Lucy gazed at the kites zig-zagging overhead. There was no other direction to look but up, not in this gale. 

Do not fly a kite if there is a risk of thunderstorms or lightning. 

Had their pilots never heard that warning? She had taught that to her Year 5 students; needlessly, she had thought at the time since her pupils preferred screens to playing outside. It would never have occurred to them to recreate Benjamin Franklin’s infamous experiment. A less fortunate consequence of their technology addiction was their poor penmanship. Months later, she would joke about grading the scrawls on the get well cards they had sent her. She had been optimistic about recovery then. 

The kites eventually disappeared. 

Brought down voluntarily or blown adrift? She wondered. The clouds released buckets of rain and the lawn quickly became a small pond. 

Lucy was surprised how much she remembered, how coherent her thoughts were. On the Samsara form, one of several at the hospice where she had been transferred to after every ounce of hope had been exhausted, she had ticked the box that said ‘Flora’ and left the rest blank. Foggy from morphine, there had been no room in her mind to consider which her personality was most like: flower, shrub or tree. She had been so worn out, all her willpower used up in her quixotic fight against that wretched disease. What wouldn’t she give to be as sturdy as that beech tree a few metres away. Had she made greater effort back then, she was sure, she would not have been this worried about her stem snapping. Funny how these cycles perpetuate; the cancer had been in her spine too. 

The storm subsided into a drizzle. Finally steadied, Lucy was relieved to be still intact save for three or four petals. 

The sun reemerged, but only to bow goodbye. After the purples and pinks of the evening sky faded, and an orchestra of crickets that had miraculously escaped drowning started their nocturnal chorus, she slowly turned her face back east. A cold crescent moon that barely illuminated anything looked back at her. It made her sad. 

The ability to feel in this state was another surprising discovery. 

But there wasn’t time to dwell on that. Right now, a pair of pesky mosquitoes were making a loveseat out of her disc florets. She wondered if they too had been transubstantiated and if so, why had they made this peculiar choice? She thought back to the Samsara form and its blur of options. Perhaps she should have chosen to be a citronella. 

The stars in the sky were unmoved. They were not the wish-granting type. 

“Oh well”, Lucy sighed. “At least, I wasn’t transformed into an insect.”