Happily Ever After

Happiness is hard to write. Arguments. . . Betrayal. . . Loss. . . Longing. . . Passion . . . All easy to describe, detailed in flashing eyes, raised voices, turned backs, touching mouths, groping hands. But real happiness is elusive, it doesn’t tend to lend itself to fiction. It’s comprised of daily chores and mundane conversations. Happiness is safety and stability, punctuated by fear of loss wondering how all this will end. It kills desire, and wanting is what keeps us alive.

“We all die alone. . .”

That’s why they can’t have eachother. It’s not his loathing for her career. It’s not her fear of surrendering control. It’s the knowledge that after that one bright moment, it will all fade into banality.

It’s why fairytales end with happily ever after. Nothing left to say. No one wants to know that Cinderella got fat. That Prince Charming had a roving eye. It’s why, ironically, the Little Mermaid was the luckiest out of all of them. Better to be foam upon the waves, better to fade to nothing, than to watch that happen to love.

They may not know these stories. Maybe they got lost over the course of the wars, the melding of nations, forgotten in the annals of time. But true meta-narratives are never truly gone (the stories change shape . . . the characters get new names), the unspoken truths remain the same. After the story ends and the child puts down the book, the hero wonders if he should have gone to the next tower, kissed a different girl as she slumbered. The heroine absently watches as the wet nurse feeds her brat and dreams of escape.

“It takes one pound of pressure to pierce human flesh. . . We’re just that fragile.”

They don’t want that. They’re creatures of the world, far wiser than the rest of the crew. Zoe deludes herself thinking a baby might make him grow up. Wash plays with his plastic dinosaurs and jokes, while doubt and jealousy consume him inside. Kaylee dreams of her city prince, while throwing herself at rim toads, dreaming that a ki