Playing with words

You grow elemental

Enchanted, you wander past the lemon grove to lounge under a Magnolia tree. Cradled by a hammock, you rock. Squirrels swish branches, a hummingbird hinges on air as the leaves filter your feelings, lightly.

Closing your eyes in a summer sigh. Life is good, especially when it’s time for a nap.

Except for that trickling sound.

Something is leaking!

Reluctantly, you rouse yourself to investigate the source.

Climbing the rope ladder to your tree house, you head down the hall to the lofty library. As you open the door, all your confidence drains out.

Bound up for generations, your antique encyclopedias have roosted comfortably on the top shelves for decades. Until now!

All the volumes of inherited wisdom are scattered spread-eagled on the shelves, flailing and flapping their pages in a dewey decimal disorder.

What’s happening? You grab a distressed volume and leaf through its pages. Unanswered question marks tumble out, but otherwise, the pages are bare. You grab another volume — Nothing! just an irritable colon:

You appear to have lost all your meaning.

A portrait of Great Gramma looks down at you sternly from the marble mantle…