[Nightflower - a girl and her dream. The Night Flower sim hosts some of SL's finest photo art by some of SL's most creative artists. The paint on the walls was still fresh, meaning some of the prims were still untextured when I met Nightflower there for our photo shoot. Is there any better place to take pictures than a gallery? This woman is spontaneous, chaotic, loveable and a wonderful and eloquent writer whose blog www.nightflowerblossoming.typepad.com I have been following for quite some time. Her friends dropping snotty remarks while she was dropping her clothes were no big help but they are as much part of her life as creativity and open-mindedness. - Bunny Brickworks]

They stared out at me from the pages of the crumpled in-flight magazine: a digital Ken and Barbie, swirling across an otherworldly dance floor awash in firefly lights. The article told of a fantastical alternate reality, populated by personalities both magical and garish, a world willed into existence through the creativity of its citizens.

This wasn't just a computer game, the story continued, but a place where you could do and be whatever you could imagine, giving birth to a totally new you in a safely anonymous place of limitless options. Even the name left me breathless with promise - Second Life.

Three hours later, dream smashed headlong against reality. I couldn't seem to fly in a straight line, couldn't figure out how to drive the damn car, and somehow managed to attach the torch to my head. I walked like a duck, stood like a man at a urinal, and couldn't stop jerking my head around like someone tracking the flight path of a troublesome insect. I remember standing there in those stonewashed blue jeans and that ubiquitous purple long-sleeved tee, feeling like I'd really been sold a bill of goods.

But somehow, I managed to make my way to a place with the inviting name of Help Island. It's worth noting that I received no help there - well, at least none of the instructional variety. But it was there that I first saw them.

There was a dazzling fairy trailing pixie dust, a little clown made of dancing lights, a delicate child who appeared to be half machine. A massive, tentacled orb hung over the landing zone, and a sensual catwoman writhed nimbly against a leather-clad vampire.

And that was all I needed to see, all I needed to know. Not even the griefer who at that moment nuked me with fart gas could dampen the thrill that was surging through me, as my consciousness stretched to consider a world made not of limits, but only of possibilities. I knew in an instant that creativity was the very fabric of this world, and here, I would be reborn.

Now I am a citizen of the virtual world. I play the game of paper dolls for a grown up little girl, but that's just one of many delightful diversions. I dance and party like a wanton sorority babe, but that's just a festive novelty. At the deepest level, I am here to create.

I'm here to forge a life for myself that is a pure expression of my spirit and character - a life somehow truer than the one I live in the flesh. I'm here to create an existence that, though completely imaginary, is indelibly stamped by the reality of who I am in a way that my real life will never be. Freed from the implacable circumstances and restrictions of my bodily life, I'm here to create the fullest version of who I want to be.

Here in this make believe world, this powerful reality, Nightflower is blossoming.