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Blue and Beautiful
She had never seen the sky. Oh she’d heard of it of course from books. They gave her books and taught her to read and for that she was forever grateful. Sometimes visitors mentioned it. The constantly fewer people who came down to her cell to stare at her like an animal and chatter like a social club. She didn’t know that they thought of her
like an animal or chattered like a social club because she’d never known anything different. She’d been brought here as a baby, a prisoner of war she was now sixteen and still there. It was the only home she’d ever known. Sometimes she longed for the outside world, sometimes she didn’t. But mostly she simply longed to see the sky. In books it sounded wonderful, blue and beautiful during the day, orange, red, purple, yellow, black at other times. Blue and beautiful and reaching on forever. Blue, what did that mean? Like blue jeans she saw the visitors wearing, faded but once bright? Like blueberries a kind guard sometimes slipped her, bright and shiny? Like the worn tattered bind of a book, so old it almost didn’t even seem blue anymore? And forever what could that mean? She didn’t see how something could go on forever. She knew that past the bars of her cell was a hallway and at the end of the hallway was a staircase and then offices and then more stairs and above that was the world. They had told her that. She knew that none of these things went on forever but the sky did. She imagined the sky like a blanket, soft and fluffy, with bits of cotton and animals walking on it. Sometimes she pounded on the bars of her cell with passion, longing, curiosity. Not just for the sky, but for the world. She wondered if there was anyone anywhere that wouldn’t stare at her and ridicule her. People like in the books they gave her. She didn’t think there was anyone like the people in the books. They were fiction after all, weren’t they? But still she longed to see for herself and pounded mercilessly. She wondered why they wouldn’t just let her out, why they still kept her there. She had been only a baby when she arrived and couldn’t even name what kingdom she’d come from but they seemed to think she was dangerous. Once when she was little she’d slipped through the bars and she’d nearly been shot by a guard. They said she was top-security. She wondered if there was more to it than they told her. She ate, she slept, the cell was her world. She longed for the sky, for the openness, curiosity overwhelmed her. They said she should forget about it she’d never leave. She asked why they told her things and gave her books if she was to be here forever. They said it was because they felt sorry for her. She asked why. They told her to stop asking questions. They told her all this but they left the gate open. There it was silver and shiny and ajar. For years she’d hated it, willed it to open and now there it was, open. And out she slipped. Down the hallway, up the stairs, past the offices, and up endless more stairs. They followed her, but they couldn’t catch her. And then there it was, the world, the sky. She understood it now. She knew she hadn’t before. She wondered how she could have thought it was different when it was so wonderful. So big, endless, and blue. They caught her. She ran. There was a shot. It hit her in the heart. But she was happy. She’d seen the sky. And it had been all she’d hoped. Blue and beautiful.
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