The city was all short girls. They rode on the bus along the lake in the morning and some of them stared off and some wanted the seats gentlemen couldn’t give up and then some of them held their novels up to their noses so everyone could read the titles and some of them dreamed little fictionista dreams of writing their own novels, big thick ones that little short girls like themselves could disappear behind and they knew they could just take a biblical name and a random noun and squeeze together in a title and they’d have their book deals: Isaac’s Stove, The Hammock of Ruth, Nicodemus’ Shoes. And they sat there, pretending to read and clicking their tongues silently in satisfaction and they never stacked wheat and they never made tools, and they didn’t know that their narrow little shoulders might one day crack and the poor witless wilderness, surrounded on all sides by savages, would give in and receded. And the bus rolled south and they bumped along to their stops and they filled the uncaring offices and you might feel bad for them and maybe you should, but there they were, the brawling laughter of youth never too far from tears and they weren’t noble like their grandfathers, but nobody had to tell them that and they just would wrap their scarves a little tighter the next morning, wear heals that were a little bit higher and hope beyond the point where it wasn’t even hope anymore, but more like the hatchling fallen from the nest (which is often mistaken for hope), and they thought about what it must feel like to tumble down like that, staring down from their high, high office windows, and they were scared icy, and they wanted to pull their scarves even tighter on the way home, and they worried who might sit next to them and they thought and thought and thought as the bus went north along the lake into the night.