The girl, she stared at the sky like she would letters. It was falling, really falling, that big blue up there. What caught her attention was the way the sun still shined even though the rest of its support was in chaos.

I felt that she was helping the sun up by staring dumbly into it. I had, though, half
a mind to tell her that either if she kept making that face- you know the one, the one of complete awe- it would freeze that way, or that if she kept staring her eyes would burn out. I did neither. I was too busy watching the clouds collapse. They'd trip, stumble, land flat on their faces and leave marks in the sidewalk that was melting to a blue because of the crumbling sky. A group of raving hippies, passerby in tie-dye and waving their hands madly, finally found solace that the world was ending; then they screamed, threw their hands over their heads, ran, the likes.

I, tall and pretending to be calmly interested, leaned over to her and whispered that those hippies were madmen. She gave me a fleeting smile before returning to finding a fitting word for the situation. Quick was I to suggest chaos, panic, and disorder, but she shrugged them all off immediately, a little shake of the head and the ideas flicked out of sight in the its wake. Her mouth formed silent letters like O and E and a sharp K sound, but cut off after that. I watched her attention wander from me back to the matter at hand, which I didn't find too important at the moment.

The sun squeezed out the neon it was hired to produce anemically. Those not afraid were taken by the idea of an actual apocalypse; I could see their ideas of telling grandchildren or Internet friends about the day before the chalkboard eraser snapped out the reminder that they wouldn't live to see anything, and neither would their grandchildren or stalkers. Their absent, enraptured upward gaze was inspiring, and my hand brushed a thickly outlined cloud. Scooping some into my rough palm felt like heaven. I slipped more warm and damp wool into my left hand and thinned it to three strands; I busied myself by braiding it. There was a crown rested in my hands.

It drooped nicely around my wrist when the hand was outstretched and the headdress offered to her. She gave me an immediate and cautious look and emitted the same shake of the head. A sagely expression crossed with furrowed brows and darkened eyes. An abandoned bird flipped down and investigated the ground, then the sky, and seeming completely lost throughout the whole experience. I followed where it had come from back to the cracks in the air. The moon was teetering on its hinges.

I, a man amongst many, leaned over to her and suggested, maybe, unfathomable. To this, she nodded slightly- merely slightly. Close, no cigar, but I had gotten somewhere. Mind satisfied, I returned to my spot I stood at and was again hypnotized by the terror and beauty. And long times passed, letting almost every cloud in the sky drop on the sidewalk and frothy white lawns, myself entranced and knowing nothing else; a hand brushed my own. Eyes pulling down, there was only traces of the unearthly tiara that I'd grasped just before. My stare directed me to her, and Lord, did she look at her best with that crown of white.

Her face was adorned with a smile and she held herself high as ever. Again did I step over to occupy the waiting space next to her, and she supplied that the word she'd been thinking of was- and then an enormous rumble from deep within the atmosphere began, and that which was left started to crack in half. She momentarily gasped and drew back, hand creeping arachnid-like to the rough palm that had weaved the crown blowing gently on and off her head, yearning for comfort. I didn't know how I could help, because I was in as much a state of panic as she was. Fortunately, I didn't need to say anything. Most of the world's population was crushed at that moment by the descending azures.

We had merely a moment. She explained that as less and less stayed up, the less time we had, looking calculative and horrified. Instead of being increasingly scared, however, I asked her for the word. The rest of the sky drifted down to earth. Her eyes glinted.

"Finally."

Our fingers laced once last. Her eyes fell dramatically closed to fit the moment. The reaches of space, unpolluted by oxygen, slipped down our throats and constricted us finally.