She is walking in a Meadow. The grass grows over her head and the sun shines brightly through the leaves. She follows the whimsical parting of the stalks for miles, each shift of direction leading her exactly where she wants to go.
She brushes aside a curtain of grass and overgrown flowers and finds herself in the middle of an argument. Two beings are arguing over a newly sprouted flower. They are hunching over it, blocking the sunlight that flows freely throughout the entire meadow. As she watches the flower, which had been growing strong and seemed to laugh with joy for the day, wilts and begins to shrink into the ground.
The creatures don't seem to notice. "The flower is mine!" They shout, louder and louder with each expression of possession, as if the argument could be decided by volume alone. When shouting doesn't convince either being they turn to shoving and slaps. She can't hear floral giggling any longer. The flower has almost fully retreated.
She doesn't remember wanting to argue. Maybe it was something she liked to do Before, but now she feels like she could be doing so much more. She could be racing with the group she left just minutes ago, or she could be singing with the tiny monsters she was with… some time before that. Why, she asks herself, am I here, listening to these people ruin a flower?
"The flower is mine," she decides, "In fact, everything here is. And I won't let you have this one but there is always more than just one of almost anything here, you can easily find another."
She wanders over and squats in front of the tiny sprout that is left of the once marvelous flower, "Why don't you come out now?" Light giggles radiate around the clearing and the flower emerges, petals open and welcoming to invite her and her companions to stare into the hypnotic patterns that unfurl.
"I can see why you both wanted the flower," she drags her eyes up to stare at the dazed and cuddling companions, "but I don't see how it would cause such a ruckus."
They don't answer. They sit smiling at the flower and the flower seems to smile back, though it has no face.
"Shoo! I'm trying to have a conversation here," her words are harsh but her tone is gentle. The flower pauses, stopping mid-sway before retreating again into the ground. Out of sight she hears the lulling giggle start again.
She stares at the couple again. Without the flower to distract them they seem to remember their argument and pull away from each other.
She knows why she wanted to be in an argument now. She doesn't like perpetuating arguments anymore but she does like to end them. She will heal this rift between the two Meadow residents. She has played an actress and a poet and an athlete and now she will play mediator.
"Now, don't do that. I'm sure we can find a way to reconcile the two of you," she soothes. The beings in front of her turn to look at her. They say nothing but make a point periodically to glare at the other.
'This will take some time.' But it is fine, she has time to spare and no place to be.
She is in a Meadow. The sky is almost as vast as the Meadow, dark with the seemingly uniform sweeps of the gaseous edges of the blackholes that make up the heavens. She would find the lack of moon odd if she knew anything outside of the Meadow. She might find staring into the mind-numbing forever above her if she didn't stare at the forever reaching across the horizons every day. She ignores the sky, it is not new or exciting.
She walks through the Meadow. She doesn't stumble in the night because her path is lit by the luminescent blooms that grow, like parasites, from the grass stalks around her. The colors they glow in change with each gentle breeze that flows in the Meadow. She closes her eyes in a slow blink and sees pictures in the dim lights left behind her eyelids.
She opens her eyes and continues on. She reaches a maple tree and slowly climbs the stairs into the castle branches. Her legs get heavier and she falters when she enters the castle. She's so tired.
Here too, her path is illuminated. In the absence of stars, though why she thinks stars are absent when they never existed here anyway she does not know, sap seeps into the gaps of the tree, brightening and dimming, that creates a mesmerizing pathway throughout the structure. She does not pause to admire lighting. Why should she? It is always there.
She trails her fingers along the carved bark of the redwood tree. She is so tired. She shuffles her way to her bedroom and does not take a moment to acknowledge the effort that must have gone into the beauty and whimsicality of the room.
She is in no hurry.
She is in a tent. She knows that it is small and it is striped but now that she is in it she cannot see the canopied ceiling, and the circling lights cause the fabric enclosing her to swirl in front of her eyes.
On thin lines above her, fabric swings dramatically. An ancient, voluminous dress releases itself into a triple flip and hooks into the legs of a full, antiquated military uniform. Off to the side, an empty Greek toga slowly crosses a tightrope, teetering from one side to the other over a filled, inflatable pool sitting prominently, miles below the taunt wire. Gasps ring out from behind her as the toga seems to fall, it is not going to survive. Just when all seems lost, something snags on the corner of the falling fabric and it twists back into place on top of the world.
She looks away toward the ground. There, in the spotlight, a suit of armor makes motions to tame the aggressive quilt in front of it. For a moment she thinks the armor will be swallowed whole and winces her face away. She sees something in the shadows.
Below the towering figures of the armor and the blanket, behind the glare of the light, are the forms of a snarling lion and the tamer battling him. Several feet away she catches a woman holding her arms out and walking along a thin line, and every few second two forms sweep across the entire floor, moving too fast to watch but beautiful in motion.
She raises her eyes to find the figures of the shadows but once again becomes entrapped in the fabric circus. Calliope models dancing to calliope music, drawing her in.
She feels as if she could watch forever.
She is walking through a Meadow. Every few steps she bends to pluck flowers from the ground and braids them into crowns that she leaves on anything she finds to resemble a face.
She places a circlet of paisley blossoms on the head of a passing dwarf.
She grants the serious looking boulder a coronet of blinking, purple blooms as she sneaks by.
For herself she makes no crown because she does not need one.
She is playing in a Meadow. She joined a baseball team but she does not know if she is really playing baseball. She does not know whose team she joined. She suspects that no one really does.
She is playing baseball in a Meadow but the grass stretches far above the tallest players head and they want to play baseball not go hunting for a clearing. So, they play.
She hears someone call for a pitch. The grasses around her sway and change with the force of the pitch and swing of the bat. She does not know if the ball hit. But then, no one else does either.
The sound of the batter running the bases reaches her. She does not know where he is running. Where are the bases?
A startled sound echoes into her ears. And she can hear an argument arises as the two decide if the runner had been tagged. No one knows if he is standing on the base. Or if the tagger is even holding the ball. Or what the ball looks like.
"He'll just have to bat again!" She calls from her spot in the outfield. Or third base. Not knowing is half the fun.
She is her room in a castle in a Meadow. Morning sunlight reaches through her windows and illuminates her growing comfort in the room.
Through the generous and plentiful windows, the Meadow can be seen stretching without boundary. The walls are soothing and just the color she prefers. Her bed sits unmade and just rumbled enough to call her to lie in. Small collections from her day lay through the room that she knows she will give away at the next opportunity. While there is not much there- she never feels the urge to carry much back with her- she feels comfortable.
The room is hers. It is home.
Sarah sat with her eyes closed, chewing on the lackluster meal in front of her.
"- You'll watch Toby for us this afternoon, right Sarah?"
She is in a Meadow. The sun shines brightly overhead but the lofty grass blocks the glare.
She stands with several beings and shares stories with them. They dramatize stories she had heard Before and stories they had heard Elsewhere. They giggle through fables they make up on the spot. They whisper tales that everyone hears echoing out of the tunnels.
She loves listening to the stories her people tell. She has listened since the beginning and will continue to listen long after but every tale teaches her more.
"And the lil fellow turned his new telescope to the horizon but just as swiftly as he raised it, he had it tucked away and turned to run," the storyteller leans in to draw out suspense, and his long hands flutter in the stillness as they hold the audience captive. The hands draw her attention momentarily. She had listened to this storyteller before but were his hands always like this?
She quickly dismisses the idle thought to concentrate on the story. Why did the explorer, brave by occupation, run? But she can't hear the story anymore.
There is a rushing all around her, static has taken residence in her ears. She looks to the others to question the noise but they continue as if they cannot hear it. They are acting as if the sheer volume is not threatening to split her head and world in half.
Sound vibrates into her very being, stuttering and bursting in an infrequent consistency. Her eyes close involuntarily and her hands rise to cover her ears.
Why is it so loud? She wishes it would just quiet down.
Why won't it-
Sarah could hear Toby crying from the playpen in the living room. His crying stuttered and his breathing gasped in his chest. The noise was unbearable.
She flipped over in her bed and jammed a pillow over her head. Irene would get him soon but god was she slow today. Sarah peaked an eye open and glanced at her clock. She only had her eyes opened long enough to get the briefest glance at the clockface and used the minimum brain power to guess the time, 3-ish.
Toby was still crying. His howls pierced through the pillows like the cheap cotton they were and kept her awake. Irene should have calmed him by now.
Is it too much to ask for a little sleep?!
"So loud. He is always so loud," Sarah rolled out of bed and shuffled her way to the door. She stumbled down the stairs and paused on the last step to close her eyes. It was summer vacation and she could be sleeping but instead she was woken up by a screeching little monster. She loved Toby but she swears sometimes he cried on purpose.
The noise got louder as she approached the living room, it did nothing for Sarah's burgeoning headache.
Sarah walked into the room and stared at Toby. Toby silenced for a moment, a single blessed moment, before resuming even more insistently, reaching up his arms for his savior, his comfort.
"Toby, be quiet for a moment. What do you want?" Sarah mumbled, she hadn't taken a step past the doorway she stood in. Her eyelids fought separation with every blink. She just wanted to go back to bed but she couldn't until she figured what was wrong with Toby.
Sarah picked Lancelot up from the floor and tossed him in with Toby, Toby's cries ripped through the room. Sarah couldn't think. It was so loud.
Sarah closed her eyes and tried to block out Toby's desperate howls.
"Toby! Shut up! You woke me up for some reason and not even giving me a single moment to find out why! I want to go back to bed. I wish I was still sleeping! I wish you weren't-"
Silence permeated the room and Sarah realized what she had almost done. She knew what words could do.
She felt sick. Sarah's heart beat fast and hard in her chest and adrenaline flooded her senses. She was afraid to open her eyes and discover that Toby was no longer in the room, but if she didn't open her eyes how would she be able to save him.
Toby whimpered and Sarah's eyes flew open. There Toby sat where she had last seen him and Sarah scooped him into her arms and buried his face into her shoulder. His face was sticky with tears and his chest spasmed with hiccups but he was there.
Sarah couldn't understand why she kept making the same mistakes with him. She yelled and scared Toby. She almost wished him away again. Why did she keep getting so wrapped up in her own fantasies that she forgets that she loves her brother?
Sarah did not think she would be sleeping for a long while.