Word Count: 406
She saw it as a dancing pinpoint of light, just out of the corner of her eye. It bowed and swirled and spun as if it were a ballerina with a candle lit to flit across a darkened stage. She saw it at the oddest times, mostly in the night but sometimes in the mid-day sun as well. She’d grown to welcome it, to even love it.
When she was little she told her mother once about it and she was taken to an eye doctor to have it checked. All sorts of fancy tests were done and she remembered how the drops the doctor put into her eyes made her vision so bleary she couldn’t see to walk without being guided. He found nothing. She never mentioned it again and kept it as her secret after that.
It seemed to appear when she was feeling especially joyful. And later, when she was older, exceptionally sad. She learned not to let it distract her if it showed up in the middle of a conversation with someone. She’d watch it for the few seconds it would dance until it disappeared. No one seemed to notice.
It was a comfort to her, a constant in a world that changed around her. Though she made choices that put her in some of those different worlds, like moving across the country east to west to settle in the California seaside. Sometimes she mistook the sun flicking off the rolling waves to be her light.
Then one day it simply stopped appearing. After a week without even the slightest hint of sparkle she started watching for it. Realized that something special might be lost to her forever. It was about the time she started working for a huge software company and rarely saw the daylight because her desk was somewhere in the maze of cubicles created by movable walls.
She never married, but she had a baby who grew into a lovely little girl. The child was her delight and they sang and played games together and she taught her how to play the guitar and to dance.
And while she missed someone to share the moments, to lay in bed with and hold onto through the nights, there was an evening when she saw the light again, for just an instant, as from the audience of parents, she watched her daughter dance just like a ballerina on a stage.
