Light Through Broken Glass

By: Bel Iver

-oOo-

Once upon a time there was a beautiful little girl made of stain glass. Her colors were beautiful- reds and clear crystal whites and vibrant blues and amethysts that caught the sun and shone like glimmering, liquid joy- but something was always missing. Her colors were beautiful, but they never shone the way they could have. She was always in the shade, like a crystal ball under a cloudy sky- shining, but not to her full potential.

The other little glass girls never understood. Her colors shone brighter then theirs because, though they were light enough, they could never bend and color light in a vibrant display the way the stain glass girl could. They were all in shadows- yet still she shone. Why wasn't she happy? Shouldn't she have been content? So the stain glass girl kept quiet, because it was an egotistical, terrible thing to say she could do better when all the other little girls were already behind.

Years passed in the shadows. The little stain glass girl grew- she was no longer little. The shadows, while frustrating before, became suffocating. Then she got a chance- a chance to move into the sunlight and really shine. So she grabbed on with both of her slender glass hands and took it like a drowning sailor in a wide, wide ocean.

The sun was incredible. Warm, filling- she could be all she could here. Now she could shine, she was sure of it. She wasn't sure her colors would still be the brightest here, but she prayed they would- in the shadows, her colors had defined her. She was proud of them.

Then she noticed the other girls in the sunlight covered themselves, hiding from the sunlight in their own self-made shadows. The stain glass girl was confused, but covered herself. Perhaps they knew something she did not, though her mind screamed at her, begging to feel the sun that she had worked too hard to gain to dismiss entirely.

She alternated, uncertainly covering herself one moment and then flashing her beautiful colors the next, when no one was paying attention too closely. One day they would notice that her unique colors were a good thing, she thought. But for now, she'd act like they were no big deal. Just in case.

Slowly, her colors began to fade. They'd gotten more use in the shadows then they did now, and while still brilliant, she risked losing them. The idea terrified the stain glass girl; so many years of work in the shadows. She couldn't let it all go to waste. So she abandoned her cover. Her colors returned, mostly. A faded patch here, a hairline crack here… but you couldn't see them, as long as you didn't look too carefully (and anyways, no one knew her from before, from the shadows, so really, who would have noticed? She was lucky.)

Her colors were safe and even admired, the way an exotic, strange flower might be… until one day she saw another glass girl weeping in a bright sunlight patch. When the stain glass girl asked what was wrong, the girl pointed out how when the light hit her own clear, white glass; she cast no colored light behind her.

"Your colors are so beautiful", she told the stain glass girl. "How I wish I had a little blue glass like yours. Oh, it's so pretty and I'm so plain."

The stain glass girl felt bad for the little plain glass girl, who looked enviously at her blue glass. The blue glass was slightly faded still, and had two small cracks, but of course the plain glass girl would know no differently.

I don't really need my blue glass, the stain glass girl decided. After all, I still have my whites and purples and yellows and reds. What's one piece of blue glass?

So she took her slender glass hands and broke her blue glass, giving a piece to the plain glass girl. The girl tapped it to her glass skirt, delighted, and thanked the stained glass girl profusely before skipping off happily.

The stained glass girl barely heard her; she was too busy staring at her slender little hands in shock. They bled, little splotches of red glass leaking through her normally pink hands. It had hurt to break her blue glass, but she hadn't expected it to cut her hands, too. Looking at the ragged gap where her blue glass had been, she was stunned to see the jagged edges left behind, red from her hands staining the tips of the sharp glass rim.

She hurriedly covered the jagged edge; if people saw the sharp, broken bit they'd know her colors weren't complete anymore. They might be afraid of her, scared they would cut themselves on her brokenness. So she took her cover and wrapped it around the spot where her blue used to shine and carried on with life.

Weeks went by, when one day the stain glass girl met an old glass man who was weeping for his lost youth. "If only I were young again," he sobbed. "But, ah, how youth is fleeting."

Once again, the stain glass girl felt bad, but she was hesitant to try and help again. It had hurt last time; she didn't want to get cut again or lose more of her colors.

"You're lucky. Such beautiful, youthful looking whites- ah, fleeting beauty!" (For indeed, his own once-white skin had faded to a grainy, rough gray.)

The stain glass girl made up her mind. She was fine without her blues; what was a little white? So she smashed her whites, swallowing the pain and praying it wouldn't leak back out through the two jagged holes- one for blue, one for white. She gave her white glass to the man, who was ecstatic. He thanked her happily and left.

It was harder to hide both blue and white, but the stain glass girl managed. This time, weeks didn't go by. Only one day passed, before the girl met a little boy, crying through his sightless eyes.

"I wish I could see the world," he mourned.

The stain glass girl gulped; she didn't want to give more of herself. Sunlight was no good if one had no colors to shine with it. And the throbbing loss of her whites had yet to fade; her eyes were her amethysts. If she gave them to him, she'd lose her amethysts.

But he was so young. He couldn't see any colors. She would still have her oranges and her red, red heart. So she gave him her amethysts. She couldn't see the gaping holes peppering her once beautiful colors any more, but oh, how she could feel them. Still, she had her oranges and reds (though it was hard to stay motivated, positive, hopeful when she could no longer see her shinning colors.)

She couldn't hide the holes any more, but she could no longer see any criticism the world sent her way, so what did it really matter?

Then she met another girl, a glass girl about her age, who had no orange. The stain glass girl panicked; if she lost her oranges, all she would have would be red glass and damn it, she was so tired and she'd already given so much. How had she stooped so low? So she lashed out, terrified, and heard the screeching scratch of glass on glass; her jagged edges had damaged the other girl's smooth, undamaged glass and given her a jagged edge of her own.

Guilt tore through her at the sound of the other girl's pained cry. How could she lash out like that? So she tore out her oranges and gave them to the girl, hoping she could fill her hole with the stain glass girl's color. (But she knew there would always be cracks.)

She was all red now; a heart positioned where every heartbeat was met with broken glass and gaping holes. She was stained glass with little glass; a mirage of colors that had lost the color. When a friend's heart was broken, she gave over her reds without a fight out of a selfish need to end it all.

It stopped the pain, at least. She was an empty shell, only coherent enough to think that maybe the others in the light had never really been glass at all and she'd been the only one fragile enough to shatter.

-oOo-

A/N: Hey, guys. I hope you all enjoyed the story, or could at least relate to some aspect of it. As I'm sure you all noticed, it's very metaphor-packed, much more so then my usual writing. For that reason, I'm curious; how did you, personally, interpret the story? It's not a trick question; while I had several specific things in mind when writing it, it's open to be interpreted in many ways. Hope you enjoyed. :)

Love,

Bel