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Luke sat down heavily, sinking into the soft, silky sand, trying to catch his breath. He and his best friend Ty had been playing tag on the beach near their neighborhood in the town Deria. Deria was a small, quiet, town near the coast. He loved to go down to the beach on hot days with his friends.
"If only it were summer. . ." He sighed. He longed for summer to come so he could do anything he wanted because his parents' store would not have as many customers and he would be excused from any helping out.
"Haha, you wimp. Ya tired already?" Ty scoffed as he appeared from behind a huge boulder near Luke.
"Hey, you would be too if you were already wiped out from runnin' errands all over the place." Luke retorted.
Ty gave a small snort. "pfft, yeah, yeah, whatever." He sat down next to Luke and they both stared out into the ocean.
"Ya know. . .sometimes, I just wonder what's out there. I mean. . .It's just. . .we've lived here all our lives. We never got to know any other place. I wonder how many people there are out there, how they live. I wanna meet them." Luke said after a long silence. He had been wondering this ever since getting over the initial amazement after the first time he'd laid eyes on the ocean as a child.
"Huh, are you sane?" Ty mocked. "Maybe you forgot, but we're not exactly rich, and there's absolutely no way we could ever go out there. We don't have a boat, we don't have the stuff to build one, nor the skills, no nothin'."
Undeterred, Luke stood up and looked out as far as he could. "Well, I can't see anything right now, but I have this feeling that one day, I will find out what's out there."
That night, as Luke laid in bed, staring up at the peaceful, star-filled night sky, he couldn't help but think about the conversation he and Ty had had that afternoon. All around him, the lights of the town slowly came off one by one until all that he could hear were the crickets chirping and the trees rustling softly in the wind. He needed to know what was out there. He loved the outdoors, and he wanted to expand his knowledge of the "outdoors." Despite Ty's words, he just knew there was more. There had to be. Exhausted from the long day, he closed his eyes and let the amazing world of dreams take over.