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“It’s funny, how you’re always there to save me when I need it.”
You said that to me, Albert, as if reality weren’t the opposite.
As a child, I read fairy tales of princesses locked away in towers, rescued by knights in shining armour. But we live in a modern age, where there are no knights left, so I was sure that I could never be saved.
…I was wrong, though. There are knights.
They don’t look like fairy tale heroes, men with glittering chain mail atop white stallions, brandishing broadswords and mighty shields. Solving problems with bloodshed, burning witches, slaying dragons.
There is a knight with round glasses and a white coat, who bears no weapons save for kindness, no shield save for a smile.
He doesn’t ride gracefully; he stumbles when he walks. He cannot move mountains; he makes them instead, out of notepads and paperwork. He could never slay a dragon; he cannot even swat a fly without shedding a tear.
He is not a fairy tale knight, and he has saved me more than any ever could.
For ten long years, I was locked in a tower, and no longer believed in fairy tales. But at the foot of my prison, I heard my name.
He looked up at the beast in the tower, the one the world sought to slay, and he called it a person.
So instead of a rescued damsel - the beautiful princess such a just heart deserved - it was a beast that fell in love with the knight.
…And though true love didn’t change the beast’s shape into something beautiful, the knight took it into his arms all the same.