Our friends embraced us at the curb as the bus arrived. Good luck! they said. We boarded and found our seats, and we waved to them from the window, twice. The motor idled as we waited.

We decided to have good luck. Not forever, which is too remote, and too daring to imagine, but good luck for a spell – until we ran dry. The bus backed and turned, and we felt the brief weightlessness of a new beginning, again, and its elements of danger, escape or imprisonment, and the promise of returning anew. Our friends outside spoke, but their words fell beyond our reach, half-vanished as we were, already into the make-it-up-as-you-go inbetweenedness of a journey. Our five-minute-younger ghosts stood there too, looked up at us, and we all waved again. Goodbye! said the ghosts. Good luck!