Expectation was rife. Exaltation expected. Ebullience anticipated. The night was contained in the magnanimity of space.
The darkness settled in a comfortable stupor around me. The defined silhouettes promised of a light.
The air was cool, not crisp; the breeze fluid, not sharp; the twinkling sky beckoned....."Up above the world so high". Strains from a distant past rang in my ears.
There was magic around me.
I looked as far as my eyes would take me. The world expanded. I felt dwarfed. The cosmos stretched with great alacrity, I shrunk.
I was living in a fantasy.
And then I saw them......
The glittering trees, the bejewelled hills, the landscape shone all around me. Emeralds - bright, green emeralds glimmered. One step transported me back in time, in space, in reality, in illusion. I was standing on the threshold of the land of far, far away. My throat constricted.
I could have stood there forever. With my arms outstretched. Facing the heavens. Beauty in my eyes, hope in my heart.
And I did stand there.
Till the spell broke....
Till the magic paled into ignominy and the wind swept it away.....
Till I decided to embrace reality, and my munificence blurred my vision. Till the voices resounded in my head and reminded me of the banalities of the trees, the wind, the hills, the fireflies. And the whispers of the rich foliage, the sighing of the soft zephyr, the beauty of the uneven landscape, the glitter of the flying emeralds, all died an unnatural death.....
The child in me wept bitterly. She mourned my pragmatism that that had left her so far behind. She bemoaned my reality that had relegated her to the periphery of my soul. She struggled to regain her balance as she teetered precariously on the precipice of my rationale. She wept copious tears as she kept fading into a dazzling transparency. She made a final attempt and clutched urgently at my heart to liberate me from a world of calculations and premeditations, to rescue me from a world of sepia.
Suddenly color sprang to my eyes as I donned my glasses of magic. My vision returned and a strange warmth soothed my heart. The trees were indulging in musical banter, the breeze was kissing my cheeks, the hills were awakening to the enchantment, and the emeralds, the bright green emeralds were flitting about me without a care in the world. I stood alert, captivated and enraptured, in a land where sweet nothings adorned all tete-a-tetes, in a land where time came to a glorious halt, in a land where sensations flowed freely, in a land where the child was the precocious and the adult was the asinine, in a land resplendent with magic. In the land of far, far away.....
