Outside

The girl sitting at the green vinyl-covered table was looking out of the window. Beyond the tangled cape gooseberry plant and blueberry bushes were triangular blocks of houses, shapeless outlines against the pale blue sky.
There were fragments of gray-touched white cloud that sat over the feathery outline of a deciduous tree. Each leafless branch was raised upwards, the twigs and branching arms intertwined and overlapping in the distance. Flickers of light from the sky on the black lines.
Then the clouds gathered themselves together in one smooth white arch. Blue deepened as evening approached and the clear blue was shot through with the falling sun that accentuated the tree's branches.

The girl swallowed. There was another world out there that didn't have anything to do with the papers, pens and laptop before her. Sheets of neatly written mind-maps, tiny handwriting. Facts, links and themes all branching from the topics in the middle of the pieces of paper - she was supposed to be forcing that information into her unwilling brain. Even though the sky outside was deepening and the magnolia tree was reaching bony branch-arms into the dining room with tiny buds that were glowing in the evening sun. Impossible. She looked at the screen before her - tiny writing, tiny details that led to one big event.

But it was coming, and she had to study. Had to, otherwise there would be a bad grade that would last in her mind longer than the clouds outside.

- Lydie