Mosaic

Eirlys shrieked with excitement as a gust of wind liberated several helicopters from the limbs of an old maple. She chased one as it whirled and glided through the air. It landed on her shoulder and clung to her white flowery dress and provoked a fit of giggles in the process. She was entering that critical age at which she was beginning to learn where she ended and where the rest of the universe began, creating objects and drawing lines in the world around her through the acquisition of language.

"Kitty!" she shouted as her attention was diverted by the approach of an orange tabby. Scampering towards the furry grail, her legs could no longer keep up with her momentum, and she stumbled, hurtled forward, and planted her chin onto the grassy ground.

Dylan, a locally acclaimed artist, was but fifty feet from his daughter up on a ladder where he had been working on his masterpiece. Upon seeing her trip, he refrained from calling out or running to her and instead watched closely to assess her status. She was fighting back tears that were less the product of physical pain than her growing frustration with her worldly constraints. She defiantly got up and started again at a slower pace--her desire to no longer be an entity separate from the cat unwavering.

The girl's father, now sufficiently assured of his little daughter's continued well-being shifted his focus back to his work. He had always believed that artistic endeavors were a window to the divine, and he too had a need to make sense of the world around him and his place therein. "If we see the world in tesserae, do gods see it in tesseracts?" he mused. This made him think of his own limitations.

Before long, after the cat lost interest in her--or she with it--Eirlys trotted over to her father on the veranda. He glanced downward and playfully stuck his tongue out at her. She picked up a bright orange tile from a stack on the floor, reached up as high as she could, and placed it onto an unadorned spot on the wall. Lacking any adhesive to keep it in place, it fell to the ground and shattered. She was inconsolable.