“Can’t catch me!” the little lass squeals, kicking off her saddle shoes without minding grass stains on her ankle socks. It is dark anyway, but for the moon and fairy light.

 

She scampers without inhibition, arms outstretched to either side as she twirls and glides like a snowflake beneath the stars. Arching backward, she expands her flat little chest and swallows the air whole.

 

“Caaan’t caaatch meee!” she cries, her giggles popping like bubbles as the warm night breeze strokes her flushed and fleshy cheeks.

 

She spins and swirls, whips and whirls, and her heart thrums like it, too, seeks escape into the meadow’s midnight splendor. Her meadow, the one lavished in clusters of cornflowers and dollops of delphiniums, all embroidered within a fine lacework of lithodora. Blue flowers, the ones her tutor has taught her about, and the ones that keep blues of her own from shading her eyes when she doesn’t want them to…

 

For now, she keeps running through her meadow, skipping among the fairies and teasing them into giving her chase. The willowy sprites dart and dive and spiral like a whirlwind about the girl as she laughs and rotates around with them until, dizzy, she falls to the ground. There, her little chest heaves with her exertions, and she feels the cool dew of sweat bead upon her little brow and just above her little lip. The fairies alight like lanterns atop the flowers and her little knees and little toes, even on the tip of her little nose, and the girl smiles while her eyes close in drowsy daydream.

 

“Here’s your breakfast, honey. Clear away your things,” comes a voice that drifts into her ears.

 

And the lass opens her eyes to the friendly welcome of her favorite bowl, placed right next to her inhaler on the breakfast tray. As the honks and sirens of urban traffic invade through the window, the girl tucks her cornflower and midnight blue crayons back into their box. She closes a cover over the meadow and slides the sketchpad neatly aside to receive the tray at her lap.

 

Closing her little hands onto either side of the bowl, she drags it closer to her. The milk inside cools it to the touch, but her palms warm the whimsy of its outside until her fingertips again brush along velvety petals. The musky sweetness of flowers floats to her nostrils.

 

And in the center of the smoggy city, she returns to her starry meadow.