The Window

It began with a room not unlike the one I grew up in. A little drafty, with various spider friends coming to visit periodically. But unlike me, the girl of this story didn't mind the spiders.
A big window stretched across one wall of the room; a window outlined in purple curtains of mother's choosing. The girl would rather have orange, like her old fat cat, but that's the way things go sometimes.
Even so, the girl mostly kept the curtains pulled back, letting the light of shifting seasons push through double paned glass with admirable persistence. These days the light shone softly; it was Old Winter light, not as misty as January, but not unfiltered like April or May.

This one morning the girl stood, as she usually did, in front of the window, one shoe not quite tied, her hair not completely in braids (some loose ends were quickly unraveling, those pesky things). The rest of the house was in the midst of morning bustle, voices repeatedly calling too loudly to each other:
“Don't forget!”
“Do I ever?”
“Do you really want me to answer that?”
“Are you ready for the bus?” Not so much a question, more a word of warning I suspect.
The window glimmered unevenly under the pressure of relentless morning rays and greasy finger prints made only so high. The girl could see the remainder of her latest smudges: a roughly constructed face. She had been bored, or perhaps in need of a companion, she guessed. It was a little fuzzy now.
The high white walls quivered as the front door slammed.
“Are you ready?” the voice called again. The girl barely began to turn on her heel, when the face in the window appeared to move, just slightly.
She paused.
Maybe it had just been a trick of the light. Then again, characters always assume that in the beginning.

Once the girl had gone, back to schedules and regulations, shadows in the room slowly twisted, shifting as the sun revolved up, up, and over. All the while the face in the window smiled, waiting patiently.

But when the girl arrived home again, all thoughts of windows, grease smudges and faces had been pushed to the back of her consciousness. While she immediately shut her door to escape the winding tendrils of busy energy permeating through the rest of the house, she went to her little brown desk instead of her favorite spot at the window. Good girls do their homework when they're told, so I've heard, and though the girl couldn't be considered wholly proper and well mannered, even she owned a pair of goody two shoes.
Yet the face on the window watched her.

Muted by heavy clouds, the sun began to sink. The face changed as the minutes cycled by, more dimensional and pronounced. The few smudged lines spread, rounding out to a well developed cheek, nose, eye, eyebrow, chin indention... until an entire set of human features seemed to leap out from the glass.
Still, the girl did not notice.

“The sun is going down, you know, you'll miss the sunset.”
The girl squeaked a little, and rightly so; I would have too if I heard a voice and turned to discover a window talking to me. Her braids whipped around, eyes two round circles on her face.
“You like to watch the sunset.”
She watched the translucent lips move. She blinked. “Um, well, yes, but... I didn't finish my school work last time. Mother said not to waste time when grades are concerned.”
“You like to watch the sunset,” the face repeated, “Didn't you paint it a few times before? I remember. I was just a small smudge back then.”
The girl dropped her pencil and inched closer to the window, eyes scrunched up and mouth quirked, “How long have you been around?”
“A few weeks I should say,” the face wriggled a bit, which must have looked quite funny, considering it was nearly a floating head. “I started out as a smudge two Mondays back. You'd noticed a little blue bird chirping relentlessly and pressed your nose against this here glass.”
“You're a nose smudge!” the girl smiled.
“I was at first” the face replied, “Then you traced the pattern of a lady bug crawling on the glass, hence my jaw. That was the Thursday following.”
“What about your eyes? They look a little funny.” The girl sat herself down in front of the face, craning her neck upwards to peer at it from different angles. I do admire her so, the plucky thing.
“Your fault,” the face quipped, cheerfully. “Sunday. The hanging flower pots the neighbors put up that morning.”
“Ooh.”

“You're missing the sunset,” the face reminded her.

The girl looked through the face and gazed at the rich purples and golds expanding across the sky, partially hidden by treetops and houses and telephone poles. The purple reminded her of her cousin's freshly painted periwinkle nails. The last time she saw those nails her cousin's hands were clasped around a dead bird they'd found. She remembered the distorted angle of the neck, how beautiful it was.
But she twisted her head around to the lonesome desk in the corner of her room, furthest from the window.
“You haven't come to the window nearly as much this week, you know.” The brows on the face furrowed, as well as a window face can furrow.
“Mother says I should tend to my studies. She says I have lots of... what did she say? Oh, potential.”
“What do you say?”
The girl paused.
“Academics are important-” she began.
“Yes, yes, they have their place. Not to say you should completely disregard them, but that's still your mother talking.” The face bobbed impatiently, “What do you say?”
“That's not fair!” she protested, “I do think my school work is important! I like it, sometimes. I like figuring things out, and learning. But-”

“What fills you with joy?”

The girl's eyes flicked outwards, to, and through the window, through the gaps in the trees, through the deepening hues of the sky, through the few birds passing by, through the hints of stars, through the thick air as it grew in size and decreased in density, all the way to something she couldn't even see with her own eyes. All of it, and more.
“Have you thought of it?” the face's crystallized voice was gentle, almost like a soft hum of a harp string.
She did not answer. Her knees drew up, her arms wound around to clasp them to her chest. She imagined the glass was no longer there, and if she reached out a small hand, she could caress the very texture of the sky.

Time passed. Minutes? Hours? I couldn't begin to tell you. By the time her eyes focused back to the reality of her little room and the window just inches from her nose, the sun had set, and a spatter of stars and street lights filled her vision. She blinked.
“Oh!” she remembered the face. She leapt up, switching on her light, and scanning the window. But no well-defined face was there. Only a collection of faint smudges, varying in size and frequency.
She looked up. The closest streetlight reflected a strange shaped light, warped within the fog descending upon the evening.

“5 minutes until dinner!” a voice outside her bedroom door pierced through the pocket of silence the girl had been encased in.
Slowly, she raised her hand, pressing the pad of her index finger to the glass, and began to draw.