It doesn't come too quickly. 

Some say it comes without warning. 

Some doubt that it's really there, that it's not something perceptible. And they'd be right. 

But they'd be wrong. It exists, in the spaces between the black and white keys on the piano, on the fuzzy border on a pencil where the wood ends and the coloured bit starts.

In the subtle ring of the final note of a symphony.

I remember the scent of rain. The grass rustling beneath my shoes. The gentle squelch of damp earth with each step. My worries and feet anchoring me to the ground.

And there it was. 

I would have missed it if I hadn't caught the glint of it in the rim of my glasses, but there it was, hiding in the little specks of moonlight in the grass. It leaps, and circles the moon. It darts off.

And I give chase. The thump-thump-thump of my feet against the mud drowned out by the night wind speeding past my ears. My pulse drums against the roof of my mouth. Like a horse with blinders, I follow it to the end of the earth, as close as I can get to the dome of heaven above. And I leap.

In a hopeful half-parabola, onto the closest star. 

It hops onto another star a half-light year away, cheekily buzzing and almost fusing with the surface of the hot gas ball. I feel the heat of a few thousand degrees sinking into my hands like a bed of pins into an ice block. My worries turn into dew beneath my palms and I slip.

Down, down, down. 

Until my spine splits on bedrock and my gaze meets the moon. And the hot steam of a wild goose chase billows from my nostrils. I squint at the blue-black above, trying to bend the disk of the moon into a banana shape for fun.

And it comes.

The little glowing blob floats from above, flickering like a spark, fluid like a pulse. It hovers in the air, ruffling the air around it in an ionised fuzz. Like a whirlpool it circles my vision, round and round until my eyes are filled with the glow of it. 

And it all goes dark.

And I finally have it.

That which lives in the light grey of a pigeon's feathers, in the steady flavour of a breath.

In the scent of earth after rain.

An idea for an essay.