Damn Balloon

“Damn balloon,” Amethyst said as she sifted through her plastic bag filled with colorful left over pieces of popped balloons. “What am I gonna do with the knot?”
Amethyst was walking through a grassy field near her studio; she needed a break from the smell of super glue and fresh paint. She reached down to pick up the yellow scrap, but much to her dismay, the scrap was unusable. What was she going to do with the knot? Unknot it? As she has been doing this for a while, Amethyst knew, from many failed attempts, that trying to unknot a balloon was merely an exercise in futility. Even if it could be unknotted, which was nearly impossible, the balloon would be way too maimed to glue to paper. She needed flat pieces, bits of plastic that could lie neatly on a page and still allow the scrapbook to close.
She dropped the yellow morsel and kept walking. She wasn’t walking in search of anything in particular, although this portion of field always had something worth looking at.
The hot air balloon field was just across the way, about a forty-five minute drive from her studio. That translated to a five to six-hour non-hot-air-balloon flight. Amethyst timed balloon travel: she knew that your typical plastic balloon, from a kid’s birthday party or something of that style, could fly in the air for about five to six hours before it reached a level in the sky that would pop the balloon and have it fall to the ground in bits and pieces; bits and pieces she collected.
“Even if there weren’t a knot, it’s yellow. I already have yellow,” Amethyst continued her thoughts out loud. Who was she talking to?
Beats me.
Amethyst kept on her way, trudging through branches and piles of leaves that were gathered on the ground. She grabbed for a long sturdy branch and picked it up. After giving it a close one-over, Amethyst held it up in her right hand and stared at it proudly. “My new walking stick,” she said to herself. “I was looking for one of these.” No she hadn’t been looking for one of those, but no matter what it was that Amethyst found, if she liked it, then she was certain that she must have been on a long search for it and she was lucky to have finally found it.
Walking through the field was admittedly easier now that she had her new walking stick. She could move away anything that was in her path as opposed to jumping over it or having to go around it. As eccentric as she was, one couldn’t deny that she was sharp and resourceful. Well, one didn’t necessarily have the chance to deny it - nobody really knew her.
She continued along in search of nothing and everything. Knees up to her chest, she marched along through the cast field. She looked around to take in her surroundings: so green and so wide, so much to explore. Amethyst was familiar with the likes of this field; she traveled it daily. Her studio was but a 45-minute walk away, so on days when the fumes were too strong or when she simply needed some fresh air, she would set out to discover whatever the field had to offer. To any regular Joe, this field was nothing but trees, grass and accumulated fallen leaves, but to Amethyst it was her stomping ground; her home away from home, her chance to uncover the many mysteries of life. That yellow scrap of a party balloon was trash to most, but not to Amethyst. To Amethyst it was a lost memory from little Mitch’s fifth birthday party, or a balloon that had slipped away from a baby’s not-so-tight grip, the same balloon that made a sad, crying baby girl shed her tears or perhaps smile. In this case, Amethyst’s interest in the yellow balloon was abandoned at the sight of the knot, but in most instances, the balloons she found were the beginnings of many adventures.
“Come on stick, let’s keep walking.”