We May Never Find It

“It's gone so far away from here,” she said, shaking her head. “We may never find it.”

“That's always a risk,” he replied, staring at wooden houses beyond the crowd of people that had gathered.

The morning's misty rain yielded to something not quite sunny but at least clear enough for the masses to venture outside again. There were clouds, which cast shadows that gave her face an almost ethereal quality. He couldn't define the effect beyond knowing that he liked it.

“Liking a thing,” she said, as though reading his very thoughts, “doesn't always need a reason.”

He nodded despite not being sure he agreed with her. And yet, he couldn't find it within himself to argue the point. So her words lingered, like misty rain, obscuring what he otherwise might have seen.

“Logic itself,” he replied, “may be illogical.”

“It's a problem,” she agreed.

He tried to make out individual faces in the crowd. Who were these people that had come to congregate in this exact place, at this exact time, for no discernible reason?

There was no logic to their presence. They were simply here.

“Maybe they just like gathering,” he said.

“Yes, I've considered the possibility. It's hard to dispute it.”

The clouds shifted. Her face changed. He still liked it, still couldn't define it or explain to himself why. He was trying to make himself comfortable with that. The shifting, the changing, the inability to define or explain, the lack of logic.

“What if the logic isn't lacking?” he asked.

“Not an absence of that,” she said, “but a presence of something else?”

“Yes, exactly. But what?”

“I don't know,” she said, shaking her head. “We may never find it.”