Plurk paste

There's no avoiding the hills that turn to mountains that slope back into hills, not unless they want to take a very grand detour. And besides, they have well-worn paths that many lives have passed through. It's scenic. The trees are dense, forever green with the barest hint of turning color. The sun is broken into shafts of light that dot the road.

Malcolm thinks of Icarus. Carolina thinks of keeping the windows rolled down to breathe in nature. Not every thought has to have the burden of melting wings.

There's a well-worn space dotted with other cars, a camper, here for a rest or here for a view. And what a view it is, the valley below them slipping and sliding into the inevitable bottom, trees and trees and dots of buildings and then the lights of civilization that they may have passed through. Carolina sits up on the hood, leaning back against the glass. Malcolm, curious of this blatant relaxation, follows.

His clomp of boots threatening to dent feels like comfort, boots on metal grate, boots down corridors, boots stomping and marching along, but tinny and distant. She playfully swats at him the way he drops himself down, as if he might break the glass with his ass if he's not careful (carolina have you ever known me to not be careful i dont know theres a long stretch of time i havent known you), and they watch, dreamily, the sky shifting colors as more distant peaks and soft rounded tops begin to hide the yellow-orange-red.

They could stay here tonight and watch the stars begin to overtake the sky and remember the have-beens, the memories that take up increasingly larger amounts of their past. She could pass a flask over between them, and he could ask when she started carrying one around and why she hasn't decided to share until now, and they could share a smirk and a laugh and break out the food like popcorn for a film, stay here until the end of the world. They've been waiting for it long enough.

"Granpa had a cabin up in the mountains. Just a little place away from people where he could chop firewood and hunt."

Malcolm's face scrunches. "They still allowed hunting?" he asks dubiously.

Her shoulders slide across the glass in a shrug. "Some places held out. Old habits. Heritage."

"Tradition."

She nods. "Old institutions have a lot of those. Even when they don't make sense, looking back."

"How often do you look back?"

His shoulder knock with hers, and she leans back, bowl of something quick and easy and supplemental lowered to her legs. "Too often." There are roads that wind back down the way they came, and she wanders back to them, runs, in her mind. All the way back and farther. She can see herself flying backwards past Mars now.

Her phone lights up like a second sun after it's gone too far down to recall the colours exactly. She curses lightly. "Maine needs a pickup," she explains at the terse text she reads. "Looks like we'll be getting a passenger riding shotgun."

Malcolm frowns, and she could swear it's audible. "We're already sharing the cab. Where's he going to go?" Because Maine is crew. Maine is her crew therefore he is Malcolm's crew. These things go in circles, never one sided.

"We'll work that out in the morning. Bright. Early." She smiles softly in the dim, sliding easily off the hood.

The way they like it. They way they've been taught. The driver's side door opening and closing isn't organic enough, seems to echo and wake every twinkling light. Malcolm doesn't immediately join her. There's too much past to consider. And too much future.