Fast and Free

The city below glowed in muted tones, its lights smudged by the drizzle that clung to the windows like breath on glass. Evening crept in slowly—lavender, then violet, then the murky blue of early night. Edna sat perfectly still in her wheelchair, her hands folded neatly in her lap. To anyone passing by, she looked empty, expressionless, as if she were simply watching the rain slide down the building.

But inside, she was nowhere near this room.

She was running.

Bare feet pounding through warm grass, arms spread wide to catch the wind as it rolled across the fields like a living thing. The sun hung low, orange and full, and the air buzzed with insects and the soft hum of life. She could smell the earth, feel the heat on her skin. A farmhouse stood in the distance, paint peeling, screen door rattling with every breeze. And there—faint but unmistakable—her mother’s voice carried across the pasture.

“Edna! Supper!”

She turned, grinning. She was young. She was fast. She was free.

The memory shimmered like heat rising from asphalt, then wavered… then bent. A raindrop streaked down the window in the present moment, and the field blurred into a watercolor wash of childhood she struggled to keep in focus.

She blinked.

The city lights became fireflies. The distant car horns became her mother’s soft call. The sterile smell of the nursing home morphed into the warm scent of cornbread cooling on the windowsill. Edna reached for it—mentally, physically—her hand twitching slightly in her lap as if she could grab hold of the memory and anchor it in place.

But it slipped.

The farmhouse faded. The field shrank. The summer sun dimmed. All that remained was the drizzle tapping at the window and the cool hum of the room’s fluorescent light.

Edna exhaled slowly, a whisper of breath she didn’t realize she’d been holding.

She knew, somewhere deep inside the fog, that the fields were gone. That her mother had been dust for decades. That memories were tricksters now—flickering, teasing, offering her only the edges before dissolving. But part of her didn’t mind. Part of her was grateful for even the fragments.

She lifted her gaze again, watching the city blur and scatter beneath the rain.

For a heartbeat, she was back in the field, sun on her shoulders.

For another, she was simply an old woman in a chair, staring out at a world she no longer recognized.

The drizzle softened.

And the past, like the city lights, drifted in and out—glowing faintly in the dusk before dimming once more into the quiet darkness.