"Uh... which way, Mads?"

"Oh, uh, I was just following you."

Things did look different than I remembered. Actually, a lot different.

"I don't remember this cliff," I said.

"Or that desert beyond it," said Hank.

There was a dry sand desert that stretched to the horizon in the east.

"I think we slept for 40,000 years," said Hank.

My delivery trips are taking longer and longer. Maybe it’s just these warm summer afternoons, but the distance between my stops seems to stretch and grow, longer and longer meanderings in the bubble car with the top down, full of bubble juice.

I wondered if I wasn’t just getting lost, flying low above the treetops. The summer growth really sneaks up on you, and all of the sudden you don’t recognize a thing.

So I tried following an actual road, rather than as the crow flies, and that was worse. Watching that asphalt snake its way through the forest, getting hypnotized watching it, till suddenly it gets lost under the canopy and I never see it again.

Oh look there’s a Qwik Stop ahead. I’ll just stop in for directions.

It was my idea for us to try and get to the structure we could see on the horizon of the desert. It didn't look that far.

"Looks like a Qwik Stop," said Hank Okomodo, Dragon Boy.

Hank loves the desert. It's in his blood, he says. But both of us know I'm not well suited for the desert. I tend to dry out.

"It can't be that much farther," Hank said. "My reptilian sense of direction is finely tuned. Oh! Time for a spraying."

Hank took the little handheld spray bottle and squeezed the trigger a few times.

It wheezed. Nothing came out.

"It's gotta be like just over those next little hills," Hank said.

This Qwik Stop seemed especially deluxe. Luxurious even. There were the usual aisles of snacks and chips, jerky on the endcaps, spinner racks of sunglasses, walls of refrigerated drinks. But there were other rooms, some full of t-shirts and hoodies, mugs and toys, others with fishing gear, taxidermy, mountain climbing equipment, axes, machetes, flack jackets, hazmat suits, space suits. Other rooms full of electronics, DVDs, guns and ammo, a movie theater, showers, an indoor swimming pool with a jacuzzi, steam rooms, saunas, a barber, and from some direction, the delicious smell of home cooking.

"Dessert's in the back," said the checker.

"Don't you mean 'desert?'" I asked.

The checker went back to looking at their phone.

So I walked into the back, past the restrooms and pharmacy, and that's where I found @Madeline Moss and Hank Okomodo, Dragon Boy.