Arrow was waiting outside the V.R. shop. Lots of people from around town were lined up, hoping to get their cracked headsets fixed or a controller replacement, but Arrow wasn’t here for any of that. He was here to meet up with his neighborhood friend Marlene, who was of course, going to have the goods. He just had to wait.

He coughed as a MagLev car whizzed by, its light blue trail still fading behind it. Though it was cool to look at, the blue trail that Magnetic Levitation cars temporarily left behind tickled Arrow’s nose and made his lungs feel cloudy. The sky was constantly gray in StarTech, a town that was getting bigger as the population grew. Tech buildings rose as more people and their virtual pets and android assistants moved into town. One of the main reasons people started coming to StarTech was because the town decided to install magnetic roads and sidewalks, which made them compatible for MagLev cars and Hover board 5.0's, the ones that literally hovered a foot off the ground.

Arrow heard a mechanical woooo of a hoverboard coming by. He didn’t even have to read the black words curved on the wheel’s outer case to know that it was a Hoverboy 2081. He knew by its purple, shiny color that that’s what it was. His family could never afford such a thing like that, not for a hundred years.

“Hey.”

Arrow turned to see Marlene, who finally arrived, her wood brown skin and nearly black eyes. She smiled at Arrow, her cheeks two round lumps as she hid her left hand behind her back.

Arrow smiled back. “What’cha got?”

“Hmm, a curious customer huh?” said Marlene.

She yanked her hand from behind her back “A pack of cocoa cookies. The last of em’ over at the richies’ store. You want a pack, you’d better have something good!” Marlene looked at Arrow expectantly.

Arrow put a finger to his chin and looked up at the sky, pretending to think. “How about… you give me the pack of cookies right now or… I'll chase you!” he put his hands up, fingers bent like claws.

Marlene jumped backward. “You wouldn’t dare!” she said on que.

“Watch me,” said Arrow and approached slowly.

Marlene backed up, then ran past him, Arrow turned after her and yelled “GRRR!”

Marlene was fast, and could weave through people and robotic pets like it was an art. Arrow was determined to keep up. He bumped into a few adults, who didn’t even look up from their phone screens to yell, “hey, watch it kid!” or “Arrow, I’ll message your Mom about this!”

Up ahead the metal sidewalk turned into stairs leading to the subway. Marlene ran out into the street to doge stairs, and then ran back onto the sidewalk as a hover car whooshed by on the road.

Arrow matched her movements, closing the distance between them as Marlene approached the huge highway bridge that marked the end of town.

Marlene could feel Arrow on her back, getting closer and closer, and they were almost to the highway bridge where MagLev cars made a huge whooshing noise that you had to yell to talk over. .

Usually, Marlene turned around and said “Enough running! Give me something good or else!” but today, she thought, just how long will Arrow chase me? Today I’ll find out!

She kept running even under the highway, which shocked Arrow, but he wanted those cookies and he wasn’t going to give up. He followed Marlene under the bridge and into the greensward that came after it, his feet crunching in the dry yellow-and-green grass.

Far in the distance, the children noticed an old crumbly factory. The building had red bricks, but was grey in some patches, and graffiti covered random parts of the building. It looked unstable, and a little scary. Marlene began to wonder if she should just turn around and give up running, as her parents wouldn’t like her wandering too far from home. But she had run this far, and she’d never seen real grass before… She’d keep going. She’d made up her mind.

Soon the grass got even livelier. It went from a weak, crunchy yellow color, to a bright green color. The sky had even went from gloomy gray to a bright blue. Arrow looked up at the sky and was almost blinded by a big, shiny yellow ball of light. His eyes hurt and he squeezed them shut.

“Ah!” he yelled and tripped. He put out his hands out to save himself but only succeeded in slamming all his weight onto his palms, which hurt like no ones business. He tripped and rolled in the grass uncontrollably for a moment before he lay flat, his back against the grass, his neck tickled by soft grass points. Beside him he could see Marlene’s pant leg, and he looked up to see that Marlene was staring straight ahead.

Arrow then made his eyes look ahead, past his nose to see that they were in some type of clearing, bright, lime green grass all around them, the sun shining in the plain blue sky with white, cotton-clouds spaced out and about. trees with cocoa brown bark as thick as an elephant’s leg stood out in the distance, leaving Marlene in jaw-dropping awe as her dark brown eyes slid across the field around them.

“Where… are… we?” Arrow asked slowly, barely able to speak.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen trees that thick before.” Marlene pointed to the tree-checkered land out in the distance.

Arrow was so shocked he couldn’t even stand up. Was he really there? He lived in a city where everyone only saw forests in their VR video games. Where you barely saw white clouds, let alone a blue sky. And here he was in a field where the sun made him sweat from its heat, and he didn’t hear not one automated voice, not one mechanical whoosh, but the tweeting of some type of unseen creature. He had to have fallen asleep with his V.R. Headset on. This couldn’t be real.

“I…I didn’t know trees still existed…” Marlene plopped herself in the grass next to Arrow.

She handed him the cookie pack. He took it.

He sat up and began to church on the chocolaty, creamy, sweet goodness. Marlene took out a pack for herself.

Arrow widened his eyes. “You had two this whole time!?

“Yeah. in case you had something valuable to trade that was worth more than one pack of cookies.” Marlene answered. “A trader woman is always prepared.”

“And yet, I didn’t trade you anything, and you gave me the cookies,” Arrow smiled, then his smile faded and he looked at her, studying her face. Marlene had two sides when it came to her and Arrow’s trades. Sometimes she wouldn’t budge, he either had something she wanted or he didn’t and she wouldn’t give him her goods. But sometimes, just sometimes, Marlene would give Arrow a snack or a game code for free. Would he ever understand Marlene?

“Thank you, Marlene, for giving these cookies to me for free.”

Marlene looked down at her cookies, trying hard not to smile, but failing. “You chased me here, which is hard work, since I’m fast. So technically you worked to get these cookies. Nothing’s free,” Marlene told him.

“Except this place,” said Arrow.

Marlene took the top off one cookie sandwich and ate the cream and bottom. “I guess,” she agreed.

They sat there in the piece for a while, until Marlene and Arrow’s eyes caught something moving in the trees.

Marlene pointed. “Do you see that-!”

“Animal?” Arrow finished, his eyes locked on to the light brown creature in the distance. “Yeah. I think they call that animal a… a deer.” He told Marlene, hoping to have fascinated her with that knowledge.

The bulgy-eyed deer stared right back at them, for he had never seen any children before. So far they were, from their slick and shiny metropolis, the city so far off, it was a faint blue with a bunch of gray clouds hovering just below the tallest buildings. Faint noises from airships could be heard but besides that, not much noise escaped the city.

Marlene loved the creature at once. What was its name, a doe? A dove? Whatever Arrow had said! She loved its stilt-thin and wobbly legs, and the branch-shaped antlers that sat on its head, and those shiny, round black eyes! So cute! I must hug it, she thought. That’s something I just put on my metal bucket list that shall get scratched off immediately. She slowly stood up, and the deer watched her, his neck raising as he stared at her go up. his right ear twitched.

After a moment of thinking, will it attack me? Marlene sprinted off for the poor creature, who took off deeper into the woods at her first step.

“No! Please come back!” Marlene yelled with an outstretched hand, but the deer was long gone, thinking: I should have never trusted children! Never!

Something inside Arrow’s soul had told him not to move in the deer’s presence, but he guessed nothing had told Marlene. He stood up and walked over to her.

“Well, at least you saw the deer,” he told her.

“Deer. That's what it’s called?” Marlene turned to him.

“Yes, I heard that deers live in forests, and that’s why we don’t see them.” Arrow told Marlene. Arrow believed was a guru of the forest, knowing what ancient deer were and such, and right now the student to ‘enlighten’ was Marlene.

“Hmm. I thought forests were fake.” Marlene told Arrow. She desperately wanted to run all around this field, walk into the forest and find the deer, and just stretch in the middle of the hot sun all at once. But she shouldn’t be this far from home, and she knew it.

“We should head back,” Marlene said sadly.

“Why do you sound so sad?” asked Arrow.

“...I don’t want to leave!” Marlene admitted.

“Me neither,” said Arrow, to her surprise. “But we really should. My Mom’s going to start wondering where I am,” he told her.

“Mine’s too. Well, let's set off.” Marlene turned, and walked through the grass with Arrow by her side.

The city was so far away, she could almost see the top of the Colony Crystal building, the tallest building in the southern hemisphere of the world. She was very glad to not be alone, to have Arrow to go back home with. Good old Arrow.

“I wish we didn’t have to go back,” Marlene stated.

Arrow thought about this. “We can come back!” He told her.

Marlene looked over at him. “Your mom will let you come this far out of the city?”

“Well no one has to know,” Arrow started. “This can just be our little secret. The Field past the old game console factory!”

Marlene rolled her eyes, thinking this is just one of Arrow’s crazy ideas,but he could be right. What if they could come back here, and explore this place thoroughly?

“Yeah, let’s come back here sometime, I wanna climb a tree!” yelled Marlene. After all, no one would tell her to stop yelling, they were out in an empty field, where no grown-ups dared to visit!”

“Yeah, me too! I can climb higher!” Arrow yelled, and then on went the children’s yelling of who could climb higher than who, and could shout louder than who as they reached the metropolis once again.

TO BE CONTINUED

Also, I've go NFT's on Ab2.gallery! You can reach them here: https://ab2.gallery/address/VFJRN2LQ3F6I65YKQIMF6ULSYVF3B5HJRNLOQMTYTBNPJQNSYJANGFL6KU

Thanks for reading!