Once upon a time there was a girl who wore her hair swept across her head, pulled back into a ponytail. She spent her days doing advanced algebra, and her nights dreaming of the sky. She dreamt of running. Of running so hard that her thick glasses fell away, forgotten, and she would throw her arms out and suddenly she would catch the wind. Her arms were wings and she flew up and up and up into the brilliant dancing blue. She had the same dream every night, of the wings, and the bright blue sky.
Every morning when she woke up, she felt like something was missing. She felt like she could never quite get where she was trying to go in her dream. The dream was exhilarating, like running for miles and never getting tired, but she could feel that she was flying towards something. The blue was calling her, always pulling her closer, but she could never reach it.
She woke up every morning, with the sun, and arrived at school just as the sun was shaking off its morning haze. She sat at her usual desk in homeroom, tuning out the morning announcements as she let her eyes flutter closed for a moment, trying to pull her dream back out of the recesses of her mind. She could never quite recall the shades of blue when she was awake. She couldn't remember the way the white hot sun warmed her soul, until— "Is this seat taken?" a soft voice broke through her thoughts.
She blinked her eyes open, clearing her vision, and turned her head towards the voice. She was struck dumb at the sight. Language fell from her mind completely. In front of her stood a girl with hair like the sun, clutching her books nervously to her chest. Her head was bowed, shyly, but suddenly her gaze snapped up to meet Santana's, and she felt like the air had vanished from her lungs. All Santana could do was blink. Once. Twice. Surely she had gone mad.
The girl's eyes were the same brilliant blue from her dreams. The same exactly. Dancing and playful and bashful and sweet and a million other kinds of blue that Santana couldn't understand for the life of her.
The mystery girl with the familiar eyes was standing there awkwardly, unsure of what to do. She bit down almost painfully on her bottom lip and pulled her eyebrows together, waiting for a response. She glanced nervously to the empty desk next to Santana's, and back at Santana, quirking an eyebrow at her.
"You… you can sit there if you want," Santana had no idea how she managed to form the words. She was transfixed, in a dream, in the blue. She let her face slip into a ghost of a smile as the girl sat down next to her.
"I'm Brittany" the girl said quietly, in an almost hopeful way. "It's my first day."