I wait patiently for my chance. The room is cold, dark, but not lonely. In it are filled with things like me. However, we cannot communicate. After all, we are only inanimate objects. Occasionally the door will open, stabbing the darkness with a crack of light that I can feel on my surface. Someone will enter, take what they need, and charge out. I wait patiently.
Is today my day? Someone has begun walking toward me, their expression determined, coarse. He hefts me up, tests my weight. If I had a breath, I would have held it as I anxiously awaited his verdict. Without a word, he turns and walks out, holding me in his arm. I am ready. But my charge is not, it seems. I am given to a boy, barely in his adolescence. Yet… his courage is strong, his determination fierce. We begin training.
Years later. We have both been battered and struck, yet we have emerged stronger, harder, and just as determined. As he tends to me, I can feel his fear, his nervous worry. I have felt it before, but never as strong. I take this as a warning and prepare myself mentally. But I trust my boy. He has developed well in these years and is no longer a boy to anyone but me. Instead, to the world he is a man with a quest, a purpose far stronger than what most citizens are given in their whole lives. He has been given his task, and I shall help him in any way I can.
The battle has begun. I can feel the death around me. My boy is injured, but by no means hurt. He continues forward, slaying those that try to strike against me. Wait, what’s happening? His fear is unlike anything I have felt before. I can feel multiple attacks, is he surrounded? He has no chance to make an attack, hiding behind me is all he can do.
I vowed to help him, and that is what I shall do.
I weaken the bonds holding my aging metals together, allowing the swords around me to penetrate through my steel shell, trapping them in my cold grip. He sees his advantage and tosses me aside, disarming his foes and giving him the split-second window to charge and slice.
As I lay here dying, I can feel his foes vanquished. I am irreparable, but my boy is safe. Forever a Shield, I vowed to protect him. And that is what I did.
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As a child, I often entertained the idea of inanimate objects having a consciousness and inner monologue. I'm sure others did the same. Stuffed animals and dolls were common, but I often extended my imagination to other things. With the mind of a child, how was I to know the remote didn't have feelings? After all, it only worked some of the time, therefore, it must be moody. Even silly, simple things like refrigerators shouldn't be slammed - how were YOU to know you weren't causing pain?
Now that science has turned my playthings into plastic and my refrigerators back to soulless preservation tanks, I like to be reminded every once in a while that anything can have a "soul." It just depends on what you choose to love. Sure, that beloved vehicle you've owned for the last ten years may just be a bulky box of metals and other materials, but all the love you've put into the car doesn't just disappear. It turns into something. That's why cars have names, and why books have life. Writers pour their life's essence into their creations, and when you read, that pours into you, filling you with the unmistakable feeling of something that can only be called "living."
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