When I ran away from home, a quilt accompanied me. The patchwork blanket was where I built my makeshift homes in secret fields. Over time, it became home to more than just myself. The rips and tears in its pattern were doorways for crickets and windows for little beetles. Visiting ladybugs tickled my ankles from underneath prairie stars and daring caterpillars would inch down a highway of morning glory embroidery. Ants often requested entrance to the pages of my books, not looking for knowledge so much as seeking unknown crevices in which to burrow their shiny sable bodies, not knowing that with a turn of the page they would become inky additions to the story in my hands. I didn’t want to hurt them, but adventures had to continue, journeys had to reach completion, and happily ever afters had to be fulfilled—or, sometimes, broken. The wiser insects found adequate interest in the hems and fluff of the quilt beneath me, building their own adventures through tattered fabric and color. They were my new family, and I was happy to host them.

   A Daddy Long Legs visited me once. He knocked politely on my cotton door, and entered with a tip of his hat. I encouraged him to make himself comfortable; he chose to take a seat on my hand. He asked me how I had been, who had been here, what it was like to be on my own. I answered in all of my own perceived truthfulness. It is good. I am happy. I am full. He then told me, clearing his throat in nervousness, that I was very much so missed back home.

   I didn’t believe him. I didn’t want to believe him. I asked him to leave the way he came.

   Eight hesitant legs.

   I told him my decision was final. I would not go back.

   Teary beady eyes.

   I threatened to squash him.

   It is good. I am happy. I am full.

   He finally exited, downcast, closing the cotton door behind him with a puff. The pads of his feet on my palm as he left felt just like the prickles of grass tips at the edge of the blanket, like the earth was spilling over the edges of morning glory stitches onto my little trembling island and swallowing me slowly.

   It is good. I am happy. I don’t need them.

   That night, in pitch black, lightning bugs speckled the surface of my quilt and blended it with the air, and I couldn’t tell the difference between up and down, between here and there, between earth and space. The only reminder of my existence in my secret field was the warning of water seeping into the quilt beneath me. It was cold, and damp, and all my doing. I couldn’t forget Daddy Long Legs, his hat, the pads of his feet, and the puffing slam of that cotton door.

   The next morning, I lifted my blanket from the ground, shook off the remnants of rebellion and newness and God’s creation, wrapped it around my shoulders, and walked back home. A few ants clung to the spines of my books.