Put your face close to the creek the next time you sit by it, but don't look at your reflection – look though it. Frogs enjoying their evening around a pebble, right? Glitter, of course, courtesy of the wet sun. And when you part your lips to exhale the early morning air, if you sit calmly and allow yourself to see it, the mirror of the creek will reveal the world of Bella Sara. 

It's been so long since 2007, when I must have started playing the card and PC magic horse game. I'm sure Petalhome Castle is now a cluster of blackened stumps, no longer the magnificent palace with living oak turrets and flower carpets. The palm trees in the Rose Valley desert are no doubt drooping like a sad woman's shoulders, hardly as proud as they were nearly 20 years ago (she hurts like I do). But, while most of these enchanted places have, admittedly, eroded in my memory anyway, I'll always remember my time in the Canter Farms stables, brushing my horse. 

Now I wonder, who was the horse? 

Could it have been Ivy that I tended to with that dense grooming brush, the chocolate curls of her hair entwined sweetly with vines? Or was it Bella herself, the muscular mare queen with a mane made of stardust, whose elegance and intelligence were simply tools with which she could transmit her message: "Think positive every day! Feel the bliss of joy and energy that comes with it." Or, in Russian: "Светлые мысли порождают добрые дела, а добрые дела приносят радость!"

I want to say I gave Bella oats and apples for breakfast. I scooped out the dirt from her hooves so she could walk on cobblestone as well as on water – a blessing from her friend, the child goddess Sara. 

I used to pray for that kind of buoyancy. I want to be made totally in Jesus' image. But I could never walk on water. I'd hold my breath before I jumped in the pool, and I still sank directly to the bottom.

Looking into a creek, that's something I can do. Miracles, that's something I feel. Alone in the woods, I sense the wind carrying a stampede of memories: a swarm of unicorns and purple horses, the child goddesses who once brushed their hair online. None of God's humility. 

I'm ashamed. We were vain, enjoying when Snowdreamer – spots of poinsettias around her tail like freckles – would tell us indulgently, "Be brave enough to go wherever your dreams take you." 

At times as an adult, I've paid for following that advice. But the part of me that's still a child, that sees the child in my sister and people that played Bella Sara online – our heartstrings glow with decadence, and this braids us together. 

Silver on the summer breeze, one of us is singing:

there was bella, 
white as a forgotten dream
i brushed her with great tenderness
and i kept her house and hooves clean
she only ever stood, silent and unknowable
a beast belonging neither to flesh nor me
but i loved her ferociously
because she was alone 
unless she was being led by her rope
and for that i felt we were the same

 – Bee Wertheimer

And now I should lay in the moss to dream of vanilla. 

Vanilla is Bella's favorite food. It smells like my perfume and frosting. 

I'd like to make everyone frosting from my love. 

I'd like… for midnight to come early, so that I can wish for good luck, a horseshoe, and the frosting of my audacious childhood to move in where the pain lives.