Soon, the couple’s machine pulled to a stop in the midst of the bustle. Kendra stepped out slowly, still fix ed and overwhelmed with her new environment. This must be a dream, Kendra thought—it just didn’t seem real at all. And the strange thing about the city was its relative quiet, its peace. The sounds of machines and buzzing lights and footsteps laced the ground and echoed between the building walls, but there was no talking anywhere.
No yelling or fussing or singing, like the noises that always filled the Home. The lack of human voices made the city seem at once peaceful and somehow lonely.

But all around her, Kendra saw people holding hands, smiling at each other, even kissing—the man and the woman from the car doing the same now. Kendra imagined what it would be like to hold the hand of a man and have him kiss her. One man, wearing a piece of clothing on his head, passed by and met Kendra’s eyes. She felt an immediate burning in her chest and between her legs—a sensation she’d never quite experienced before, certainly not without touching. And as Kendra turned from his eyes, the man’s face was burned into her mind, like the great Top Fire’s imprint within her eyelids. Kendra wanted him, badly. And then two women passed Kendra, and they looked strange with weird colors painted on their faces, and
they gave her a look that seemed to hurt without touching. Kendra immediately felt guarded and turned away. As they passed, Kendra looked quietly to the ground, remembering then what the Doctor had said outside the home: Fear, desire, things that weren’t in front of her, that didn’t actually touch her. No control. No getting what she wanted. Nonsense, she thought!

Kendra would find a way to exist here, she would find a new life…and love. Just like the fairy-tales. If Kendra had ever desired something she could not see, it had started with those stories in the Home, with the tales of distant cities and princes and eternal, fantastical love. And here, Kendra would find it, she would get what she wanted, she would have what she saw. Kendra would find her place. And if anyone looked at her with hurtful eyes, like the two women who passed, she would learn to hurt back. And if any man looked at her with an enticing glance, Kendra would learn to attract. And this exciting, but menacing dance of fear and desire and anticipation in the eyes and faces of those that passed, she would learn to control. And the nerves it conjured up in her stomach would just have to be ignored.

With that, Kendra strode down the street in confidence, chest out, head high, smiling large, and in the direction of the fairytale man with a strange and attractive headpiece.