Heroine

“But where do the ideas come from?”

It was a warm summer evening, sticky, stifling, but his aching limbs were somehow relieved by the lulling intensity of heat. He was tired. Very tired. And it was such an old question.

“Grandpa…”

She was looking at him with wide eyes.

He never could resist those eyes.

“What did you say?”

“I don’t know what to write,” she said. “I want to write, but I—I don’t have any ideas.”

He leaned back in his chair.

“They come to you, ideas. This porch. That tree. There’s a story in all of it. But you can’t look for it. It’ll find you. It’s like love, sweetie, I guess. You can’t force it. When it hits, you’ll wonder why you worried at all.”

“But…”

She hesitated.

He lifted his head.

“But?”

“But you write—about aliens and dinosaurs and the moon and—it’s not real life.”

“Oh isn’t it? And the moon isn’t real?”

“Grandpa.”

He softly laughed.

“Oh it’s real,” he said. “Or don’t you recognize Missy Zed, Savior of the Blue Planet?”

The girl rolled her eyes. She studied her shoes.

“I’m not like that,” she said.

“You are like that every day,” he said. “My perfect little heroine.”