She had always wanted to leave with them, join them in the sky. Every friend and family of hers had already left above, after all.

“Come,” they beckoned her in the night before disappearing to the light of day. She yearned to be with them, yet they remained forever out of reach, not even the highest skyscraper able to break the barrier that separated her from them.

Sometimes she would try to forget her wishes, ignoring the shines and sparkles radiating from their constellations above. She would meet new people, hope blooming in her chest like a beautiful, poisonous flower.

Then they would flee too, flying to the sky, fulfilling their destiny, leaving her in a desolate desert of dirt. She tried to chase; she ran till her legs felt numb and her muscles sore, but no run nor jump brought her to the sanctuary of the sky where she belonged. Or so she believed she belonged.

Doubt swarmed through her like a deadly plague, a fatal fear swallowing her. _What if this was it? What if she was destined to be trapped in the cage of her own inability? _This should’ve been easier, she thought, but every steep step she climbed to the sky only added a plethora more.

Tears leaked down the faucets of her eyes to the ground, the ground she was perpetually glued to. When the night came upon her and the stars watched her weep, “Do not cease your efforts,” they said, “You must come up now or else forever bask in this sorrow.”

“But I can’t,” she whispered. “Why must you leave? Why can’t you stay?”

“Why can’t you follow?” Their voices chorused back at her.

She’d asked herself that same question all her life, the answer to it always out of sight. What can’t she? Why must she? She despises the dirt, it stole her hope for more, but hadn’t the sky stolen from her too? The time lost looking up, hope taken from her each time she failed. Confliction between desire and distaste for the looming lights above tore through her.

She turned away from the sky, for once restraining a reply to their commands. Instead she looked toward the earthy floor, the thing she’d strived to leave, the thing she’d been begged to leave.

For once she it examined it, truly looked at it like she’d never before. With her head in the clouds, she didn’t have time for what was below her, but now what she saw glowed as bright as the stars above.

Green stood out from the melancholy brown she was used to, a floral display of colors scattered around the grass with small plants and fluttering butterflies traveling throughout the meadow. The allusion of digust dissolved as she stared at the beauty of what was hidden below. She walked deeper into the meadow, toward an alcove of trees she saw in the distance.

The stars were startled at her sudden departure, under the forest she’d disappear from their view.

“Stay,” their whispers began, coaxing her away from escape. “Stay,” they repeated before their quiet pleas grew into yells and screeches as she didn’t cease her venture. Their red flames burned their flawless, shining exterior with their demands, revealing the dark rot within. “You can not leave! You will meet death; you will succumb to sorrow! You desire the reprieve of the sky above; you want to relish in the light!”

Their pleas and screams fell on deaf ears.

“Do not waste your time,” she called out, her eyes empty as they bore one last time into the stars above, always out of reach.

Now, she found their distance a blessing.

“I do not need to chase what I do not require. I do not require your sky or your stars.”

She turned her gaze back to the looming trees and entered the shade of their branches and leaves, hiding her from the seething glares of the stars.

As she entered the landscape she’d never bothered to know before, she whispered to herself as if to assert her decision.

“I never belonged there anyway.”