The second day.

The three of us made our way behind the grove of unkempt fruit trees and followed the dirt path through the woods to its end. We left our footprints plastered to the leaves and crossed a small brook that was green and milky from the rain. L had on woven flats and I had on canvas sneakers. By the time we arrived at the field only C's feet were dry. We climbed upward over the bramble and sunk back into the ground. A step up and a step down. There was a patch of green clover large enough for the three of us so we stood upon it watching armadas in the sky collide, melt, and emerge like woolen hats in the sun. I turned back to measure how far we'd traveled and saw a treehouse high up in the forest line. It hung dark and precarious at the brim of vision, and C said that she'd always wanted one when she was young. There is a song I like about an old treehouse that burned down at the town's edge. I thought of it standing there and wished I had a treehouse. Someone mentioned lions and the things that scared us when we were kids, like white witches and ones with blue spit. L has never read the Narnia books so we're going to watch the movie sometime after the semester resumes. There was nothing to do but sing, so we sang choruses to the beat of cupped palms and taught each other the parts of songs we remembered. We sang til we were out of songs, then repeated the ones we knew, and in between chatted about small things that are hard to remember when I'm awake. Finally the wind grew strong and we were cold from standing so we left the field and headed back along the sodden path of tree leaves. We crossed the milky brook again, passed the grove of unkempt fruit trees, and went inside to change shoes and dry our feet. At night, there was no fire--it was too wet and cold outside. So we sat around in a ring downstairs and told secrets until morning the next day.