Beth’s blond hair dances as she throws her head back in a laugh at the sight of me flailing around in illustration.

“What _do_ winged people do with their arms when they fly?” she wonders aloud at my various examples.

A bit more breathless than those movements should’ve made me, I say, “I think all the books we read about the men sweeping down and scooping up the heroines are written that way because it’s not as attractive to imagine the male’s arms dangling in front of them like a bumble bee.”

She cackles again and I smile at the sound, tilting my head back to bathe in it along with the sunlight overhead. We walk in step along the gravel path that connects our vast properties, same as we have done every day for over a decade now.

Strangers turned neighbors then best friends, our busy schedules only align for this hour every day. We ensured it to be so.

Both of us become revived in the fresh air. Both of us openly notice the way the other’s muscles unclench the further from our homes we get.

But while she only has to return to an empty house, I have to return to _him_.

It wasn’t such a hardship before I met her.

We were fine until I learned what it meant to have a friend.

“I don’t think I could date a winged man,” Beth says suddenly.

I huff a laugh. “Too flighty?”

She snorts. “Yes and no. Our cultural differences would be too great.”

I scan the endless rolling green grass on either side of us. “You’ve got all this open land for him to fly though! Seems like it would be a good match.”

“Nah. I told you I got my land to entice aliens to abduct me. It’s only a matter of time.”

“So, your type of man doesn’t exist on this planet? I get that.”

There’s a moment of awkwardness punctuated by Beth trying to kick a rock out of the path we made and missing it entirely.

The copse of trees ahead seems to encroach on us rather than the other way around.

It’s always where we end our walk and always something we approach with mutual dread.

“No,” she sighs, “Definitely no man for me here.”

I ignore the tightness in my throat and counter, “So, aliens, huh? We talking tentacles or –“

Her laugh scares some birds away from the trees we unfortunately reach. I find my own rock to kick, just to take the edge off my emotions.

Beth stares down at the boulder that denotes the ends of our properties like there’s something she forgot to remember.

I recall that very thing in full clarity, starting with the sound of her voice in my home years ago after I’d been out all day.

I followed the direction it came from eagerly until I entered the living room to find my husbands back to me, body recoiling and hands raised in plea, and Beth attempting to mount him anyway.

My face fell further when she purred, “Please, I’m so lonely.”

The incredulous snort I released startled them both. My husband turned, not to say ‘_It isn’t what it looks like,’_ or, _‘I can explain,’_ but, “Help.”

But Beth didn’t hear how much he still cared for the feelings of my friend. Horrified, she stumbled away from him and bolted out my back door.

I squeezed his shoulder and asked if he was alright. He nodded a little dazedly, as if he were in shock, but shooed me out after my friend.

“We’re all she has,” he’d said sadly.

I raced outside and found a flash of blonde hair illuminated by moonlight. “Beth!” I’d called after her, only for her to take to our walking path at speed.

Almost more annoyed she was making me run than the fact she was just coming onto my husband, I breathlessly attempted to close the distance, hating the way we were desecrating our path with such negativity.

She looked over her shoulder at me with wide tear filled eyes and sped up once more. I had no idea she was so athletic. I barely had it in me to both breathe and cry out, “Please!” as we reached the copse of trees.

But she turned at that and called back, “I’m so sorr-“ Her foot went out from underneath her, slipping on one of those pesky rocks.

I was too far away, even as I sped my pace, to do anything but helplessly watch her arms pinwheel as she fell back, slamming to the ground with a sickening thwack that seemed to reverberate in finality across our lands.

I cried out her name to no answer.

As I finally caught up, I found out why.

A pool of red had already spread behind her head that had landed on that forsaken rock, pulsing out rhythmically beneath her until it simply started to pour. Her eyes stared unseeing up at the starry sky that she so badly wanted to join.

I look over at her ghost now as we both stare down at her grave. She’d always wanted to be buried on the land she worked so hard to buy. I took the liberty of burying her halfway on mine as well, so she’d never be alone again.

But my hope seems to have cursed us both.

The specter of my best friend seems to shake off whatever she’s forgotten to remember and restores her wide grin.

“Same time tomorrow?” she asks, as she did daily back then, except now she exits by unknowingly dissipating into the very air we used to find so rejuvenating.

My smile is brittle as I whisper my assent into the emptiness where she once stood. “Same time tomorrow.”