There lived a King and Queen in an opulent palace far up on a hill overlooked all the land. No one came to visit them and they lived their lives in seclusion and isolation. One day, after years living in the same gilded cage, they became very angry. So angry that they tore at their elegant clothes and pulled out their neatly combed hair. They went around the palace smashing every exquisite ornament and furnishings that they had cherished for years that slowly ticked on like a gently maturing wine. Down came the velvet draped curtains on the four poster bed; scratched were the crafted oak wood panels that had framed the gigantic fireplace; smashed was the vast mirror that they had so admired themselves in dressed in adornments of silk, gold lace and silver. Behind the mirror lay a spacious land, green and lush, rolling hill stretching as far as the eye could see. The King stood breathless from the strength needed to destroy his golden prison. As the wind swept through his greying hair, he squinted into the bright lemon sunlight at the emerald green land before him. He knew is was approaching the winter of his life and he was angry and have been fooled for so long. Screams made him turn to see his Queen similarly enraged, her once neatly tied hair, now as wild as an abandoned bird`s nest after a storm. Her lips, once tightly pursed together in dignified silence were now open with loud yells from deep within her; her deep rouge smeared across her cheek. Lifting a wooden baton high into the air she took a swing above a polished and refined table.
"Stohhhp"! Yelled a voice from the doorway.
Turning both to look, they saw a man and a woman no older than themselves standing in the doorway. Their faces were softer, calmer, although their hair the same speckled silver, white.
"Put it down" the woman gently spoke, as she softly took the wooden baton from a stunned Queen.
"This is not the way". The man, dignified in his step walked over to the King and gazed in the direction he had been looking. "We can put a window here" his deep, steady voice settling into the King`s turbulent soul.
"Where there was once a mirror for my vanity"? The King spoke, his words lilted by shame.
"There will pastures fresh and new, as far as eye can see" the man rested his large hand onto the King`s weary shoulder. "Why are you so angry and destroying all around you"?
"It´s brought us nothing but confinement, greed, loneliness and sorrow, I cannot live in a Palace gradually erodes at my soul".
"Is it the Palace, that has so taken you into your selfish concern"?
The Queen wipes away her smudged lipstick, from across her cheek, the woman smiles endearingly and she looks down a little guilty, like a girl after a tantrum.
The man gracefully traces his fingers over the elegant, hand carved table leg. "Years of work, precision, craft, nurturing, would have been destroyed in a second...is that what you want"?
The woman takes the Queen`s worried face in her hands and gently smooths her windswept hair back. "Why are you here"? The Queen asks, as she looks into her eyes so like her own.
"We are all but a mirror unto ourselves, change comes from within, over time you brought us here".
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