“Hey. Hey!”

I woke to the familiar sensation of tugging at the corner of my blanket, and immediately decided I was not going for this. The tugging persisted, as did the whispered urging, until it became impossible to ignore. When I opened my eyes, it was to the sight of a beautiful dark-skinned man kneeling by my bed, all twinkling eyes and boyish smiles even at what I assumed was an obscenely early hour. His grin widened when I managed to respond to his prodding with more than sleepy grumbles. The hand I had raised to push him away instead landed heavily down on his, and he laced our fingers together immediately. He kissed my hand.

“Morning, Sunshine!”

I blinked. “Watt, what…”

“C’mon, c’mon, get up!” He tugged at my blanket a little more insistently, though not enough to actually pull it off. “Get your braces on, get your glasses on, get your clothes on, we gotta go!” His stage-whisper was adorable, and very effective at pulling me from sleep. “C’mon, flower…wake up.”

“Watt, it’s…” I turned my head to squint at the clock by my bed, and Watt obligingly moved his head out of the way. “…three in the morning. I shouldn’t be up for another two hours at least.”

“Sunny.” I was caught by the way he said my name; with an exaggerated frown and a play-serious tone, as if I were in trouble. “You haven’t forgotten.” The seriousness was gone in an instant, and he tugged at my hand this time. “C’mon, I promised I’d take you to see the ghosts tonight!”

Oh…shit. Was it Fools’ Day already? I propped myself up on one elbow, and immediately ran out of energy. My fingers started tingling. It was enough for him, though. “I’m up?”

His grin returned, like a little sun right there in my bedroom. He squeezed my hand. “I’m going to kiss you now.”

It was quick and excited. My “okay” was mumbled against his lips, and then he was gone, opening my closet and rifling through my colorful wardrobe, at least half of which he had given me. By the time I was upright, he’d already picked out my outfit, handing me each item like he was giving me a gift.

“Thanks, flower.” Still sluggish, I set about the laborious task of dressing myself still half-asleep, ignoring Watt’s indignant sputtering. He insisted on turning around while I changed, but also insisted on helping me put on my braces. It was sweet when he helped with the leg brace, but the wrist brace felt a little pandering.

“You fucked up the clasp like four times,” he defended himself, but I knew it was just an excuse to lace our fingers together again. He tugged me upright and towards the door. “C’mon, c’mon, we gotta hurry. Sunrise is at seven-twenty-four.”

“We’ve got plenty of time then?”

Shockingly, we didn’t wake anyone up sneaking out of the house, despite me running into quite possibly every piece of furniture between my bedroom and the front door. Watt laughed silently and kissed me every time I hit something, leaving me practically breathless by the time we stepped outside.

Thank God Watt had the foresight to grab me a jacket. I was cold the second I stepped outside, and immediately wished I was back in my warm cocoon of blankets and stuffed animals. Watt tugged me insistently on, promising the car would be warm.

“I left it on,” he admitted, like saying he had snuck an extra cookie from the jar. Guilty, sly, delighted.

The car was warm. He had the stereo playing something upbeat and bouncy, quiet enough that it wouldn’t overwhelm me. I noticed belatedly that he had picked out matching outfits for us.

I spent the car ride staring out the window. Watt drove slowly, and the sand dunes crawled past, rising waves of bright orange. He was mesmerized too, though unlike me he acknowledged it verbally, humming and oohing and ahhing at every particularly pretty sand formation.

When I had been a little kid, I’d been convinced that the desert was actually an ocean of orange soda that had frozen. How else could you explain how dazzlingly bright the sand was, how soft and smooth it felt on your fingertips?

Speed of Love played softly as we drove. Watt drove as if we were going into town, and at the halfway mark turned away. Mountains rose up in the distance, and before them pillars and platforms of rock. I could barely make out the twinkling headlights of other cars already parked there, which blinked out quickly when they got close enough. We weren’t the only ones hoping to see ghosts tonight.

Watt pulled past the first parked car but didn’t go past the last. For a few minutes, we sat in the car, neither really looking forward to stepping out into the cold night. He laced our fingers together again, and we just sat. I leaned back and burrowed deeper into the jacket. It was his jacket, and so was loose on my shoulder and snug at my chest, but I was pretty sure it was perfect.

“Can we just go back to sleep…it’s so warm and comfy…”

“Pff. Not a chance, flower.” He tugged at my hand. “I’ve been planning this for, like…months. Literally actual months. I even found a perfect spot and made sure no one else would come close, so we can pretend it’s just us in the world.” His famous grin again, this time with a cocky, proud edge to it. “I set it up real nice. Like a picnic.”

“Fool.”

I watched another couple meandering on, drifting slowly towards the forest. “Well…if you don’t pull me out now, I probably won’t get out.” I was joking, and I hoped the way I squeezed his fingers made that evident. I pulled away and pushed against the car door. It opened a hiss and there was no turning back…I was outside now.

I immediately stepped around the car and pressed myself against Watt’s side. It was fucking cold. I wrapped an arm around his shoulder and we set off towards the rock forest. Once I stopped shivering violently, it was actually…really nice. The sand shifted with a soft hiss beneath our feet and the wind blew hard far above us, like an otherworldly song. It was a bit of a walk, but it was a beautiful walk to take.

I loved the desert. It was more colorful than anything else I could conceive, and even at its very harshest was still the most welcoming and beautiful home I had ever known. In the daytime it was nearly blinding from all the color and light; the sand dazzled by the sun and all the plants swaying in the wind, tiny dancers in impossibly gaudy costumes. In the early morning, it was dark orange on the red and pink and light blue of the sunrise, and when a few stars were left twinkling, it was absolutely breathtaking. At night, though…at night it was something else entirely. The desaturated warmth of the sand against the pitch black and deep blue of the sky, the sand twinkling under the light of the moons or the stars or even the nightlight plants, which shone so brightly that even on cloudless and moonless nights, the road was lit.

I understood that most places weren’t like this, all color and sound and light and softness, not on Una and certainly not on other planets. The story went that when the first group colonists had come here, they’d nearly abandoned it, having landed in the hostile jungles of the western hemisphere. The next group had stuck it out under the sea, building breathtaking submarine cities beneath the waves. When a group of restless explorers had found the desert, though, they’d fallen completely and immediately in love, and had beaten biology to stay here. Four generations of adaptive evolution and one generation of genetic modification, not in that order, and humanity settled in the Una Expanse, spreading across the massive desert continent in little pockets of life.

As we approached the rock forest, the silence got more absolute. Watt steered us with obvious intent, and I just stared and marveled at the spires of rock that rose around us. There were already people on top of some of them, camping out waiting to see some ghosts. Or just making out. Or just talking. Fools’ Day outings were really just an excuse to get out of the house early in the morning for a few hours. Whether you actually considered yourself a fool was completely irrelevant.

I, of course, was a complete fool, through and through, and lucky enough to have fallen in love with possibly the only man in the entire universe more foolish.

“Here we are. The Sunny-And-Watt rock. Da da daa!” He actually posed dramatically, presenting the formation to made as if he’d built it himself just for the occasion.

“Looks comfy.”

He grinned. “I already brought some stuff up there,” he said again.

“You really have been planning this for months.” Though my tone was teasing, my chest was warm. Watt was so unbelievably good sometimes that it blew my mind. Such pure souls definitely shouldn’t exist, not in tiny little towns like the one he lived in. It was for people like him, I was convinced, that Fools’ Day existed.

“Of course.” He grabbed my hand again, and pulled me forward. The rock was a little bit more nauseatingly huge this close up, but I trusted Watt not to lead me to a place where I would fall to my painful and immediate death. Or my painful and immediate grave injury.

“I assume, then, you have a plan for getting me up there?” I waved my braced hand at him, and stepped a bit heavier with my injured leg.

“Oh, but of course, flower. You underestimate my skill and genius.”

I couldn’t help grinning back at him now. “Of course. I forgot I am standing in the presence of a modern day Moreau.”

He bowed deeply. “And like, Moreau, I shall take you, my flower, to the stars!”

Fucking dork.

It turned out the formation had what appeared to be a completely natural staircase, shallow enough that even my lame ass could easily get up. It wound up the wide base of the formation and then wrapped around part of the body, ending on a ledge high above us, which I assumed and hoped was our destination. It was not at the top of the formation; there was a steep tower that threatened to touch the sky, and I was fairly sure one or both of us would probably get sick that high up.

“Less of a Moreau, more of Xenith,” I decided as we climbed. “An explorer, not an engineer.”

“I do believe you are the Moreau in this relationship,” he agreed. “And for that…a kiss.” He lifted me up a particularly difficult step, doing right by his word and kissing me again.

We made it to the ledge with minimal difficulty, and I decided in that moment that I probably loved Watt more than possibly anything else in the world. He really had set up what looked like a picnic, with blankets and pillows and nightlights and a basket of what I sincerely hoped was food. I’d been awake nearly an hour now and had done a little bit of desert trek-and-hike and I was pretty sure I was going to start eating rocks here soon.

“You like?” He actually sounded unsure, as if he hadn’t known me for years and knew very well that this was quite possibly the most perfect thing he could’ve done.

“It’s amazing, flower. Kiss for you.” I turned and kissed him quickly. His grin was infectious.

He led me carefully towards the set-up, warning me which spots not to step on. He let me settle down first. I constructed what was, quite humbly, the most perfect and amazing bed ever constructed with spare comforters and pillow in the world, and settled back. He settled between my legs, resting his head back under my chin, and for a long while we just sat there, staring up at the stars. His hand magically found his way to mine, playing with my fingers. I was sure it was purposeful that he chose the hand with the brace on it, and I was in such a placated and affectionate state of mind to be charmed by that.

The sky was endless. The stars were the brightest tonight of all nights, spread in ribbons and boxes across the expanse. Silvery-white mist shrouded an entire section of the night, as if the mountains to the east were radiating white light. This high up, we could hear the echoes of everything going down on the desert floor, and even such things as a fennec stepping on a rock came as an audible click to our ears.

Watt fumbled around until he managed to pull the basket closer. He pulled out two boxes, a brown and a black, and passed the black up to me. Darling that he was, he didn’t complain when I set it on his head.

“Sea wraps?” I couldn’t help grinning. These were expensive and tough to get way out here.

“The real deal,” he confirmed. “My buddy flew them in a couple hours ago. His dads make and sell them on the border.”

“Damn. It’s the real thing.” Fish was a rare enough treat, and I dug in with relish. Watt was just as contented with his peanut butter toast, a delicacy just as if not more difficult to acquire.

“We deserve the best, my dear,” he told me, and given the situation I had no choice but to agree.

We sat silent for a long while, eating slowly and alternating between watching the sky and the desert.

At four o’clock on the hour I began to recite the Fool’s Prayer. Not really a requirement even on Fools’ Day, but a ritual I was loathe to abandon nevertheless.

“One among the congregation looked up, looked past the mother’s Hands,” I began. I was one of the few people I knew who could recite any of the mother’s Prayers from memory, and Watt was one of the few people I knew who had never held it against me.

“On this the clearest of nights, every star was visible and to this one the way was clear. Fool, this one was called, for turning eyes and feet away from beaten paths. By the mother’s Guidance the one walked, and though the one looked neither at the ground nor the horizon as did the brothers and sisters, this one stumbled on neither stone nor pit, breached neither wall nor skin. By the mother’s Guidance the one found the door and through the door ascended to stand at her Side among the cosmos.”

On the second verse, Watt’s deeper voice joined mine. My heart swelled with affection, though in our position the only way I could shove it was squeezing my fingers or thighs. Together we murmured the prayer to the stars, eyes scanning the sky, unsure of what we searched for.

“On this the clearest of nights every star is visible. Beloved mother, to this one make the way clear. By your Guidance this one shall walk, and guide me from stone and pit, from wall and skin, for I look to neither horizon nor ground. Your Wisdom this one shall heed, for I am but your Child, young and afraid, and I look to neither horizon nor ground. Your Love this one shall need, for I am but your child, trembling and alone, and I look to neither horizon nor ground. Your Light, this one shall follow, for I am but your child, blind and stumbling, and I look to neither horizon nor ground. As you have said, so it was, so it is, and so it shall be.”

“So it shall be,” I whispered up to the sky. My grandmother used to tell me that if you looked long enough at the sky, you would see the mother up there looking down.

Watt managed to wait just long enough to avoid offense before speaking up. “I’ve got some binoculars in there too if you wanna start looking now.”

I didn’t, actually. I was comfortable here; his head on my chest, our fingers laced together, snuggled in a little nest of warmth. But he was practically vibrating with excitement, so I gently pushed him up and reached for the basket.

He hadn’t just packed binoculars; there was a magnifying glass, a map, several torches, some empty plastic jars, a rope and, at the bottom, two pairs of binoculars. I passed him the cooler ones, with the red stripes and light-up lenses. His grin was blinding.

“Love you,” he said before turning and surveying the desert. It was nice of him to pretend not to notice how deeply I took that statement, even after all this time. I had to take a few deep breaths before raising my own binoculars and looking out over the sand.

“You look north, I’ll look south?” I suggested.

“One step ahead of you, flower.”

This was the fun part of Fools’ Day, or so I’d always thought. My earliest memories were of climbing up to somewhere high and looking out over the desert trying to find ghosts. As a child, just about everything was a ghost, from a tumbleweed to a gust of wind, and now that I was older, I just appreciated the chance to look out at the wilderness when there were no cars, no caravans, no lights. Having Watt at my back, warm and solid, was an integral part of the routine as well.

The rest of the sea wraps were eaten while I scanned the desert. I saw some abandoned cars, some trash, and even a giant green bird that I sincerely hoped was a lot smaller than it looked. After about ten minutes, Watt and I switched sides. Or, more accurately, we began to switch sides, got lazy halfway through moving around, and both ended up looking west. For appearance’s sake, though, I looked northwest, and he looked southwest.

“What time is it?” he asked as I tracked a giant snake that was making its way across the road further up.

“Five oh one, thereabouts,” I told him as if it was not exactly five-oh-one.

“I’m pretty sure I’ve seen like four ghost already,” he said, and I could hear the grin in his voice. When was this man not grinning? “Any luck, flower?”

“None at all,” I sighed deeply. “I’m not shocked. You’ve always been a much bigger fool than me. Though…I am watching a ghost viper, if that counts.”

“Shit, really?” He turned to me, and I let him look through my binoculars. “Wow…that’s a big girl. Thought they’d all already gone for the year.”

“I…I don’t think snakes migrate, Watt.”

He looked at me like I was an idiot, albeit the most beautiful idiot he’d ever known. “Of course they do, Sunny. Everything migrates.”

“That’s…that’s not even a little bit true.”

“I’m going to kiss you so you stop arguing with me and being right,” he warned me.

Then he kissed me, slower and deeper than before, and we didn’t do much more looking after that. We ended up back in the nest, lying on our backs, wrapped up in blankets, his head on my chest. It was starting to warm up a little bit as it got closer to six o’clock. I traced the patterns of constellations on his back between his shoulder blades, and hummed an old hymn.

“We should probably head home.” I didn’t really want to, as it would involve moving, and I was far too comfortable. I was warm and weighed down and full.

Watt grunted once, probably agreeing with my unspoken sentiment, and buried his face in my stomach. He was so clingy. It was adorable.

“Holy shit.”

Watt’s voice was muffled against my sternum, but his shock was easily discernible. My hand stilled.

“Holy shit. Flower…babe…Sunny! Sunny, look.” He pushed himself up, lovingly using my stomach as a launching pad, and pulled me up with him, fumbling with his other hand in the mess of blankets and pillows. I nearly kicked him when he grabbed my knee (twice!), and he kissed my hand by way of apology. “Sit up, sit up, look!”

Panic made me easily pliable, but my fear calmed when I heard no other shouts. Unfortunately, I was out of the blankets now, and the morning wasn’t that warm. I shivered and shifted closer to Watt as he lifted the binoculars to his face, which was a mask of surprise and…awe? God, he was hard to read sometimes.

“Sunny, look.”

He passed the binoculars to me, guiding me until as I scanned across the desert until I saw…

“Holy shit.”

It was…a person…kind of? They were taller than any human I’d ever met, and the edges of their body were blurred like a bad hologram. Their motions, however, were smooth and graceful as they walked slowly across the desert, each huge step taking them over a dune. I thought that I could feel the impact of their feet even from this far away. I found myself breathing in time to the footsteps. They were easily visible against the pale sand: they were completely black and the area around them seemed dimmer and hazier. I couldn’t make out much of their features save their lips and nose, but from the silhouette of those I could tell that their face, if it was a face, was tilted up to the lightening sky. I lowered the binoculars slowly, keeping my eyes trained on the rapidly moving black spot in the distance.

It was…a ghost? Well, not a ghost…scripture said the black shapes on Fools’ Day were angels, not ghosts, but scripture also said all angels were fools. My heart squeezed in my chest and if not for Watt’s lips on my shoulder, I would think I must have been dreaming.

I didn’t realize I was laughing until Watt wrapped his arm around my middle. “Hush,” he admonished me gently. “You’ll alert the others.”

“Nooo.” I was amazed I managed to speak around my half-hysterical laughter. “Watt, is that…?”

“I think so.” His whisper was as low as mine, if not half as reverent. His grip on me tightened. When I turned to look at him, he looked completely stunned, and when his eyes caught mine, he grinned. “I think so,” he repeated, with such feeling this time that I couldn’t help laughing again.

“Holy shit,” I whispered, and leaned in to kiss him once.

We turned back and watched the fool run across the desert, following the light of the rising sun.

Long after the sun rose, we climbed down, grinning like fools.