One day, for some reason, the girl thought of the redheaded man. As she did so the air around her flattened, and the edges of the emptiness crept outward just a tiny bit.

The boy noticed immediately.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“I met a man once,” confessed the girl. “He told me I was free.”

“What does that mean?” said the boy.

“I don’t know,” said the girl. “But he said I could do whatever I wanted now.”

“Isn’t that what you’re doing?”

“I don’t know.”

The girl was silent for a moment. Then she spoke again.

“I don’t think I have anything I want to do...”

They were in an abandoned orchard, where the weeds grew rampant and far away stood a tattered house with its roof caved in. They had come here because the boy said the music here sounded soothing. He had ventured out of the boundaries of her "safe space," and lay on a patch of clovers that peeked out atop a rotten piece of wood, his hands behind his head.

"You don't have anything at all?"

The girl vaguely remembered others in the cage talking about things they wanted to do, and where they wanted to go. Though she had been in the cage for as long as she could remember, other children came and went, but she never bothered to learn where they had gone. They spoke fondly of sights the girl had not seen, like the ocean, and places they would rather be, but the girl thought the silver cage she lived in was the most beautiful place in the world, and she loved it as she had loved her nest, and feeding time, and being patted on the head.

But she recalled the dull grey bars, the gaping hole, and chilling wind. And she knew deep down that she could never return there again.

“I miss how things used to be," she said.

"Don't we all," said the boy. He rolled onto his knees and stood up, wiping the dirt from his pants. "I hear the bittersweet thrumming of oboes. There must be something ripe nearby."

As the boy wandered, his head cocked to the side and his hands out in front of him, the girl marveled at how he moved with such confidence, just as how he had first eased into her life, though he could not see.

"Here!" said the boy. He stopped before a small, bushlike tree, reached out, and plucked a small, yellow fruit. It was a lemon.

"Let me try," said the girl.

The boy tossed the lemon to her and plucked another one for himself.

The girl caught it, and tore at the skin with her fingernails. When the juice emerged, she took a bite, and as if in reflex the lemon in her hands dissolved silently into white dust.

"Bleargh!" said the girl, making a face. "So sour!"

"That's why the song was bittersweet, I guess," said the boy.

"I liked apples better," said the girl. Some weeks ago they had traveled through a city that was still mostly intact and bustling. The boy had gone to the market to get some fruit, and they shared it, when he got back.

The boy paused thoughtfully. "Well, now you know that you like apples. And you don't like lemons."

"I suppose that's true," said the girl.

"I don't know what I want to do either," confessed the boy. "I only know what I like. I like some songs, but I don't like others. And I like lying on sand, in the sun, but I don't like getting wet."

"But if you don't know what you want to do," said the girl. "How can you do what you want?"

"But I am doing what I want," said the boy. "And so are you. You threw away the lemon because you didn't like it, didn't you?"

"Hm," said the girl.

The boy sidled back in next to her. "You like how things are now, don't you?"

"I do," said the girl.

"I suppose that's enough."

"I suppose it is."