For a second you think that she’d teleported you both all the way to the fair, but when you spot your neighbor’s muddy silver tinsel tree sagging against the fence on the next lawn over, you remember that she’s never been there. You’re going to have to make the trip down the hill.

Oh well. It’s just one more chance to show off your smokin’ waifu to all the wannabes. Did any of them even have a waifu? Nope. Just ugly-ass girlfriends that blew their money.

She’s sitting in the grass, gazing at the one or two stars that were bright enough to be seen this early in the evening. Maxin’ out on swag. You wish you were downwind of that mane.

“Hey, uh, you know …” you stutter, searching for the words, “you’re picture perfect. Like … uh … poetry.” The memories churn. Something from junior high that girls talked about. “You’re pretty as a sonnet.”

Luna watched the stars grow brighter. “A sonnet?”

“Yeah, a sonnet’s a, uh, a kind of … uh …”

“A poem. A poem of predetermined structure, often terminating in a rhyming couplet. Prominently used by one of your great bards, Shake Spear. I learned of him while reading the Wikipedia lore of your computer, as you call it.”

Damn she’s smart. Smarter than you, though she’s got a few thousand years’ head start. You admire her noble profile as she scans the sky. Her ever-flowing hair. Her perfect forelock. Her delicate sloped muzzle. Her …

“Are you quite finished gawking?”

If you were somebody else, you’d punch yourself in the face. Smooth. She’d caught you with your mouth hanging open like the Neanderthals over in the boonies in Boartown. “Yeah, uh, yeah. Hop on up. I got some new rims back there, so be careful. I’m gonna have Phil install ‘em next weekend. You remember Phil, right? My baby’s gotta ride in style!”

Luna might have sniffed. With a single flap of her wings, she performs a fluid leap into the scarred pickup bed. The frame shrieks under her weight. You figure she’s seven hundred pounds easy, but the bed’s rated a ton plus, so you’d never worried about tooling around with her back there.

After choosing a spot as far away from your stack of rims as possible, she sits back on her hind end and turns her muzzle again to the sky. The spirit link twists in your chest. She’s not happy. Not one bit.

You circle around to the driver’s side and get in, letting the cantaloupe drop onto the passenger’s seat. No problem. Her mood will get better once you get to the fair. Once you get her on the Ferris Wheel, laughing and screaming along with everybody else. Maybe get some fried dough and slushy in her. Win her a teddy bear or two, or some of those goldfish in plastic bags. Girls like those.

“Shit!” you curse. Your keys are back inside, and you already have you seatbelt on. You crack open the window. “Sweetie, can you …” The keys appear with a loud jingling and fall into your lap.

“Thanks! It was like you read my mind,” you call out behind you, before realizing that she actually had read your mind.

You pull out of Sunnyview Estates and head south toward Johnsonville. Johnsonville, home of the largest, shittiest shopping mall anywhere west of the big city, VilleHaven Merchants. Renamed Grand Doritos Shopping Center after whoever owned Doritos had bought advertising rights. Everybody works at Grand Doritos.

You start down the hill like you do every morning, that dumbass chick’s toilet breath still lingering in your nasal cavity. You’ll probably end up with strep throat, or whatever diseases her kids brought home from school. Whatever. That’s why they have fairs. To get drunk, ride the merry-go-round, and forget about your week.

Goddamit, you’d better not get sick. Being sick sucks. You jab the power button on the radio. Skillet? Skillet’s good, but Luna’s not a fan. What else? Mellencamp? No. Korn? You’d blast it if it was just you, but no. Bowie? That’s one you hadn’t tried. “Under the moonlight, the serious moonlight …” you croon over the wind and the rumble of your F-150.

You concentrate your thoughts so she can’t miss them. It’s hard, and you never get it right, which is probably why she thinks you’re an ass. You have to steady your nerves too, in case she’s glaring at you like she usually does. Two pairs of underwear had gone into the trash because of that shit, and underwear is expensive. You peek up at the rearview mirror.

She is. Her huge eyes are locked onto yours, folding up the jack-in-the-box of your soul and locking it down nice and tight. The spirit link had been telling you she’d been watching you this whole time, but you’d ignored it. There are always reasons to ignore it.

Honey, what’s bothering you?

Luna turns her head. Doesn’t really feel like talking. The square window panel disappears in the cloud of her mane, turning your view into a swirling blue sea of sparkles. After a few minutes, her words poke into your mind like beams of light through a fog.

Say, yonder farm folk, what are they doing?

Farm folk? You ease your foot off the gas a bit and look outside. Out on the hill, a bunch of guys are pulling logs out of the back of a wagon. One by one, they wrestle them into a wood chipper.

“Lumberjacks, lumberjacks, jacking their lumber.” You laugh at your little ditty. You have a ton of little ditties.

Just turning some trees into mulch. That place sells it to all the hardware stores.

Wood … chipper … it makes chips of wood. I see.

There’s nothing more to her message. You can feel her emotions change, though, from sullen to delighted. Almost joyful, then calm. You smile and turn up the music. She could be so childlike sometimes, and that was the best. You never feel more in tune with her than when you’re explaining that Mustangs aren’t horses, that smoking doesn’t mean you’re on fire, and what people really mean when they say ‘take a load off’. She really has no idea until you tell her. Sometimes it feels a little like you’re taking care of a toddler, but that’s OK. A toddler that never needs a diaper changed or her puke mopped up, and who actually listens when you teach her stuff is a good deal.

You reach the bottom of the hill and take a left. The brown sign for the Median County Fairground is hanging on by one rusted nail, same as it is every day when you pass it on the way to work. An orange light is clinging to the underside of the clouds above the road ahead, and you can already hear music and yelling.

Cars, pickups and minivans appear on the muddy shoulder of the road. The parking lot must already be full. Oh well, better to have to walk than sit in a traffic jam for an hour when it’s time to leave. Luna can teleport you back up the road anyway. You swing into a spot that hasn’t completely turned to slop and put it in park. You grab the melon as you get out, because you know Luna’s going to want something healthy after all the fair food you’re going to make her eat. She’s a stickler for her diet.

“OK sweetie, what do you wanna see first? How about the petting zoo?” That’s advanced girl schmoozing. Ninja stealth techniques. Take her to pet the billy goats. Guaranteed smile.

“It hardly matters. Take your pick,” Luna replies, already heading toward the noise and laughter beyond the ticket gate. She wasn’t even talking in your direction.

You linger by the pickup. She wasn’t angry, but she wasn’t acting happy either. “Honey, could we talk for a sec? I’m sorry if I …”

She’s a black shadow, far away against the lights of the rides. Probably can’t even hear you.

Petting zoo it is, then. You check your pockets for your wallet and keys, and jog to catch up.