[ WP ] `` Hey , remember me ? We used to be friends ! Well , you told yourself and everyone that I was 'imaginary ' ... Well , how have you been ? ''

`` Grafino...'' 
 
 `` Yes, Max?'' 
 
 `` Grafino, you *are* imaginary.'' 
 
 `` Well, that's just silly, Maximillian. If I was imaginary, could I pick you up like... *this*?'' He wrapped his long ourangutan arms around me, and with a grunt of effort, lifted me several inches from the floor. 
 
 I sighed. I hated when he forgot himself like this. 
 
 `` Yes, Grafino. Yes you could. Because Lucy invented you for *me* to *play with*, once her mother told her to grow up.'' I shook my head sadly, my shimmering multicolored mane throwing out curlicue comets and pirouetting stars. 
 
 Grafino's enormous, expressive face fell, and he tugged at his lip idly, in an expression of contrition. `` I- *I'm sorry, Max. * I forgot again. I forget sometimes.'' 
 
 I felt my temper soften, and I looked at him, the sad ape wrapped in his own arms for comfort. I stopped my pacing, and lowered myself to rest on the grassy expanse of the infinite field. `` I know, Grafino. It's ok. She was fading as she made you, and some things went... unfinished. It's alright, I forgive you.'' 
 
 `` Hooray!'' Grafino leapt to his feet, all melancholy of a moment ago forgotten. He jumped on my back, his customary place, if there were a customary place for an ape on a lion. `` Would you take me to the Stretchy Trees, Max?! I want to go!'' 
 
 I looked around me. Recently, Lucy had been taking a creative writing class, restoring some of the color and life to this place, but she had had to drop it. It was too early in the morning, it was too hard to get up, and though she did n't know it yet, her depression was back. 
 
 Already I could see the slow spread of the fade. Soon, the twisting, elastic vines of the Stretchy Trees would be gone again, as would the field, and the underwater Whirlpool Castle, and even the Clubhouse, that final redoubt, would begin to fade. We had never faded, me or Grafino ( named for her favorite pencil ), but there was no telling the future. Grafino, with his half-formed mind, would forget those places, as the tight confines of the Clubhouse would become his new reality. 
 
 I never forgot them. And as she slept, I would whisper the names of those forgotten places in her ear, so that she might dream them, and be happy and young and bright as she once was, and so I could see her again. 
 
 For the moment, though, they were still there. And I looked over my shoulder at Grafino, and shook more nebulas from my pelt, and nodded my ascent. 
 
 I took off at a run, and Grafino, as he always did, laughed in glee. 
 
 
 THE END 
 
 POSTSCRIPT: 
 
 Hi! I hope you liked this. I've got some other stuff like it over [ here ] ( http: //www.reddit.com/r/IWasSurprisedToo/ ), so give it a look-see, maybe comment on any strike your fancy? I like feedback! Thanks! 

