When I was little, I used to imagine that the sky was actually made of water, like the ocean. And that the clouds were really the white caps of humongous cresting waves and if you looked REALLY hard you could see the movement of living beings under the calm blue surface or the depth of swirling stars beyond that.
I wondered if it was the bottom of another world, in the same way that our oceans are the bottom of ours. Are they also the sky to another dimension ? After all, their depths have never been fully explored, the same as the galaxy.
I liked to imagine myself swimming in the sky, among the clouds and floating galactic whales, to dive down as deep as I could and pop up in a new world.
I’ve always been obsessed with water, calmed by its beauty, intrigued by the fact that it contains another world of living creatures and intimidated by its vastness and power, all at once.
I would read books where the main character could travel through worlds by jumping into lakes or whirlpools, even puddles. Puddles were my favourite portal to imagine since there were so many in my real life. I would make sure to jump in all of them, wearing my bright yellow rain boots, just in case. I played computer games where the princess would lean over a pond and see a sparkle far below, that materialized into a seahorse-dragonfly hybrid, popping out of the water and urging her to follow it.
Alice in Wonderland and The Little Mermaid were especially magical movies to me (convinced I was going to be a mermaid when I grew up). Even as an adult, I still wonder when I see a rabbit or a butterfly rush past me if I should follow it.
The water soothes me and fascinates me.
It will always feel enchanting to me, a place where my overactive imagination can run wild. It keeps alive that tiny spark inside that still believes that maybe magic does exist and we just can’t see it. ∞