Wish

Prologue

Something about the beginning of summer makes anything feel possible. Longer days inspire dreams of adventure to fill the previously unlit evening hours. So here you stand, watching the sun drift towards the tree line across the fields surrounding your small village, your heart as full of longing as the basket of strawberries weighing on your arm.

You've lived your whole life in this place. A few dozen homes and the familiar faces that occupy them are the only existence you know. Each morning you wake early and help your family with the usual daily chores. You take the same path to and from the market to trade eggs, fruits and vegetables. You chat with neighbors about the weather, the harvests, and various insignificant personal matters. No one seems to think of much else. This farm life is reliable and peaceful. It's also excruciatingly dull. 

When you were very small, Nana used to sneak off to the fields with you on summer evenings like this. She would flatten a section of the tall grass with a heavy patchwork quilt and read you fantastic stories from a battered, pale-blue book. It's been so long that you can barely remember the stories themselves, but the feeling of wonder in them has never left you. In those stories, heroes travelled to far off places, made magic, found love. 
"Nana, can I learn to do magic one day?" you remember asking, full of youthful hope.
"There are all kinds of magic, love," she had told you, "you'll learn the kind that's meant for you. Even turning seeds into flowers is magic, isn't it?"
As you'd gotten older, you realized that she'd been trying to let you down gently. Things like magic only exist in faded old books and dreams, of course. 

Still, magic or no magic, this time of year always makes you feel hopeful that something wonderful could happen. Or at least something different. 

Daylight fading slowly behind you, you finish the well worn path home wondering what ever happened to Nana's old book.