She leaned on the balcony and strained to see the stars. That’s all she wanted in this moment. She wanted to rest her eyes on something beautiful this night but alas it looked as if it were not to be. The clouds hung low over the skyline and nothing pierced the veil save the twinkle of a plane’s lights every two minutes or so. There were nights Natalia loved living in the city, times where she couldn’t believe her fortune to be living here at the center of all things. Then there were nights like tonight, when her feet yearned to run through a grassy meadow and her heart longed to hear the laughter of a brook as it ran past. Tonight, Natalia wished she could rest her eyes upon the heavens and see the stars strewn across the sky in all their glory. But tonight her ears were full of wailing sirens and the lights from the building across the street trumpeted in her face and laughed in mockery of all her dreams. Natalia sighed as she folded her arms around herself. She closed her eyes and let her imagination take her far away, back to her girlhood home. She could see the cottage at the end of the driveway, she could see the garden that lay at the back of the yard. She could smell the woodsmoke ascending to the heavens and she could hear the clucking of the chickens too. If she let herself sit long enough with her sorrows, she surely would hear his voice next. Instead, all she heard was the drone of another plane across the city sky.