Forty-nine! Forty-nine! The bird-clock sings. From the window a small flower grows.

A girl wakes from her slumber, staring up at the ceiling of her room. The brevity of a strange dream bothers her. She blinks. The skylight blinks back at her.

Forty-nine! Forty-nine!

Stretch your toes and open your eyes!

For now it is the time to rise!

The clockwork gears shift and a bright, warm glow replaces the darkness and tranquility of the room before. The girl stays in her bed for a second more, then slowly walks into her dresser and emerges wearing a pair of faded blue overalls. Her parents have bought her clothes, new clothes, clothes that glimmer and sparkle and adjust the temperature for her, but she refuses to wear them.

Perhaps the great-grandmother is to blame. Perhaps she embedded the tales of a distant civilization too deep into the girl’s mind. Perhaps the grandmother taught her too many things, too many songs, too many words. Perhaps she told too many stories and gave away her too-many wishes to the girl sitting patiently next to her, asking, Granny, what happened?

At breakfast, the girl attempts to persuade her parents to go outside, away from the bubble of existence their hut provides. No, they say. There are better places to be. Being outside is not one of them. The girl asks again, this time pleading, but her parents refuse. Anger wells up inside her, and she stands up from the table and darts out of the door. She knows where she will go.

Walking down the long hallway, the girl waits to hear the expectant footsteps of her angry parents, but she hears none. A strange feeling tugs at her heart, but she does not know what it is or where it came from, nor does she care. The girl enters the lock’s combination and the door slides open to reveal a dusty, barren landscape. The heat is almost too hot to bear, but the girl kicks off her protective shoes and runs off barefoot.

She does not bother to close the door behind her.

Soon the girl comes across the place she used to go to with her great-grandmother. They used to go outside all of the time, climbing, exploring, laughing. The girl and the great-grandmother used to sing. They sang the lyrics of a long-forgotten song, a song which the words no longer made sense to the girl. The girl shakes her head and tries to forget. She does not know why.

The girl begins to climb the hill. She can feel the burning blisters growing on her foot, but she persists because she remembers that people used to do it all the time, in the past. Her great-grandmother told her. Her great-grandmother knew so many things; however, the girl’s parents had called her a dissenter for everything they suggested was good for the girl and disapproved of the girl being with her. The girl would cower as her parents scolded her of their disapproval, but she would always visit her great-grandmother afterwards.

The hill is very large. It is very bumpy. Rocks slash the air at angles everywhere. The girl wishes she had another word for the hill, and something distant, something faraway emerges from the depths of her thoughts. Mountain, she thinks as she climbs higher.

The world is silent, and the only thing the girl can hear are her own footsteps swishing through the piles of sand that have gathered from a wind blowing from a desert. Swish, swish.

Because, she thinks, there is no one out here.

At the top of the mountain the girl takes a rest. She thinks of what her parents said to her that morning. There are better places to be. She wonders where that may be. She wonders if that is the place her great-grandmother went.

She wonders if her parents are worried, if they have sent a drone out to find her, but then she remembers that they did not even bother to run after her.

As the day wears on, the girl gets restless. She stands and decides to take a walk. She finds nothing but three dried up shrubs and she wonders if they used to be green, the way her great-grandmother described it her. Swish, swish. She spots a pile of sand gathered between her toes. The sun is high in the sky and there is no wind. She walks on. For a moment, she wishes for something that could stand tall and block the sun with their waving hands, but no, no, there is no such thing.

The girl sits down again, but this time a small creature scuttles onto her arm and she stares; she has never seen it before. The creature explores a patch of skin with its antennae, feeling its entitlement to its new habitat. She imagines what it must be thinking: In my opinion, this is the perfect ground in which to live. I want to live here; therefore, I shall. The tiny creature looks so carefree she almost cries, but then she shakes it off her arm and watches it scuttle away.

When the sun sets, the girl thinks, I will go home. She stares off into the distance in uncertainty. She does not know whether this, a dome with two indifferent souls living in it, is her home. I will go home when I want to.

To pass the time, the girl makes up stories. She talks to no one about strange flying creatures that lift her up into a land of fantasy, of dark purple skies and light blue skies, of flowing waters and icy landscapes, but at the end she is only reminded of pher great-grandmother. She remembers the anecdotes her great-grandmother told about everything, even the simplest things as a compensation for the many confusing claims she was making to such a young girl; mostly to entertain her. At that time, the girl felt the entitlement she so longed for in being with her parents.

The day slips by and clouds cover the sun. Suddenly she is freezing. Though the girl gets colder and colder, she does not head back to her home. Instead she takes a handful of sand and buries her bare feet because she thinks it will keep her warm. Although it is scratchy and grainy, the girl does not mind. Her thoughts are somewhere faraway, away from this place she hates so.

After the clouds gather, they cry a fine rain that settles in tiny droplets on the girl’s hair, her cheeks, her eyelashes. It looks like she is crying, but she is not. Or maybe she is. No one can tell now.

As noon turns to dusk, the girl sits on the rocky ledge and thinks about staying there forever. The golden light pierces through her eyes, so she blinks once, twice, and closes them. She sighs slowly and continues to fade away into her silent melancholy.