The Princess's Heart- Part 5

"I've got to fix this!" Day thought, she reached down and tried to scoop up all the little glass shards on the flagstones. She winced as pieces got caught in her fingers and it seemed as if in its brokenness the little heart was making one last desperate attempt to get back at her for not protecting it. She pulled her hands away from it with a cry of pain and surveyed the wreckage it had worked on them. "Oh it's no use!" She cried. But looking at the pieces as they glittered in the sun, she thought at least she could give it one more chance. She carefully picked up one tiny fragment with two fingers of one hand, wincing as it cut her fingertips, and then placing that piece into the palm of her other hand, she found it to have become attached to her two fingers and as if it did not to want to let go. She shook her fingers and finally she scraped it off onto the palm of her other hand where it cut there too. She let out a cry of exasperation and flung the shard away from herself.
The King found her there. Sitting alone in the middle of the garden, weeping over her shattered gift. When she became aware of his presence as his shadow fell on her from behind, she started and leaped to her feet, turning toward him, and wiping the tears away quickly with her arm. She stepped away from the broken glass on the ground as she did so, hiding them from him behind herself.
She put her hands behind her back and looked down, afraid to meet her Fathers gaze, afraid of seeing his disappointment in her.
The King knelt and came to eye level with his daughter, "Day, what's wrong? I haven't seen you in so long, and I've missed you so. Do you want to talk again?"
She reached up to cover her face with her hands as tears threatened to come again and the King caught her hands in his.
"Dearest Day, what has happened to your lovely hands?" Her father asked her ever so gently.
She couldn't hold it back anymore, "I'm sorry! You gave it to me and I broke it!" She stepped aside and pointed to the shattered glass on the flagstone pathway, "I tried to pick it up and maybe fix it, but I couldn't even pick it up! I can't do anything right anymore! I cant, I cant, I cant... breath!" Her whole body was racked with sobs as the King caught her up in his arms. He rocked her gently and let her cry, stroking her hair and holding her tightly. He never wanted to let her go, and she wondered as she wept in his arms why she had ever stopped coming to him. This was her Father, and He was good, He loved her, really truly loved her, it wasn't pretend. He would never play games with her heart.
"Princess." He whispered softly, when her cries had calmed somewhat, "What do you say we go make you a new heart?"
She sniffled, "B-but how?" She asked.
The King set her down gently, he knelt by the broken pieces and began to scoop them up into his hands, "No!" Cried the Princess, "You're hurting yourself! It will cut you too!" Her father looked at her, "Day," He said with a patient smile, "You will understand in time; nothing could ever hurt me more than losing your heart, I would endure any pain to get it back again."
The princess burst into tears again as she watched him gather up all the broken shards of her heart and hold them in his hand, ignoring the pain it caused him. Then he turned to her again and picked her up and together they went to the furnace where he had first created the little glass heart for his daughter.
"Where are we going?" she asked.
"We're going to my furnace, to make your heart whole again, precious daughter."