A misty light it was. It seeped through the dense foliage of a mighty oak behind the window and poured into her room. Inch by inch, it conquered the space. Soon all she could see were soft, flickering shapes and contours. The light had reached her face, stroked her cheek, pinched her chin.
Ow!
She sat bolt upright in her bed. It’s been a year or more since she’d last walked around the apartment being too feeble to stand up. Now she rose effortlessly, like a five-year-old girl.
She skipped around the room, then leaped up and hovered in the air. She swam through the delightful mist to the dark lacquer china cabinet and traced her finger along the row of pictures of her children and grandchildren, pausing on her late husband: bespectacled, serene, with a distant twinkle in his eyes. She beamed at him, leaned back, and somersaulted.
A key jingled in the keyhole. It was time. She stepped towards the window, shook off her life like an old robe, patched and comfy until now, and slipped outside, through the glass.
She wafted in a cloud of that misty light along the early-morning streets, over the scarce people trudging forward with numb determination, their eyes half-empty. She patted one of them on the head, but his ears were plugged with tiny plastic pieces, and he didn’t notice her.
Her cloud maneuvered through the maze of buildings, skirted the garages, and hopped over the thoroughfare, bringing her to an intricate wrought iron gate between two towers. She laughed happily and dived right through the gate. The cool metal collected the dew of the cloud, but she didn’t notice it: she was in her beloved place: the sleepy, misty, grand Botanic Garden.
She drifted through the main alley and turned onto an overgrown path where she used to bring her grandchildren to feed the squirrels. Now it was calm and peopleless, only squirrels rustled to and fro, occasionally pointing their snouts at her cloud. Unseen birds warbled in the branches.
A little further she floated, towards the pond with dozing ducks. She glided above the water and inhaled deeply, savoring the crisp morning air, compensating for those years she hadn’t been here. It tickled her nose, and she sneezed, laughing with joy.
She cast the last look at the green mass of waking trees, steel glints on the pond surface, sleeping isles of ducks, and busy squirrels. Gratitude filled her; she let it spread through her cloud and rain down on the ground, as she rose higher and higher until you couldn’t tell her from the sky.
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They will cry and close a curtain of sadness over them for several days. Then they will understand. They will let her fly, and they will come to that garden occasionally and crane their necks and peer into the sky.