Purple Dreams

She looked up as if expecting me, or maybe just the wind— it was hard to say. A teacup floated beside her, steam curling into the shape of a sleeping cat. "Stories," she said, "make the world wobble just a little less. Do you have one about a cloud that forgot how to rain, or a fox who dreams in third person?" I didn’t, but she didn’t mind. She handed me a pebble that hummed, and a leaf with a tiny map drawn in dew. “Follow this only if you grow tired of gravity,” she said, vanishing into the ivy, like mist fading from a memory. I stayed a while, just in case she came back— and because the mushrooms had started to sing.