Her world consisted of an arched window.
The tower she danced in day and night had been crafted with love and affection. Delicate features were carved into the stone walls and pillars, a detail one could marvel at for hours – if not days. But she spent all her life in that tower, and the beauty of it had long lost its glory to her.
On rare days, the especially warm and sunny ones, life would enter through that window.
Rows of ants would march up the sandy walls of the tower, clinging to the course stone. And when they eventually reached the window, their tiny antennas waved at her. What marvellous creatures! They could climb all this way even though they were so tiny and insignificant looking!
And with melancholy and joy she recalled the memory of a black singing bird that had settled down on the window sill. It had come all this way, far up, further up than any bird would venture. She had watched it, slightly worried by the strange guest.
But then it had opened its tiny beak and had started to sing. That a dark and scrawny thing could sing so beautifully! She had never danced with so much delight, for the inaudible tune that always played in her heart paled when compared to the song of the blackbird. When the sun had set and it had spread its wings, she had reached out to it, wanting to call it back. But it had taken off, never to be seen again.
It made her wonder what other marvellous creatures there might be out there. To her, the world was an arched window and through that, all she could see was the sky. It shifted constantly, either a deep blue or fringed with tufty clouds, a deep and angry grey – and every so often with white bolts cutting through thunderous tempests.
But at night the sky always seemed to be the same; a canopy covered with a million shining specks of stars. They glowed and shifted, like a deep sea of diamonds.
But to her all these words made no sense, and all these pictures had no names. The sky was not called 'sky' in her head. Yes, she would still watch it, knowing what it was.
She danced day and night – because that was all she had ever known. She never left her podium, the thought had not once occurred to her.
Yet something seemed to miss, a little reason, a little bit of depth. Why was she dancing? For what? For whom? For nothing? As the days came and went, she continued to grow. Like a young tree she reached out towards the sky, growing longer and longer.
Until one day, when the sun rose and the sky turned from dark to rosé, she glimpsed a part of the world she had never seen before. The window not only showed what it had shown previously, but far more. There was land, covered in lush grass, meadows and forests. There were trees and bushes, colourful flowers, blue rivers and lakes.
But most importantly there was so much life! It seeped from every corner: Birds scattering air, deer roaming the wild, lizards claiming the heat and cats the darkness.
Slower and slower she danced, so she could marvel at the endlessness of everything.
Past the forests there lay villages, cities and towns. They were so much closer to the ground, decorated with bouquets of fresh flowers and painted in colourful hues.
And, she gasped, there were more of her kind! They worked on the fields, walked the streets and enjoyed the morning sun. A constant supply flowed from the doors of the houses. There were little ones, old ones, ugly ones, pretty ones. Ones that laughed and talked and others that preferred silent isolation.
The joy in her heart came to a halt. But why, she asked herself, didn't they have to dance day and night? Why weren't they trapped in a tall tower like her? What made her so different? Was she being punished for a crime she did not know of?
