Journeys full of dreams

Every day she would go on a journey. At the beginning she had just gone for walks across the fields near her childhood home, breathing in the fresh clean air, the wind gently lifting her soft auburn curls. Later she had gone cycling with her cousin, sandwiches and a flask of tea in her rucksack. They would lie down in the freshly cut hay and see what shapes they could see in the clouds.They loved the country lanes, the green fields and the little streams. They loved stopping at tea shops or sharing a flask of hot chocolate and telling each other the secrets of their hearts.
One day she had been taken to a new shopping centre and had bought a book on Pub walks. She had done one a day. Climbing steep hills, cutting through heavily forested hills, paddling in streams, stopping to pick wild flowers and then relaxing in a country pub by a roaring log fire.
Her son and his wife organized a whole series of holidays. They brought back beautiful books full of glossy photographs of the places they had visited. They called them coffee table books. So far she had visited Prague, Stockholm, Moscow, Paris, Amsterdam, Australia, Budapest and Rome. She only saw the best parts. They went to America to see the beautiful Autumn colours. It was everything she'd hoped it would be. the red leaves of the sugar maple filled her heart with passion and hope. They went to South Africa and lay in bed watching rhinoceroses bathe. They went to New York to do their Christmas shopping.

Today they were returning from Vienna. They would be arriving any moment. They'd be offered tea and biscuits and push her into the garden. Only then while leafing through the latest coffee table book and seeing the photograph of the famous ferris wheel featured in one of her favourite films, The Third Man, would she look down and be reminded that she was forever trapped in a wheelchair.