At the ends of the Earth.

It was barely 4 a.m. when we boarded the bus that reminded me a little of the Polar Express. The morning air was crisp and cold, so we shivered together in the back seat and watched our breath on the window turn to frost. Though sleepy eyes we saw the pearl moon cradled in the gentle oyster of the black night sky. They say that destiny is written in the stars, for they are but shards of the old gipsy's crystal ball that fell once on the black marble floor, shattering into a thousand pieces, never to be put back together again. Out here the hills are blacker than night and the air is colder than steel. As we drove on through winding valleys of sand, slowly the stars began to fade and the ebony sky melted to periwinkle, though the sun was nowhere to be seen among the brickred mountain peaks. Soon we arrived at a place where all that should have been real was magic, and all that should have been magic was real. Smoke and steam surged forth from the earth and, like a factory of clouds, painted mist in the silver sky. And as we wandered though the silent fog, we huggged each other and knew that we were lost together at the ends of the Earth.