Platypus was riding in her shotgun position as always. Her eyes scanning the horizon, the heavens above & earth below— seeing what was to to be seen, smelling what was to be smelt; hearing what was to be heard, feeling what was to be felt. There against K-Roo’s belly & with her head poking out from his pouch, she was in a certain sense equivalent to a watchwoman perched upon a ship’s mast. In another sense, the word symbiotic defined their relationship quite well, what with how each helped the other get to where both were off in the going to go, their aims & goals being kindred & alike.

“I’m not feeling so great. Can we pull over?,” she said.

Kangaroo had been bounding along into the lonely open, an open which seemed never to close. Not even close with the night: for when down went the sun & whereupon the horizon died into darkness, the openness of the bright barren & clear simply passed the baton along to another, opposite openness of the dark impenetrable & endless. Neither was much of a home for a kangaroo, he sometimes felt; and yet both, in the end, absolutely had to be, needed to be without question.
        Yet nevertheless & notwithstanding being in the midst of his musings (mused to the metronome of his own steady pace) Kangaroo came to a stop. Platypus climbed out, briefly stretching her platyarms & legs as she did so, immediately after which she moved into a hunch.

“You alright?” asked K-Roo. Platypus had sat down, looking around. Kangaroo reached into his pouch for some water, pulling out a bottle containing not as much as he hoped to find. “Here. Take this.”

Platy took the bottle & drank, her dribbles making dark the dust around her platylips. As eagerly as she drank & as thirsty as she was, she stopped perfectly halfway & handed the remainder to K-Roo. “Here,” she said, “you have the rest.”

“I’m fine,” returned K-Roo, in casual protest, who clearly wasn’t fine at all; droplets of sweat seemed to terminate from half the entirety of his fur’s follicles.

“It’s my water. Drink it.” K-Roo didn’t argue and drank; it was, after all, Platy’s bottle that he’d pulled out. Watching K-Roo gulp the last drop, Platy couldn’t help but notice that if the sweat dripping from this drinking marsupial were to be collected back into the very bottle from which they drank, quite likely it would’ve filled right back up; their supply being finite, this was an issue. As evenly as she could muster she expressed “We’re going need some more of this… in the coming days.” Upon looking up at K-Roo— who didn’t seem to register the weight she’d intended to convey— she then added “And we’d best get to the task of finding it soon.”

“Where? And where are we, anyways?” asked K-Roo.

Platy scanned the horizon, listened to the wind & watched the manner in which the sun fell, noting the time upon her watch’s face, as well. She then looked down at the ground below, touching it. First with her delicate webbed hands, then with her soft body as a whole. After some minutes of feeling the Earth upon her furry belly, she climbed back up into K-Roo’s. Pointing yonder, she said “Over there. I think it’s over there where we’ll find a well. Let’s try for it.”

“You’re the boss,” smiled K-Roo as he bounded away. The ground they’d left from was hard, almost cousin to the concrete of the City. Tumbleweeds blew in from different directions, and the couple drops of water they’d spilled camouflaged via evaporation & absorption into the natural color of the unforgiving desert. The few living creatures around (mostly of the hardscrabble burrowing variety, or else insects of great tenacity) looked up, and— knowing the well towards which K-Roo & Platy bounded— chattered intently, and quickly agreed upon conjointly investigating the situation. To see what was to be seen, perhaps, as they say.
        Not a soul had gotten water from this particular well in decades, perhaps even nearly a century. And if the well they were off to was indeed the one suspected, each & every one of them had to wonder: was not that well reputed to be a sham well? a kind of cultural mirage for the foolish? an empty, dry hole that only looked of water to those “believing” they were seeing as much? For since the beginning of the earliest any of them could remember, it’d always been said that that fabled well was really nothing but a fable after all.

So it would all have soon to be seen. Presently visible for the moment, however: was a kangaroo & a platypus bounding off under a boundless night, beneath a slow trickle of stars bringing forth to bear. And in differing degrees & at varying speeds: with a motley audience of the curious trailing behind.