April 22, 2026

They met at the corner of Foster and Milwaukee like it was the most natural thing in the world.

The blonde had just finished staring in absolute disbelief at a bus pulling away, its doors folding shut like some kind of mechanical jaw. She stood there, barefoot, blinking, trying to decide if the thing had been alive.

“That was not a wagon,” she said to no one in particular.

“It wasn’t,” came a voice behind her, cheerful and amused. “But I’d ride it anyway.”

The blonde turned.

The redhead was leaning against a street sign, arms crossed, grinning like she had just discovered the world’s greatest joke.

“You heard it too?” the blonde asked.

“I heard everything,” the redhead said. “And I’ve decided I like it.”

They looked at each other for a long moment.

The blonde tilted her head. “You’re not from here.”

The redhead laughed. “Neither are you.”

That seemed to settle it.

“I woke up,” the blonde said slowly, “and the prairie was gone.”

“I woke up,” the redhead replied, “and found myself sitting on a metal beast with wheels, and a man in blue asking if I was from Indiana.”

The blonde blinked. “What is Indiana?”

“I haven’t the faintest idea,” the redhead said brightly. “But apparently I might be from there.”

The blonde considered this.

“I went into a building,” she said. “They had… pieces of animals. All cut apart. Kept cold. The man behind the counter thought I was from Wisconsin.”

The redhead lit up. “Oh, I like this place already. They assume you’re from somewhere else no matter what you say.”

They both nodded, as if that explained everything.

A car passed. Then another. Somewhere behind them, a bus hissed as it stopped. People got off, barely noticing the two barefoot women in strange green dresses standing on the corner.

“They don’t see us,” the blonde said.

“They see us,” the redhead corrected. “They just don’t know what they’re seeing.”

That felt closer to the truth.

“So,” the redhead said, pushing herself off the sign, “what now?”

The blonde turned and looked back the way she had come—from Long Avenue, from the quiet neighborhood, from the place where the world had once been open and green.

“It was all fields,” she said. “Grass. Wind. Trees along the edges.”

The redhead followed her gaze, then looked the other direction—toward Milwaukee, where the traffic thickened and the noise grew louder.

“Well,” she said, “it’s not anymore.”

They stood there together, caught between what had been and what was.

“We should find out what happened,” the blonde said.

The redhead’s grin returned instantly. “Yes. Let’s do that.”

“How?”

The redhead spun slowly in place, taking in everything—the storefronts, the passing cars, the people moving with purpose.

“Somewhere in all this,” she said, “there’s a place where they keep answers.”

The blonde frowned. “How do you know that?”

The redhead shrugged. “Because they’ve built all this. People who build this much always write things down.”

That made a strange kind of sense.

“I saw a building,” the blonde said after a moment. “Books. Many books. Near a stone place with mailboxes.”

“The one by Lawrence?” the redhead asked, as if she had always known it.

“Yes,” the blonde said. “That one.”

The redhead clapped her hands once. “Perfect.”

And before the blonde could say anything else, the redhead grabbed her by the wrist and started walking.

Not walking, exactly.

Skipping.

Down the sidewalk.

Barefoot.

Laughing.

The blonde stumbled at first, then found herself laughing too, the sound rising out of her before she could stop it.

People stared.

A man waiting at a bus stop blinked twice, then shook his head.

A woman carrying groceries stepped aside as they passed, watching them go with a look that said she would be thinking about this later.

“Where are we going?” the blonde asked, breathless.

“To the place with the answers,” the redhead said. “Obviously.”

“Do we have to skip?”

“Yes.”

“Why?”

“Because we can.”

That was, apparently, the end of that discussion.

They turned onto Milwaukee, then cut across toward Lawrence, moving through the city like they had always belonged there and never belonged there at all.

At one point they passed a group of teenage boys sitting on a low wall outside a building.

The boys stopped talking.

“Hey,” one of them said, grinning. “You two headed to a costume party or something?”

The redhead slowed just enough to glance over her shoulder.

“What’s a costume?” she asked.

The boys laughed.

“I like them,” the redhead said to the blonde as they moved on. “They seem harmless.”

“They were staring,” the blonde said.

“Everyone is staring,” the redhead replied. “We’re interesting.”

The blonde wasn’t sure how she felt about that.

But she didn’t let go of the redhead’s hand.

They reached Lawrence Avenue and slowed at last, the skipping fading into something closer to a normal walk—though not entirely.

Across the street stood the library.

Solid.

Quiet.

Full of things that lasted longer than people.

The blonde stopped.

“This is where we learn,” she said softly.

The redhead looked at the building, then back at her.

“Good,” she said. “Because I have questions.”

“So do I.”

The redhead’s grin softened, just a little.

“Let’s go find out,” she said.

And together, they stepped inside.