I can't count how many love stories use the dramatic plot point of lovers planning to meet at X location, only for unexpected problems to occur. One of the pair might be late, or perhaps they both arrive but miss each other. Or one of them arrives, breathless and starry-eyed, but at the wrong location. Perhaps, for some reason, one of the pair did not receive the message about their dramatic meeting. Perhaps it was intercepted; perhaps it was lost. Other times, the one of the pair, or both, may have second thoughts about the meeting, and as the seconds tick down, we agonize, with the couple, over whether there will be a happy ending.
These moments happen in real life as well (you laugh, perhaps, but they do!), though when they occur, they tend to be quiet, private. Unobtrusive.
They aren't always meetings in front of glowing fountains, at the top of skyscrapers, or in the middle of street as rain pours down and the lovebirds ignore on-coming traffic. In fact, the moments aren't always between lovers.
It can be a broken promise between friends, a cruel act of betrayal between parent and child. It can be one person reading more meaning into another's words than that person intended. It can be an unlikely dream that shatters in one moment of clarity. That moment of "coming true"...simply wasn't.
I'm really talking more about expectations, rather than the actual act of waiting. One person has expectations, dreams, or hopes, and for some variety of reasons, they are not realized. The message is lost or misunderstood. The people you are depending on don't come through for you. Perhaps a person you trusted didn't feel the same way about you, and you find out too late.
When we wait, we are, of course, expecting something. We don't wait in lines without the intention of doing something or receiving something when we reach the front. We don't sit down to people-watch without expecting people to come along. We don't listen to music over the telephone without wanting to speak to someone at the other end.
In The Fracture of a Dream, Dek Sundowner is waiting under the willow tree in Dimlos Park. What is it? Does he find it?
Ren D.