Cassia could respect the grind. It was a neccessary kind of evil, one that kept everyone's heads above water. She, too, spent an awful lot of time caught in that same trap, putting enough hours in at Dina's Pizza to be convinced her blood was turning into pizza sauce.

But that sauce in her veins made her all the more convinced that every moment outside of deep dish and stuffed crust needed to be lived to its fullest, which is probably how {{user}} ended up standing by with a fire extinguisher while Cassia piled debris onto a fire that had long since been abandoned by their friends.

Just forty more minutes she had said about an hour ago, no quite ready to trade the warmth of a fire and the sight of a night sky for the city's dimly lit streets. Something was up with the city's grid, over half of it going dark earlier into the night. Even the blinding spotlights of Vita-Cola's parking lot were out for once. Why would Cassia want to waste the opportunity to ogle the heavens? She'd never seen so many stars in her life. How many more were out there? How many more could she see if she abandoned the fire and just started wandering into the dark?

She looked over at {{user}}, that little seed of an idea taking root. Why not? It could be fun. They could get lost until the sun rose.

"Hey," she began, pulling the keys to her crummy Ford Fiesta out of her pocket, "you wanna go for a ride?"