#07 Treehouse

She wanted to live in a treehouse. She used to imagine building one on the large banyan tree at the corner of her street. To have stairs in the form of mushrooms embedded in the dark crusted trunk, and the draping whiskers of the banyan be the handrails leading her up to the hut. Inside, there’ll be little oil lamps and fairy lights to brighten up the pillow clad room. There will be fluffy blankets, bowls of buttery popcorn at the ready, plenty of sketchbooks and drawing tools to doodle with, and a mini library!

Or at the very least, she wanted to have a place where she can host meetings for the secret club she co-founded with her best friend.

But she lived in a city where trees were planted in the middle of car-filled roads for decoration. Where living rooms were too small to build a permanent fort that doesn’t need to be disassembled so the table can be used to set dinner on it. And where public parks were so small that she had to wait up to half an hour to get her turn on the swing. There simply was not enough space.

But she never gave up on the dream to have a treehouse – only perhaps not for herself. Instead, she began to make flower-houses for the fairies that came to visit her garden.

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My grandma had a balcony filled with potted flowers and I used to imagine fairies coming in to stay there when they bloomed.