Source: Write On Prompt Generator
Response: The balloons rose like so many multi-colored candy drops into the pale blue sky. How many were there? she wondered. Six? Twenty six? Six hundred and twenty six? The brightly-colored balloons drifted all about her as far as she could see - an unfolding of a hidden color-by-number pattern large enough to coat the sky.
The wind whipped her blond curls across her face. Her fingers gripped the side of the basket with an intensity only brought on when exaltation is paired with terror. The balloons rose to sweeping, impossible heights - leaving the leathery surface of the earth far beneath.
Up and up and up they sailed, above the clouds. Beyond the arctic wastelands and Palestinian wonders. High above the rumbling ocean breakers and towering mountain peaks. Over scorching deserts they floated, and bustling cities.
And upward still they traveled. Past the moon's cratered face they drifted and through mazes of glittering stars the entourage of wonderful balloons went.
To the very edge of the horizon - to the green light at dusk - to the cusp of imagination the balloons carried her.
And if she closed her eyes they went higher still - to the pearly gates of heaven, to the wondrous banks of billowing sky giants, to the homes of angels. With her eyes closed and her hair drifting around her face in a cloud, she could imagine that the balloons would never land - that the candy drops would travel onward, upward, farther and farther until they had surpassed the reach of time itself; that the ride would never end.
But when she opened her eyes, the balloons were nearing the ground. The concourse set down in a field and she wished with all her might that she could be going upward still.
Notes: Feeling better today? Oh yes, just enough to make this more or less than melancholy. I liked this prompt so much I had to post a picture (found through Google search).
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