Always Running Out of Time

Prologue

She looked to the sky, and back again at her feet.

The action must have been repeated twenty times during that short period of time when she would tear away the gaze from the book and look around her. The wind swirled in that bright sunny day of summer. Everything seemed just right. Birds singing and all she could list for the perfect day ever.

Back then she was five. But even at that age she could quite understand the importance and rarity of days like that, when no one is watching your every movement, and you don't have a thing to worry about.

Sometimes, when she was feeling very nostalgic, she would go back to that exact time and live there. Not because she was five and had no responsibility whatsoever, or because she enjoyed the idle style of life. All she wanted was another summer day, bellow the biggest tree she had ever seen, and that book lying on her lap.

As if the thought traveled time, the five year old remembered the existence of another world right below her eyes, and started gazing at the figures again. A rabbit and his watch, a cat and his smile, a madman and his hat.

She had learnt how to read at the age of three, and had heard many times after that, how bright she was. Adults would say she was a rather curious, and sometimes, impertinent child. At the time she took pride in those qualities, or insults depending on the point of view, but she soon wouldn't. They say that the curiosity killed the cat, and she wasn't the cat of the book. She just couldn't see it.

When reading, every now and then, she would stop at some point and stare at the book as if it was alien. It was hard for a book to overwhelm her maturity, but Alice in Wonderland could do it. Drink me and Eat me was obvious to her, but there was something unsettling about the Lobster Quadrille and she just wasn't capable of pointing out what. She thought it was the whole idea of it.

Tired of thinking, she leant back on the tree and closed her eyes. Soon enough she started dreaming about a certain rabbit and his certain watch, a certain cat and his certain smile, a certain madman and his certain hat, and a very uncertain reality that actually seemed possible at that light of the day.

If she could, she would go back to that exact second and never leave.

   ***

The next summer the tree wasn't there anymore.