"Reality leaves a lot to the imagination."
— John Lennon
The girl from the meadow did not stay to watch the evening fade. She went down to the reeds by the water, sat among them in a gown the colour of dusk, and began to play.
Her instrument is small, a box of wood with metal tongues, and she plays it with her thumbs. The tune is simple, but the reeds go quiet to listen. A blue mist rises from the water. Then, out of the mist, a ship appears: three masts, red sails, sailing not on the sea but through the air, between the stalks of grass, at the height of her shoulder.
Nobody in the realm had ever seen the sea from this meadow. She did not need to. She played the sea into being, and then she played a ship to sail it, and as long as the music lasts, the ship will keep going, wherever she sends it.
That is the power no other creature has. The others see only what is in front of them. She sees what is not there yet, and makes it come.
"Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand."
— Albert Einstein
The second half of a diptych: in Time of Bright Youth the heroine reveals herself; here she acts, sending the magic ship of imagination out to sea.
(Fine Art Photography. Created in 2014.)
