NBR Prompt: You're a kids imaginary friend. He/she is growing up. And you're fading away.

Dedicated to a wonderful woman who sadly passed away recently.

Fading

I remember those happy days when we would play in the sun, just the two of us. Nothing could harm us then, the world was our oyster and we would conquer it with sticks and blankets. We sat on our bottoms and made daisy chains while singing about life and love. Penny she called me, I wafted on the breeze and danced around her. She was my best friend; she still is my best friend.

I was young when I was chosen, my body burst into existence as she wept alone in an abandoned room. We are created when needed, she needed me and I stayed as long as I could. There was no one to guide me, no one to warn me what might happen. I thought I had an eternity with her but really I only had her for a short time.

The seasons changed as she grew but I continued to hold her hand and guide her through the hardships of life. I became her confident for all things; her anger, her hurt, her pain, her happiness. I'd heard about love but I'd never truly experienced it. She loved me, she said she did but only while the magic lasted.

The world around me grew gloomy as she grew up. When things started I was with her constantly, I never left her side. Now it seems she needed me less and as she grew she began to forget. I look at myself in the mirror and can barely see anything. This is what I wish I had guidance for, the fading. She is forgetting all about me, the magic that once lit up her world is slowly diminishing as she discovers clothes, boys and popularity.

She doesn't need me anymore but I don't want to do. Being unknown and by her side is better than fading into nothing. There has to be something more than this. I can feel the darkness coming now, it laps at my fingers and sings in my mind. I know I cannot linger & though I wish I could say goodbye, she would not hear me, deaf as she is to my words. She doesn't need her friend anymore now that she is all grown up.

I float in nothingness for years. Am I aware of my surroundings? I'm not sure, time has stopped and I am paralyzed. I feel nothing and I see nothing. There is a hole in my heart that cannot be fixed, I am worse than an imaginary friend, I am not invisible, I am simply not there.

Who knew life would play out as such, I never thought I could be this sad or this lonely. Am I to remain in this land forever? Never to taste the living world again? What more is there for me but this never-ending darkness?

I never had a chance to live my life for my life was always tied to hers. I was rejected, thrown out to rot in the cold and the damp. Like a broken toy tossed aside, I am doomed to lie here and collect dust with no hope of anything more.

A light, a speck of soft light glimmered from the darkness I was soaked in. Unusual it was, curious was I but without a body I could do nothing but gaze at it and hope and wonder. It got bigger, it was a slow process but it did grow. Suddenly – though it could have been many hours, days or years – the light expanded. It filled me and expelled the darkness that coated me.

I was pulled from where I lay and transported to another realm. What did this mean?

I was in a hospital; I knew because I'd been before when she'd broken her arm. She lay in a bed now, but she was old, much older than I'd ever seen her. People were gathered around her, family members cried as she took ragged breaths.

"Penny."

I heard her call in my mind, it was simple, a word, my name. I felt a tingle as my body returned to me. I took her hand in mine and she gazed at me. That love I'd never experienced shined strongly in her eyes.

She was dying I realised, her ragged breaths got shorter as she took her final steps towards death. The line went dead as she faded from life and smiling, I faded with her...

740 words

(Not including the prompt or dedication at top)