a little story

Beware: this story may be confusing/odd/long/not really a story at all. Never combine writing with a longgg shift at work- you have been warned.

The soft shadows of dusk stretched their fingers across the playground, bathing the blue ground in a peaceful glow. Jenna closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Anything you can imagine is real. After reading the line on one of Tim's postcards- a generic, cheap one, to be found at any tourist trap, sent from India and Pakistan and Africa- she'd taken to believing it. What harm could it do, after all? In a worst-case scenario world like the one she so often found herself trapped in, she would simply remain on the ground. In the best case... well, she could fly.

And that was certainly something worth imagining.

Just visualise, her aunt's self-help books exhorted. Eyes still closed, she placed both feet squarely on the base of the... what was this, anyway? A swing? A ride? A....

Stop procrastinating and do it, she told herself firmly. She often found herself doing this, as though there were two parts to her personality, running on parallel railway lines inside her head. Jenna One was firm, driven; the kind of girl you wanted for a project, who could take charge of her own life.

This side usually lost.

Jenna Two was softer. She followed the easier path, drifting through life lost in her imaginings and caught between the thin blue lines on her school papers. Somehow this very insouciance made it easier for her to conquer her more forceful half. Why bother trying when floating was so much easier?

Because the journey is the most important part. If her brother, whose head was filled with nothing but dollar signs and briefcases, could travel to such exotic places- and be so tightfisted as to send back only cheap postcards, filled with such preachy sayings as that- she should be able to accomplish this one dream.

"What are you doing?" Jenna opened her eyes. A little girl stood in front of her, arms folded squarely across her chest. She blew an orange-scented bubble, and said firmly, "Big people aren't allowed on the turny."

Jenna met her eyes, noting the obstinacy in her gaze, and said, "One spin?" shocked at her own daring. The girl continued to stare at her, before finally nodding and walking away. Jenna One smiled; Jenna Two sighed and slipped both feet back onto the turny before she could be pushed off. Anticipation filled her, shining like a soap bubble above her head. At last, she'd done something right.

Spin, spin, spin, until all your dreams blur to shadow. Spin, spin, spin...

This is also my contribution to the wonderful linkup over at City Girl Gone Country and A Beautiful Day!