The impending rain threatened above as Florina squinted to admire the powerful curves of the dark clouds. With a great chilly breath, the clouds blew crackling, brown leaves around in circles, and Florina pretended they were poor ballerinas, making due with their hideous tutus.

“Luckily,” Florina thought, “the leaf ballerinas can dance to the wonderful, rich rhythm of the wind.” She smiled down at the dancers and clapped with delight when they finally bowed and exited the stage; in reality, the shriveled leaves lightly scraped the wooden porch.

Her laughter rang like a tiny twinkling star, and her cheeks blossomed into a rosy pink shade, for she forgot her warm scarf inside her ruddy trunk, tucked under her metal-framed bed. The foster home agency only allowed each child to possess items that could fit in the provided chest. As a result, Florina sacrificed her favorite bedtime books to make space for her sturdy boots, yellow-flowered rain coat, and priceless drawing supplies, consisting of a worn sketchbook, graphite sticks, and kneading eraser. Despite the agency’s requirement to relinquish so much, she promised herself to never abandon her passion for art, for by drawing new masterpieces, Florina kept the memory of her parents alive like an ember, flickering red in the ashes.

Her parents taught her how to hold a pencil and how to move the implement across the blank page with precise and flowing strokes. From her father and mother, Florina breached the confining wall of reality and embraced the hidden imagination and boundless creativity trapped inside every object around her. Flowers became mystical fairies, and happy tears appeared as beautiful glass gems.

“These precious gems,” Florina thought, “are presents for my parents. As they once said, from great despair, beautiful treasures are born.”

When they left Florina forever, she created many treasures every day.

The broken glass all over her parents’ tattered clothes shined like blood-red rubies. Their heads tilted to a side, and Florina imagined they were sleeping, which was odd since one usually slept in a bed and not in a car, especially not one crumbled on the side of the road. Florina shook their shoulders, but they did not stir nor plant tender kisses on her rosy cheeks. Gems poured out of her alarmed eyes as she crawled out of the car. One metal door was smashed in, and all the windows were utterly broken. The glass beads covered the concrete road like a prickly blanket of snow, piercing the soft knees of the girl and leaving a red carpet of blood. After Florina escaped the metal box to safety, she lay down on the concrete road that provided no comfort. Nevertheless, Florina pretended she was reposing on the peak of a magnificent mountain, surrounded by bitter cold snow. From her perch on the mountain, Florina imagined the dreadful scene as a silver jewelry box with its expensive beads of rubies and diamonds spilling out from the cracks. The screeching sirens shattered Florina’s image, and the elegant jewelry box became a wrecked vehicle; upon closer observation, the red rubies were blood-covered glass. Her parents were no longer a wealthy pair of royals dancing in midst of their riches but no more than forever still bodies. Her hot, wet tears--not glass gems--stained her entire face a bright red as Florina realized that she could never return to the innocent land of blissful happiness: it died as her parents did that dreadful day.

“That was a long time ago,” Florina thought. Every morning she recalled their passing as a nightmare. Now, there was no one to lovingly kiss the top of her head, to convince her that nightmares do not exist, and to promise to never leave her side until all the horrific dreams faded away into nonexistence.

“The nightmares can’t get to me if I think about happy things,” Florina thought. In a desperate internal battle, she did so every day.