"Well...we could go to the moon."
"The moon?"
"Yea. Why not?"
"I don't know. I don't really feel like it." I paused, and bit down on another strawberry, the red juice flowing down my chin and doubtless dying my teeth. "We could go flying." He shrugged, grabbing a strawberry from the bowl between us and swirling it over his head, and I watched as a dragonfly flew over us, placing my arms beside me again and running my fingers through the grass. "Maybe. What else?" I continued to move my fingers through the grass as I thought, and I listened to the creek in the distance; the sound of the water nymphs tripping over their feet on the rocks and crashing onto the pebbles beneath them. Clumsy things; water nymphs are.
"We could go swimming."
"Oh, no, it's too cool today. We should save that for a warm day." He was right. I didn't really feel like going back to the house to search for my oxygen pills in our big medicine cabinet, anyway. I was so comfortable right where I was. I didn't say anything for a while, just listened to the colorful sounds dancing around my ears, swatting some away when they started to get bored and play tricks on me. "It's very nice out here," I said finally, as the grass; now accustomed to me, curled around my fingers lovingly, glad to be stroked by such tender hands, not afraid of being ripped from their warm soil homes. "It is," he agreed, wiping the juice from the last strawberry on his jeans, leaving red trails like fresh blood on the stitchlines. I rolled over on my belly and watched the wind as it moved through the trees and over the open field, coming towards me and giggling as it brushed through my hair. Its long, silver fingers brushed my face again and again, and I smiled at its delicate touch as the sounds sighed gratefully, whooshing through my ears like beautiful lullabies. "I wonder what it's like," he said, turning to face me, his amber eyes bright with excitement about things unknown. "What what's like?" I asked, moving so I sat cross-legged in front of him and reaching out with slender fingers, brushing them through his hair more sufficiently than the wind, pressing the warmth from my hands into his wind-scraped, freezing cheeks. I watched as the blues bursted into reds there, and the reds in my fingertips dimmed into pinks. "To be blind," he said, "deaf. Numb." 'Numb' is how we usually refer to the Outsiders. They come here and give us strange expressions, say to us confusing things. One of them figured out the difference between us and them, when he passed through. "You feel things," he said, wringing his hands, trying to explain, his eyes confused and tired, "You experience things which we don't. I mean, we do. I don't..." he had paused, shaking his head. "I'm not sure how to explain this. We feel what you feel and see what you see and hear what you hear; but everything is muted for us. Turned down, as if someone reached up and threw a blanket over the sun; worried it would be too bright for our eyes." I wonder, sometimes, too, what it must be like to be Numb. If they don't experience all that we do, what do they experience? They've tried to explain it to us before. But none of it made sense. "You hear the wind?" one of us had asked a Numb man. "Yes," he said, "But I don't...see the sounds." The one of us raised his eyebrows and asked, "Do you see the wind?" The Numb man furrowed his eyebrows, "In a way. But not completely. I see the wind's effects." None of it makes any sense, honestly. "It must be frustrating," I said to him, taking my hands from his now warm, red face and placing them on his own blue hands. "I can't see how it wouldn't be," he nodded in agreement. I turned, after his hands were red, and lay beside him again. I moved my head onto his chest and he moved his hands through my hair and brushed my cheek with kisses. "So you don't want to go to the moon?" I asked again, lacing my fingers through his and watching as the sounds left my mouth and swam up to his ears. He smiled, "I don't know. Maybe."
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