Exquisite Encasements

Swiftly hastening down a cold flight of unoccupied stairs, I felt the cool breeze of sheltered air smelt across the contours of my face, wiping over their pail entailments. Everything about my features were light in color; my eyes emitted a blank aqua, my rounded face a creamy white. All except for the flaming mush of red hair that piled onto my balding head. I was ugly. Hideous. Lacking in profound beauty.

There my journey had begun. The homely vying for the beautiful. Not in female sorts, but rather in aspects that the world paid little notice to. I just needed one simplistic notion to find in my life that fell under my insightful category and then this mission of mine would be no more. Wandering would come to a close as simply as it has began and my life would float naturally back to what it usually pertained.

I had witnessed beauty many times in my life. My wife was perhaps the most appealing aspect in my world, but I strived to notice it in other nouns than simply humans. What stunning qualities could other structures provide? The reasoning fascinated me and that is where I found my heart.

The mysterious, historical basement of my workplace- seemed to offer me a variety of places to choose from. There were several rooms, each able to fulfill some form of beauty. With enough to take in, I would most likely find it amiable to meet my goal in the course of this one flowing evening.

Taking a right as I reached the end of the vast corridor connected by various cobblestones, I was met with a handful of solid doors. Each appeared the same as the next from my rightful angle; an oak door bluntly squared off in exact patterns and a dust-free brass door knob off to the side. Which door should I open? Once you go inside, it is simply expected of you to get lost if you know enough about the mysteries themselves. If that was to be my fate, I had hoped I could come out in one piece, but I was convinced that nothing else could make me feel more alive in this time of darkness.

Sighing wildly, I shuffled my feet to the first door on my right hand side. Taking the frozen knob of alloy into my fist, I turned it, anxiously waiting to take in its confinements.

What the room contained simultaneously knocked the prepared breath from the back of my throat. A squared row of stone benches fell to one corner of the room and a set of a dozen gray gargoyles of various sizes and designs rested near the opposite wall. In what appeared to be the very center of the room, a vast, billowing patch of raspberry bushes could be noted. Each individual plant produced a large, seedy replica of the berries of love. I had to be in some sort of the love chamber.

Instantly questioning my assumption that the colorful scene before me was indeed the room of love, I reached for the cold door handle that could lead me out of the room. It was locked; perfect. With the proven fact that the room was what I had assumed, I turned back to the sight and searched the tiny trinkets and dust clumps for the beauty that the sane could expect.

The room was beautiful. With the illusion of bright sunshine, thousands of colors illuminated for my eyes only. The gargoyles off to one end transformed as my eyes widened with surprise and the benches offered the most appealing perch of any. But the beauty that seemed to be enveloped within every aspect did not sprawl the correct type of splendor; at least, not the one rare form that I was working to find.

My journey through the smiles and frowns of pettiness and superiority opened my light eyes to every form of exquisiteness except the one that I needed to grasp most. At that moment, an idea engulfed my better senses. What if the form of beauty that I wished to witness was not a sense that I could see with my plain eyes? What if it was a form that was found inside of me, rather than outside where the real world existed? The sudden realization seemed plausible seeing as I never really knew the exact components of what I wished to find. I just strived to look for the unknown, and where it led me, I followed with gratitude.

Slumping myself down onto the first bench of hard stone, my mind raced at a speed only a mind could perform. What was it that I wished to grasp? What form of beauty could be found inside of me that could answer my deliberate wishes profound so limitedly? I tried to pry inside of my frozen exterior, but the failed attempt allowed for nothing more than what I had possessed before.

Suddenly, a warm breeze engulfed my silhouette into an innocence of heat and comfort. I relaxed a bit as it settled and tried to pinpoint its origin. Only one possibility came to mind. Myself.

How could I have performed such a power? I had not even realized that I had committed to such a thing. What aspect, if any, did I possess that could account for anything as wonderful and promising? I did not know the answer, but once again, I turned to my inner self to work to answer the chilling question. This time, I opened up into a contraction of what I really was.

Memories flooded through my mind at a horrendous speed, and I, myself, had no choice but to instinctively blink them away. Jagged pieces of wellbeing that constructed my life flew through my ears and forty-five years worth of dialogue and understanding clashed with my present day mind. I did not know what was occurring, but in the midst of my sudden recollection, the warm breeze and comfortable passing returned.

I can not explain how exactly it happened, but one thing is clear now in my mind: through the memories that coursed freely and the warmth that committed a similar ridicule, I grew to love myself--the most beautiful accomplishment of all. It seems now that that was the origin of my search all along.