It was midday, just past the moment when the sun shone brightest, an hour past when it caused me to shed my flannel, when I first saw her. Fatigued shoes hung by laces from her fingertips and her naked feet lightly touched the mulch of dirt and bark and pine nettles covering the path around the lake. She walked as though she had always been barefoot, as a fawn prancing through mulberry. Her legs, lengthy and marked with blemishes of mud from puddles formed by nighttime rain, walked, then skipped, then leapt in a perfect arc over a fallen birch to land in a puddle half her size. She was immaculate and the sun shone perfectly around the back of her disheveled blonde hair and lit the water as it broke into hundreds of droplets, rose through the sweetness of the air, and came falling all about her, soiling her newly-tanned skin and the yellow sundress hanging loosely from straps about her shoulders. Her teeth appeared through a childlike grin and illumined my mood instantly. She giggled the laugh of joyful essence, accepted the mess made of her dress, and relished it, then journeyed on in exultant silence. My body abandoned its weight and I ran anxiously to the puddle and continued the dance in her spirit.
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