She's got a million pieces of paper lying around her desk, stapled to her walls, taped onto her furniture. Tens of thousands of post-it notes flake off as the fan twirls around her head, covered in glow in the dark stars that swirl together into a giant glowing tornado in the ceiling. Her clothes are nothing exceptional, except on her they look like like magic. Nothing ever fits her, and it's not that she can't find the right size, it's just that clothes don't seem to go with her. She looks like she's about to burst free in a million different directions. She looks like she's on the verge of something exciting and she's about to explode. Her clothes always look as if they cannot contain her.

She sits in her room, amid those papers and post-it notes that are covered with quotes from books that mean so much to her. Things she never wants to forget. There is a television in the corner collecting dust. Her parents bought it for her years ago and it has never been used. The computer in the other corner is equally dusty, and covered in more post-it notes than even the television. She has a stack of papers, books, journals, and other things covered in words, all piled up on her left. She has a box of crayons, another of markers, a jar of pencils, a sharpener, and more tubes of glitter than you've ever seen, all sitting on a table to her right. She's lying in the middle, on a bed that's broken and old. She's lying in between the input and the output, and she's staring at the lit-up tornado in the ceiling.

There is no real light in the room, except the stars on her walls and the faint glow that comes from the moon outside her window. It's not anything worth mentioning, but there is barely a sliver of a moon, moments away from eclipsing into darkness. There are no streetlights, and there are no cars, and there are no other lights on in any other houses. Everyone is sleeping, even the crickets that used to be singing in the bushes outside.

Her walls are alight with constellations that were carefully crafted from detailed maps of the heavens. Her ceiling is devoid of such stars, however, because she cannot reach high enough to put them up there. Her room has no door, and the ceiling is so high above her she feels like she's in a cave. The spiralling tornado seems to move and shift and change as she stares at it without blinking.

The hum of the air conditioner and the far-away bark of a dog are the only noises that reach her ears, which are drowning in a puddle of her tears. She has nothing to be sad about, because her life is completely perfect. She has nothing to be happy about, because she has no one.

Quietly and softly she sits up. She looks down at her hands, and she can see right through them, and through her knees, and to the bed that should be creeking. Placing first one foot on the old carpet on the floor, then the other, she walks to the window. It has no glass, and she puts both her head and shoulders through it. The tears continue to fall, and they clatter to the ground like foreign rain drops.

The moon dissapears behind the earth's shadow and the world is quietly darkened. She steps out of the window and floats in the air, her hair not fluttering in the wind. Her clothes not rustling in the wind. Her tears falling due to a gravity that doesn't control her body.

With jealousy and nothing else, she turns aroud to face the window. Inside is a girl, covered in blankets and sleeping soundly, a light smile on her lips. The stars shining on her walls are illuminating enough for the floating girl to see the sleeping girl's body rise slowly underneath the blankets with every single breath. The tv isn't dusty, and neither is the computer. Papers and post-its are not so littery, and the ceiling is not so high. The window has glass, and the door is shut. Another few tears sprinkle the ground beneath her feet.

The sky in the east is tinged with colour as tear by tear falls to the ground. The floating girl looks back in through the window at the sleeping girl, as her body slowly fades away. The sun rises higher, and her tears continue to fall as she presses her hands on the window pane. She can barely see her reflection in it now, the sky is burning pink, and she sees that she is beautiful. The tears streak down the glass and the sleeping girl turns, her face now brushed slightly pink from the rising sun.

And the girl outside fades to nothing, as she cries because she wishes she was the sleeping girl. Her tears dribble over the glass, as she wishes she could give away her beauty, her adventure, her grandeur, her exotic nature, to be the sleeping girl for just one day. And as the tiniest bit of the sun peeks up between the neighboring houses, and the first car drives down the street, she dissapears completely, for she is only a Dream.

The sleeping girl's eyes flit open and she walks up to the window, wet running lines still slowly creeping down its surface. She yawns. "It must have rained last night," she thinks. The scenery outside is beautiful, but it doesn't make her any happier. "I wish I could be someone else," she smiles bitterly to herself. "I wish I could be how I am in my dreams. Beautiful, adventurous, grand, exotic... I wish I could be her. Just for one day."

The sun comes up in its full glory, and smiles on the irony of the thousands of sleeping girls waking up and the thousands of dream girls fading away.

Fin.