This is a true story. It doesn't matter if you believe me.

When I was small I met an angel.

I was standing in a field with tall grass, sunflowers and dandelions. I don’t know how I got there, and didn’t care. The sun warmed my chubby arms, and a gentle breeze blew the grass so that it tickled under my dress.

There’s another thing that was strange but wasn’t; I was wearing a dress - canary yellow, with thin straps over the shoulder. Not the kind of thing I could wear at home; not the kind of thing I was allowed.

And my hair was long with ringlets hanging over my cheeks, just like I always wanted!

The how of it didn’t matter in the slightest. There was only the simple joy of girlhood in the open, and I could giggle, and I could dance, and be free for the first time in my short life.

Then I saw her, wings half furled, with the same spattering of freckles on her feathers as on her nose. From the moment she smiled I was in love, and, by some miracle, I knew she loved me back. That something so warm and gentle could appear from nothingness and fill our hearts was supernatural.

I ran to her, faster than I’d ever run before, into those wide, welcoming arms. I all but crashed into her, and she laughed. My little hands gripped the sides of her tunic, pulling me to the softness of her chest. The angel’s heartbeat boomed inside her, as if to pronounce how real and alive she was.

When she spoke it was with a voice of a mother, gentle and melodious. “My name is Beth,” she said. “Hello, little one. It’s good to finally meet you.”

Beth…

I’d known her for all my days, from the moment I was born, but only realised her then. A pang of guilt rang in my heart, but she was quick with a brush of my cheek. Her touch was as soft as anything you can imagine, and more. No words could encapsulate the closeness of us.

We played for hours, maybe days, before the sun started to set. We walked, held hands, sometimes ran; sometimes found a place where we could sit - or Beth sat, and I climbed over her. She laughed, and brought me down with a rain of tickles.

My real mum never did that…

When the moment came to say goodbye she kneeled in front of me and brushed my arms with both hands. Her emerald eyes sparkled like actual stones, not like the eyes of an ordinary person. Then she kissed my brow, and exhaled into my third eye. The breath of life filled me so deeply that my body could not contain it.

“You are so loved,” she said. “Others might tell you different, but you are, now and always. Please remember that.”

In the next moment the field was gone, and no time had passed. Was it a dream, a delusion? I stopped to wonder, are dreams ever so beautiful?

I returned that night to the coldness of home, and to the rest of my life - but through it all I carried a piece of her, and a vision of what could be.