Escape

Her father’d said it first.

“What should I paint?” she’d asked.

“Paint your imagination.”

So she had.

An artist, and the love of her life, had painted the same grand, sweeping pastel strokes, stopped to rest on a key-shaped bridge of blue, and so, been recognized.

Magic revealed their future home the same way -- rain fading the newspaper colors through to the advert, the familiar rainbow-bridge of their combined imaginings appearing.

Too soon, hospital wall paper, pieces torn away, revealing the old patterns in an eerie, familiar representation. Pressing her hand, she whispers, “Let’s do it! Let’s take the bridge!”