When he was finished he blew flecks of wood off the mantle and leaned away from it, crossing his arms across his chest. "That's beautiful," I said, imagining the tiny carved eyelashes blinking. Noah grinned at me, "Maybe compared to the blank wood walls in here." I grinned, "Well, yea, I guess there's not a whole lot for me to go off of here." Noah smiled and turned his whole body toward me suddenly. "So, you're a glitch." I squinted at him, "Yup. I think we covered that." His eyes gleamed with excitement. "So you know what it's like then. On The Outside." I thought of Jen's face, her eyes focused on mine, filled with determination as she tried not to scream, her face covered in sweat. "Sure do." He smiled like a child in front of a candy store, "Can you tell me about it?" I rose an eyebrow at him, "Why? It's not like you never lived there." He shrugged, looking away from me, "I probably didn't experience it quite the same quite the same way that you did." I looked straight into his eyes, "What do you mean?" Noah shrugged again, the sparkle back in his eyes, "Doesn't matter. Tell me about The Outside." It was strange, hearing the rest of the world- my life, before the disease spread- spoken about like that, like it was a place bizarre and far off. "There are a lot more surprises there. Like the weather, for instance. You could never be sure if it would rain or be sunny." Noah shook his head, "No, I know about that. Tell me about the other things. The...man-made things. What did people do to entertain themselves?" I thought about this. "A lot of things," I said eventually. "It really depended on the person. There were a lot of options." I sighed, "Unlike the Entertainment Center." Noah's expression was excited and impatient, "Well, what did you do?" What did I do, indeed? "I lived in a relatively small town. I liked to go to the shopping district- that was a long street with a lot of small stores on each side of the road-and just walk there, watching people shop and talk and laugh. There was also a small beach that wasn't too far from my house, and I used to take me daughter there and watch her swim and build sand castles, despite the fact that the water was colder than ice." I smiled at the memory of Jen at that beach, calling out to me as she splashed in the waves and explaining to me the backstories of the imaginary inhabitants of her sand castles. Noah sounded surprised when he asked, "You had a daughter?" Startled, I blinked, "What?" He rose an eyebrow, and I rambled, "Oh. No. I mean, yes, but no, she was actually my sister, but..." I trailed off, then shook my head, "Anyway. It was really wonderful. I miss it a lot." Noah stared at me a moment longer before looking back into the fire. "I wonder if I would," he said, and I asked, "Would what?" He smiled slightly, sort of sadly, "Miss it. I wonder if I would miss your Outside if I had...if it had been the same for me." I still didn't know exactly what he meant, but I said, "You would." He glanced at me and I nodded before looking again into the flames, "Trust me. You would."
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