Aami Tomar

Once upon a time in a far away land, there lived a little girl. She wasn't a princess, or a countess, or any of the romantic things you hear about in fairy tales. No, this girl was just that - a girl. All her life, this girl grew up knowing that she was ordinary. And the strength of her conviction let others know it too.

In a class, you'd have the ones. You know. The smart one, the pretty one, the funny one. This girl was - well - she was the no one. She wasn't even the loser or the left out one, she just had absolutely nothing special to define her with at all.

And she knew nothing special would happen to her either. She didn't have the brains or the ambition to want a career. She didn't have the looks or the romanticism to dare to dream of love. Love - love's reserved for special people, for someones. If anyone chanced to look at her twice, for lack of anything better to do, they'd look away the minute they realized there was someone better. There was always someone better.

And then, all of a sudden, when she wasn't expecting it, when she didn't want it, even, she met a man, the first she'd ever seen. He fascinated her in the way that fire fascinates a kitten. He wasn't like the boys she was used to, the ones she could boss over and control. It scared her a little that she didn't understand this strange new glowing flame. She was smart enough to know the treacherous warmth that called to you could burn you just as fast.

So she flitted around the warmth he brought in her life, letting the flames lick her, but backing away before they could engulf her completely. Never really trusting though she wanted to. And he, the fire, for reasons she couldn't tell, seemed to understand. He didn't claim to love her, which would have been scary and difficult for her to believe. He just claimed to want her. And that she could believe. Not because she was special, no, but just because he was a male.

She knew wanting, she recognized it with relief, and let him want her. She let herself want him. She told herself that wanting wasn't love, it was.. infatuation, juvenile, attraction. Something she could get over. Even while she knew she couldn't, that he was taking her out of her noone'ness and making a someone out of her. His one.

She wished she could be that one. The one who believed in happy endings. Only... what happens when a movie ends, when you close a book, when the singer breathes a final sigh?