About

Miranda woke just as dawn broke over the ocean outside the glass south wall. The fuchsia and periwinkle sky lit the white room with hues of rose and amethyst. She stretched, rolling over upon perfect white sheets to her left side to look out above the short wall over the stairs to the hallway, across the sitting room with the three tall glass window-walls, beyond the white and red sand beach surrounded by dune brush and fan palms, to watch the sand cranes play with the violet-hued waves.

She gazed on until the sun was well into the sky and the room was purely white again. She turned on the television for company, switching it to the appropriate music channel. It tried to argue with her about whether the general public shared her often odd but never unique taste in music, but she always won. She rose gently to semi-independent experimental rock and Japanese postmodern pop music. She walks the yard or two it takes to reach her half-kitchen counter. She made delicate herbal tea, but added far more sugar than anyone else would have a taste for, and made her special pancakes which were thin as crepes and made with anything and everything from rhubarb to cocoa powder to cinnamon.

As she walked from the kitchen, she precariously balanced the one plate she owned, red and dark pink and blue and white swirled ceramic, currently piled high with allspice pancakes, her sole ceramic cup filed with a mix of chamomile, peppermint and lemongrass tea, and a bowl filled with berries, carambola and overripe peaches. Her pristine white bamboo fabric top curled up higher on her stomach and her white organic cotton pants reached down to cover her feet as she stumbled like a tired six-year old, perfectly adorable and flawlessly clumsy, down the three steps to the sitting area overlooking the beach.She moved to the black couch in the sitting room and set her breakfast on the glass and wicker table. Drowning the entire plate in pure maple syrup, she turned to the laptop, reading journal after story after journal, fork clicking against the glistening earthenware plate. She hugged herself with her elbows and smiled coyly as she sipped at the perfect ceramic cup that was just the right size with just the right complementary white and red and yellows scrawled across it. Her fruit bowl was equally beautiful, a shade of brownish blue that resembled the inside of an oyster shell.

She pushed back her feathered brown hair into loose, light pigtails and took her bowl back to the sink. She then knelt beside her bed and closed her eyes and prayed. Prayed that today the ones that lived out her life would care for it greatly. Because today was a very important, very special day. Today was her first day of school.

With more than an hour left in her morning, she climbs back into bed among the white linen and lyocell comforter and the lilac and light green quilted pillows and grabs another perfect cup of tea and turns the television on. Soon she faded away into sleep against the worn fabric, always with the aching worry of where her dreams would take her.