Where fairytales fade

She had always been a dreamer.

As a girl, she believed in the kind of love that lived in dog-eared fairy tales and flickered across cinema screens — the sort that defied odds, rewrote destinies, and endured. She carried that hope with her into university, tucked between textbooks and lecture notes, certain that somewhere her own story was unfolding.

He had been her best friend in the department. The one who lingered outside classrooms, leaning against cool stone walls, waiting for her. The one who surprised her with small bouquets of flowers bought from the old vendor by the gate. They would sit in the quiet corridors long after the crowds had thinned, saying little, his fingers laced through hers in a silence that felt sacred.

Back then, it did feel like a fairy tale — two strangers drawn together by some gentle conspiracy of fate.

Twenty years later, she sat on the opposite end of the same man’s couch.

His phone seemed permanently fused to his ear now. His voice, once warm and attentive, was reduced to distracted murmurs — indistinct fragments of conversations she was no longer part of. The silence between them was no longer sacred; it was heavy, crowded with things unsaid.

She studied his profile as he spoke, searching for the boy who had once waited for her after class. Who was this man? And when had they drifted so far from the story she thought they were writing together?

The questions followed her into sleepless nights and restless mornings.

Perhaps I am too much of an idealist, she would think. Maybe all fairy-tale weddings eventually dissolve into ordinary routines and muted conversations. The first blaze of romance fades for everyone, doesn’t it? That was what she told herself, again and again, as though repetition could make it truth.

Still, guilt pricked at her.

Maybe she had been too absorbed in her own dreams. Too hungry for grand gestures and cinematic moments. Even now, she felt that reckless spark — that sudden, breathless pull toward every charming, well-groomed stranger who crossed her path. It had always been that way. A glance, a smile — and suddenly, bam — Cupid’s arrow, sharp and electric, striking without warning.

She wondered if the flaw had always been hers: loving the idea of love more than the person beside her.

And yet, somewhere beneath the disappointment and doubt, a quieter question lingered — not whether fairy tales survive, but whether they are meant to.