Mother never seemed to notice or care when I disappeared. She was too busy with the farm and with my brothers and sisters. She assumed that I worked alongside the others and took my lunches with the other village children as I used to. To her, there was no change in my routine.
But Walter Rund noticed.
On those days when I was trapped on the ground he would seek me out. He asked me where I had been, but I never told him. How could I? The sky was my paradise, no one else's. It was my haven, formed from the whims of my imagination. I couldn't share it with anyone.
I was Jessa, creator of the Sky Kingdom. I had a whole world, waiting to be born under my fingertips. What need did I have of others? How could they possibly understand me? No one had seen the world the way I had.
And yet, Walter continued to sit with me in my days of earthly-captivity. He told me stories that he made up as he spoke, trying to coax my mind back into the world in which my body resided. Why did he care?
For three weeks there was not a cloud in the sky. Walter stayed by my side, a glimmer of light poking into the darkness that was the ground in my heart. It was as if he were a pin, pricking around the walls of my blockade, trying to find a weakness. I hated being on the ground, away from my white world of wonder, but there was no escape. The clouds simply would not form, and my pillar of freedom would not rise without them. And so I let Walter in.
I knew he could not pull me away from my creation, but I needed something to keep me sane while I waited anxiously for any sign of my kingdom's return. He filled my ears with tales of adventure and soon I discovered that he, too, craved a life outside of this small, cramped village. Perhaps he wasn't so bad after all, I began to think.
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