Finally.

The old way of growing them made them soft as fur.

I took them into my arms and pressed them into my face, the sweet smell of sunlight and dirt over-whelming to the senses and the softness like a bed I would have liked to lay in forever. I rolled over onto my back and looked up into the face of my companion, his slim features blocking the sunlight from my face, and I asked him why we don't grow them this way any more.

He took a swig from the bottle in his hand, hissed as it burned his throat, and he replied, nonchalantly, that we just didn't.

A rotund figure approached us on the horizon, waving to gain our attention but far too obscured by the heat rising off of the plain. The silhouette soon became a man wearing a tweed-colored suit, and he beckoned us toward him. My companion smiled down at me, and he told me that it was time to go.

We played games, really. Bombs exploded in our faces, and when dirt would fly into our eyes, they would water and we would weep for fallen colored soldiers. Side-by-side, the three of us walked the earth as gods of pleasure, because the more it hurt, the more we wept, the more we laughed. Alda drank like a sailor, but was always a gentleman, and Watson drank less, but was certainly a lecher. When twilight rose, we would wander back to the lake and we would dine on the spoils of our labor. They told me stories of their adventures, and when they were too drunk to speak, they would playfully make passes and then they would sleep.

I cannot remember what that girl was trying to achieve by transporting one hundred painted men by sea, or why she decided to tell me. All I know is that she was the antagonist, because every great epic requires such a character.

I was not that girl who explored and traveled and cried away the dirt on her cheeks, because I was in the audience all along, laughing with the rest of them at the absurdity of such a plot. Who would write such a thing? Who would end such a beautiful film with such an unrealistic, unbelievable twist? I thought this with intensity, but when I looked into the seat beside me at the figure there, who had been waiting for my gaze to affirm the strangeness of what we had just seen, I realized that the answer didn’t matter. Just asking the question, without the enlightenment of conclusion, would be enough entertainment to last me an eternity.

I laughed until I cried.