But there was no-where else to walk. I had reached the bottom.
At the bottom of the stairs was a girl, waiting for me. She was pale, sickly pale, the white porcelain skin that marks many a fairy tale and nursery song played on every childhood night before the old wireless. But unlike most fairy tales she was not shallow; her eyes were deep, dark pools, reflecting the entire universe and my destiny within them. She had hair like silken strands of golden thread, and a smile like the Mona Lisa; enigmatic, unknowable, unattainable, but lovely to the world nonetheless.
Her dress fit for a queen was tattered and torn, its original grandeur long since vanished beneath the wear and tear of hard travel. It was soaked with blood from broken nights spent in the wilderness, from the rats' cave to the sorcerer's tower, from the outlaws' cavern to the pillar of the witches. Its golden threads glowed with a fierce inner light, a whisper of a promise that it would one day be restored to its true magnificance.
"You're no different from me," she whispered."You're no better than me. Because we're the same person."