Martin and Folly travels towards Texorami.

A few hours more, and they're dressed in their new clothes, renting a car. It's old, and red, and a convertible. Martin takes the wheel and heads out onto the highway. "Sing me a story," he suggests.

Folly nods and watches the landscape for a few moments, feeling it, hearing it, finding what's missing, figuring how to get there from here. The ocean, there on their left -- good. Gotta keep that, always. The road, the sound of wheels on pavement, the smell of traffic -- good. It will get bigger later, but what they have already is a whisper of the motif to come.

That takes care of the rhythm and bass. Now for a melody. Folly takes a deep breath, settles back against the seat with the wind in her hair and her eyes half-closed, and starts her song. She starts with the gardens -- the garlic and avocados and orange trees and artichokes -- and not just the sights but the smells as well, sweet and sharp and tang and mellow, ocean-salt and fields left fallow, citrus and spice and the produce of home -- as it grows by the road near the ocean by the truckload, all along the road to Texorami. (Her voice is low and earthy and rich and savory, and Martin can almost taste the peppers and the blood oranges.)

Martin begins humming along with her, and after a time, they pass through a dazzling veil of the sort Folly has begun to recognize.

And then the sun -- the size, the brightness, shining its lightness in golden-and-whiteness to dapple the ocean like diamonds in motion with sunset rays that pierce the haze to set ablaze the winding ways to Texorami. (Folly is almost in a trance now, singing as much *with* the landscape as *about* it, her melody high and bright and strong and full of warmth and joy.)

Another veil, and this time the shape of the steering wheel has changed in Martin's hands, and Folly knows the car has changed too, and it's just like the red convertible that trumpet-playing friend of Bastien's used to have that she admired so much.

A beacon, a lighthouse -- it pierces the twilight like knives through a skylight, the dance of its beams like a thing out of dreams, like a fairy-fire sweeping the earth like a living thing, keeping just out of their berth like a living thing, hiding just out of their sight 'til it reappears, lighting the night with an eerie delight as they glide the seaside ride to Texorami. And always, always, the sound of the surf as it's pounding the turf in an endless dance all along the expanse of the road to Texorami. (There's a strange eager urgency to her song now, like something out of myth, where everything means more than it seems and stories lurk under every rock, all once-upon-a-time and night-before-Christmas-y. Martin may feel that Folly is singing part of her own history, of a hundred van-rides home through the near-dark, toward a comfort infused with the buzz of promise and possibility.) And now the road, the petrol bass, expanding, crescendoing, changing its pace, it merges and grows like a surge from below to emerge in a rise toward the night-pink skies, and the lanes full of cars sweep along toward the stars...

And another veil and another and another in time with their tune and the sweep of the light from the lighthouse.

...'til they all crest the hill and are awed by the thrill of the sight of the city, a jewel in the night shining brighter than light from the stars and the moon...

And the last dazzling veil breaks just in time for them to see a sign coming up in the distance ...

(Folly takes a few deep breaths as she blinks at the sight in front of them. She is exhausted, and almost out of voice -- but she smiles with pure joy as their headlights sweep past a little green marker: Texorami... 15. "...And you can follow the signs from here," she says, beaming.) ...and there endeth the tune of the road to Texorami.