Wardrobe Fancy
Her skirts had a habit of flying off to places little travelled. They would return, slightly rumpled but happy, with tales of strange spices, narrow alleys and stone architecture.

She never questioned their absence, instead letting them chatter in the closet of the morning after to overhear their escapades; escapades that brightened her dreary days.

Her laundry bills were largely untouched. Either the skirts had a sense of decorum when abroad or something about the arrangement that permitted their travel left them largely unsoiled. A few times there were mud stains and once a deep scarlet crepe affair returned with a large unidentifiable blotch on the front that could not be removed.

Surgery was finally necessary but the seamstress had an expert eye, and was able to meld in wide stripes of purple and white so the damage was invisible. Still, the skirt did not chatter on its return and she never heard it mention that night again.

On nights she could not sleep, she would envision her skirts on their travels, flocking and turning through the nighttime sky to emerge sunny and colorful on the far side of the world.

They would shop and bargain, drink flavored teas in outdoor cafes, break into little groups according to their interests, museums and site-seeing, dancing or gastronomy. One skirt in particular, a green plaid, would root out scientific sites. "Rosalind Franklin slept here", it would announce to the rest and then bore them with details of her contribution to the search for the structure of DNA. It may have had details of Franklin's sex life, something about the archly turned pleat of fabric at one side during some of the stories implied there was more, but it never stooped to gossip.

She had to go to the library to look up Franklin, which confirmed to her the reality of these trips; her skirts were not exiting the back of the closet to some fantasy winter of talking animals, witches and wizards.

It also awakened in her a nascent feminism, never burgeoning to the point of marching with a sign but certainly enough to ask for a raise.

Which she received.