“I swear,” said the man, “It was like I made a knot that wasn't really a knot, and I knew it wouldn't work, but then it did. But then suddenly the knot was an ordinary knot, a working knot. It was like Reality shifted, or something.”
The man was resting on one knee, and had moments before been bent over, in the process of tying his black shoes. Now he was resting an elbow on his other knee, which was, like the rest of his legs, covered by his black pants. On his upper body he wore a black t-shirt under a black sweater, and an all black jacket on top. This attire went well with the sunglasses he had yet to put on, which had a black frame. He peered over at the woman in his bed who was sitting upright, turning to look at him, still halfway under the covers. Her pale skin was almost lost between the sheets and the duvet, but the fiery red hair that cascaded from her head down along her back made her quite noticeable, and in no danger of getting lost. She had a sort of amused, befuddled look on her face.
“Right,” she said, “I'm sure it did.” She rubbed her eyes. “Where are you going?”
“I'm just going down to the store for a moment, get us some breakfast,” she said as she got up, her shoes tied, “Bread had gone bad.”
“Oh,” responded the man. He yawned, too tired to focus right now. “But wait-“ A thought had suddenly entered his head, and he felt it imperative that he expressed it, for fear of what might happen if he didn't.
“Yes?” Asked the woman, her red hair contrasting violently with the black she was clad in. However, in this particular violence, there was beauty.
“What if I never see you again, as you are now?”
She smiled slightly, and looked at him reassuringly. To herself, she thought: “Well of course you're never going to see me again as I am now. After all, later won't be now, will it?”
But she didn't say this. Instead, she said that she would be back in just a few minutes, and then disappeared through the door.
The man turned back around and stared straight ahead. He contemplated whether he should just get up out of bed and get on with it, but he was fairly certain he had just witnessed Reality shift, and if that wasn't a good reason for going back to sleep, the man was not at all sure what was. As he laid back and rested his head on the pillow, he recalled a story he had once been told.
The story was about a prince in a distant land. It wasn't the kind of silly prince you found in fairy tales or Hollywood movies – it was a proper prince from a proper land. Which was proper distant, both in space and time. And the land the prince lived in was magnificent, unlike any other land that had ever come before it, or would ever come after it. However, all was not well in these lands. For the prince's love had been captured by some sort of beast or other, it didn't really matter. The point was, thought the man as he slumbered somewhere between dream and wake, that the prince's love had the most beautiful, fiery red hair. And then he fell asleep.
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