It started with a piece of paper and a pen.
Scarlett had been mildly bored - not the deep creative boredom of last week, just the ordinary kind - when her mum appeared in the doorway with an idea.
“Let’s make a map,” she said.
“Of what?” said Scarlett.
“Of everywhere we’ve never been that’s less than an hour away.”
Scarlett looked sceptical. “We’ve been everywhere near here.”
“Have we?” said her mum. “Name five places.”
Scarlett opened her mouth. Then closed it again.
She could name the supermarket. The school. The park they always went to.
Five actual places?
“Exactly,” said her mum, and handed her the pen.
They spent the morning looking things up - real things, nearby things, things Scarlett had driven past her entire life without ever once stopping to wonder about. There was a nature reserve fifteen minutes away with a hide where you could watch herons. There was an old mill that had been turned into a museum. There was a hill with a view of four different counties if you stood in exactly the right spot.
“I didn’t know any of these were here,” said Scarlett.
“Neither did I,” her mum admitted. “We’ve lived here for years.”
They went to the hill first.
It was windy and the path was muddier than expected and Pudding found something deeply suspicious in the hedgerow and had to be firmly redirected. But when they reached the top and stood in the right spot and looked out at what turned out to be a genuinely extraordinary view, Scarlett felt something open up in her chest.
“I can see so far,” she said.
“You can,” said her mum.
They stood there for a long time, not saying very much.
On the way back down, Scarlett found a feather - long and dark, possibly from a crow - and put it in her pocket.
That evening she stuck it on the map, next to a small drawing of the hill.
“We’ve only done one,” she said to Lenny.
“Plenty of summer left,” said Lenny.
Scarlett looked at the map. At all the places with their names written in her best handwriting, waiting.
“It’s funny,” she said. “I thought there was nothing near us.”
“There usually is,” said Lenny. “We just have to remember to look.”
🫶 Dream big dreams.