We meet in the heart of the woods, where the trees are made from ancient fairy tales and the birds finish each other’s sentences through the leaves.  I come from one side of the forest, she comes from the other.  My best friend Lily is a tiger, with her wild eyes and hair that is strawberry blond and made of silk.  When she smiles, it is brighter than the setting sun that rests on our backs.

We don’t talk as we weave our way through the forest.  The stillness is like glass; speak a single word and it will shatter.  Every branch we brush against bursts into flame, leaving the trees behind us alight with gold.  Smoke curls from our fingertips.  Even the air is alive; it crackles and whispers, like a third person that walks between us and dances around us.

Lily and I stop at the base of an oak tree, and pause to stare up at it in awe.  It is the tallest tree in the forest, and Lily swears that the tip of it is lost in the clouds. 

We each grab a branch and begin to climb.  I spring from limb to limb with every part of me alive and twitching, and I feel as if I’m flying.  Higher, higher, until the other treetops are below us and there is nothing above but sky.  I climb until I could reach out and brush the clouds with my fingertips, and then I wait for Lily.  If she is a tiger, I am a bird. 

Without leaves to split and refract it, the light is everywhere at once; in our hair, on our skin.  Lily closes her eyes and tips her head back, and the sun makes it glow.

I watch the sun sink, sink, sink, and then finally fall, slipping from one side of the earth to the other.  Its fire fingers go with it, and the burning forest turns to grey ash.  The air silences.  Lily smiles, a piece of the sun saved on her face.

The oak tree waves goodbye to the sun, and we wave with it.