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Walk on, child. She stumble on.

Her hair is messy, her hands are soaked, her clothes are wrecked, her feet hurt. Yet with every step she breathes life.

The paint she makes her own, forming patterns, expressions, emotions, on the walls of this lonely garden. Giving energy back, tired but beaming. She tugs her daddy's hand closer, he who hovers silently at the door, having just returned from work, worn-down and wearily wiping away the stray splatters that taint his perfect suit. His mind swims with the pull of mundane duties. He feels cold though the sun's rays glow, teasing a peace he can't place. He watches on. She rolls in the mess, plunges both hands into the blue, the yellow, the orange, the colours, with joy swimming in her eyes, the laughter freezes time, holding it with fragile happiness.

A foray of colour splashes the face of the father who was distractedly gazing away from his daughter. He starts, rushing towards her in anger, she cowers back. He pauses, the paint dripping off her dress as she lays back in the pools of colour, her face fearful.

He should punish her, shout at her, grab her and take her inside. Shout, scream, lay out his wasted day on this innocence..

But he holds back, sensing the freedom of this moment, in her face, in the paint, in the life and passion and purity of it all. So he, tentatively, dips his hands into the mixture that lies across the gravel drive and launches a flurry of paint at his daughter. She thrives on the ground, giggling, hopelessly trying to dodge the sea of green flying her way. She tips the pot of yellow her father's way, it trickles across his black, polished business shoes. He flings them off, tips up a huge tub of orange and crashes it against the wall. It explodes over the two of them, as they gasp together, breathlessly. He gathers her in his arms and dangles her bare toes over a full mixture of blue, daring her to squirm free. She escapes and gleefully rushes to the wall with her dad chasing. He watches as she makes her next careful move, pressing her whole body against their scattered masterpiece, the wall soaked in fresh paint. She waits patiently. He takes his time. The joins her, moving towards the wall. The pristine suit now crushed against the damp bricks, he feels a weight lifted as he takes back the hand of his daughter in his own, they turn their faces from the wall to the other, smiling, cheeks coloured with the paint. They step back from the wall and smear more on each other, running in circles, roaming about the garden under the glaring sunlight. The wife, the mother, looks on through a bedroom window, smiling.

This is freedom, this is love, this is beauty.

Learn more about this author, James Hall.
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