[this was just a bit of adventure, really, more like longing]

She is on her own now and knew this would be the last. But she is a brave girl and a nice girl and she always answers the surprise calls of her friend. He knows just how to make her give in. He knows how she works, what keeps her alone.

“Come with me. Right now. Let us adventure today.” His voice is strong and righteous, and she wants to be left but he dropps her favorite word so her heart jumps in joy. It has been years since she heard it.

“Yes.” She says, cutting his voice in half. “Take me tonight.”

So he does.

Her shoes and cheeks are dotted in pink and she plays for him for hours, down routes she has never known. Here, she is learning and almost likes his offbeat voice when he sings with her – louder, louder, he follows in tone as she projects her heart through her lungs in a familiar story he learns to adore.

He never expects her to win at his game. He has practice, he is ready for anything. But his heroine makes him stop; she calls all sorts of crazy shots.

He is gone deaf by her song but keeps on driving; she says she is looking for the end of the world.

“I’m afraid we might not be able to find it,” he cries, and as they fear their craft has died and they are left on the side of the road in 66 degrees of rain.
“Oh, you are just hard of believing,” she tells him. “Let me lead,” and she finds his strong wrist. “Come with me.” Her voice barely reaches him and he steps down. He’s never stepped down for such a heroine before and she is glad to be his first.

She steps boldly into the night in a skin all her own. She parts her lips and sings to him, in a voice all her own.

“You are nothing but a storyteller,” he says, and she trips and falls.
“But what could you mean? I am saving our little lives,” she speaks looking up at him, his long silhouette. Her voice is pleading; it is horrified by his crude remark. Beneath her night shadowed hands the earth is green, wet, and alive; passing life-waves through her body. He bends to set her right on her feet. “I never meant that for you,” he says and brushes a streak of red from her cheek. She knows he is young. He is uncertain and almost deaf to her stories anyway. “I trust you, I do,” he promises, barely conscious now, and she almost feels sorry.

“Just over the hill,” she tries not to sing, “I promise,” and finds the hard bone in his wrist is pressed to her palm and she cannot do anything but wrap her grass-stained fingers around it.

She leads her boy through the warm winter night. Their feet slid over the damp below them on their incline, when she stopped to look back. Behind them, their shadows drown any light, any remains of where they had been, who they were only hours before. She smiles and he misses it completely.

They tread onward and by what was considered morning the little Queen and her friend, the King, reach the peak of the hill. “I swear, this hill looked rather small in the night light,” he faces her to notice her face has changed, she is no longer a blonde haired girl, but a grey haired woman with sad grey eyes. She can see the sadness in his skin that hangs from the bones on his face.

“Boy,” she sings and follows the contour of his brow line with her cold fingers, “we have reached the end of the world. Look, look on your kingdom.” She gestured down over their path but there was nothing. Nothing but complete darkness and lightness in a sort of combination.

“This is sad to me,” and his voice almost breaks into a song but hers cuts him short. For one more favor. Her skin is paler and paler still, and he knows they are dying. In his eyes there is a moment of love and before she can sing her last request his arms are tangled around her frail body and they are plummeting over the edge of the world.

“Boy,” she whispers in his ear and kisses his face.
“Girl,” he loves for another great moment, “you will never be alone now. You will never have to be alone.”

And they sing in beauty that is undeniable to any ears as they float across the universe in a skin, in a song, in a voice all their own.