Walking through the art gallery was like waltzing through a million tiny, infinitely detailed worlds.

She stopped in front of a painting of thousands of rainbow colored balls on a deep black background, as dark as space, giving the illusion that each sphere was a whole planet, a whole ecosystem, that existed for no other reason than to simply exist.

"I wonder..." she murmured without looking at me, "If a picture can paint a thousand words, can a thousand words paint a picture?"

"You know what I find odd?" I asked.

We sat on a swing in the courtyard, surrounded on all sides by ancient, ivy covered buildings. This little courtyard of ours was hidden amongst labyrinthine side streets, packed shopping centers, and perpetually crowded avenues of our city, a city which never knew silence in all its years, a city which had never felt the touch of serenity, except for in our secret courtyard. Here, we were shielded from the chaos, protected from the frantic shells of men and women desperately trying to live while they suffocated under the weight of the endless drudgery of slogging through life, going through the motions in a manner that could hardly be called living.

Our swing hung from the branches of an old weeping willow, its long fronds motionless in the warm summer air, like the curtain in a stifling theater that closes after a long performance, once more confining its sweat drenched, but smiling performers to the sweltering heat of the backstage. Across from us sat a several square-shaped ponds, trimmed with simple gray stone and connected by channels which snaked across the garden like an ancient river. These ponds were home to a small family of ducks, who paddled from pond to pond, floating torpidly through sunbaked lilies and shimmering minnows whose bodies glittered like stars, their scales like a million tiny suns which created rainbows of color in the water. A small, wood-slat bridge ran from one end of the largest pond to the other, allowing passersby to dip their fit in the cool water should they be so inclined. The fish would often come to nibble on the toes of strangers, cleaning the bacteria and dead skin off of the tired feet of their human patrons.

"What?" She asked. Her hair was waist-length this August, but today it was pooled behind her head on the ancient wooden swing's headrest, like liquid gold seeping through the gaps of a cracked mold. Her cheeks were flushed in the heat, and her green eyes seemed like palm fronds as they glistened lushly, mirroring the leafy appendages of the weeping willow around us.

"The phrase 'you have a gift.'"

The words hung in the air, like steam in a sauna, floating across the still surface of the water, past the heads of our web-footed friends, before swinging their way up the ivy of the surrounding builds and bobbing off towards the distant clouds.

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"Well, I guess it's really more about how we interpret it."

"When someone tells us that we 'have a gift,' we always think of it as some divine endowment which has been bestowed upon us, in part by providence, in part by happenstance. We see it as something received, to be treasured by us, the receiver."

She nodded, but her eyes betrayed her confusion, and yet, she still smiled. She always smiled when I began to ramble.

"It's odd, because I've always interpreted it completely differently. When we have a gift, it's something that we give to other people. Take the violinist, Itzhak Perlman. He has an incredible gift for music, but it's not something that he guards. The gift is not his, but something that he gives to the world. He takes this gift and uses it to bring happiness and joy to everyone that hears him."

Her smile had become as radiant as the sun itself, sweltering like the heat of the day, exploding outwards like a solar flare, encompassing me as if I were a passing comet, easily consumed by the overwhelming beauty of our solar deity.

"I like that," she whispered. "Our gifts are not ones that we receive, rather the gifts we give."

Sunlight slanted through the checkerboard windows that covered the wall behind me, the early morning light bouncing dully off of the slate stone surface of the blackboard on the far wall, as if it had encountered a perfectly flat veneer of windswept sand, pressed and compacted into a smooth sheet, simultaneously reflecting a million individual grains and glowing as if the surface was one, clast-less whole.

She sat to my left, the light illuminating half of her face while the other half was clouded in the half-darkness of the room, her features a peaceful contrast of night and day, half her hair an explosion of golden satin, the other half a mysterious, moon-chilled blossom of deep hazel.

She looked up at me, one eye twinkling like a distant star, the other foggy like an early morning, deep within a frosty wood.

"What are you staring at?" She asked, her voice cutting through a seemingly unbreakable silence that clung to the world like a set clothes which, after being stuck in a midday shower, grip their wearer like a constrictor.

"Blue velvet," I responded.

She looked at me questioningly.

"I'm not sure how to describe it..." I whispered, as if I was afraid that speaking too loudly would send the vibrant image scurrying for cover. "Come look."

She stood silently and tip-toed over to me, as if she were floating, her feet sliding just above the creamy tiled floor, like a specter of the sun, like a ghost of the moon. She peered over my shoulder, inspecting my glasses frame through which I was gazing so intently.

She gasped.

"Blue velvet..." she sighed.

Reflected in the lens of my glasses, was my own face, except colored in the most vibrant, ultraviolet blue. The hairs on my cheeks stood up, like lightning rods, reflecting  the sloping sunbeams like silky strobe lights, each tiny movement sending a shimmer of light up their lengths, as if they were a million tiny radar antennae, sending a million tiny messages to the universe. My eyelashes glittered like a crystal lattice, and every time I blinked, they would scintillate, as if I had shone a powerful neon laser through blue glacial ice which had cracked and shattered like a broken mirror, the flashes simultaneously blinding and captivating. And in the very center of the image, my left eye, the stroma in my iris no longer appearing as a soft hazel, but a florescent velour which seemed to sparkle like light shining at an oblique angle on compacted snow, almost reminiscent of the tiny, lucent eyes of a fly. It seemed to suck the color from the rest of the world, as if nothing else existed, or had ever existed for that matter, but that single, incandescent, ebullient, blue velvet eye.

And we sat, watching my eyelashes flutter, watching my eye sway languidly from side to side, a whole world within a world, a parallel universe that lived within the grains and contours of the image of my visage.

Finally, after what had felt like an eon of staring into my ultraviolet eye, which stared back at me with the intensity of a supermassive star, day turned to night, and my image disappeared, like a mirage that had never been there in the first place, like a whiff of smoke that swirled in the darkening sky before disappearing into nothingness.

I turned to face her.

She had become a moonflower, no longer half night, half day, enveloped fully by the twilight and the ever-darkening sky, accepted and loved by the lunar world above, a child of the stars.

"I almost didn't see it," I commented.

"Aren't those the most beautiful, perfect moments? The ones that we almost miss?" She asked.

"I think they are."

A hissing sound filled our ears as helium gas poured from the rapidly emptying tank into the last of our balloons, inflating the cloudy, translucent vessel to the size of a car tire. I shivered as my fingers, numb from the cold, attempted to tie an intricate knot, trapping the inert gas inside the capsule that would carry our weather balloon to the stars. When I finished, I sat back, admiring our creation.

Atop a light, square-shaped wooden frame sat our simple cluster of instruments: A thermometer, a barometer, and an altimeter. The frame featured struts which weaved throughout the structure like a spider web. The instruments were glued in place, but a shiny, white ribbon, which glittered under the intermittent sunlight, held the panel securely to the frame. The same ribbon snaked inwards from the four corners, wrapping around the diagonal supports that pointed towards the central cluster, before finally terminating below, where the ribbons were tied together in a loop. Roped around the loop was the end of a fishing line, so thin that we could only perceive it when it fluttered in the breeze, illuminated by the afternoon sun in a blinding flash of light that lasted only a fraction of a second. The line zigzagged across the wilted grass and half melted snow that covered the field in which we stood, finally climbing the rod of the fishing pole that I held in my hand and wrapping its way around the reel, as if it were hugging a dear friend. The frame bowed inwards and upwards as three balloons pulled at each corner, tugging at the fabric of our creation, yearning to be released, to be sucked upwards by the gravity of the infinite sky.

She smiled giddily as the balloons pulled at her arm, excited as I was to watch our invention ascend into the clouds. I looked up for a moment and watched as the white giants slipped by, high, high above us, their surfaces like smooth fields of cotton candy snow that alternated harmoniously with the clarity and peacefulness of the azure sky.

"Ready?" I asked. She nodded. I held out the pole to her. "The honor is yours." She laughed with child-like excitement and took the pole from me, her eyes bright. We were going sky fishing.

I held the frame in my hand as it strained against my frosty grip. The wind blustered, encircling me as my hair whisked around my face, covering my eyes and tickling my nose. She stood a few feet from me, the pole in her hands, her hair fanned around her head like a halo, like a corona as the sun light scattered on the fine strands.

"Three, two, one, go!" She yelled as I released our weather balloon, relenting to the inevitability of lift, giving in to the pull of the sky. The line whipped around the reel as the balloons accelerated upwards, faster and faster, leaving us far behind. We stood in wonder as the machine that we had built, the contraption that our small, dirt-stained, earth-bound hands had once touched, spiraled upwards with the wind towards the clouds that we were never destined to caress.

And for a blissful moment, we felt a rush of elation. I closed my eyes, breathing in deeply, taking in the sound of the wind howling past my ears, inhaling the scent of leaf mold and freshly melted snow mingling with the dirt and grass, feeling the cold that drilled into my bones, somehow simultaneously jagged and bracing in its frosty embrace.

And then the tether snapped.

I gave a shout of surprise as the line suddenly went slack, no longer pulled upwards by the force of the helium-filled balloons. We stared upwards helplessly as our contrivance flew further and further out of our reach.

For a moment, the wind paused, and suddenly there was silence. And in that moment, the sky enveloped our beings. I felt as if I was being lifted upwards towards the heavens, sucked into the chaotic serenity of the sky. Light reflected off the surface of the balloons high above, showering us in a rainbow of colors, winking at us playfully as they soared steadily higher. The sun passed behind a cloud, and an aureole filled our vision as sunbeams, dispersed by the dense water vapor, graced us with the most beautiful continuum of color, an infinite gradient of jades and sapphires and rubies and ambers, at the center of which sat our tiny weather balloon. And then, like an elderly father taking his last breath, our airship flitted behind a cloud, winking at us one last time as if to say goodbye, before disappearing into the vast sea above.

The wind picked up once again, jarring us from our stupor, cutting into our ears and chilling our noses, dragging us back down to earth as our blimp continued its journey to a place where we could not follow. She looked over at me, her face rosy red from the cold, tears in her eyes.

"So many hours of work..." She trailed off.

"But so much more beautiful than I could have ever imagined."

The wind buffeted my back as I walked up the slope, my bare feet thumping softly in the grass as the blades whipped around in the squall, their thin stalks glistening in the midday sun as they swayed this way and that, flattened by the wind, pointing up towards my destination. My curly locks swirled around my head, their bronze and golden hues sparkling in the brightness of the day, happy to be flying with the wind, happy to be so high and so free. A few wispy, cirrus clouds gave texture to the sky far above, floating lazily by like a trawler with no particular destination, no purpose other than to sail the skies above, to say hello to passing strangers, and, for a fleeting moment, bring joy to those far below before warmly waving goodbye.

As I continued my stroll up the gently sloping hill, the green of the grass spanned across my vision, as expansive as the sky itself, a veritable ocean of plant life eagerly stretching, basking in the warmth of the world, simultaneously embracing the sky and the ground, as if each tiny stalk was a bridge to the world above. The summit of the hill was drawing closer, and I eagerly quickened my pace, ecstatic to discover whatever hidden gem I had stumbled across.

When I finally crested the hill, I came to an abrupt halt. I stood, rooted to the spot, gazing at the sight before me.

I was perched on a small, grassy plateau which dropped sharply away into a sheer cliff not more than ten feet from me, and far, far below, a huge lake winked at me, its surface rippling lethargically in the breeze. It seemed to stretch out for miles, crisscrossing the landscape while its shores lapped at the feet of huge mountains that poked up into the sky, their slopes covered in emerald pine trees which swayed, as if they were greeting me from afar. The vast lagoon seemed to embrace these monumental giants, sometimes disappearing behind one mountain only to appear on the other side, just visible through the gaps, through the cracks of the smooth puzzle laid out before me. At the base of the closet mountain sat a small, Norwegian-style cottage, whose vibrant red roof and snow-white walls glowed radiantly, picturesque in their rejection of the landscape's homogenous color scheme. My skin tingled as the smell of fresh water rolled over me like a tidal wave, mixing with the pungent smell of pine sap and old lumber.

And, in the very center of my vision, just a few feet from me, stood a girl in a red dress which floated around her knees in the wind. Her long, chalk-white hair fluttered like a butterfly, rising and falling, sometimes breaching above her head like the long spine of a blue whale recently risen from the depths for a breath of fresh air at the surface, the interface where the salt and the effervescent sea collide with the turquoise sky. Her arms at her side, she stood completely still even as her hair moved with a mind of its own, statuesque in her stillness and her serenity.

I was enraptured, enamored, enthralled, entranced by the resplendent view before me. The wind stopped, only for a moment, as if it were holding its breath, and the moment stretched out for eons, the trees and the mountains and the water and the sky and the clouds and her long, swirling tresses frozen in time, forever caught in this moment of absolute, unapologetic perfection.

And in this moment of rhapsody, this moment of utter silence, I sighed ever so softly, and the wind sighed with me, as if my exhalation had reminded the world to breathe.

And she turned, hearing the sound of my sigh as it floated across the silence to kiss her ears.

She stared at me and my rapture, her harlequin green eyes, as deep as the ocean and as vast as the universe, meeting mine, and she smiled.

"Hello," she said.

The snow fell silently from the agitated sky. Grey clouds swirled like a whirlpool around our heads as we peered into the maelstrom. The whole world was muted as the flakes painted the ground without a sound. The sparkling fragments kissed our faces, melting on impact, dripping down our eyelashes, reddening our cheeks, trailing down our necks, before dropping away to the rolling snow dunes that surrounded our legs.

She bent down to run her hand through the snow. So soft and light, her fingers created troughs as they plowed slowly through the shimmering surface. Each perturbation seemed to ripple through the surrounding snow, as if she was swirling her finger in a placid pool of water, the waves traveling through the surrounding aqua before scattering off of some distant shore.

"You know what I think snow is?" She asked.

"What?"

"Sky fossils." She peered up at me, still running her fingers through the powder. I couldn't help but smile.

"Sky fossils?" I asked.

"Sky fossils," she repeated, nodding sagely.

Silence followed for a few moments as I gazed at her.

"When we're young," she continued, "we're taught that every snow flake is unique. Each and every one of them has an utterly distinctive structure, never before seen by the eyes of humanity. When we learn this, we always look up at the sky, enraptured, wondering 'How is this possible?' There's so many of them!'"

Now she was pushing her hand into the snow, compressing the fluffiness beneath her fingers, feeling as it hardened, as millions of tiny fractals conglomerated into one, smooth surface reminiscent of glacial ice.

"As we get older, I think we forget how beautifully complex each one of these billions and trillions of tiny, insignificant specks of crystallized water are. We become accustomed, and they become pedestrian, just another mundanity in modern life."

Her eyes sparkled gleefully as she threw a handful of snow into the air. It blew around us, swirling in a misshapen ball around our heads like a school of fish, herded by chirping dolphins.

"Whenever I see snow, I like to remind myself of how enchanting, how charming, how unspeakably lovely each minute flake is... The tiniest pleasures in life are what make it worth living. I love the snow for no other reason than the simple joy of basking in its vivacious, resplendent beauty. "

"But why sky fossils?" I asked.

"Because each snowflake is made of water which has been recycled an incalculable number of times. The particles that make up every blizzard around the world existed at the very beginning of the universe. Billions of years of history live on in their molecules, preserved in each delicate structure. They are the carriers of history, the keepers of antiquity. In that way, they are like fossils. By looking closer, we can look back."

"I like 'sky fossils,'" I mused aloud. "It's quixotic."

"Why thank you," She said, smiling.

"I don't know," she continued, "I think part of me just likes that snow is cyclic. It falls to earth, plays whatever role it has to play in nurturing life, before returning to the sky."

"'Ashes to ashes', I suppose."

First a drip...

And then a drop...

And then a splutter...

And then shower...

And then a downpour...

We stared up at the sky,  the drops sliding down our faces, over our eye lids, around our noses, tracing the contours of our lips, before pooling at our chins and dropping down to the sparkling blades of grass below. She looked over at me, and smiled.

We both love the rain.

We sat inside, curled up on the couch, drinking tea and watching the rain fall from the sky, as if the house had been placed beneath waterfall, the torrent of cascading droplets never wavering or ceasing, cocooning us within our own world of water.

We were the only people on earth.

"I watch you sometimes," she said. "When we walk."

The smallest smile flowed over her visage, that sort of smile reserved for the loveliest little things, the one that appears once in a epoch, guarded preciously for only the most intimate moments when words fail to describe a feeling, a moment where only the smallest little smile can describe a whole universe.

"You're the only person I know,'' she continued, brushing her damp hair from her eyes, "that looks around when they walk. The first thing you do when you walk out of a building is look up."

Her eyes glistened with the rain as she looked at me.

"Why?"

It was my turn to smile.

"Because I don't want to miss out..." I trailed off, trying to find the words.

"We spend so much time looking down, looking at our phone screens, craning our necks anywhere and everywhere but upwards... There's a whole world above us."

She nodded, turning herself on the couch so that she could face me. She rested her head on her arm. Her chestnut hair seemed to foam around her.

"But it's more than that. There is such freedom in the sky. The sky," I said, emphasizing the word as it shimmered off my tongue, "is beholden to no one. It is subject to the whims of the universe, always changing, never static, never stuck in a moment. Embracing the sky is like embracing change, change which is as inevitable in life as death."

The rain was beginning to let up now. The world outside was in limbo, as if it didn't know whether it wanted to rain or shine, and it seemed to glow in that special way that it does only after a long rain, when the world is so dark and grey, coated in a thick, heavy veneer of swirling clouds, but simultaneously so bright. The ghost of a rainbow flickered in the distance beneath the voluptuous brume.

"Whenever I feel trapped, all I have to do is look up, and I'm free."

She turned to me with sad eyes.

"I'm living in a glass box," she whispered. "They pick me up and carry me places inside my box. They allow me to see the world, but never to touch it. It just passes me by."

She paused for a moment to brush the hair from her face so that she could look me in the eye, my hazel eyes meeting her sparkling green nebulae.

"The whole world just passes me by," she repeated with more intensity. "I can never touch the world and thus, I am never touched by the world. I remain static in my prison of glass."

There were no tears, just heavy silence that hung in the air around our eyelashes and our mouths and our ears, pulling on our shoulders, pushing on our backs, rooting our legs to the spot.

The bees had gone silent and the birds no longer sang. All I heard was a gentle wind rustling in the leaves, through the grass and through our hair, rippling through our clothing.

"What I wouldn't give to feel the weight of the world..."

"Why do you want to travel," she asked me.

"Because," I began, a faint smile tracing my lips, "I want to seek out all the quiet and hidden places in the world. I want to find the baroque pearls and invisible gems overlooked as 'pedestrian' and 'common,' the minuscule and infinitesimal beauty that exists everywhere that we fail to see,  the beauty that exists inside fleeting moments, passing by never to return. That, to me, is the purpose of life."