Wildflowers

          Everything, Mira thought. This is everything I wanted.            Minarets in alabaster           Moon upon the lake           Gypsum called out of the waters           Night named all these things her daughters           They gleamed in her obsidian                She carried them in jasmine           Blossoms of the Empyrean…           Burning flowers from her tresses           Spilling starlight into the endless         Every word Damian read convinced her that the veil was lifting. Dream and reality were blending.       She’d watched him pick those words out of the meas...

          Mira went to pick up Damian’s pen off the floor. He thought about stopping her, to say not to bother, but instead he just walked over by her. For some reason, he didn’t feel like he needed the pretense of being highly apologetic. She just struck him as not being that kind of person.         "I mean, it's hard to describe," he said, "but if I had to pick a 'nicest person in the school' for some reason, I'd pick you, intuitively. I mean, it would be kind of a leap of faith, so I'd have to hope the consequence for failure wasn't... like..." he paused.                    She seemed to be hiding her face, just a little. And he noticed she was quite flush -- her pale skin was cherry red. Like blood, in the snow.                    He didn’t know where the thought had come from...

Day One           Mira had been here before. Countless times, in fact.           In her mind, over and over, it was always the same – she had her books, and her thoughts, and could never escape their gravity, always merely at the threshold of broaching some new change.            She didn’t know what it was. It was like the world had a veil cast upon it, enshrouding everything where the material world crossed with the aspects of her dreams… and she knew if she encountered these dream figures – if she pulled back the veil – she would see whether dreams could leave the domain of wish and travel into the world of solid things, where they would have to become real… or if they would reveal themselves to be as wisps… ephemera that were only ever illusorily here; only ever potential.           But today, it was like some unseen force pushed her up to him. When she was ...