She takes my hand in little fingers and my heart makes a loud beat and settles into a warm place inside my chest. I smile. She annoys me, this little child. Her hair is tangled and wild in a brownish nest-like halo on her head. She has my blue eyes, big and round with freckles like tears cascading down her cheeks and nose. “Look at those clouds, see the waffle?” laughter presses at my throat as she points at the sky where a fluffy waffle balances on the horizon with the orange sunlight cooking it from the other side. I nod and squeeze her fingers “Yeah, I see it!” She laughs, her mouth open, head tilted back and eyes squinted. I laugh, too.

“Come on!” she turns to me and lets my hand drop, running ahead of me, dusty feet springing her into the air. I run two steps to catch up with her. Dirt is smudged on her face and her purple sparkly shirt s grimy, but she doesn’t care, which is why I love her.

We lay on our stomachs in the grass with our heads toward each other. I run my hands through my hair and breath in the sweet grass. She looks up through the green as a blade tickles my cheek. “Fairies live here. All around us. Can’t you feel them?” I smile when she says this and nod “Yeah,” I say lamely. I feel like I need to be more for her, I need to tell her how I believe in magic and how I used to make houses for the fairies, who were my friends for so long. She rolls onto her back and I prop myself up on my elbows and look down into her upside down face. “I talk to them all the time. They change the weather for me and they light up the leaves and the snow.” I cringe in my heart and put on a sad smile “Yeah, I talk to them, too.” She looks at me like that was obvious and sits up, tucking her hair behind her ear. I twist grass between my fingers, rip them from the ground and pile them on top of her head. She giggles and shakes it off.

I get up and stretch, then I lift her up and twirl around.

We start down the path again, her head looking up, my neck craned down. “The clouds have changed again! Elephants!” then she nods importantly and looks at her toes. “Feet are beautiful, Addie.” she says to me without breaking her stare. I look at my toes, curled and dirty “Yeah, yeah they are, in a way. Mine aren’t really beautiful, but they do tell stories.” I mumble as I watch my feet move under me.
A root pile protrudes from the ground at the side of the path, without a change in her stride, she clambers up it and walks over the peaks, then she leaps off of the other end shouting “Aiii-yA!” I stub my toe on a root and air rushes to my lungs, sharp and dry.

“Sometimes I think it would be so cool to live like everyone else,” she says matter of factly as she continues up the path. I begin to protest that her life is amazing, but she continues like I didn’t even take a breath. “You know, showers and stuff. But then I think, what do they do when they’re bored? NOTHING! Then I think of all the things I can do! I can do ANYTHING!” I laugh at her because I am bored sometimes and I do not see the “anythings”, I am blinded by the “nothings”. “Come one, we’re going to see the animals.” I am a guilty animal owner. I push my cat off the bed when she is too close, I don’t take the dog on my walks because she walks directly in front of me, I toss a piece of grass in the general direction of the bunny’s cage. So when she suggests this, I am timid. She pushes in past the goats that crowd the gate and I squeeze by them, hardly able to hold them back. This is pathetic. I’ve grown up here and I have become blind to the repetitiveness of the clock’s ticks. Because there I am, teaching myself what to do. Shouldn’t I have learned as I have grown? A child is always superior. Take a walk with that little child, and learn something. Let them give you a tour of life, let them teach you about all those tiny things.