Author's Note: This is my 100th blog post--it feels like quite a milestone to have come this far in my writing in the past two years. Fiction and writing is a path of constant growth, and it is one I am excited to be traversing. I thought about saving this for something special, but perhaps there is something special in even the most obscure of pieces. 

She daydreamed in the dark.

At night, she would turn out the lights, turn the air conditioner down to 63 degrees, and stand stock still in the middle of her bedroom. As the temperature dropped, she spun slowly, allowing her eyes to adjust to her surroundings. Everything seemed new, haunting, and original in the dark.

Tears would slide haphazardly down her face, but she wasn’t sad. Lost in thought, she stood in the middle of her dark room, but she was transported to worlds beyond her own. She soared across the sky on the wings of a dragon or wandered through a field of wheat in search of inspiration.

She came back to Earth when the temperature got too cold. Shivering, she stood there a few more minutes just for the sake of it, before undressing, pulling on a hoodie, and sliding into the warm covers.

Her phone buzzed on the nightstand, and she hesitated before taking it and scrolling. A friend needed help with chemistry, and she considered for a moment, thinking back to her many assignments due this week. Although she wanted to decline, she changed her mind last minute and scheduled a date and time.

He agreed enthusiastically, and she worried he thought of it as a date. With that, her mind drifted to the one she had been saving her heart for, and she clenched her eyes tightly.

Unbidden, images of her favorite daydream came to mind, and she smiled, imagining how his lips would feel on hers. She shook off the thoughts, because they were distracting, disturbing, and too fanciful for her own good.

She opened Spotify and switched to the fire ambience she fell asleep to, closing her eyes and leaning back.

Her mind shifted, and faithfully, she began to say her prayers, struggling not to grow too distracted with the random thoughts of the day. Colors danced across her mind, and an image of her best friend’s face came to mind. She remembered laughing over the stupidest things, and somehow this made the pain easier to bear.

A spark created by her ambience blossomed in her mind, and she focused her attentions on it, feeding it the daydreams she created in the dark. She was coming to terms with the difficult, struggling to find the hope in what first seemed like a hopeless situation. She strung worlds together with strands of light and words.

Two nights ago, she sat out all night, lying in the middle of the grass staring upward at the clouds. If she looked carefully enough, she could see her worlds up there.

Characters and their stories came to mind, and she could see her friends leaping from star to star. She saw two lovers dancing around a fire, and she could hear the rain dripping from Mercury’s umbrella. She saw Red and Hornet teasing each other around a card game, and she could make out Summer’s scowl from the ground where she lay.

Tears slipped down her face as she recalled her stories and her characters, and then suddenly she found herself back in her bed, staring at the dorm room ceiling.

The sound of fire still met her ears—canned by Spotify, and she cried again at the thought of the constricted force. She could control the tears now. What she could not control was the aching feeling of loneliness threatening to scoop out her entire soul. She turned off the ambience. 

She turned onto her side, whispering her prayers aloud.

“Lord, please grant me wisdom—please heal my heart. Please teach me how to love again, and please help me find myself again.”

Her thoughts drifted away again, and she lost herself to sleep.