Once, there was a girl. Her beginning was simple as beginnings often are, born into a family with an older sibling and parents who, while troubled themselves, were doing their best to stumble through a world that had hurt them long ago.
As she grew, the girl learned about the world around her. Through the bluest of blue eyes, she saw beauty in the ordinary and discovered a fierce strength and determination to rail against injustice and prejudice. Something, she was never entirely sure what, ignited in her heart, coursing through her veins and shining a light into the darkness. She discovered a passion for performing, for sharing her thoughts and her dreams that grew from the smallest of hopes, the tiniest of possibilities.
On her seventh birthday, she woke to find her mind filled with such wonder and joy that she broke into song with a voice that could charm the birds from the trees and hold eternity in an hour. Thrilled by her discovery, she crafted performances to enchant those around her, to share the fire in her heart that had been ignited within. She would perform for her parents, who found that they barely had the time to waste on such frivolities and each new request for attention drew a harsh and unexpected response. For the first time in her short life, she felt a cooling of that fire within but brushed it away with the innocence of youth.
Undaunted, the girl approached her siblings, who now numbered four in total and at first they watched her perform, laughing at her jokes and encouraging her dreams. In her mind’s eye, she could see a day where she could be the brightest movie star or the biggest name on Broadway. But gradually, her brother and her sisters lost interest in her dreams, consumed by thoughts of their own paths to walk and by the destruction of their family unit, punctuated by acts of physical violence and infidelity.
The girl’s heart ached, the fire within cooling without the nourishment of the sharing of her dreams. Instinctively, she knew that the fire needed feeding, needed to be nurtured and loved just as a child should be. The fire needed hope, it needed sustenance and most of all, it needed an audience.
As she moved through her school years, her emotional and physical landscape in turmoil, she found little to protect and encourage her dreams. Her peers were inconsistent in their appreciation of her aspirations, while in order to protect her heart, she developed a quick tongue and a robust, physical approach to those who would subdue her. The fire within raged out of control in the absence of hope, of stability and of love. Unable to bear the pain of rejection and shattered dreams any longer, she ran. She ran and she ran, the transition from child to adult a turbulent shift. Robbed of a safe environment in which to grow, to understand, she struggled to control the fire that was once full of joy and optimism and a million could-have-beens.
The lines between childhood and adulthood blurred, the understanding of the complexity of relationships stunted by broken promises and a deep, deep feeling of loneliness. She needed something to cool the fire, to numb the pain that she felt.
Which was when she discovered winter. The winter brought forth relief, an escape from the darkness and the fury, a blanket to subdue the feeling of bitterness and the fragility of life. The fire within was cooled by a euphoria so absolute that for a little time at least, she felt nothing, the dissenting voices inside quietened, the ghosts of her past slipping their moorings and drifting away. Winter froze everything, for just the shortest time.
After the freeze came the thaw, rivers of tears running freely, the dam of her brittle resistance bursting, overflowing with regrets and righteous anger. She sat in the ruins of her once blissful existence, the memories of sunshine days clinging to her body. The dreams that had once inspired her were now an unfulfilled promise, a vain hope in an ocean of uncertainty and disappointment. She no longer felt the sunshine, no longer saw the joy in autumnal colours tumbling to the ground or the first signs of life reborn as winter reluctantly turned to spring. Instead, she sought out winter more often, the relief from the ordinary becoming a necessity. The love that she longed for transformed, grew out of the shadows to become a monster that could only be managed by the snow.
Relationships came and went, people breaking through the barriers that she had carefully crafted only to discover that she either wasn’t what they thought she was or that she wasn’t what they wanted her to be. She became a mother, finding purpose and an opportunity to create love where there had been none. But winter had other ideas and the snow returned, the only familiarity in a constantly shifting landscape. The rage that winter suppressed now burned more fiercely in the cold light of day. Sacrifices were made and love was lost, her identity slowly slipping through her fingers like running water.
There were periods of lucidity, cherished in a life where nothing was normal. Hope resurfaced, many times before the world froze over once more, the person who she longed to be trapped beneath the ice in a lake of dreams. She clung to fragments of her shattered existence, each hint of optimism suppressed by the snow. She sacrificed yet more in the hope that she might one day break free from the shadows of winter.
Those shadows revealed their true nature as she came to understand her flaws, her frailties. Demons, some said, of her own making, while others sat silently, hoping for an absolution that never came. She tried to build bridges as some did around her to craft an escape, but more demons surfaced, some disguised but others throwing off the pretence of normality and taking hold of her slowly, piece by piece. The enemies that most of us have known, loneliness and self doubt, fear and shame now walked with her wherever she went. Sometimes they followed in her footsteps. Sometimes they led her down the path of least resistance. Where she had once craved the love of those who could, she now expected little but disappointment and the familiar smack of abandonment.
Slowly, the fire that had burned so brightly, that had sparked the dreams of an innocent girl back in the mists of time, began to flicker out of recognition. Her hope in people died to be replaced by faith in a higher power, a light that would shine like a million matches in the night and furnish her with guidance where so many had failed. A belief that there truly was something better than the cards that she had been dealt. And still, even then, she could feel the winter chill.
Time appeared and stopped, followed by mortality, the enigma of her existence thrown into sharp relief. Comforted by her faith, her only defence against age-old scars, she continued to rage against the past. Against the choices that others had made. Against the choices that she too had taken.
Outside, autumn leaves drifted to the ground. In the distance, a dog barked and somewhere between here and there, a melancholy melody whispered through the nameless streets.
Which was when the fire went out.
And somewhere, way back when yet not so long ago, that seven-year-old girl took one last look around her. She flexed her fingers, flashed a last, lingering smile and parted the curtains. She drew in a deep breath and felt the years of pain falling away. She basked in the light, where dreams come true and when the world knows your name.
She stepped onto the stage.
Copyright Alec Hepburn, 2026
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