Sleeping on the blacktop

Fern

Warm breeze blowing summer smell
Those Friday nights and stars up in the sky
Made me feel so damn alive

Golden hair stretches out in damp arms around her like a half-smothered seastar cushioning her head. Flat on her back, Fern lies diagonally across the rainbow road, making a very inconvenient obstacle and very squishy speed bump for anyone not paying attention to the need to detour. For now, she is blessedly alone, or as alone as a girl can be when her father is acting as sentinel somewhere nearby via a four-legged shadow—she'd wandered from his side some time ago, drawn by one curious thing or another, but she's under no impression she's truly lost him, nor had she meant to. They have spent plenty of afternoons just like this.

Her current focus, and the reason for her roadway hindrance, is watching the rainbows leap into the spray of the geysers around her. The angle of the sun makes this particular viewing spot the best for the full brunt of color and the stretch of the elusive, colorful smiles that shimmer among the mist. "There they are!" she announces excitedly to herself, a hand pointing up and tracing the arc, another hand lifted up to shield her eyes from the Torchline sun. The spray drifts down, freckling her in diamond droplets that bead together and darken the fabric of her clothing.

---

Didn't know that I had found the good times
We were happy as can be
Now it's just a memory that's faded