The community left the islands of Wranglestone via the boathouse, travelling on through the forest in single file until they reached the land where golden grasses swayed and the clouds moved as one across the roaming blue. Peter took up the reins, leading Junior and the others uphill to a windy bluff where they could gain good vantage over the plains. And as he secured the reins over the bucking roll, swinging his leg up and over ready to dismount, there they were.

The Dead moved slowly across the plains like the shadow of a cloud passing over land. No one really knew what drove them towards the higher regions when winter threatened to seize their brittle bones. Tokala liked to think the shimmer of the northern lights beckoned them into the afterlife. Others, like Becky, thought they were drawn to follow those streaks of cloud that passed by once in a while. Peter gazed up, noticing the unmistakeable trail of an aeroplane passing overhead and wondered how big their towns and cities were becoming and what would become of the people trapped inside them once the littleness of life took over. Either way, the annual migration of the Dead had come to mean a lot of things to a lot of people in the years since they fled town. Whenever petty differences or the routines of daily life threatened to take over the community, the herd had become that constant reminder that death was coming to us all, and to live. Live now, while you can. But as a pack of wolves broke out in bounding leaps towards the herd, hellbent on picking off the weakest stragglers at the back, the Dead had come to symbolize something else, that people living on the land had been put back in their place, no longer above the planet, or outside of it, but a part of it.

Peter watched Cooper standing there for a while, lost in his thoughts, lost in his hair, lost in the billowing wonder of it all. But as the herd travelled on towards the horizon, Cooper’s sights didn’t stay with the Dead for long. He turned back, as if seeing even greater journeys inside Peter, and gently took him by the hand.

“Peter?”

Peter wiped a strand of hair from Cooper’s lips and smiling said, “What?”

“Oh nothin’. I just needed to hear your name is all.”

Cooper held eye contact for a while just to be sure of them. Then he made his way down off the bluff, wafting flies away with the brim of his Stetson, and Junior turned, swishing the sun-soaked dust with his tail for Peter to follow.

And a breeze caught the air,

And the air caught the grass,