I recently extended this pretty significantly and am really looking for suggestions on what should be kept and what is really unecessary or ineffective... any ideas are much appreciated :-)
(apologies ahead of time for typos)


The Lady of Shalott


The people living around her tower didn't seem to question its existence--most of the time they didn't seem to notice it.Some believed it could only be found after death, when the eyes grow dim and those truths that are darkened by the vividness of life are thrown into sharper relief.Those ewho spent their lives tearing their clothes and skin in the thick woods of that country and losing boots in the slippery depths of its marshes found that the tower was merely a shadow that wavered and then faded away in their minds the longer they sought it.Eventually they returned home, wondering all the way why they had risked their boots in wanderings that now seemed to have no purpose.The remnant found peace in the life that had been given them, soft and simple.Yet the tower was still a presence in the back of their minds, always.Sometimes looming in its mystique and sometimes still and quiet, lingering, but intangible all the same.They never gave much of a thought to the voice of Fate.


The Lady sat at her loom, gazing into the mirror that reflected the pattern her never-idle hands wove.Its design was perfect in her heart, yet flawed in reality, fraying around the edges where human hearts and minds intertwined and mixed the strands of color that were the weft of her craft until they twisted and broke.But her soul was the pure warp, and she held them until they were almost a part of her.She followed every thought, giving dreams to their nighttimes abd tracing every heartbreak in gold, all the while weaving.Weaving ideas and hope that filled their sleep and, eventually, their lives with the sort of energy and zeal that is not overpowering as much as it is permeating.Her thoughts dissolved into the people and settled into their decisions, drawing them and designing.

She sat as a Queen, regal on her throne and surrounded by the Muses of her court.They sang from the depths, calling to everything that was beautiful and those things that were called answered, joining the Lady and her loom.The sweetness of song from every corner of the Earth filled the room, billowing with the winds of the sea and softened by the touch of a mother.The music lifted as though it would carry away the stars and gather up the joy of the sun that is rarely felt below.And it fell, touching the inexpressible emotions that make humanity real and true and deep.The Muses danced around her exquisitely, tempering her art with their song.Their robes brushed against her arms and blew her hair fleetingly across her face, surrounding her with a willowy swirl of motion.

But her mind didn't stay with her work; instead it flowed--around her windowless room and into the world beyond its stone walls and impenetrable ceilings.It moved among the people outside, speaking gentle wisdom into some lives and remaining silent in others.All felt her touch in their mindsand loved her while it was present, but most chose to forget as soon as it was gone and strayed back into their lives as though they had never known her nearness.Those who remembered were wise, but their fervent words seemed to slip from the thoughts of those around them until the few were as forgotten as the Lady in her tower.

The mirror still reflected but she didn't see until her thread was spent and her hands could move no more.The Muses' song rang out at the highest of fortes.At once it was the tumultuous bellow of thunder echoing among distant mountaintops and the deadly quiet of peace at the hear of a swirling storm.And then there was silence.But the dance continued, eerie with its arrhythmic flow.The Lady knelt before the mirror that reflected the world of her heart's design.Its august white castle rose from rippling grasses, the tearing winds unable to move it; paradise on Earth.Its gates were the golden thread of mended heartbreak and its banner was filled with the exultation of the sun itself, every part of the Lady's design painted into its architecture.

And at its center was the face of a man, as mutable as it was poetic, who lifted his eyes to Heaven and gave his body to Hell.The people who loved her presence would have felt its absence, but his ears were deaf to her silence and his heart was closed to her paradise--his Fate as sealed as hers was lost.

She touched the mirror, weary fingers tracing its simple frame and lifting it slowly, but her tears fell and pooled on its surface, glimmering secrets and grief from the deepest part of her heart, pouring out her life.It turned to liquid in her hands and fell to shatter on the floor.The man threw off his feigned covering and drove his heart heedlessly into rebellion, searing his only lingering humility until all that remained of him was a perished eclipse of what he may have become.The Lady's light silhouetted his darkness until her heart broke under his defiance.A single thread snapped at the center of her design and her soul began to unravel.Camelot and its people fell.

The tower shook with its Lady's grief and the dance of her Muses rose until their pale feet crushed the stone that held them above the world and above the Fate of the world.The tower fell as her heart had fallen and her soul unraveled, softly and completely.The eyes of the wise turned and wept until their tears became a river, flowing and eternal.And upon this river came the Lady, her hands still and her countenance forever lamenting the death of those Muses that had danced.The river saw her completely and held her, giving its love where she had none left to mend and hiding the tears that fell--not from her eyes, but from teh shattered pieces of what had been the most perfect of hearts.The river carried her until she could not be seen by the sharpest eye, nor touched by the keenest mind.


Those living in the shadow of her broken tower no longer sought it, they could not now escape its spector.It was forever first in their sight and foremost in their thoughts, but their hearts had turned toward pretense and would not waver.So they forgot the grief of the Lady that had been born of love and her music was lost even from the undefined memories of those who had always remembered her touch.They despised the tower's blemish on their minds and cursed their Fate with every breath they were given.