Sonya thought he was “the one,” the guy who would get her, who could love a gal who liked to wear gold brocade just for the heck of it, just because life was too short not to wear it whenever the notion took. The guy whose ego was strong enough to withstand a woman who read physics texts for fun, who wrote existential poetry in her dreams, who knew her way around an astrolabe and a Latin prayer book. But no, he was just another disappointment, a man who wanted to see himself in the mirror of her admiration and not bother seeing her at all–not Sonya, with her contradictions and vulnerabilities that sometimes came off as strengths. His Sonya was a drama of his own creation, and for awhile she played along, improvising a persona that would spoon into the curve of his wanting, but now she was tired of play acting, of being his “play pretty.” She no longer knew the why and the wherefore that cajoled her to negate the blue-sky that reeled inside her, the prairie meadow that stretched to infinity ecstatic with corn poppies and primroses and blue bonnets. He wasn’t worth making herself smaller, less than. He thought he was so grand. If he only knew. And how wonderful to escape, to stretch one’s legs, to walk free down a gravel road, even if it were for miles and miles and miles.