Lily and the Wonderfalls

Lily was long used to being the only one who could see them or feel their effects. They looked rather like tendrils of milkweed, or the fragile seeds of a dandelion blown for a wish. They floated down from the sky like raindrops over her head, the drops of wonder coating her dark hair like snowfall.

Her head soon became full of them, and because she was full of wonder, every stick she found, every stone and acorn cap and feather was a thing to be marveled at, stuffed into her pockets until they were bursting with bits of moss and cowslip. Her hair was always messy from the constant bombardment of wonder, and she was smudged with grass stains and dirt.

“Lily is so quiet – she needs to speak up more. Her voice is too soft, and she keeps too much to herself. What is going on in that mind of hers,” her grandmother would say at the loud family gatherings, where Lily would quietly color, or read, or glue her sticks into little beings with acorn hats.

Sometimes the wonder would drizzle down in light patches, only giving her a few bright spots in a dreary day, and sometimes it would gush – a verifiable wonderfall that would soak her with absolute awe. On those days she would stare at the sky, dreaming about her life and imagining things to come, pondering questions that had been raised in school or from books or considering grownup knowledge from the conversations overheard at her big family dinners.

“Lily – what did you do at school today? Surely you have something to share. You need to be more sociable, have more friends. Spend less time in your head,” her father would scold.

But Lily had all the company she needed, with her books and her sketchpads and her acorn dolls. Perhaps her perception had started as a baby, honed by the time spent on a quilt in her backyard when her grandmother was gardening. A butterfly would land on her nose, his translucent orange and black wings so large it was like looking through a stained glass window at the sun.

Perhaps it started when she learned to tell time on a dandelion clock or look through a blade of grass held in a circle to see fairies. Or when she wove a long string of daisies into a chain and wore them on her head like a crown.

Or maybe it was in the stream by their house, with its treasures of polished stones and broken shells. The way it burst with life after every heavy rainfall, causing Lily to float boats of leaf down its torrents and waterfalls, only to return back to calm babbling afterward with silver minnows darting between rocks.

Whatever it was, it was hers alone. She learned not to point at the wonderdrops as they fell, or share her vision of what to most looked like mundane, everyday objects. A clump of mushrooms arranged like a tiny village, a leaf shaped like a face about to tell a tale, a pothole in the road shaped like a perfect heart.

One night an older cousin was talking about UV light, a type of light that was invisible to humans, but animals could see. Bumblebees, butterflies, birds, reindeer and many other animals could see this light spectrum, giving them the ability to find food easier, identify gender, and communicate. Reindeer could see mosses growing underneath the snow, bees could see nectar on flower petals, birds could differentiate plumage and coloration, and butterflies could see each other while hiding from predators.

Lily thought that must explain the abilities she had. She alone could see the wonderdrops, and they were invisible to other humans, But not to animals, just like the UV light. That would explain why the wild things in her backyard were just as interested in every bauble as she was, because they too saw the worth in these gifts of nature. When a sparrow would land near her chair and lift a piece of birch bark to carry away for her nest, Lily would think: “she sees it too!”

She imagined bee scientists, analyzing the humans who could see the wonderdrops. They may assert that all humans can’t see the drops whilst bees could, and then after much study ascertain that some humans could, a.k.a., Lily. They may compare that skill to the ability to see the color red, which bees cannot. They may query that if some bees could see the color red, it would also serve as a cause for wonder for them. And that these individuals would be a curiosity amongst their own species, as Lily was amongst hers.

“Lily needs to participate more in class,” her guidance counselor told her parents when she grew older. “She’s a smart girl and does well with her schoolwork. But she is very shy, and it will hold her back in life.”

Her parents enrolled her in after-school activities, sports and dance and music and art. She enjoyed them and excelled, trying her best to be social and fit in. But she would still drift away at times, missing a pop fly in softball as she stood in mid-field, watching the clouds shift into animal shapes instead of concentrating on the game.

“Lily – you need to pay attention. You are part of a team, and we’re counting on you to participate,” her coach would say.

More time passed, and Lily began to grow up. She started high school, and her family rejoiced that she had finally come out of her shell, like one of the snail shells from the stream, now all tossed back to the current. She had friends and belonged to clubs. She played on a softball team, and never missed a pop fly because she was staring at the sky. She liked to go shopping, style her hair, and laugh with her friends at the silliest things.

She felt the drops of wonder less and less often, and then forgot about them entirely. She didn’t even miss them, because she was growing old and growing up, her life filled with the busyness of adolescence. Her grandmother would share a pretty stone she had found in the stream and Lily would roll her eyes.

“Kidstuff.” And her grandmother would miss the faraway look in her granddaughter’s eyes that was now replaced with teenage boredom.

One day Lily sat alone at lunchtime in the schoolyard, unusual for this social girl. She was studying for a test and sitting on the lawn as it was a warm day. A boy sat nearby, a guitar resting on the grass beside him. He was staring at the sky, and it looked like he was seeing something wonderful. Lily looked up, seeing nothing herself at first. But then a cloud caught her eye, torn at its edge and changing shape into a butterfly. And then something else – like a drift of milkweed, or the seed from a dandelion blown for a wish.

She got up and moved to the boy’s side. She could see the white fluff drifting down and settling on his dark hair. He looked up and smiled in wonder, as she plucked the seed and held it, startled.