Even though it was nearing midnight, the bright Coyote moon lit the playground of our memories like it was mid-day. For a summer night, the humid air was warm, but a chill breeze every now and again caused me to pull my woolly scarf over my nose, and clutch at my clothing. Oddly enough, for a girl, my sister didn't seem to mind the cold, walking through the aged and dusty amusements in a sort of trance. When I noticed, I thought about calling out her name, but the word 'Sammi' died on my lips as I suddenly bumped into the one structure in this moon-kissed dream that was covered in shadow.

The rattlesnake slide rose straight into the clear arizona sky like a stair way to heaven. It was just as tall as I remembered it, or just looking up at it made me feel like I was three feet tall again. I NEVER used to ride the thing...the only reason I got anywhere near it was to retrieve Sammi from the top when she refused to come down to go home. Even then, every step up made me shiver, and I was glad I had no good reason to go up there now.

"TAG!"

The verbal shout was the only warning I got as I was viciously shoved forward, nearly kissing the nightmare serpent with my forehead. As I turned to confront my assailant, a flash of green fabric and gray fur were the only clues to HER identity. Then, in a flash, she was past me, taking the stairs up the slide two, three at a time. There was no thinking...my sister had just shouted tag, and I was it. When i came to my senses, I was nearly to the top...and twenty four years of age or not, it was still pretty high. I felt the fur prickle on the back of my neck and I timidly gazed up, silently imploring my sister to stop.

And then, suddenly, she did. Perched in the snake's mouth, where the slide began, she stopped and looked back down at me, with her odd colored eyes. She gave a long slide and turned her head back out to the Tucson skyline.

"Do you remember, big bro?" she asked, and I didn't have to answer or ask for clarification. I remembered.

And then she was GONE, disappearing down the slide in a speed approaching teleportation. I leapt up as well, and suddenly, we were children again, all of three years old, and Sammi's dress and matching green ribbon were floating in the musky desert air, because as all of the neighborhood kids knew, the only scary part about the slide was it's visage and it's height...clothed, the fabrics only served to slow you to a dead crawl. So as I watched, my sister, my twin at twenty four years of age, zipped down that slide at three, clad only in her sandals and diaper. I made a grab at her hair, longer then it had ever been since she got it chopped off our senior year of highschool, but I missed. I had to catch her though...I was it, wasn't I? Glad I was wearing a fresh pair of training pants, I teased the buttons of my collar with my left paw, and grasped the end of my scarf with the other...