Lesson Learned

The girl danced in shoes of scarlet scale.

She had been dancing for a long time, and had been dancing a long way. Three months and two hundred miles, in fact, which is a lot longer and further than most people dance, given the choice.
Three months and two hundred miles ago, the girl had danced out of her big house and down the lane. She had shimmied her way out of the city, through the suburbs and into the forest. Then she had boogied for a few dozen miles through trees and bushes and thorns and grass, before tap-dancing into the Wilderness, which was mostly a bunch of nothing with a few scraggly weeds sticking out of it.

Then she danced across that as well.

The Wilderness was mostly full of monsters, who were terribly confused at the tiny girl dancing through their midst. Confusion is a good state of being in which to find a monster. Hungry is not. The girl danced through the Wilderness, and as she did she learned to live there - hiding during the day when great dragons of gold and black scales clawed and fought in the sky, stealing fruit and berries, learning how to hide her tracks so that predators couldn't find her.

And all the while, she danced.

Eventually, three long months and two hundred miles after she danced from her home, the girl found her destination, the Great Nothing beyond the Wilderness.

In the Great Nothing there was... nothing.

Black sand. Bright stars. Or maybe the stars were black and the sand was bright. It was hard to tell.
The girl danced and danced and danced. The tan she had gained from months of harsh Wilderness sun faded, stolen away by the half-hearted light of the stars. A trail of dust rose behind her, pointing back the way she had come. Miles and miles of nothing, until eventually, in the distance, she saw...

Something.

A desk.

A man.

He nodded at her as she moonwalked closer.

'Evening.'