Enlightenment

Once upon a time a little girl learned about wishes.


She had been lying in the sun, wearing her brand new red dress. Pure white stockings lined her legs, looking as if they were begging to be stained. The grass, which matched her eyes, made for a comfy bed, as the sun a warm blanket. With the sky as open as her mind, what more could a lovely day need? For most of the time, the girl had been simply staring upwards, catching a few airplanes she mistook for birds. It was only until recently that something much closer to Earth caught her eye. Floating happily in the air was a seed. The girl had never seen seeds fly. In fact, the only time she had ever seen seeds was when she watched her mother plant flowers. The mother had dug a whole in the ground and gently laid the seeds inside. What was this lone one doing?

Because this was something new, the girl sat up to look closer. It is only natural that a young one explores all she can about this new world she’s inhabited; even the small things. The seed bobbed lower to the ground until finally, it softly landed in the patch of grass beside her.  Peering closer, she noticed a feature that wasn’t quite right. The seed had something white attached to it: a sort of long, skinny stem. One end went straight into the seed, but the other end sprouted some sort of wispy, feather-like things. They were thin lines, going out in all directions like wild hair. Instinctively, her hand reached out…

“I wouldn’t touch that if I were you, girl.”

The small girl jumped in surprise, quickly pulling back her hand. Nobody had been here as far as she knew, yet the voice seemed right next to her. She turned her head, expecting to see a stern face, but she only found an amused one. A man was leaning against the weeping willow only a few feet away. Dark skin only accentuated his already lively eyes, and his relaxed posture made his appearance not as alarming as it should have been.

“Don’t you know that could be somebody else’s wish?” he continued, nodding his head towards the seed.

The girl made a small, inquiring sound with her throat, not knowing fully what to say. What was this stranger talking about?

“Don’t tell me you don’t know about wishes,” he said, seeing her puzzled face. “Well then, let me be the first to introduce you.”

She watched him smile as he made his way over. He crouched down beside her, and plucked something from the ground she had long ago dismissed. Now, as it was catching her attention, she realized it was a whole bunch of the strange seeds, cluttered together to look like one puffy dome.

“You see,” he began, “when you really, really, want something, but you can’t have it at the moment… you wish for it!” His eyes opened wide with the excitement of sharing a delicate secret. “Whether it be a toy, or a new room… or anything! Just wish for it… and it might come true.” The man held out the clutter of seeds to the girl. “All you have to do is blow on a bunch of them, and your wish is carried away with the seeds.” He gestured with his arms somewhere off into the distance. “The seeds grow and, if they all become bright yellow flowers, your wish will come true.”

So many words, thought the girl. And this new word… wish. She tried to play over his speech again, but it all got jumbled up. Did he really mean that if she wanted something, all she had to do was wish</i> for it? She looked back down at the lonely seed. How simple and ordinary it looked, even though it was supposed to be part of somebody else’s want… maybe even a need.

Her tiny fingers closed around the seed clump’s stem right above the man’s. She pulled and the man let go, so now the clump was right in front of her face. What did she want the most out of anything?

“Just remember… all your wishes have to be…” he put his finger to his lips, “secret.”

The small girl had more than her share of kept secrets. Keeping one more would be a cinch. With that thought in mind, she knew what her one wish would be. She opened her mouth, sucking in a big gulp of air, all eyes seeing the future, picturing the wish…

And she breathed out.

Straight away the seeds flew ahead of her, across the meadow and then some. They danced up and down, spinning and twirling, enjoying their new freedom. The wind carried them the rest of the way, and she watched until the sunlight swallowed them into the distance. What happened next was out of her control. Her only hope was to see the flowers soon.

The little girl turned her head back to the man, expecting to see his smiling approval, only to find that he had gone.