The Carpet

I lay sprawled on the living room carpet, lulled near senseless by the sun streaming through the wall of large, south-facing windows. Sharing in the warm rays are lush, green plants placed carefully on a teak wall unit. With my feet up on a black, vinyl chair I let the random patchwork of brown, orange and cream in the long pile blur together in the light through my half-lidded eyes. Crossing my eyes, I make the stark colours swirl with the dancing dust motes and just as I'm starting to feel dizzy my vision re-focuses on the white socks and frayed jean hems of my older brother James.

I scan up to take in the rest of him - blue, ratty t-shirt and scraggly hair that seemed to sentiently undo in 30 seconds what 5 minutes of combing had done. His 12 year-old hands are filled with brightly coloured metal with black wheels.

"Wanna play cars?"

I sit up quickly, giving myself a head rush in the process but not willing to risk losing a rare invitation to play together. He plops down next to me on the rug talking excitedly but I miss his next couple sentences as my sun-baked brain clears. It doesn't matter, because I know the instructions he's giving regarding the game by heart: as the oldest, it's his right to pick the nicest cars and the best patches of coloured rug for his vehicles, the ones that make the perfect hideouts for his good-guy outlaws hounded by the unfair police. It's always the same game, played the same way, but we never tire of rolling our tiny renegades through the wondrous, uncharted territory of a world carved out in brown, orange and cream pile.