the Guardian

Florae was born into a troubled squirrel family. Her mother had an aversion to nuts, and her father would get drunk off of hummingbird feeders. Her childhood was one of isolation and troubling conversations with imaginary friends. Florae knew she had problems when one of her imaginary friends, beaver, told her she was leaving because she had "gotten too moody."

The rest of her imaginary friends told her the same thing a month later in an intervention.

So with hopes of making her life better throgh a broader world view, Florae left home at the tender age of 11 months. She traveled far and wide, joined a small theatre production in New York, took up smoking in France, quit smoking after she had a lung removed, and became a Buddhist. Then one day her world came to and end.

Florae died.

She was crossing a river on some power cables just outside of Ulan-Bator, Mongolia, when she stepped on a bare patch of wire. Unfortunately, the 60 foot measuring tape she had in her napsack happened to break and burst open at just that moment. Florae watched, as if in slow motion, as one end snaggged on her napsack and the other end fell gracefully to earth. She was grounded, and from the 5 months she had worked as an electrician for Habitats for Humanity, she knew what would come next.

The raw energy that enveloped her was indescribably beautiful. It lifted her soul into a different time, a different place (specifically, Buenos Aires, circa 1920). There on the banks of the Rio de la Plata, she met a being of sublime beauty.

Which way should the story go? What type of animal is she likely to meet? And no, it won't be Carlos Gardel.