2
III.
He stopped by the large pool with the white myst that circled it. The girl was there again and she was always there and she never moved. She was strangely beautiful in her own way. She wore a black top hat that covered her black eyes and pale cheeks, and a tattered dress with black roses sewn into it, and she always just stared into that pool, watching the myst circle round and round. She dangled her toes into the water but they passed through the water. The water didn’t ripple. He spoke to her because she was the only one who ever spoke to him.
Hi, he said.
Hello. You again.
Yes.
Busy?
Moving about.
Hmm, she said, idly flexing her toes.
Why do you sit here all the time?
Lovely by this water, boy, no?
I guess.
It’s different than the rocks. It’s better by here.
It is different.
Why did you come by? To hear the stories again?
Yes.
But you’ve heard them before.
I know. But one more time, maybe?
Ok, she said. I will.
This pool, he said. Is this where the mythmakers live?
Where they used to.
They don’t come around anymore?
No.
Oh.
She titled her hat and looked into his eyes——Some people don’t even believe in the myth makers at all, you know.
Do you?
Someone had to make the myths, she shrugged.
I suppose so.
I like the stories.
You do?
Yes, she said. But I don’t believe them. I don’t like it when the other vapors talk that way.
In what way?
As if they are true. They probably aren’t true.
Something must be true.
Yes. Something. Will you be sitting awhile?
Sure.
Ok. I would like that.
The boy and the girl let their feet disappear into the pond. The myst surrounded it and the pond did not ripple.
