“It’s fine,” she muttered again. “Seriously.”

Lost in a world set precisely between never-before and ever-again, she was, of course, only trying to convince herself. Though, in all honestly… she wasn’t doing a very good job of it.

She turned her eyes away as she spoke. She needed just then, she needed still, to keep secret the thought that crossed her mind as she said the words. She knew enough to know turning away said as much as, if not more than, her eyes did. It was only instinct, perhaps, to listen primarily to the voice that begged her to do so. It had always been the loudest.

“Fine,” she repeated.

She closed her eyes.

In the silence that followed, she could imagine a cartoon bubble “Fine” floating in the air just above her head. Floating there, obscuring the moon from view. She let herself think that she had sounded convincing. She would realize soon enough that she hadn’t.

Wordlessly now, she was panicking. She was terrified of being wrong and scared of being right. She was, after all, still very much that same little girl that never once colored a storm cloud without a rainbow on the page. Even before the words came, she had always had images of what it should be… images of right. She was holding on to “right” just then, clenched tightly inside one fist, refusing to let it go. But, she thought, no one needed to know.

She reminded herself not to cry. Not then. Not yet.

After a powerfully long pause came the reply, “Yes, but… it’s… not.”

She expelled an enormous sigh and opened her eyes to find that if she did let herself cry, she would not be alone in doing so.

“I know…” she confessed, “I’m just not sure why.”

Remembering back to childhood days, to the empty page… she suddenly recalled that she always, always, drew the rainbow’s outline first, sketching it in black and white against a purple-blue, cloudy sky.

Tears came fast and hard when she realized why.

“I... I know why," she finally managed. "Never mind.”

“Rainbows?”

She nodded, whispering almost inaudibly, "Right".