Children's Hour

We stood and raced up the grassy hillside again, our laughs echoing down to our friends who were slower to follow. You reached the top first and fell backwards comically, a half-pratfall overindulgently performed, and so you sat up, rubbing your bruised head ruefully. I grabbed your grass-stained hand and pulled you up, whirling us about and casting our eyes out towards the miniature houses and cars below, towards the faultless evening summer sky whose blues melted into the cascade of a thousand colors in the horizon.

Soon, it would be all over, and our parents would send siren calls beckoning us towards home, towards the drudgery and reality of routine.

But not now.

"GO!" you yelled, and we rolled down the hill and all I could see was a nauseous whirlpool of green and blue and so I closed my eyes and when I opened them up the whirling form of the others whipped by and I heard you shout when you hit a rock but still we rolled until we reached the soft,wet depression sown with emerald grass and we came to a stop, laughing and yelling.

We stood and climbed again.