Perplexed. His feelings as blunt and as short as the previous sentence. A tenseness in the cab that circles round the two of them. The girl says little. For the first part of the journey she pasted her eyes through the frosted glass. He doesn’t know what to say and nothing would be said.
Unknown to him she would ogle the strange creature and his dangled limbs. The denim legs and the riot of black hair on his head. Sometimes his fingers scurry around his face and the motion of it so alien to her she would wordlessly do the same to her own face with her own alien fingers. She can’t help but smile a little at the absurdity of it.
The darkness strangled the night. Henry took turns at holding the road and the girl in his stare.
Her own face. The Breathless flat face in the glint of glass. The round curve from the nose and then the subtle jutting of the jaw. Pink lips. The carved out cheeks. Hairless stretches of skin around the eyes, then the green blue pits of them. All of it painted on wind burnt flesh and hazy light.
When her fingers touch her lips it’s not a snout. When her fingers touch the reflection she’s not a pony. She keeps her fingers on the reflection. She clenches her eyes shut and mouths a few whispers to herself. Is she praying? Is she cursing? Is she thankful?
Well, she’s a little weirded out about everything. Who knew that magic could be so temperamental with such a strange sense of humour. One minute a pony and the next a human. She keeps staring at her reflections and the road and the driver and the landscape. Astounded and terrified at the inconsequential blurs of American landscape.
Henry thinks she’s high. Or retarded.