Blood-covered shards stabbed through his palms, remnants of a vase that had fallen and shattered on the hardwood floor. The boy, less than ten-years-old, could have blamed it on the darkness that surrounded him.

However, he had remained instead of run, kneeling alongside the broken pieces, heedless of the sharp pain as they poked and prodded through his tender skin. Somehow, he could see the outlines of each piece, even without an evident light source, so he picked up the largest, turning it over to study it.

In brilliant watercolors shone half an ancient rose, petals curling softly around the glass. The boy rubbed its painted petals, as if he could feel the way the leaves had blown in the breeze. Setting it aside, he picked up another piece, hardly large enough to be considered a fragment at all, and he slid his finger along the smooth but sharp edge.

He liked the feel of pain, the boy decided. Clean and constant, it made him feel in an otherwise shapeless void. Thinking, he set the fragment beside the first, and glanced down at his cut and bloodied hands.

Maybe…maybe the vase represented the state of his own current existence: broken, damaged, and incomplete.

He knelt there for a little longer, a single tear making its way down the side of his face.

“Why are you crying?” someone asked behind him.

“I broke something.”

“Looks to me like it was already broken,” the person replied. The boy turned to face the girl behind him.

She was about his age, and blonde, but around her there was a halo of light, not an aura of darkness. She put her hands on her hips and studied him, clucking her tongue. “It’s a good thing I brought the first aid kit,” she said.

“Are you going to fix the vase?” the boy asked.

“We have to fix you first, silly!” she exclaimed. “Come here and let me see all those cuts.”

Uncertain of many things, including why this girl was in his mind, he obliged, letting her put crooked Band-Aids all over his body. When she was satisfied, she turned to the vase. With the light she brought, the boy could clearly see all the pieces.

He waited for her to doom the cause as hopeless, but she only grinned, scooping up the largest pieces and pulling out duct tape from somewhere. In a couple of moments, she had sloppily taped it back together again.

The boy glanced at her in skepticism. “That’s not going to hold water, you know,” he stated.

“I know! But it will hold flowers, and sometimes that’s all we need.” So saying, she plucked about eight or nine flowers from the air, stuffing them into the precarious vessel.

“Alright, take better care of yourself from now on!” the girl announced, surveying her handiwork. “I don’t want to have to visit you too soon.”

“Are you leaving already?” the boy asked.

The girl nodded, two feet away, when she stopped, slapping her head and turning back to face him. “I forgot something,” she said.

She snapped her fingers, and suddenly all the lights came on at once.

The boy blinked, trying to make out her figure, but by the time his vision had adjusted, she was gone. His gaze fell to the table in front of him, where a completely perfect vase held eight or nine flowers.