Flight
“Lovely swallow, where do you go?” Nina whispered.
The swallow fluttered in easy wavelike patterns.
She sat on the veranda, the sun warming her skin in the cool spring air. Nina smiled, swallows meant summer was close.
“Did you see the world?” She asked, as the swallow alighted on the beam above her. It twittered, then flew off again.
Nina had never seen the world.
She lay her head back and closed her eyes. Images of adventure flitted through her mind, like hummingbirds. She imagined herself on a ship, brave in a raging storm. Or in the jungle, making her way through the thick vegetation in the driving rain. Her favorite fantasy was the one where she climbed the Eiffel Tower.
Up, up above Paris she would climb.
Chirrup, chirrup.
Another swallow appeared and was gliding in its random, careless flight.
“Nina!” The voice called from the house. It ripped through the sunny calm. “Time to come in!”
“Yes, Mother!”
Nina took one last look at the soaring swallows and sighed. She wheeled her chair around and rolled inside, away from the world.
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