It's all well and good to see those rich velvet sundowns on the flipside of postcards and the fresh dewdrop greens brimming on a veiny leaf, magnified a thousandfold. What she didn't know about was the fury of the sun that day, hot humid atmosphere pressing down. Or the cool whirr of pixelated screens, an artificial rainbow. Hues neatly numbered and ordered. Magenta. Chartreuse. Cyan.
As a city girl, she had often dreamed of rolling hills, running streams. She was Christopher Columbus, piles of foamy sea before her. The horizon was always within reach, infinity just around the corner. It's peculiar in that funny way - when your earth is one gigantic sphere of aqua and terra, the notion of forever in a day lurks in the periphery. And then there is tomorrow. Always tomorrow.
That strange word, she tastes it tingling on the tip of her tongue again. Rolls the syllables around as she stares at the clock. To-mor-row. The hand jumps, executes a pirouette into the unforseeable future. Yes, in twenty-four hours.
Tomorrow, the sunlight will stream in through the glass. Dust motes will sparkle for one magical, fleeting moment. She will wake up and smell the tar and conrete, chase the sound of imaginary birdsong through her mind. In her fabricated soundscape, melodies are always harmonious. God forbid the thought of shrieking birds.
Her attention is drawn by the harsh sounds. Again, she realises it : no alpine winds, no crickets. Sheer mundaneness pushes her further back into the bed like a lead weight.
How many patterns can she find in the half-darkness?
A world forms in the pitted canvas-white of the ceiling. You might not have noticed the presence of those early-morning spectres, but they're there. Unfocus your eyes for a bit. First, they'll blaze golden-white. Then they'll waver through a pastel spectrum.
Personally, I think they're fairies.