"Grafino..."
"Yes,
Max?"
"Grafino,
you are imaginary."
"Well,
that's just silly, Maximillian. If I was imaginary, could I pick you up like... this?"
He wrapped his long ourangutan arms around my left leg, and with a grunt of effort,
lifted it several inches from the ground.
I
sighed. I hated when he forgot himself like this.
"Yes,
Grafino. Yes you could. Because Lucy invented you for me to play with,
once her mother told her to grow up." I shook my head sadly, my once-lustrous, round, metallic body glimmering out curlicue comets and pirouetting stars.
Grafino's
big, expressive face fell, and he tugged at his lip idly, in an expression
of contrition. "I- I'm sorry,
Max. I forgot again. I forget sometimes."
I
felt my temper soften, and I looked at him, the sad ape wrapped in his own arms
for comfort. I stopped my pacing, and lowered myself to rest on the grassy
expanse of the infinite field. "I know, Grafino. It's okay. She was fading
as she made you, and some things went... unfinished. It's alright, I forgive
you."
"Hooray!"
Grafino leapt to his feet, all melancholy of a moment ago forgotten. He climbed on my shoulder,
his customary place, if there were a customary place for an ape on a robot. "Would you take me to the Stretchy Trees,
Max?! I want to go!"
I
looked around me. Recently, Lucy had been taking a creative writing class,
restoring some of the color and life to this place, but she had had to drop it.
It was too early in the morning, it was too hard to get up, and though she
didn't know it yet, her depression was back.
Already
I could see the slow spread of the fade. Soon, the twirling, elastic vines of
the Stretchy Trees would be gone again, as would the meadows, and the underwater Whirlpool Castle, and even
the Clubhouse--that final redoubt--would begin to fade. We had never faded, me
or Grafino (named after her favorite pencil), but there was no telling the
future. Grafino, with his half-formed mind, would forget those places, as the
tight confines of the Clubhouse would become his new reality.
I
never forgot them. And as she slept, I would whisper the names of those
forgotten places in her ear, so that she might dream them, and be happy and
young and bright again as she once was, and so I could see her again.
For
the moment, though, they were still there. And I looked over my shoulder at
Grafino, and shook some stardusts from my rusty joints, and nodded my ascent.
I
took off at a run, and Grafino, as he always did, laughed in glee.
