Words becoming reality

“Does this sound right?” I asked, highlighting a paragraph in the Word document.

Ethan leaned diagonal toward my laptop. His hand stayed by his chin as he always did while thinking. “As they rounded the corner, the portal came into view.”

I shuttered. It was always strange to hear my written words out loud.

“The portal hovered an inch above the ground between a couple of trees. Wait. Let me get a pen.” He reached down toward his backpack.

My heart leaped. I watched him fumble for a pen.

He kept his eyes in two places: on the page or on my words. “Okay. So is it more like an oval or rectangle?”

“Oval. Well, shaped as tall and skinny like a rectangle, but curved edges.”

“Got it.”

His pen traveled across the page in quick rushed movements. “And it’s in a forest right?”

“Yeah.”

“Let me draw some trees.”

The trees took a second to draw. Nothing fancy. But I didn’t need anything fancy. Neither of us did.

He glanced back up. “Various lines of colors moved in and out of an unwritten path. They didn’t seem to be moving in a certain way, but the portal’s form never changed. So, the colors go in and out of it?”

“Well, it can.” Not what I was going for though. “The colors stay inside of the shape and move around, but none of them move in a certain path.” Me—being the control weirdo I am—took the pen from him. “More like this.” I drew lines.

“Oh. Gotcha.”

I let the pen drop as I turned back to my laptop. Words mixed around on the Word page. “How about: Various colors flowed inside of it on an unwritten path. They didn’t seem to move in a certain way, but the outline never changed? Is that better?”

“Tons.” He leaned over again. “In some open specks between the magic, tiny green images from the forest behind were visible.” He drew trees behind the portal, but it was hard to distinguish them since they were from the same colored pen. “That sounds good.”

I took a picture of his drawing before we left class. He kept repeating that it was too rushed; he could make a better one. We both knew he could’ve done more, but I didn’t care.

No one had the courage to draw my words before. I wanted that moment marked in stone.