Dinah laid in the water, her legs floating listlessly before her and her arms flying out to her sides like some misshapen starfish. She drifted on top of the water, completely and totally aware of herself, so much so that she could feel her shoulder length blond hair tickle her shoulders like loose and supple seaweed. As she floated, slowly around the small and lucid pool, her mind also drifted. It drifted to school, to work, to the colors the sun was reflecting off of the clouds, to the area beyond the clouds where hopes and dreams reach escape velocity and burst out among the stars like intangible galactic rockets.

She had been out on the pond for almost an hour, but it felt like longer. It was almost like she had lived a lifetime on the pond, that all she was destined to be was a piece of duckweed floating on a freshwater paradise. In terms of small things, bacteria and such, she had lived a lifetime. She had existed more than several lifteimes, and she spent all of them thinking within her head. Nothing else really mattered, not at that exact moment when her appendages bobbed in their liquid cushion.

Dinah wondered what she would do with her life. What should she do? There were so many roads to take, so many paths to choose, and she had all the time in the world to decide as long as she stayed alive in that moment, that precise moment on the pond. She felt as if the minute she left, the instant a part of her body touched firm ground, time would speed up again and all of a sudden there would be almost no time to decide what she wanted. Time would run out, like water in a sieve and it would be all Dinah could do to prevent those precious little tears from dropping and evaporating entirely. As long as she was in her aqua cocoon time was motionless, solid and firm around her, keeping her safe from the life-altering decisions that awaited her on the shore.

Dinah laid there in the pond. She could feel time itself, she could feel that very moment on her skin, like standing in a warm summer breeze. As she laid there, Dinah noticed shadows had changed on the shore. They were longer, darker, more present than they had been. She was wrong. Time was moving, but only on land. As long as she was in the water, she was safe.

Dinah watched as the sun set on her pond. She watched the sky turn from blue to yellow to red to purple. Then, in her endless drifiting, Dinah felt her foot brush the clay bottom. Her cocoon had been interrupted and she had to re-enter the land of decisions. As Dinah stood, her hair slicked against her head, still trying to keep hold of the precious time as it dripped off her hair. She slowly made her way to shore, desperately trying to hold on to the feeling of timelessness to no avail. As she reached for her towel and felt the rough and foreign terrycloth against her skin, she knew her time was over, and Dinah made her way up the path to the small cottage that awaited her, set back in the trees.