Fire Crackled
By Hannah Lee

    It was such a picture. I swear I had seen it before, in a movie or something. I started from my feet, the fire, the tree that loomed over us, the darkness and suddenly the stars showering down. They were falling, all melting down the sky as if to cover the earth with its sparkles. My face was so warm, I put the back of my hands against my cheeks from time to time to cool it down. We talked about things that we never really told anyone else, and we laughed at things that would usually be ignored. It was a night of dreams, and I knew at that instant when I had to scan from the earth to the heavens the picture I was in, that I was going to paint this.

   I hope you become whatever you dream of being, a counselor told me, and you’d think anyone can say that, but I say not many of them sound as alive and genuine as this. We were star tripping that summer night. We tried to bake raw cookie dough over the flames. Some silly things we said. And I tell you while all that went on, the world stopped for some time and listened to our songs. We were drunk in a spell, driven by its power. An ancient force was encompassing us in this magical, wondrous land.