Tell me about something that will stay forever

“Like, will you stay forever?” Nutan said.
“I’ll try. But eventually I’ll have to go. And you might have to go before that.”
“Where would I go?”
“Study, for example. At a school in some other town.”
“I would never do that. I want to stay with my mother. And you.”
“You might change your mind.”
“No. – What would I study?”
“Maybe engineering. Many Indian girls study engineering.”
“What’s that?”
“It’s about building machines, cars, airplanes and other things.”
“No way. Something else.”
“You could study art. That is how to paint.”
“I love to paint. I’m going to paint something right now.”
Upon which she hopped off my lap and skipped towards her room, not to be heard from for about a quarter of an hour, when she reappeared.
“Look at this,” she said, triumphantly waving a piece of paper in my face.
“That’s very nice, Nutan.”
She proceeded to explain it all to me.
“Look, this is me in another town. You can see it’s different because there’s snow there, and they have a clock tower, see? I saw one in Switzerland. – And see this girl? She’s studying what you said.”
“Engineering?”
“Yes. See the machine she’s building?”
“What does it do?”
“It makes ice skates. Because they also have ice in that town.”
“So you’re going to study engineering after all?”
“No, that’s not me. That’s her. My friend. I’ll do the painting.”
I’m looking forward to the transformations she will go through – painting, engineering, whatever – and hope to be witness to them.

– James Steerforth ( © 2008 )

Written for Totally Optionally Prompts and transformation.