She knows nothing of the world.  For her, the world is made of colours and sound, of beauty and life. The cloud and trees are hers to play with, from under the safely of tall walls and painted lines.

The skies are a soft, pastel blue by day, an endless black by night, the light of the stars is never to pass through the cloak of smokes that veils the city, never to outshine the yellow glow of the streetlights. The world she sees is made of definite backgrounds of tall, grey towers and strategically places decorum. It’s a pretty, comforting sight.

Every day, with the help of her mother’s gentle hands, she’s dressed in long, flowing gowns, colourful and soft, and she delights in the way they move with every movement of her own. The wind is never there to make them dance for her; it holds no place in the confines of her spacious rooms.

Alone in the night, under the neon light that sneaks past her curtains, she is a mere shadow, small and jumpy. Full of energy and driven by fear, she submerges herself in darkness and swirls around the empty chambers in silence. Her long hair moves like ribbons behind her and her tiny hands reach all over the place as she tries to catch fairies, fingers always closing around empty air.

She is only a child, lost in her fantasies, sure in her beliefs, mischievous by nature.

They are not to find out what she does at night, she would never be allowed to dance again.

Long and full of challenges, full of new faces and all kinds of hidden monsters, the days pass much too reluctantly. Time goes by in a monotone rhythm, always the same, never changing for the better. Her mother’s smile is suddenly strained, or maybe it’s always been like that, and she’d just begin to notice. She cannot remember the last time she’d heard her father laugh; she cannot find a trace of happiness in the spirit of her parents, not in their posture, not in their smiles, not in their warm eyes.

There are a lot of things she doesn’t understands, a few that she cannot place, many things she doesn’t know and only one that she is entire aware of.

She is constantly longing for night-time.

The pale, neon light still baths her as she twirls, hair dancing wild and full of life around her slim shoulders. She is still a little girl, dancing in silence out of fear of being discovered.  Her body is weaker, but it doesn’t fell like it. They tell her she is sick, but she won’t believe them.

It doesn’t matter, her dance never stops.

Her sickly-pale skin is never decipherable in the dark, nor is there any fragility in the quickness of her spins.

On the rare occasions her parents let her play outside, they always choose days that are bright and dry, but she secretly wished she could dance in the rain with the wind and the playful water. She pleaded and begged them so many times to let her, but they would always look at her in fright and sadness. They eyes were always haunted by something she could not comprehend. Her sweet smiles and naïve requests are spoken with all the passion and rightfulness she can summon, and still she cannot help but feel like somehow, she is hurting them with every plea.

That is a stupid thought, she knows, her mother always starts to cry when she spokes of such silly things.

It’s not long before she’s told that she’ll be moving away, to a place of white and healing, they tell her it’s for the best, that it’s be over soon. She can only wonder why nobody is smiling, but it soon passes.

Fall is here, the trees are full of colours and it is raining. For the first time, her parents tell her she can go outside if she wants, only for a minute, before they start packing their bags.

With the water seeping through her clothes and her feet digging into the soft soil, she’s the happiest she’d ever been.

There’s only the most wonderful feeling of satisfaction that fills her, even when her lungs start to burn and her head feels heavy, and she wants nothing else but this. There can be no greater happiness, and nothing more tragic than having to go back inside.

She knows nothing of the world, not yet, not fully. For now, she is just another soul dancing in the autumn rain, wishing for summer, dead before the end of winter.