Briar Rose 14
He is caught in the branches. The gnarled branches entwine him like a vindictive lover, the thorns lacerate his flesh. Everywhere, like a swampy miasma: the stench of death. He longs now for the solace of the blossoms, their caresses, their fragrance. Ever life's student, he reminds himself that at least he has learned something about the realm of the marvelous, but it does not comfort him. Nothing does, not even fantasies of the beautiful sleeper who lies within, though he does think of her, less now in erotic longing than in sympathetic curiosity. He is young but has adventured the world over, while she, though nearly a century his senior, knows only a tiny corner of a world that no longer even exists, and that but innocently. What kind of a thing is this that jumps about so funnily? she is said to have asked just before being pricked by the fatal spindle and falling into her deep swoon. And now, what if no one ever reaches her, what if she goes on dreaming in there forever, what sort of a life would that be, so strangely timeless and insubstantial? Yet, is it really any different from the life he himself has until now led, driven by his dream of vocation and heroic endeavor and bewitched by desire? Ah, the beautiful: what a deadly illusion! Yet, still he is drawn to it. Still, though all progress through the hedge has been brought to a painful halt and the thorns tear at him with every stroke, he labors on, slashing determinedly at the hedge with his sword, beating back the grasping branches, and musing the while upon this beautiful maiden, fast asleep, called Briar Rose. Does she ever dream of her disenchantment? Does she ever dream of him?