I know, I know. I'd said I'd be not-posting stories for a while, but I sent in my Very Important Draft this morning (and by morning I mean twenty past midnight) so I can't do anything about it, and when the girlfriend wants a story, she wants a story. I hope you enjoy it nearly as much as I hope she enjoys it!

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters portrayed below, or the quote used as an epithet. I can't actually find a source for it, but if you do let me know.

Dedication: You know who you are you big nerd

Seeing the World

I want to travel the world twice. Once to see it. Twice to see how you see it.

-Anonymous

"Can I put my wallet in your purse for the plane?" Nyssa asked as she forced her backpack shut, tugging at the zipper.

"Mmm-hmm," Lacy asked. Nyssa turned to look at the bunk that Lacy had occupied in this particular Spanish hostel's colourful and humid dorm room. Most of Lacy's things were still spread out all over the mattress. Actually, they all were… As a matter of fact, Nyssa didn't think that she'd packed at all.

"You know," she said. "The plane that takes off in four hours."

Lacy nodded and half-heartedly shoved a pair of jeans in her own backpack.

"What's wrong?" Nyssa asked.

"Nothing's wrong."

"Yes something's wrong," she protested. Lacy wore her heart on her sleeve, for starters- it was one of the things that made people instantly attracted to her. And after spending a year island-hopping, job hunting, sight-seeing, people watching and wine tasting with her and their two bigass backpacks all over Europe and Asia, it was impossible not to read even her subtlest cues. "Let me fix it."

"Do you think we could go to Norway, Nyssa?" Lacy asked.

"What the hell?"

"It's so pretty there," Lacy said. "With the mountains and the sea and the Northern lights..."

"We didn't go to Scandinavia this trip because we wanted to come back," Nyssa said. "That was your idea. And we printed out the plane tickets home an hour ago. Where's this coming from, Lace?"

Lacy took a deep breath and twisted back to meet her eyes.

"It's going to be like this when we go back home, right?" Lacy asked.

"Well," Nyssa started. "Ideally we'll go back to the one bed, and the bathrooms aren't going to be as disgusting as they were here but-"

"Not about the hostel," Lacy said. "About us."

"What do you mean about us?" Nyssa said.

"I mean, we'll still be crazy and adventurous right," Lacy said. "Like, remember how we had to spend that one night sleeping in front of that car rental place in Athens last September? Or that four-day stretch of time when we only got one hour of sleep? Nearly freezing to death while visiting Stonehenge… How the bus broke down in the Alps and you fixed it and they refunded our tickets and paid for us to get a fondue supper… Oooh- what about that time when you got your passport stolen but the guy who'd taken it had dropped his driver's license and that Dutch cop who tracked him down asked you out?"

"Yeah, I remember those."

"Or just yesterday! You asked a hooker for directions last night?"

"That was an accident!" Nyssa said.

"I know but it was funny," Lacy said. "And it was crazy and scary and hilarious and new and exciting! I want us to be like that at home too. Like, my worst nightmare is that you'll go back to school, finish your master's, and I'll sell some wedding dresses to people and we'll get home after our 9-5 jobs and collapse on the couch and grunt out our orders so someone can call for take-out. And then we'll watch the news, see how badly people are murdering each other all over the world, go to bed and wake up the next day to do the same exact thing."

"Wow, we're never having sex again?" Nyssa asked. "That is a nightmare."

"Don't laugh at me."

"I'm not laughing at you; I just think you're exaggerating. That's not how things happened before we left, why would we start now?"

"Well, according to my nightmares, because we've had a big, big, big adventure," Lacy said. "I mean, look at us. We've seen the world."

The Polaroid pictures spread out over Lacy's bed were of her favourite places- which Nyssa knew either because she'd confirmed that it was on their destination list a thousand times while they were planning their trip, or because of the big, goofy look on her face in the pictures.

There was a picture of Lacy with her arms raised over her head under a blossoming cherry blossom tree in Kyoto. Lacy had loved Japan more than she thought she would, probably because she'd loved how Kyoto made her feel hopeful about good things to come and good things happening.

Another of Lacy hiding in the hedge of Hampton Court Maze- it'd been taken by a Canadian backpacker they'd hung out with for that day, and Nyssa was hiding in the greens with her. All day, her girlfriend had been making bad puns about how some travelers traveled to get lost and here they were, literally lost in the maze. She was so excited about it that Nyssa hadn't had the heart to show her the way out right away, even if she'd printed up a mental building map of the maze itself, and they wandered around and kissed in dead-ends all day, holding hands to make sure they at least never lost each other.

A picture of Lacy sitting in the shallows on a beach in Bali, Indonesia- leaning into Nyssa. Both of them had sand weaved into their hair, their bikini tops were dirty and this was the closest to showering they'd gotten to in a week- but they'd asked a passing Australian traveler to take their picture anyways. Lacy had agreed saying that they'd make the beauty in the moment.

One of Lacy holding her fingers up as if she was going to squash the Eifel Tower. Just after Nyssa had clicked the button on the camera Lacy had pulled her hand away, saying that she was more sure than ever before that you should never, ever break things (it was month 8 of traveling by the time they got to Eastern Europe).

Another picture showed Lacy kissing Nyssa's cheek under The Bridge of Sighs in Venice. There was some kind of story about lovers associated to it, but Nyssa had been tuning her out. She'd sounded excited and breath-taken by the story, which was how Nyssa knew it was about love. Most of Lacy's oh-my-gods-Nyssa-we-have-to-go-promise-me-we-have-to-go destination picks had to do about love. Nyssa had pointed it out to her and Lacy had shrugged off the irony by saying that she'd wanted to go around the world and make sure that its romantic hotspots were as good as they ought to be since there was so much goodness and potential and hope in it.

One of Nyssa's favourite places had been the Taj Mahal. Nyssa had been giddy to hear the tour guide (on the tour they were illicitly following) cite facts about the construction time and the amount of marble that had been used, while Lacy had gripped Nyssa's arm and awed as the guide recounted the story of its construction for what was probably his billionth time. Anyways, in the picture Lacy had been riding on Nyssa's back since she'd fallen down some steps, and the big white building proudly stood behind them.

A picture of Lacy and Nyssa kissing in The Rodin Museum, Paris: more precisely in front of The Kiss, a famous statue. It'd been taken by a pair of Slovakian backpackers, but the photographer had given them the picture saying it was "too intimate" for anyone else to have. That was one of Nyssa's favourite pictures too.

"Yes, we have."

"And we've seen the best of each other and the worst," Lacy said. "And I… I don't want the excitement and all the planning and all the buzz we had going on to leave, you know?"

Nyssa scoffed. "Listen, if the world didn't become boring after months and months of seeing it, than you never will. If anything, you make the world better, Lace. I love seeing it like you do, I love how you rub off on me and make it, make everything, more… exciting."

Lacy arched an eyebrow.

"What? You make me better," Nyssa said. "Why is the world such a stretch?"

Lacy bit her lip, blushing madly, and that's when Nyssa kind of knew she had to do it.

"Listen, I got this back in Indonesia…" she said darting back to her backpack and playing with the straps and pockets and zippers- so many zippers… Thankfully they weren't so stubborn this time and Lacy gasped as soon as she spotted the ring box.

"Don't do this to me now, I'm going to cry," Lacy said, pressing her hands to her mouth.

"You were going to cry anyways," Nyssa said kneeling down in front of her.

"Fair enough, go for it," Lacy said.

"Lacy Victor," Nyssa said. "You're the kindest, sweetest most positive person I've ever met. Will you..?"

Lacy cut her off by pulling a similar box from her purse and holding it out to Nyssa.

"I got yours in Germany," she said quickly.