Snowglobe

Kyra sat alone in the dark, lit only by moonlight streaming in through half-open blinds. She had been crying, but she was done, and now she was just very tired. Her green eyes were bloodshot and underscored by thick circles of black. She was breathing very slowly, very deliberately, noting each punctuated exhalation from her softly parted lips. It had been a bad day, but she couldn't say why, exactly.

The sadness was vague: the same sort of nameless melancholy that usually overtook her at night when she tried to sleep had somehow seeped into her waking hours, and she didn't much care for it. She couldn't pinpoint a reason, any reason at all, why she felt so sad. But she did. She felt heavy, burdened by something she couldn't articulate. Or more likely wouldn't articulate. Somewhere in her riddled psyche she knew exactly what was spurring her misery, but to say it aloud, or to even think it, would be granting it a level of authority over her life that she refused to give. So she relegated the feeling to a notion, an impressionist's wash of cause, and she sat on her sofa, dabbing at her eyes with a Kleenex.

In the darkness, the slotted moonlight reflected prettily in a small and very old snowglobe that Kyra held in her palm. The thing had been in her family for years, sitting on her grandma's knicknack shelf and in her mother's curio cabinet before finding its way to Kyra's apartment. The white flush of light filling it, now, gave its occupants a rather ghostly look, and Kyra stared at it, suddenly aware she'd never really looked closely at the thing in all the time that it had been nearby. She had plucked, almost instinctively, the small globe from a dusty living room shelf a few moments before breaking down into tears. It seemed appropriate, but she couldn't say why. Looking at it, now, suddenly aware of its contents, she felt strange... disconnected and weird. Inside of the globe were two small figures, and, eerily, they seemed to be moving.

Of course she felt like she was merely seeing things. Even sad, even disconnected, she was a rational person, and there was no reason to believe that the two miniature men in her grandmother's snowglobe could be moving of their own volition. It was a trick of the light or the distortion from tears still clinging in her long lashes. But she knew it wasn't. It was plain as could be. The little men were moving about in the thick water of the snowglobe, oblivious to the giant holding their whole world in her hand. Kyra felt sick to her stomach, then, all too aware of the sheer unlikelihood of what she was seeing. It bothered her, but not enough to do anything rash about it. She wondered if just putting it back on the shelf, now, was any more or less rational than smashing the damn thing with a hammer and flushing the remnants down the toilet. She couldn't do a thing with it, though. She was hypnotized.

The figures, she knew, had names. And she did not like the fact that she knew this. She wasn't sure where that knowledge had originated, but it was a strange thing to know no matter what the source. One of them, the taller, angrier looking one was named Ichabod. The other, shorter and more pleasant was named Martin. Ichabod and Martin, Kyra somehow knew, were not friends. They were not enemies. They were merely acquaintances. And yet, through the turn of fate, both of these tiny, snowglobe-bound me were enamored of the same (unseen by Kyra) woman. Worse still, that woman was madly in love with the both of them. One of the men would be spurned, and the other would be betrothed. It was a horrible situation. The unseen woman, Kyra somehow knew, didn't want to disappoint either of the little men. Kyra could almost hear that woman's thoughts as she ran through a laundry list of pros and cons regarding her two dissimilar suitors.

Ichabod, apparently, was the brighter of the two men. He was stable minded with a good head on his shoulders and a fierce and unerring sense of logic, dignity and responsibility. He was dry, not humorless, but not fun and he had a sort of cruelty to his demeanor that, while discomfiting, also made the rarity of his compliments precious like gemstones. The unseen woman always hoped that there was a sweeter side to Ichabod hidden amongst the craggy faces of detachment, cynicism and sarcasm, but she secretly worried that there wasn't much beyond the barbs and arrows of the tall intellectual.

Martin, on the other hand, was kind and generous to a fault, almost spilling over himself to please the unseen woman. This was welcome, to a point, but also unchallenging and unsporting. There was no real value to the sweeter man's gestures of love (other than the face value, of course) because there wasn't a bit of scarcity to them. Still, he was an easy man to love. His affection was always flowing and lush. The unseen woman couldn't help but be a little bowled over by his unswerving goodness, but she did wish for a bit more edge and fire to him... She would've loved to see him get angry or jealous or even a little bit mean, just to prove to herself that he was, in fact, human and that he did, in fact, have depth underneath his big, infectious smile.

The unseen woman, Kyra somehow knew, was ripping herself to shreds trying to choose one of the men to be her husband. There was something exciting about Ichabod and his cloistered emotion. He took work to be around. He required a bit of demystification and unlocking. There were riddles in him and rewards in his rarely offered kindness. She knew that Ichabod loved her, but it was a game to get him to show it. The effort required in him both appealed to her and made her uneasy. She felt none of that with gentle Martin. His love was simple and easy to understand and it was something she could count on. There was a definite comfort to him, a dependability in character that she wanted, most times, to cling to. There was, for the unseen woman, a very real love not just of Martin, but also of the love that he showed to her. She felt better about herself in his presence. She felt good with him. But she was afraid, terribly, of boredom. She wanted to want Martin and feared she wanted Ichabod instead. The unseen woman was unsure of what to do.

Inside Kyra's snowglobe, the two suitors looked nervous. Martin, of course, was showing it worse and Kyra wondered if that, in itself, was bad news for his chances with the unseen woman. Kyra desperately, inordinately given her zero stake in this strange little opera, wanted the unseen woman to choose Martin to be her husband. It seemed so obvious to her, so blatant as to almost be preordained. But Kyra knew it wasn't. Kyra knew, then, that the right person isn't always the chosen person and that poor Martin's happiness was dependent upon this unseen woman putting her future well being ahead of her short term interest. And Kyra, suddenly far more morose and despondent, knew just how unlikely that was.

She stared into the globe, big tears rolling down her blushing cheeks and tried to will poor Martin into being more interesting, more cutting, more reserved and more mysterious. But that wasn't who he was. And, of course, it wasn't who she was, either. It wasn't fair, she thought, being beholden to another for your happiness. But it didn't matter if it was fair or not. The figures in her snowglobe ceased their movements, froze back into sculpture and returned the old knicknack back to normalcy. And Kyra held it, now completely cut off from the story of the men and their unseen love. It was over with no ending and it made her mad.

She slammed the snowglobe on her coffee table, cracking it open and letting the liquid inside gush out onto the floor amidst a flurry of shimmering glass and sparkling bits of fake snow. She stared at the mess for quite a while, still miserable, and mortified her own story wouldn't have a happy ending.