Give me a random image and whatever it says to my mind and heart, I will type it. All things are not obvious. Perception of the mind could be completely different than that of another's. This is mine for this image]

Every day, Olivia would lay hands on the Rose of Rewards. She never picked it because of the power it possessed. It gave favors, and to possess it would destroy the magic. The rose gave to all petitioners freely, but only when duly earned. A failed attempt to earn your desired request always came with a second opportunity the following day, and each day after.

Olivia was a lost soul. She had beseeched of its magic, but it had come with a bitter price. The privilege, a voice which turned heads, calmed storms, and could even give life. Each time she sang, the masses would stop to listen. They would spend hours absorbing the angelic sound of her voice, paralyzed in her song. The price, each time she sang, it pulled precious time from her. Years of her life vanished, traded for each note given. But she wasn't aware of the cost, until she was.

One day, she sang her heart out while walking past a mirror. She was horrified by what she saw.

"Where is my beauty?!" she screamed.

Her fingers raced across every inch of her wrinkled face, but they found none.

"NO! HOW CAN THIS BE?!"

She spent weeks crying. Weeks turned into months and then to years. It broke her. Every evening she would venture into the wooded area, as it neared dusk, to lean over the water's edge and view her reflection. And every time she would run away after throwing something at it to ripple the beast away. It haunted her, so she refused to sing again. Sunrises to sunsets came and went for years without a single note created. She had forgotten how to. The constant reminder of the hideous being who rode atop her reflective shoulders kept her heart from even remembering how to position her mouth. So, every evening she ran from the water's edge to the Rose of Rewards and touched its tiny petals, begging for her beauty to return. Every attempt was denied, though.

Today, she was done. She had decided that if the image still stared back at her and the rose still told her 'No,' she would lie down at its base and simply die. She would stay there until she dehydrated or starved to death, as long as it took.

First moment of truth, the beast stared back. She ran. Second moment of truth, it denied her again.

"Very well," she said through a heavy sigh. "Let it be."

She crumbled to the earth and looked up at the night sky. She imagined that each white dot star was a music note on the blackened sheet of the space behind. She imagined them rearranging into something that could be sung. She remembered the feeling of doing so and touched the corner of her lips. It had been so long that it was a struggle to even position them to form a single word. Could she even?

"If I am to die here, I will at least sing my own eulogy before I go," she whispered to her mind.

She puckered both lips and squeezed out a single note that rattled and cut through the silence. And then came another. With each note released, they began to correct and harmonize with the sounds around her. For the first time in years, she sang. She sang, hoping it would accelerate the dying process. The quicker, the better.

The animals heard and stood still to listen. The flowing waters calmed to join and ushered in a background rhythm. The wind steadied so it could gracefully carry her last song to nearby ears, even as rough as it was. And she sang. A single leaf on the rose started to glisten and shook loose from its stem. The breeze carried it high above the dying Olivia until it let it fall to her face. When the leaf touched the corners of her lips, it granted her, her last wish. Not for the return of her beauty but the return of her voice. Without a song in her heart, she knew she had nothing. She chose what gave her the best life she could possibly imagine. She chose to be heard. Regardless of the cost.

Olivia sang and she felt beautiful. The most she ever had.

And she was.