I have been traveling for such a long time. Stepping from world to world on my trip toward home. It was a Long and Winding Road, but one I needed to take. The places that the gates dropped me in seemed to be pretty much the same, dark, bare and pretty empty of life. I would walk them all till I found some life, be it a plant or an animal, once I found it I knew the next one would be nearby. This world took longer than the rest; maybe I was going to make it home soon.

I was getting pretty tired of this place when I finally caught a break. The small rodent looked about, sniffing the air before scampering across the broken ground to the bright yellow daisy. It was the only bright colored thing in the field of white bone and it caught my attention.

Watching the little brown creature as it climbed up the stem and sniffed at the flower, I sighed. I hadn’t seen anything other than bone for so long that this little bit of life made me smile. A plant growing through a skull was no surprise, but the mouse, that was.

See six months ago I stepped through a gate into this place. I hadn’t realized just what had happened until hours had passed and the sun hadn’t come up. For three days I wandered around in the darkness looking for a way out of the cave I found myself in. When I finally reached the opening I watched a weak sun rising over a field of bone.

What had happened here, I had no idea. Mostly likely it was some kind of War. Some crazy general probably hit the button and killed everything down to the rock. How long ago I had no idea. One Bad Apple destroyed more than the bunch in this sad attempt at a world.

I traveled by the weak sunlight as long as I could, but the daylight rarely lasted more than a few hours. Darkness became most of my world, as did the dust and the bones. It took days for me to realize that the vegetation that had survived this world was the color of the bones that littered the ground and oddly enough I could eat it. It tasted like Grease and Black Water but it kept me going.

I slowly sank down onto the bone-strewn ground and dug into my pocket. See I might have been eating the not so tasty vegetation, but I did have some treats stashed away in my overcoat. Seeds that I had gathered from each world I stepped through to were stashed in the various hidden pockets, small nuts I had slipped into the hem and seams. I pulled out a small peanut and held out my palm.

Softly I started to sing to catch the little animal’s attention. “Song sung blue, everybody knows one…”

The mouse froze at my first note. He quivered, his little nose twitching as he caught the scent of that little oil filled nut. As I watched he slowly turned and looked up at my big shadow. Maybe it was my voice, more likely it was that nut, but he jumped from the flower right onto my palm. The tiny nails of his paws pricked at my skin as he caught his balance. He froze once again, as if expecting me to do something to him. I just stayed still, but I kept up the soft words of that old song. “Song sung blue, every garden grows one…”

When the mouse decided I was not going to hurt him, he grabbed up the nut and started to nibble on it. The sight of my new little friend eating made me smile. Even in a world of bone and darkness there was something worth finding. Now if only I could find a Horse With No Name, it would make the walk to the next gate a lot easier. I slowly stood up all the while balancing my new friend. As long as I kept singing those old, old songs from my home world he seemed to be content. For the first time in a long time I had a companion. When it was time to step through the next gate, he ran up my arm and burrowed his way into one of my inner pockets. A small bit of life, unwilling to stay in the darkness any longer.