I'm afraid if you haven't read part I or part II, there's quite the likelihood this won't make sense. Although sense is something I'm often lacking whether you're up to date or not, so carry on...

Hope knew something we did not.

You see, perspective is a shape shifter, an alterer, a wispy solid thing that won’t be nailed down or stuck in one place and is forever changing it’s mind and just when you thing you’ve figured it out, you’ve seen all its crystalline edges and lines and perfectly formed shape, it’s like a snowflake you see so clearly but then you realize the dang thing is a ten foot bank all plowed up and ready for sledding but certainly not that petite bit of lovely delicateness you’d been honed in on for a week. It moves and rolls around and drifts in and out like the tides and the hindsight version is certainly the clearest but then Faith shows up and says, “HAH! You silly, silly thing, you know nothing at all! Your ridiculous clarity is but a speck of sand on this beach we’ve made and your gloating in knowing how things were supposed to be after all is nothing but nonsense!” And there you sit with your head in your hands and your perspective all wonky again like a child who thought that delicious melty caramels were certainly the greatest candy ever but what to do when someone hands her the smoothest most creamy chocolate you could ever dream? Now what?

So perspective it is that evades us most definitely in the present and we fool ourselves about the past, some of us better than others, and hopefully none of us about the future because what can you know about how you are supposed to look at something when it hasn’t happened yet and you aren’t yet the person it will happen to? Nonsense indeed.

Well then, what Hope knew that none of us could, or even could have asked for so skewed was our perspective was that even though we wanted her back so desperately, it wasn’t her we needed. Only it was her we needed but not just her and certainly not a storm of her all rolling in like thunder and lightning and bright and loud and conquering. There was too much to do, and we were so far gone that Hope had indeed scurried off to those who love us to find shelter and sustenance, but she’d also done something very, very smart. She gathered friends. She knew looking from the outside in and being a very different being from us that the twins had us in far more trouble than we’d imagined. Had she strode back into town and rousted the twins and set us straight we’d have died of the shock for certain but moreso we’d have been blinded by the light and had our skin all burned off and been deaf from the sound and would have rightly fallen straight to pieces never to recover but just to hide in some cave rocking back and forth all our good memories burned away with the bad ones and no chance of returning to a world where things work and people love each other.

So indeed after being banished our lovely Hope did seek shelter and find immense strength in the arms of those we love, but she did not stop there. She rounded up Faith and Grati(tude) and they all spent hours and hours and hours chatting over tea and fires and cocoa and homemade marshmallows planning the best way to save us all and bring us back without destroying us entirely. And the story could never be complete without the mention of those who housed our dear precious friends, those who loved us from our birth and those we’d just met, those who’d called when we didn’t answer and sent lovely notes that we burned in the fireplace with the twins shouting encouragement, and those who snuck food into the empty cupboards just hoping we’d find it and have a thought to eat before we wasted away in our filth and pity. For as much as Hope and Faith and Grati might bring us back, the true heroes are all of you who kept them in your hearts for us while we wallowed with Anxiety and Dread and even though we’d tell you we wanted Hope back, truth be told we’d rather have just died in our squalor and never been seen again. But it was you, all of you who whispered our secrets and our truth and the things we dare not think of ourselves they are so good and pretty, you put those words in the ears and the minds and the hearts of our three friends for without that what would they have come back with – for that matter what would they have come back for. We were certainly not recognizable as anything good or precious or redeemable, but you remembered who we were, who we could be, the love and light lost in our Hopeless world, but never forgotten thanks to all of you. So the three of them made their plan, all secret and careful, afraid not of those rotten stinky brothers who’d driven us to near madness, but most afraid that we’d not come back from our lives with Anxiety and Dread, that we could not, that the mere sight of light and purity would drive us mad, that warmth and beauty would scald us, and all the best things in the world were lost to us forever.

Their plan was ever so simple, ever so subtle and ever so beautifully gentle. We didn’t notice at first, it was just a warm spot you’d walk through, or a sliver of light through a blacked out window. But it kept happening and our dull minds were forced to see the pattern but we were far too lazy and wretched to diagnose this bothersome problem so we just avoided the slivers and walked around the warm spots but they kept moving and changing and pestering us and we wanted nothing to do with the whole thing. We’d mutter and groan and stomp our feet and throw our greasy hair around and smash things, warm was hurtful and light was downright agonizing. We’d step out after nightfall to buy more black spray paint for the windows and run back home to be sure there wasn’t a single spot uncovered, there couldn’t be anything good or right to interfere with this life we’d established, as awful and gross and terrible as it was, it was our life now and we were surly and angry in its defense. But the slivers kept coming back, you’d hear one or another shouting and ranting day in and day out it seemed and the shouts got louder and you couldn’t hardly walk through the house without tripping over empty spray paint cans, kicking and scattering every which way as you scurried through trying to find a lonely cold spot and fighting and snarling at the next fellow trying to take it up when you did. The chaos and filth grew ever worse and we grew ever more weary and violent and mean and the twins were becoming more and more unbearable if it seemed possible, although most days we were all such a mess it was a wonder if you could tell us apart. But the persistent heat and the relentless light just wouldn’t go away, like fruit flies in the summer when you’ve spread fresh strawberry jam thick and smeary on a slab of homemade bread and the whole contraption makes your mouth water to look at but you can’t take a bite for all the swatting and fear the little monsters are swimming in your fruity goo – the annoyance of it all was making the house downright uninhabitable to a set of beasties such as ourselves and so it was one day that we woke midday to find the twins had up and left.

The sun was shining in various slivers here and there and the house was some balmy temperature well above reasonable for those living as snarly, miserable trolls and there we were, our torturers turned muses had gone and we were stuck in the only place we knew to live with no inspiration and no way to carry on as we had been and no recollection of what life was like before and certainly no Hope to cheer us on, and not the least bit looking for her either. I know right now you’re remembering that shifty devil named perspective and it’s all so clear to you what was happening with Hope and Faith and Grati sneaking around, but when you’re in the thick of things it’s rarely so clear, or even visible at all, like you’re looking through glass that’s old and wavy and full of charming bubbles and it’s covered in a century’s worth of dirt and grease and random particles and all you see on the other side is some blurry shape that turns out to be your long lost best friend from second grade and you’d know her anywhere, ‘cept you couldn’t see, do you see? Well, we couldn’t see either.

So we attempted to carry on and ignored the fact that things kept getting brighter and cleaner and warmer and somehow when we woke sometimes we’d swear we’d been bathed and there was food on the table so we might as well eat it, and the rumbling and growling occasionally shifted to a word or two here or there and after weeks, or was it months or years I dare not say so fuzzy is my recollection, it seemed we were right human again and wandering around in the daytime and even smiling a bit here or there and waving to the neighbors like we were a part of things, only we still couldn’t shake the feeling we didn’t belong here and something was most certainly out of place, or more like 323 somethings, but who could tell what they were?

Until one night we sat down to a dinner mysteriously prepared, but ready for us when we came in for the night and our table was already occupied. There sat Hope. There sat Faith. There sat Grati. They were waiting for us, hands politely folded all proper and spiffed up and looking rather like school children quite anxious to please the headmistress having mopped the floor and cleaned the boards in her absence but not entirely sure she’d like the job or even the effort and half afraid they’d be scolded for having left their seats. I won’t lie, the sight of them was shocking, and a little painful, but it hurt in that way that you know the world is going to right itself and it will drag and scrape and pain you in the process but when it’s over things will be balanced and level, scarred forever, but righted for sure. We stood there staring at each other for what seemed an eternity but might have been a minute or two, perhaps it was ten but at the end somehow there was a pile of everyone sobbing and weeping and hugging on the floor, some jumbled mess of lovely and healing and fear and remorse all mixed up with joy and relief.

I won’t tell you things are all better and sunshine and roses and kittens. There are deep and darkly colored scars all around, but we’re living together, all of us, in the house that we’re rebuilding together and day in and day out even when we fight we’re building more than a house, we’re building a life and no one in the place has any doubts about the importance of the outcome or how fragile our lovely state with the house all tidy and freshly painted with the Victorian flair accented in the gingerbread paint and newly refinished floors and fires in the fireplaces each night. We all know what happens when darkness seeps in and we’ve a wariness we never had before. While our lives are certainly filled with the most wonderful days there’s an air of suspicion about us that will never be tamed and a look in the corner of our eye that when spotted tells you not to tangle with us, especially not with our Hope or Faith or Grati, we’ve a fierce and driven loyalty to the three who saved us from the pit the twins threw us in, although we’d lived there sure enough on our own, we’d no desire to return.

And so it is that Hope returned.