William Murphy, author of Sleep(s) on Chickens
The story of a loveseat one mightn't expect to be a terrifically magical one, unless it happened to be a magical loveseat, one which, upon sitting in it, transported you to Arabia, or Katmandu, or some suitably magical place and took you on all sorts of adventures, possibly finding, appropriate to it's* name, Love, or some fun variation thereof, and possibly dragons (though considerably less fun than Love, or not, if they happen to be cuddly sorts of dragons that don't set your magic loveseat on fire and tell you magnificent stories about frogs getting in to misdaventures that are by turns both comic and tragic and you grow, over time, and despite the conventional notions of interspecies feelings, to Love the dragon, in a harmless enough sort of way without getting into any relationship issues that may cause concern amongst your friends and family).However, you'd be terribly, horribly wrong.
Loveseats, in and of themselves, and completely normal, are indeed extremely magical, and their stories even moreso.
Once, as a child, a loveseat, headstrong and brave, was sat upon.
This was to begin a long career of being sat upon, first in the furniture shoppe, then, later, in a flat. A flat that was sometimes warm, sometimes cool. Sometimes it complained of the cold, other times it sweated quietly, bearing the heat with a composure little seen amongst mortals. It enjoyed being sat upon, sometimes by two, sometimes by one (usually never more than that, as loveseats are not designed for large crowds, though once in a while the rambunctious little ones they called kids (and the loveseat affectionately, if a somewhat tough-love affection, referred to as 'the chits') piled four to eight of them in the loveseat, arms, cushions, and all overtaken by a teeming sea of flesh and ice cream stained t-shirts and short pants or dresses), but always lovingly, as was the way, on a loveseat, to sit.
Years passed, ages passed, from generation to generation, the bottoms filled the loveseat, and the loveseat was happily sat upon, giddy with each passing posterior, or more, as some people took to lazing on them, or lying on them, or other such positions. It was a glorious existence, one in which form and function came together blissfully in a pillow-covered grand loveseat.
Until, one day, something changed, something irrevocable. Something Yeats would write about, and annoyingly blow all out of proportion and take it to represent Man's Fate in the World and the Deflation of the Spirit of Art when it was really of quite an import, all on it's own.
And no one had the heart to tell the loveseat that it had finally become a couch.
disclaimer:
Now if that doesn't bring a tear to your eye...
footnote:
* I hate the conventional wisdom and generally accepted grammatical practises that move the apostrophe in ownership based solely on whether or not something displaying ownership is a person, and have been boycotting that practise for nineteen years now, so no comments, please.
Yer Weekly Horoscopes. Wee!