Breathe of Wind

The wind blew up from the sea: cooling, smooth breaths, offsetting the bright warm summer air. The grass churned gently in the wind. The blades were dancers dancing in unison. The sun shined off their smooth green blades.  Across the meadow and down the hill stretched the sea, like a mass of liquefied sky.  Blues and purples and greens whirl-pooled together into roaring waves. They beat onto the surf and tapered into small ripples of water creeping up the sun-bathed sand with foamy fingers.
Legs spread shoulder-length apart, the girl stood in the middle of the meadow. The grass moved gracefully about her legs, as if it was trying to caress them. She stood perfectly still, looking out at the sea. Her eyes were wide to take in all her surroundings and all the sensations. But they were too wide. The sun shone its brilliance, and the light that it radiated fell on white skin. But the skin was too white. Sun-starved.
She looked across the rolling fields of rolling grass, and the rolling waves of the sea, and the rolling wind and the sunlight that rolled over her, and she knew that she was being called.
Her knees began to knock in the anticipation of freedom. Her legs were weak, and still cramped from being stationary for so long. Her muscles cried out to be in motion again. They cried out against decay. And the trembling in them slivered up her spine like a cold snake, and dispersed through her body. And then her whole slender figure was consumed by the shivering of anticipation, of the call; the call of freedom.
And suddenly it was as if she had ceased to exist. No longer was her identity found in the body of the little girl standing in the field. Her identity was rolling with the grass, and crashing with the waves, and shining with the sun, and flying with the wind.
Freedom.
And she began to run with no conscious effort. She did not even know that she was moving. She only knew that the call of freedom was beckoning to her, and that she was rising to meet it.
The wind lifted up the strands of her hair and blew them out of her face. Her tattered clothes no longer hung limp on her body, but wafted over her moving muscles like water. And her eyes were wide enough to take it all in, and exist in it. And they were as bright with life as the sun is with light.
And she was rolling, running, flying, living.
But only for a moment.
There was a breath of freedom, a breath of flight. But then the breath dissipated. And she was left trying to grasp the grains of sand that that seeped through her fingers. For now she was no longer standing, or running. She had fallen to her stomach on the ground. And there was a sharp clamping around her ankle, the grip of an iron fist. And she remembered, for the first time, that there was a milestone attached to her leg.
A smothering sensation filled her head, like a cold balmy hand was kneading her brain. And for a long moment it was as if she was gasping poison into her deprived lunges and not the life-giving air that she so desperately needed. The sun no longer seemed so bright, nor the day so glorious, nor life so brilliant. The bright grass that looked so soft grew out of a hard dark ground. Her head rested on that ground. Her eyes were open, but they were not so wide, nor so bright. They stared, unseeing, lifeless.
It was being a helpless baby left in the corner, with a blanket being thrown over its head. It was trying to scream, but the blanket blocking the passage of air. It was thrashing puny limbs that were quickly weakening, and suffocating on its own screams.
Disappointment.
But the wind slithered through the grass, and whispered across her ear, and breathed a thought of hope.

Reviews

[sagevogel]

Your imagery is suitably vivid; I had a clear vision of the setting. Additionally your description of her being smothered was absolutely superb. You used fitting language throughout the entire piece and in such a short read you successfully presented an entire story. I appreciate how you left so much up to my own imagination as well. One suggestion, take it as you may, is use a more diverse bank of adjectives. There is so much colorful language out there just waiting to be used. Words like green, cold and bright are dwarfed by others like emerald, frigid and vibrant.
A beautiful piece of work, again I admire your competent imagery.