Different Paths
By Nara Merald

Summary: A short piece on growing apart.

Once upon a time they had been the best of friends. They'd danced together, sung together, ran around and had glorious battles together. They'd had their times of makeovers, of campouts, of triumphs and losses. The trees had been their guardians, fairies and elves and dragons their friends.
There had always been the strong one and the nice one, the mean one and the weak one.

At one time their opposing personalities had complemented each other perfectly. But now, like a niggling sense of something not quite right, their paths had diverged. One path was straight forward, with noble, towering milestones, golden achievements and team work and love.
It was a path that the other simply could not walk.
The other path was tangled and unsure, one step forward, one step back and one out to the side. It was a path of uncertainty, a path of possibility, a path of freedom. This path was closed to the other.
It was only in hindsight that they realized they'd not taken the same paths- that somewhere on their happily pebbled road, there'd been a fork and one had gone left and the other had gone right.

Both were too caught up in their shiny new pavement, the soft flora reaching out from the sides and the glint of something exciting in the distance.
And as the distance between their roads grew, the distance between them grew. Their interests stretched and splintered and shattered, until they could barely find common ground. When they tried to meet in the middle, inevitably there was a thicket, a road block, a 'Keep out!' sign.
Their paths flourished, the golden milestones acquired one by one, the sense of comradeship satisfying. The windy path proved a challenge, but the sense of exploring was a rush like nothing else. And when they saw each other next, one held an expensive bouquet of flowers and the other an oddly flavoured ice cream. One half-heartedly offered a flower, which the other did not particularly want, and the other tried the new ice cream with a forced enthusiasm that fooled no one. They both stared at each other awkwardly. The puzzle pieces that had fit together so naturally as children were no longer the right shape as adults.

They reached out to each other, looking to find what they'd lost, only to find shards of jealousy, of immaturity, of your choice will never be my choice between them, cutting them when they reached for each other.
The extended hands came fewer and farther between, dwindling as they stared at each other from across the new void. And they continued walking down the paths, unable and unwilling to turn back and meet in a new middle.

And when their paths finally did cross again in some strange, barren clearing, they met as strangers, and unrecognizing of the other, continued to walk on alone.