When you are blind, your world becomes very small.

Molly picked her way down the stony shore of the lake, her bare feet questing for each step.

They think you cannot do the same things they can. You are either overly helped, or utterly ignored.

She winced as a sharp rock pierced the bottom of her foot, faltering for a moment. No one called out to her. No hands reached for her elbow. Molly smiled to herself despite the pain, and continued down to the water.

Eventually your room becomes as much a cage as a haven. When you are not being useful you are unnecessary. An accessory at best, to be trotted out and admired, and placed back on its shelf to be kept safe.

The water was cool on her toes and she eagerly waded in despite the chill. The darkness was married to the water, and her world expanded to match. Little fish fled from her steps. A frog leapt out of the lake twenty meters away, along the shore. Molly lifted her feet and swam through the glittering substance that surrounded her, her minds eye open to the lapping waves and everything underneath them.

She turned slowly to her back and floated, a cork in the middle of the water with her face toward the warm sun. The light did not pierce the darkness she had been born with, but she could see the fish swimming deep below her, sense the roots drinking in the lake, spreading upward into the trees at the shoreline. Compared to her basin, the lake was almost unimaginably huge.

One cannot blame the bird for flying away.

This was freedom.