An Ever-Changing World

If only Lily could remember dropping it.

The voice on the other end of the line continued, unaware that Lily was no longer listening. It was a very self-centered voice, and it could not imagine that Lily could do anything but listen.

She wasn’t, though. Listening, that is. She stopped listening long before the phone slipped out of her fingers. She had a tendency to become quite focused on inanimate objects, spots-on-the-wall, and such. It was an awfully bad habit, and she didn’t know where she picked it up.

The inanimate object she was focused on at that specific moment, though, wasn’t being properly inanimate. It was a spot-on-the-wall, in fact. Normally quite still, it hadn’t moved since the paint had chipped eight years earlier. She’d assumed (wrongly, apparently) that after eight years of sitting still, the spot would continue to do so for the remainder of its existence.

But things have a habit of changing, and the spot, apparently, was no exception. For even as Lily sat watching, it was slowly metamorphosing. Since she’d been on the phone the spot had moved nearly two inches. She could also swear that it was changing in shape, growing, even. She watched it as it developed a teeny-tiny little head, as well as a number of teeny-tiny little legs. Since the legs had appeared, it had begun moving much faster. It was starting to move at a speed that Lily found quite disturbing, in fact.

The voice on the line was still gibbering away, nearly distracting Lily from the spot-on-the-wall. That bothered her. If she got distracted from the spot-on-the-wall, then there was no telling what it might do. It had moved three more inches since she’d dropped the phone, every one of them in her direction. That would be disturbing enough, but by then the spot-on –the-wall had developed a tail. Not a cute, wagging tail, but rather one that was long and skinny, with a little point on the end. It was starting to resemble a scorpion, in fact, and Lily hated scorpions.

So Lily decided to move. That was probably a mistake, she reflected a moment later, for that was the moment she realized that she was now the inanimate one. To be precise, Lily discovered, she had sunk nearly an inch deep into the sofa. Her hands were completely submerged, and she could move nothing but her face. It was very comfortable, but the scorpion thing (for it had long ago left the wall, thereby nullifying it’s existence as a spot-on-the-wall) was drawing ever closer, and she was fairly sure she would eventually want to move.

Then, as they say (whoever they are), the second shoe dropped. Literally. Except that it was only the first shoe, and it didn’t so much drop, as sort of just drip, suspended from her roof. For a shoe, it was rather large, and, she imagined, fairly useless. It had melted from her ceiling, and was proceeding to swing randomly about the room by its laces. It wasn’t very threatening, but she would have preferred for it to be in someone else’s home, for she had enough to deal with without the addition of a swinging sneaker.

For instance, the scorpion-thing, formerly known as the spot-on-the-wall, seemed to be growing wings. Fortunately, the pointy thing on the tail was gone, and it no longer looked so much like a scorpion. But it was getting uncomfortably close.

And if all that wasn’t enough, she still had the jabbering voice on the phone to deal with. It was really beginning to annoy her, especially after the phone grew a head. The head seemed rather out of place without a body, and kept jumping up and down on it’s cord.

Suddenly (if any of this was sudden at all), she noticed an odd sensation. It was, she realized, the same sensation one would have if one’s legs were growing roots. The explanation for that was very simple indeed. One generally only experiences that sensation when one’s legs are growing roots. Which was precisely what was happening to Lily.

The butterfly (once known as the scorpion-thing that was formerly known as a spot-on-the-wall) had begun orbiting Lily’s head, which was now growing leaves. The butterfly was beginning to look suspiciously like a moon. It had, in fact, lost any semblance of a living creature, and had instead taken the form of a tiny grey ball, ducking in and out between leaves and branches in its orbit. It was a strange little thing, but Lily found it quite cute, actually. She’d always wanted a moon of her very own, though it seemed rather unlikely, especially if one brought the laws of physics into the equation. But not very many things seemed to be following their set rules.

The head-phone was starting to get exceptionally annoying. The voice was squawking louder and louder, and it was getting quite grating. Even the little moon was visibly upset. It was wavering in its course, and had even gone so far as to bump into Lily-tree’s nose. She thought idly that she should help it, but being a tree was making it really quite difficult to get motivated.

As the screeching of the voice reached a crescendo, there was an audible "Snap!" Lily-tree had stupidly forgotten the swinging-sneaker (most likely due to the fact that she had a head made of wood), and now its lace had broken. It careened wildly for a minute, then smashed resoundingly into the back of the head-phone. The head-phone flew forward, screaming all the way, and knocked the tiny moon out of its orbit. The moon returned to its former position as a spot (now splat) on the wall. The phone began to fall, the head nowhere in sight. The formerly malleable sofa spat Lily-tree out, severing her roots. Her branches fell into the floor, likely from the shock. The sneaker, mortally wounded, limped its way into her closet, where it passed away quietly. And Lily found herself back on the sofa, safe and sound.

The phone hit the floor.

Startled, Lily bent to pick it up. She lifted the receiver to her ear, listening to the steady stream of words that emerged.

"Lily, hon, what’s wrong?" She couldn’t quite remember the answer, for some reason.

"Sorry, luv. I dropped the phone. Go on." Lily listened as her aunt described the very minor details of her life, and wished that something different would happen, for once.