It doesn't take a genius to understand where the places of honor are in these machines. Whatever the mysteries of their construction or their operation, cabins are meant for riding in and those seats are built for comfort. Together with their slow overland speed the only proper conclusion that can be reached about these chariots is that they are intended for luxury. To sit inside one is to be told that you are important. Beloved. Irreplaceable.  

She tests these words against herself. Several people gesture for her to get inside. She shakes her head, and gestures back in turn. Rest, sisters. Rest, honored guardians. This moment is for you: the journey has been long and difficult and you must take this moment to recover your strength in comfort and repose. She has no heart for resting, and no need of it either. Sit. Sit, you fools, or we'll never get going again. 

The girl climbs atop a roof, instead. Here she can challenge her footing against the smooth surface and the motion as it clings to the ribbon paths of the gods. Here she can feel the air whipping through her hair and the sting of salt on her back. Here she can smell the burning fuel and the grass and the infinite blue stretching impossibly far to one side of her. Her eye is drawn that way, to this thing that has no name inside her mind, and needs no name with all its vastness and majesty. Light reflects across the smooth yet choppy surface in patterns that delight her senses. They are well worth the pain she buys them with. 

A moment like this is quiet, despite the roar of the engines and the occasional shouts of her comrades. A moment like this is solitude even though she is hardly alone, up on the roofs or in the more general sense. A moment like this is... meditation. She breathes the air and the land soothes her. She kisses the sky and the light swallows her. She feels the pain and the salt carries her up, and up, and up, and up into a thing that can only be called euphoria. And maybe that's the name of that endless blue she cannot turn away from. 

Her arms fold across her chest as she rides astride her roaring steed. Her feet spread wide to either side of her as she obstinately continues standing upright where a crouch would be both more restful and help her stay on in the first place. What does she care? The idea of falling is so impossible she cannot even imagine it fully enough to fear it. And if it did happen she would simply run alongside the caravan and take back her place. 

No smile passes her lips, but she is happy. This is a game. And if it is to be a game, let it be a fun one. Her legs tense like tempered blades. She swings them up into the air as such, one and two and one and two. How long can she keep her body airborne without falling off? She floats and she drifts; she is a seed in the briny breeze. She is immovable and immaculate, always calculating her trajectory with such precision that when she lands she hasn't so much as moved a centimeter relative to the vehicle she's riding atop of. The exercise sets her heart to beating, and when it beats it also soars. Her body grows loose and light, and demands she be trickier still. 

And so she adds dimensions to her games: every time one of these chariots passes hers on a straightaway, she leaps from where she currently is to glide from roof to roof until she is at the front of the caravan. When she has ridden there a while she flips backwards and finds the rear again and waits for it to challenge. She is everywhere, and with everyone. She climbs higher than the hills, and gets to watch the skies in a way that none around her see. What she finds steals her heart away and fills it with the fresh call to adventure.

All she dreams of is adventure. Her mind is filled with a spark, or maybe an idea, of the sky beyond the sky and horizons she has not crossed yet. It is no longer the desire to swim in dreams and become lost that drives her forward. It is love. It is a love so pure that Aphrodite could never bear to touch it, though she has not fashioned it into a sword. 

It will be many long kilometers yet before she realizes what it means. It will be countless sights beyond that before she finds the words to explain it in a way that finally quiets her. Here in this moment, she only feels the sting on her back and the stiffness of her muscles fade into nothingness. 

There is no wish for oblivion in her soul. It is not adventure that makes her stretch her hand out as if to grab the next bend in the road and pull it closer to her.

And there are no scars shaped like roses for her back to bear any longer.