Once, not so long ago, a girl who was as old as the moon and young as the day went on a journey, looking for a long-lost treasure whose name she did not know. She was dressed in rags, for she had spent a long time locked in a high tower, and had outgrown many of her clothes - what she wore now was the best she could do with her old apparel, tied and wrapped around her to protect herself from the elements. She knew she would need to find new clothing, but without the means to buy or make, she must do her best with what she had. She travelled, walking long and lonely miles from those who had once known her, starving at times, but resolute. Her feet were bare, of course, because as you know, shoes are always the first thing we outgrow: the path made cuts and bruises on her feet, and sometimes the heat of the sun burned her soles, and sometimes the ground was cold and bitter to her toes, but she tore rags from her hem and bound them when the going was too harsh, and ploughed on.
Once, she found a pair of kittens, and stopped to talk to them. Cats are cats wherever you go, after all, and one can always find a warm spot with a cat to keep company if one looks the right way. The kittens looked cat-wisdom at her, and told her she should continue her passage, and though she pleaded to stay with them a little longer they wept kitten-tears and bade her go. As she stood to leave, an old bent woman approached her, rushing up, with a hobbling smile as reward for remembering to talk to cats, to pat her on the shoulder. She spoke the same speech as the foreign cats, with sounds whose noises meant nothing to the ears of the girl but whose meaning drew signs in her heart of hearts. She, too, told the girl to carry on: you are on the right path, and there is time to stop and talk to your kin where you find them, and time still to follow your dreams, and time again for making the map to find your lost treasure, and time remaining to clothe yourself as needs must. Always time enough to do that which needs done, always and always and always. And she smiled and bobbed and rushed away laughing, and the girl followed her out of the maze and set her feet back on the track.
Some time later, whether short or long who can say, she found herself in a small town in northern hills, not knowing why she was there or what she would do, waiting for a stranger to point her feet in the right direction. Strangers she found, and friends amongst them, and dallied for a time in their company. None save one of them could help her on her journey, she knew, but she bided her time until she could be alone with this lost prince of foreign lands. He had something important to show her, some special gift she would need to lighten her way, and she was content to wait until he recognised her as the one meant to receive it. For the space of a week they travelled together, these strangers to each other and themselves, and then the girl and the lost prince returned south, to the place of the cats, and began their time alone.
One night, a night somehow lighter than any before or since, a night fragrant with promise and magic; in other words a night like every other which ever held a spell of love, he gave her his gift. She awoke to find he had dressed her in garments befitting the goddess of love and adorned her with his eyes, weaving light and care around her to show her what he saw. She cried soul-tears at the beauty of his sight and the generosity of his giving, and allowed him to lull her back to sleep with hands that whispered I am here, I will take care, tonight you sleep with angel wings to shelter you and my breath to keep you warm, tonight you may forget your rags and wounded feet, tonight you are safe in beauty.
When morning found her, close against the lost prince whom daylight had made human again, she looked at that beautiful dress and wept anew. The rustling silk of it whispered of trees and birdsong fit to break her heart, and the colour - blue as promises and summer skies and wistful flowers - glowed against her bare and grimy legs. In dreams she had allowed herself to wear it, dancing across moonlit fields in the arms of such a sweet prince; she had laughed and pirouetted before the mirror of his eyes, needing nothing else to confirm her right to wear such a beautiful robe. The cold light of day showed the tatters of her feet, though, and her travel-worn face, and her grubby work- worn hands, and shame forbade her to wear it any longer. She took it off and folded it carefully, vowing to care for it until she had the opportunity to don it once more. When her lost prince awoke, he noticed at once that she was not wearing his gift, but since he was lost he had not the words to ask her why, and she did not have the gift to find him.
They travelled a ways together, and once or twice she tried to wear it for them again, but without his aid she could not make it fit, and she did not know how to ask him to help her. He did not seem to notice that it hung crookedly or slipped from her shoulders and tangled her legs; his role was to give the gift, not to teach her how to wear it. Finally, weeping scalding, bitter tears, she took it out one night and lay it on the ground beneath the moon, and danced bloody anger upon the fragile silk until it was stained with mud and tears and torn to rags by her agonised feet, and the moon hid her face from the ruin and the girl's howling pain. Exhausted, dry of tears, she looked at the despoiled raiment: it was not now so different from her other rags, and now she knew how to wear it. She pulled it on roughly - and now it fit her without protest - and went to her prince dancing an old dark-moon dance, and caused him to dance with her, and in the delirium of their dancing they forgot to ward against evil and mischief-causing spirits.
For this the lost prince blamed her: she had made ruin of his gift (he was too young and lost to know she could do naught else), and in the same breath she had neglected to defend them against unwelcome guests, and she was, was she not, as old as the moon? Should she not know better, than to ever, ever, let Chance poke his head in to play havoc with them? Forgetting she was also as young as the day, she agreed with him: she was at fault, and when he left her she tore her hair and clawed at her breast in self-hate.
He found her again, at a time later and not yet late enough, and again they travelled together - yet they shared no magic any more. She did not know how to thank him properly for the gift he had given, and neither knew how to forget the nights of sorrow, so together they mourned the coming loss of each other, and the loss of what might have been. Alone each climbed to a high place, numinous places, to see what they could see. With all her life laid out before her like a tapestry, she could see all those she loved and who loved her, could see - and relive with painful clarity - every event which had ever caused her pain or brought her joy or changed the course of her path. Could see, and it beckoned to her a forbidding comfort, that tower from which she had lately emerged, and for a heartbeat it seemed that she should return to it. She straightened her back, though, and lifted a mourning song to the moon, and fought her way back through the maze to the place where she was to meet the lost prince.
They said their farewells over a brace of days, stilted and unfamiliar until the last. She left him at the fork, as he left her, hoping that they would meet again when seasons had ripened them both, and hoping too that he would come to learn the meaning of her actions and his gift. She turned her feet homeward, for so her path led now, and wished he had known how bright he had shone in her heavens, and wished he could know how unsullied his gift remained in her memory, and wished - oh, how she wished - that she had been ready for such a treasure.
And for as long as need be, while she works to tidy her rude hut, while she works to clean and soften her skin and eyes, while she fashions for herself sturdy shoes to keep her feet safe, she may stop and remember the moment she wore the splendour of a goddess. She is washing that dress, and darning the holes she made, and sewing it to fit her more closely, and when it is finished she will wear it proudly to complete her search for that long-lost treasure. See her smiling as she bends over the glowing folds of fabric? Can you see her there, weeping cleansing tears to dissolve away the sorrow she danced into it with her blood? She is thinking of that lost prince, and the one she has not yet found, and of the strangeness of a path which leads a circle dance from and to and from again a place she has called home.
Do not cry, children, la! She is as happy as she yet knows how to be, and when that dress is finished, you will see her spinning by on a moonbeam, singing all the joys she has learned, and there will be a happy-ever-after to end them all!