4-22-2017 Fiction

Devotion

She moves forward timidly. We are recalling the conversation we had the other day, out loud; words paced with her every step. The slower she walks, the fewer words I say, but my tone tightens with audible disappointment.

"I thought you said you wanted to test your devotion," I call out to her across the room. She takes another four-inch step towards me and stops. She tries to straighten her shoulders a little bit but cannot, the handcuffs have grown so tight from her previous struggling with them. She is visibly uncomfortable. When she doesn't answer, I clear my throat.

"I do, I just," she pauses a moment, "I always walk slowly when blindfolded." I chuckle a bit under my breath. It's true, her instincts run wild with her imagination when she cannot see. Every step is an invitation to stub her toes on furniture or place a tender bare foot on a Lego. And she has been told already that she will walk over broken glass for me today.

"It was your idea," I remind her.

"It was an expression," she hissed, "I wish I'd have just said I'd walk to the ends of the Earth instead." Then she giggles despite herself, probably imagining me constructing some scenario where she'd endlessly walk for hours. Perhaps on a treadmill. I smile at the thought and tuck the idea away for another time.

"How close are you to the broken glass?" I ask. She stops abruptly and raises her head feverishly looking around the room regardless that she is blindfolded.

"Shouldn't you know?" comes her question and I tell her that I am also blindfolded. I watch her shudder. "Shouldn't you be watching me so I don't go off path and walk right into a wall?"

"I should", I say slowly, "but I'm not. I am just as blind as you are without your devotion, just as helpless. So, until you prove your devotion, there's no way I can guide you at all." She seems suddenly more motivated and takes two large steps forward then stops again. "Come on, you have to be close to the glass by now."

"You're making me do this all on my own," she mutters and takes another small step. Then she raises up on her tip toes and makes a short ballerina run covering about two feet. She settles back down onto the soles of her feet. She is unknowingly one step away from her fate now. "I can't do this," she admits.

"Are we to forever be blinded by your fear, little girl?" I ask. I watch her face distort with a painful grimace. "Come on, it's just a few feet of broken glass. You can take that for me, can't you?" She sighs loudly and purses her lips. She goes back onto her toes to make another choppy run. Then, on her first step, she hits it. There's a loud popping sound. She wiggles her big toe around and feels small pieces moving with and over her toe.

"Ow!" She yelps. "I'm going to end up bleeding all over your carpet, is this far enough?"

"Keep going, this is about your devotion and your fears, not about my carpet."

She sniffles a bit and takes another step on her toes. I can't call her out for cheating the test so I remain quiet as she toes her way through it.

POP POP POP POP

She bumps right into me at the end. I catch and embrace her. I spin her around and remove the handcuffs. She rubs at her sore wrists asking if she can now take off the blindfold. I remove it for her without a word.

"What?" She gasps looking at the floor. On the floor in front of us is only a swatch of bubble wrap sprinkled with some uncooked rice, not the shards of painful glass she was expecting. She turns around and sees that I never had a blindfold on myself. Her eyes narrow at me.

"Not that I wouldn't make you walk through broken glass if I felt like it, but pain itself was not your test," I say, "we already know you'd endure pain for me."

"And no blindfold?" She asks, toying with hers in her hands.

"Do I not guide you even when you are blinded by fear and refuse to trust me?" I ask and her expression gives me my answer.

"It really felt like glass," she sighed leaning into me and I wrap my arms around her.

"I know. Just imagine, your little mind creates broken glass when there is none all the time," I reply. I squeeze her lightly. "Now, about the tip-toeing your way through it..."