I still remember those old times.

Before memory was fully crystallized.

Kept liquid under the glow of a single reading light.

How bored I was then.

Even as I was taken to different worlds.

I am not sure I would have gone on my own.

***

I was carried there.

Borne by the words of my mother.

My younger sister the only other passenger.

The glow would lift me up to places I had never existed.

The only guides my mother and the pages she read from.

Safe and sound even as the tension rose.

***

Every voice was hers even as the most grand scene was enacted.

I did not know how special of a talent that was.

Content to pick at my teeth and fingers as the mind wandered.

It was only after those days were over when I realized.

That I had mistaken clarity for boredom.

After those moments the light had been turned out and had already been long since crystallized.