a late-night story

"Look over there!" she cried. "In the distance!"

She was right. The balloon was drifting back towards us, somehow disobeying the laws of physics and descending towards the secret clearing between the forest and the city.

She looked up at me with the clearest, bluest eyes that I'd ever seen and asked, "Why is it doing that?" Her freckles bounced at her dimples arrival.

"Must be some pressure change in the stratosphere," I remarked, shading my eyes at the blazing sun. Drowsily lying in the shade, I shook myself out of the afternoon stupor.

She frowned, pondering this logical chain of thought. Life couldn't be that easy, that logical. There had to be another explanation.

"Or maybe...it's a small bird wanting to fly higher and higher. I'd call her Amazon; she's probably from somewhere in South America. And she saw our balloon after hitching a lift from her eagle friend. Her name can be the Nile!" - she had just gone to the Tutankhamen Exhibit at the museum - "And then she wanted to fly that high by herself, instead of having to rely on Nile. Too bad her weight is dragging it down..." She trailed off, contemplating the sad fate of Amazon.

I laughed at her curiously random train of thought. She continued.

"What if the air in the balloon was sucked out by a ghost? Maybe the Air People are having wars, and shot out some of the air from the balloon! Or did the aliens in Outer Space shoot a warning shot at us?"

I brushed the air out of her eyes as she flopped down on the grass next to me, chattering away at the endless possibilities of this tiny balloon. I hugged her close and whispered to her,

"We'll just have to wait and see."