The most beautiful thing about leaving the dust bowl is returning to fertile lands where skies aren’t masked with sand.  The landscape is all-encompassing, green velvet hills are bursting with trees, many of them bearing the crispest apples.  They drop at their own pace, following their own rhythm, falling down, down, until they nestle into a bed of swaying grass.

I am wearing a white summer dress with two sandals, one gold and the other silver.  My hair cascades down to my bottom and a new mole sits in the middle of my left calf.  I pick out several red berries that are piled by my feet and squeeze them.  Red covers my fingertips like blood.  I smear several berries onto my lips in order to feel beautiful again.

I’m trying to make a daisy chain but none grow here, so I use stinging nettles.  I find some long, thin twigs and coil them around one another so they make a crown.  I take a bundle of stinging nettles and wrap them around the wooden wire.  I place it atop my head and indulge in waves of earthly power.

Shouts and cries whip through the air, abrasive against the gentle wind.
Two young boys come bounding through the grove on horseback.  Twigs snap like brittle bone under their hooves.  I can see that they’re wielding cold, metal guns as they share jokes and piercing laughs.
I sneeze.
Their necks almost snap as they turn to me.
We share a silence.  Their faces are shielded by black cowboy hats, a shadow slants over both of their faces so all you could see are mouths.  Their outfits are identical apart from the thread that circles the brim of their hats: one red, the other blue.

They inch closer and I don’t know whether to stand or remain sitting cross-legged.  The horse’s head now eclipses the sun so it momentarily falls to darkness.  I focus on the bone-white diamond that rests between the beautiful creature’s eyes, ignoring the dark shape that sits above it.  The pair of boys exchange looks as the other comes up from behind, so that now they sit abreast.  My heart quickens and echoes throughout the valley.  One of them lets out a low laugh before raising his gloved hand.
I close my eyes.
When I open them again, I am looking deep into two cold, black holes.
And then –