328. Histoire bleue, 5

(Bleue)

Imagine a wide blue sky. An infinite blue sky as far as you can see.

It's so wide, it feels like you could fall upward suddenly into this celestial ocean.

It's a thrill this sky gives you.

So much day light covers this land and its ochre fields.

There's someone there, sitting over nothing, in this field of naked rocks.

You get closer, walking carefully.

You can notice her ultramarine blue clothes, vivid, and her even brighter chestnut hair.

She's so small, a little chubby. Her clothes are a little ragged, full of patches and repairs. She doesn't care. She gazes at something between her feet, intensely.

You see her smile and the gleam in her eyes. Hazelnut skin, spotted with dust.

And then you discover the puddle at her feet.

A few colourful tadpoles swim in it.

A few small frogs are swimming there as well.

You forget time as you look at them go with her, swimming randomly back and forth in that puddle.

You see together one of the little and bravest frogs suddenly walking out of the water.

This little animal suddenly sheds something from its shining black back. Dragonfly wings spread.

The frog then carefully dries its wings under the sunlight like a butterfly.

The girl with you looks even more enthralled by the glittery show, gawking at it.

The greyish wings change colours gradually as they dry. And then, you both see this odd looking animal fly away.

You look at it, disappearing in the distance.

The young girl attempts to chase after it, with a clumsy way to walk.

She's stretching her hand in the direction where the sparkling dream flew away.

She then turns around toward you. She seems surprised because she was too focused on her observation and didn't notice you arrived. Her face quickly turns into a radiant smile.

- Mama!

Your heart swells, as she raises both of her arms toward you. She comes closer as you crouch, and you hug each other, clumsily, strongly, warmly.

The raised hand to a dream is then to yours. You hold her little hand in yours, and begin walking together slowly.

She's telling you all and everything about what she has seen today. Some words are hesitant or wrong, but you understand anyway.

You feel joy. You feel pride. You feel frail and trembling, but also very warm and relieved. Your eyes are warm and you can't help but smile.

You want to laugh cheerfully at every odd thing she is saying.

How rocks can fly. How peeing can make funny sounds. How the frog butterfly changed the colours of its wings and fly.

How she's hungry and wants to eat more ice cream you made.

She's funny, a little ridiculous and childish, annoying at times. She can be a pain but you love her so much you're just happy she's there. Holding her little hand, hearing her healthy voice.

Together, you walk back to the domain of the flying forests.

Patches of land are hovering at different altitudes over there, in quiet majesty.

She runs away ahead of you. She grabs the lift first, a rope with counterweights very high up there. She seems to fly away from you as she holds and takes this shortcut away. The pulley is somewhere so high you can't see it from there. It's risky, but she's daring and used to it whether you allow it or not.

Meanwhile, you have to take the stairs and the long way to climb up.

You begin that long climb above the land.

Flying islands are drifting away as the forests below slowly cracks and fragment themselves, leaving mountainous droplets of land slowly detach themselves from the earth. They don't go that high into the sky, but they leave the ground for good.

You live at the centre of this slow fountain of lands. Patches of earth grow, rise, hover for a while in the shape of balloons, and then drift away.

In the middle of this continental fountain and invisible tree is your home, and your family.

The little girl up there is laughing you can hear, at your slow ascension toward the garden where you live.

You climb rope stairways and suspended bridges, from one flying island to the next. You cross various small parks, woods and gardens on each of them.

You see sleeping dragons lying here and there, while birds play around the trees and basins.

Finally an hour later, you reach the main and top island, towering above the swampy caldera far below, large like an ancient city but covered with a quickly growing everglade forest.

You reach the woods surrounding your home up there. There's a house.

Your child is already running around and ahead, squealing happily like a puppy.

When you finally catch her, you rub her chubby cheeks against yours as you know she doesn't like its tickling. She complains in an exaggerated fashion and laughs.

You scrub her hair and then pat it gently. She giggles, just like you.

She eats like a savage in the house. In the kitchen, she refuses the spinaches you cooked for her, and digs in deeper inside the ice cream from winter, eating more than she could.

She burps loudly and laughter about the noise she just did.

You sigh with an aging frown, while doing your best holding your own grin. You try to tell her to act and become more lady-like.

She nods very seriously to what you say, but you're perfectly aware she's not listening to a single word you're saying.

She goes to clean her now empty bucket by herself and you thank her kindly for that. She smiles.

Teeth are missing. Some fell by themselves, a few others by accident against a rock here or there. She bounced back the day after as if it never happened.

You drag her to the study, to teach her more about the world. About languages, about natural philosophy.

She learns. When she's curious about the subject.

She asks you questions you expect, and others you never thought of.

She has begun having ideas you never had. And you see with that intelligence in her eyes, that's it's not just a young animal, but a real and full human. Her body may be small, her knowledge rudimentary, she is thinking and understanding as well as you. She is, just is.

That makes you thrill, and just knowing she's alive in this world makes you happy.

Seeing her grin, her cheeky and smug grin; you're feeling so proud and blissful, you smile back without realising it.

You love this world she lives in.

~