Angus, Reese, Orlan, Nola, Shara and Danya.

Over and over again through her mind their names went until she could recite them without a moment's hesitance.

Angus, Reese, Orlan, Nola, Shara and Danya.

A secret smile on her lips as she walked towards the Riverview, backpack over shoulder and hand down a pocket. It was 10am and the air was already well infused with autumn and it's mingled scents. The smell spiced the morning, was enlivening and went hand in hand with the excitement at the prospect of work to get her by. Young Madi was very independent, something ingrained in her by her mother, and now, with little going in way of cash or clothing or shelter she was glad for it.

After a brief check in with the front of house, who Tag had diligently already informed of her arrival, she was directed out to the yards where the horses waited, those she would foster on the dark man's days off.

Angus, Reese, Orlan, Nola, Shara and Danya.

Dumping her bag on the edge of the grounds she strode over, untying the band around her wrist to pull her hair through and into a high ponytail, the ends swinging at the small of her back as a pendulum to each step.

Soothingly, she addressed them, bending over to pluck a few stems of long grass into her hand and wave them under Angus's nose, the one she already knew to be trouble. "Well, I know you don't know me from a bar of soap, but I'm Madi. I know Tag, and when he's not here I will be. I hope that's okay. I'm very glad to meet you."

Their ears pricked and their stances rigid, they looked at her sceptically. It was a slow dance that went long into Noon, before she had bargained and bartered for their trust with promises of oats. Eventually, one by one, they relented. But come tomorrow it would be Round Two.

A horse never forgot you, your fragrance and energy lingering for all time in their mind, in their olfactory glands, and it took time for them to pair that smell with kindness, to recognise you as a friend. She knew that. And she was patient.

The horse was not long without care.

He was working his way along the road to the stables. Though he had given up two or three days of work at the stables for Madi, he had still felt responsible to come by after her shift to be sure nothing was forgotten, or that perhaps something had happened to her and she hadn't come by to take care of them. It was not out of a sense of distrust or doubt. The days off were significant ones for him.

As contrary as it sounded, he was making an effort to enjoy free time. So many years spent working everyday had become habitual and natural. Without work came the feeling of being useless, of being unnecessary and dismissed. The idea of relaxation and enjoyment was not a highly occupying one— but he was learning it.

When he passed the stables he noticed Orlan's foot immediately not because the horse was walking, but because of the white bandage wrapped around it.

The horses regarded him as the man that spoke with his hands.

He smoothed his fingertips down the flesh of the leg and the horse lifted it. Propped upon his knee he unwrapped what had been done. When he inspected it fully, examining the crevice of it he bent down and sniffed. The dark line of thrush barely visible, but the odor intense upon lenaing in close to it. He tapped the leg and the horse set it back down, weight shifting off of it at the tenderness felt.

His experiences with horses had been long standing, but not on par with a scientific understanding. He knew what was passed down. From what he experienced.

Taking one of the squirt bottles from the supply room, he filled it with bleach and returned to the stall. Again, he requested the horse's hoof and then, slowly pulling the trigger, the bleach leeked from heel to toe along the crack of the horse's hoof looking deep with the dark of thrush. Then he guided the horses leg to bend more, turn more, until the hoof became like a bowl opened upward. He sprayed the full inside of the hoof. He rinsed it in a similar matter.

He swept out the stall so that all the loose pieces of hay and dirt that hadn't been packed down tight by the horse's pacing. He thinly bandaged it, more to keep any bits from rewedging itself into the foot while it was healing.

It was good she came by at nine, he was there.

Where the grounds stretches up to the sky is it. Upon reaching his home it is clear that it is a modest, but well cared for home. Behind the house and outline perhaps two acres is a fence and two horses. One is a dark older mare while the other was a cream color Arabian with a white mask. Apparently the dark man did have horses of his own.

The house is one story and sits with vegetable gardens and well tended areas. A crow perches near, in a way that says it is quite familiar with the dark man, who sits in a chair looking out to nowhere but also like he expected her. There is a neat pile to his right. The cup in his hand steams and even from where she is to him she could tend he'd smell just like coffee. He didn't smile at her in the dusk, but it came to her when his eyebrows relaxed.

If there were children they were as silent as the grave.

"Good morning." He set his cup of coffee to the side, on an inverted crate with a potted plant squatting on it with curling green tendrils spilling down. The smell of earth and horses hit him only briefly but, like her, his mind was quick to lose the strength of it because of familiarity. He leaned forward to pick up the pile of clothes, saying absently, "You're getting along well at Maranya's?" was it a question or a statement' The tone didn't make either particularly clear.

He pulled at the string which tied his clothes together and opened up the shirt. He indicated to the shoulder, "It is here, at the seam, that it has lost its strength."

He continued to each item in that way, to be sure that she knew where to look. It was only five articles of clothes and the demands were not too heavy. He was not a man who was particularly concerned with flashy new clothes or professional ones. The glare of morning light separated from shadows makes the outline of slightly raised veins and scars pattern down his arms. No, this was not a man who cared to impress with his clothing.

They were folded back into each other, tied back with the string for better carrying and handed to her. The crow jumped to a fresh limb and the horses only looked a moment towards the unfamiliar sounds, twisted an ear away and went back to eating. She was a small ripple in the routine and now with the waves settled she was part of it.

"Are you closer yet, to home?" When he said home it was more than a misplaced noun in a sentence. He could say home like it were a feeling.

Morning was a delicate time. There was only a handful of minutes where it existed the way he loved it most. The in between stage where it was day without the sun dominating. The window of this transition had already passed and heat was rising off anything with the oil of life in it.

His eyes watched the way she handle the parcel and slipped it into the bag. He turned from her to take a swallow of his coffee. When he turned back he saw her, heard that she was staying.

"Well, was there anything you were trying to get back to?" If Madi had seemed to miss where she was or what had been, she had not been particularly demonstrative about it. It had seemed that she was more caught up in the act of getting back than having the want to be there. She had come not of her own accord but had turned it into her own, somehow. Resourceful, she was working, surviving well and protecting herself. Already had friends. He could see the potential in her, the drawn up figure of a youthful woman that would mature and change. She'd be attractive in a way that was unique and utterly Madi. She'd make a good wife because she was sensitive and perceptive. She'd make a good mother because she did not mind working for what she loved like the horses. She was a good, little friend for him, though sometimes his understanding of her was ambiguous. She was not a child that he could feel paternal to, nor a woman with whom he would be reserved. She walked in lines of grey.

"Oh?" he leaned forward to accept the coin, his eyes squinting at it even though the day was well bright enough to make out the coin. His smile was a slow progression and stopped at being just slight on his lips.

"Lost' Call it." The coin had already jumped in the air.

The next they met it was with a completely different atmosphere.

The tension of the inn resting on her shoulders like a cat whose eyes most nearly were closed. Two women, the skeleton woman and her company cackling over some knowledge which they had of Madi yet weren't sharing. It reeled her in and he stayed with her, close, like he feared they would literally lap up her flesh.

She goes to the back alley with the skeleton woman and when she returned it was like the breath of her had been taken.

"Call it." He said as he looked at her.

"Tragedy." She said with an infinite certainty. Even the cackling skeleton woman expressed a grain of remorse for what had transpired.

That tiny hand, probing his palm and lacing through his fingers he thought like a child-woman. She didn't say what the skeleton woman had cackled, she just wanted to leave.

The late evening's life was being spent in a walk through the glen where they came upon a shallow, two to thee inch puddle-lake brought on by the rain. Some grass stems standing out of the face of it. He thought it was a beautiful place to stop. The air, the scenery and the attitude of the place was just one that existed wholly apart from that of the inn.

He could not know what had been said, he didn't ask for it. The water reflects the image of two figures with interlocked hands and she broke her hold of his and he watched her. Watched the was she was collecting the parts of her on the ground.

"I don't think so." but even he did not put certainty into those words. Should he have" Did he have the unblinking nerve to say that for certain Madi didn't have it within her to offend him' This is strict lighting— he's older, his face so near to strict that it looks as though something were unearthed behind his eyes.

"If there is a proper time, I suppose you'll tell me." not said with a fiery desire that wanted her to confess and corner, nor with indifference. It mattered. It mattered that she do it of her own accord.

Free actions were the most important. A scientist will tell you that just by observing a situation you've changed it. The very act of looking altered. He wanted the outcome without his intervention: an impossible wish. There was the feeling of manipulation, of selfishness, when "I" was interjected. When "should" and "want" became the primary verbs to use. None of it seemed like truly relating.

The water looked deep. He thought he could have waded in it shoulder high, but he knew better. He knew it was but a reflective pool that, with a week of no rain, would seem to have never been there at all. Sometimes the surface jilted under the dance of water spiders.

Home.

"Where is home?" with events being what they were, it was unspoken that he intended to walk her home. Tag's eyes surveyed her, the deflated, the conflicted, reactions that motivated her face.

Was home just around the corner now?

If she had asked him if he thought he was her brother, he would have told her he didn't know. If she asked him what he thought he was then, he would tell her "here." If she pressed him further for the details of what they were to each other he would say...

....heads or tails.

Did it feel as though now was the time to know?

Madi seemed certain it wouldn't be the same— that whatever could come from her lips would change their relationship forever. She did not, though, say this with any joy or eagerness. If she had wanted to tell him it would have been said hours ago. Instead, she would only if he pressed her for it.

"I will." That he would ask. But not tonight.

When she described home it sounded more like a hotel. The tones of attachment were gone and in their stead hung a shallow description of what a common sleeping area was. As they walked to it, he felt a surprising relation to this home of her's. When he had first come to Rhydin he had lived outside it, in an old abandoned bar called Ollie's. It was one of the homes he thought fondly back on and could not say, with great confidence, what possessed him to leave it behind.

It might be surprising how a life-worn light blue warehouse, just meant to help her get by now, could become such a symbol to her later. That perhaps years would pass and she would think about a light blue house as home and not know what exactly had distinguished it from all the others houses.

She felt like a whisper hugging him. A light frame, dwarfed by him. Tag was solid, he caught her in his arms and did not slip backward when she embraced him. It wasn't surprising. A laborer's frame is full from work. He smells like work, like incense and the delicious way plants smell when they've just been cut. His clothes like fresh bedsheets on a cool morning. She'd never been quite that close to him before.

He bent down and picked up her bag, his hand now the force that kept the door open. Her bag held out to her like it were some gift he were giving her.

Goodnight just wasn't necessary at this point.

The warehouse was like a hollow opening, dust touched and haunted with its open space. He looked at the inside. When he stood there he had a sudden feeling that he recognize the warehouse's atmosphere and yet, could not recall why. He knew he had never been to this particular warehouse before, but it was something about its empty space that was trying to refresh a memory. After a moment he realized he'd been dumbly standing there and smiled shortly in the dark as though to brush off his traveling mind.

"It is good." He was one that liked these run down, worn in places. It was like breaking in your favorite clothes and keeping them always. Fresh buildings could make him nervous, like he always must walk the line of worry about depreciating it. The slightest spill or transgression was an announcement on the unmarred face of it. He rathered these places, adjusted to your liking and comfortable to live in.

The tour around the warehouse complete, he stood opposite of her and the quiet that was there felt final. He bowed his head to her slowly like to say he approved and then started for the door. He had to give it a shoulder-shove to open and then, on a look over his shoulder he gave the small wave goodbye.

The next evening was nothing like that.

There was a point in the evening where he sat at the bar with Lilliana, discussing his martial vows and what should be written. Or how. Madi was with Jane, getting sloshed with vodka and giggling madly with entertainment as they tosses curse words back and forth before a preacher. It wasn't long until events streamed different.

Madi disliked the past approaching her— every time someone said they knew her he saw her disassociate from her body and look to end the conversation. He couldn't blame anyone for feeling like that about themself. Part of him whispered at times that the old issues should be made peace with. The majority of his mind said she's deciding who she'll be. Not everyone gets that chance.

She's bratty, loud, drunk. He breaks conversation from Lilliana to trail her steps when she leaves. Jane had offered to see her home and she refused it. Outside at the porch he stopped at the porch column and looked towards her.

She shouldn't be walking alone this way.

"Hey, Madi." returned as she spins ahead like a music box doll, her lips in the most satisfied of smiles. A content warmth to her that flutters around, invisible at night. He doesn't look at her directly, but he sees it.

"Run away..." he smiled just slightly when she said it like that and looked toward her. The idea sounded like a romance novel. Was it ever that easy' He imagined what it would be like to do that, or, he tried. He couldn't see it, not even in his imagination.

When she chants the word he smiles, but the smile is stiff and his eyes distant behind the dark mirrors. He doesn't say anything but eyes no longer had him behind them. Run run run! We're not going to die here Mamoru. When he blinks he's back, the slight smile becoming more natural and perhaps with a slight indication of relief.

"I'm not sad." He promised, eyebrows arched up just the slightest like he didn't know why she said it. Truthfully he wasn't. Perhaps it was just the great alcohol rift between them. While Lilli had poured an extra heavy glass of brandy for him he had drunk no more than usual, which wasn't much. He watched the spin dance, the elation as she separated from all the caring that got in the way. All the thoughts that made her face strict. He thought she was the most beautiful to him when she had that element of abandon.

She asks him not to be scared and that the truth of it is not what it appears to be. He shrugs when she says that, "Nothing's changed."

Had nothing changed" Madi was behaving just like the young woman he met. That is, she still spoke the same way, moved the same way. She was still the person— he could not comprehend a difference. Had she lost a hand there would have been some greater visual distinction. There was nothing, no former Madi that he knew to compare to the immortal creature dancing before him. She could be no more or less than what she already was to him.

He'd lived in Rhydin many years. He'd met vampires, demons, elves, fairies, spirits and....it went on. He'd met them all and honestly, his thoughts on the races were not profound. He hadn't a Christian compass by which to judge a demon or vampire. There was no God to tell him that killing was wrong, no commandments that outlined the qualifications of sin with demons being their great social ambassadors. It was hard to notice that Tag failed to have a sense of "good" and "sin". That he was not a womanizer for fear of a God's wrath but because of his social bringing. Nationalists were like that, though. Loyalty and obedience to the whole, to the idea of your culture, dominated any concept of the self. What was wrong, what was sinful, then, could only be discerned if it was considered bad for the whole.

What exactly, then, could he discern a vampire was" This creature that drinks blood sitting next to a man who eats his steak rare. A creature that kills to eat walking next to a man who skins a rabbit for his stew. Was society not overwhelmed with itself" Were humans not beyond the laws of nature in that, mostly, the only culling of their herd was through large forces of nature and their own volatile actions" That is was fortunate for wars, famines and disease or human flesh would pour from every crevice that would support it, hungry and eating more.

Unless there were vampires. Creatures that didn't give birth and could only expand to numbers only as high as what a human prey population could support.

She coos at him. Nice. Cool. She laughs and he feels that some part of him was criticized, but he doesn't know what. He can't follow where her drunk ramblings are going.

"You're the one that's more fun. Rather, I slow you down."

She collapses. It surprises him, he almost didn't know to catch her. She had seemed so animated not long ago and now a limp doll he saved in time. Arm around her, pinning her to his side as the rest of her body tried to slump to the ground like gravity wanted.

He bent awkwardly and somehow managed to scoop her up threshold style. It was good she was small and the walk wasn't too far ahead. The flash of her throat with her head rolled to the side against his chest, sleeping like a baby and he thought he heard some sleepy drunken mutterings not quite part her lips into words.

The door screams when he gets it open. It was hard, working with a few fingers he could spare and his shoulder and elbow doing what hands were meant to. It was so very dark in there. Like steeping into a cave. When his eyes adjusted he could make the outline out of several areas. He walked and walked, finally venturing to go upstairs where there was an indication that this is where she slept.

The hero lays down the music box doll. He thought that the day he died she'd be sleeping just like this.

The patternless ringing of crickets makes his eyes open. He felt awake, almost like he'd been startled but nothing was there. Rona was asleep, the outer flesh of her body chilled by morning. he drew the sheet up over he shoulder, drew on some pajama pants and walked outside.

The sun hadn't finished its climb. He thought he should be sleeping but still his body thought he was tending to the horses today. The porch was moist under his feet and he sat in his wooden seat regardless of it. Water crawling slowly through the cloth of his pants and coolly pressing on his back and arms.

If she had asked him, he would have told her all life was suffering.

But also, that suffering wasn't bad.

He shudders as the cool of morning gets him. In the morning light he squints and sees one of the maple trees beginning to turn color. There would need to be firewood soon, he thought.

Thoughts milled around in his mind, but it wasn't long until he climbed to his feet, going inside to change into work pants and a sleeveless shirt. He went to the shed outside, at the back of the horse's stable, and collected a jar of brown paint and pushed a brush behind his ear. Then, the long morning sizzle-walk to Madi's place.

He knew she wouldn't be there. Not at this hour. At least, if she was she'd be so very asleep that the patter of his brush would not shake her from sleep. He judged the door of her warehouse for a long time before the brush lifted up and went dancing over the face of it. Filling cracks and weaving out the branches. The roots circling the bottom of the image like it'd grown over it. The sun baked the paint dry fairly quickly. He stepped back and squinted at what he'd done and decided to add some strokes here and there— to clean up other stroke. He was not a great artist but in working with one color and a silhouetted image, he fair the job well.

Stretching like an open hand open the door. The tree of life.

He walks to the market with Hope sometimes.

She's new, a young horse with a creamy coat and a white mask. Her tail rests high and her legs look thin and her frame, even for a young pony, is petite. An Arabian of substantial breeding with wide, inky eyes.

She was young. She sometimes didn't trust him.

His hand is looped in the training harness she wears everyday. When he walks it is at an easy pace that makes her slowly plod along beside him. The market was a good place to edge along because it forced her to get more comfortable with people. Only in very early hours, when you could hardly say that morning was being born, would he walk her through the ghost-market. Where all the smells of flesh and various races had combed through. Showing her that all these seemingly strange components here were....as mundane as they ever could be.

He was standing by a small drainage stream that Hope drank from when he fell asleep standing. When his head bounced up he was surprised that it had happened at all and Hope appeared unaware of the occurrence. He had to start sleeping better somehow. His exhale was like incense on the wind and he walked the shy and uncertain creature home, sure that with the following days ahead she would find the trips they took more predictable.

Sleep. Did Rona know he wasn't sleeping well? He couldn't tell. She might have been too polite or just unaware.

Or, it'd gone on so long that it had become the norm.

At the break of noon he goes to see the tree of life, to see if its changed.

There were deer paths throughout the woods he wandered along. Sometimes he puts the pecans in his pockets. Or walnuts. Sometimes he shells them with a crack between teeth as he walks and opens up their wrapping to eat the golden meat of them. These days the woods smell like the sweet decay of Autumn and the bonfire piles people set to flame.

He'd not been entirely honest with Rona. He'd been wanting to be an ideal love, one without complaint or issue. At least, not this issue. He feared to ask, to press, because he felt that it would be pressuring. That days since their proposal had turned into weeks and Rona had still given him no indication of when they would marry. He had to fight off the screaming inclination that this was deja vu. No, he trusted her, more than he ever had but the insecurity was gnawing at him.

Insecurity didn't look good on him. It fed on the life of his face and made his thoughtful eyes look distracted with internal bleeding. Was it fair to court a gypsy who loved the road? Was he just forcing the situation he wanted and she allowed it because she was passive since her ordeal and felt she could not leave him'

He didn't have to read to know what a wedding invitation was— or that some were plastered on the dirt packed ground like the one he was stepping over. He peeled it off the dirt and squinted at the foreign words. His fingers worked along the edge and he folded it in half, shoving it into the inside pocket of his jacket.

Madi had been a relief. Sometimes she was a daughter. Sometimes she was like a lover of some other life. Still, there were other times that she wasn't female at all— that she was somehow quite like the men he had grown up with in that sense of comradeship. He thought many times that women dismissed him and he often doubted that he was desirable, just approachable. He was too quiet— women liked a man who would joke and share stories of their about their day and their past. He didn't smile enough. He didn't move to be affectionate at the right times. Oh, it seemed the list of his shortcomings as a man were infinite and he had accepted, a long time ago, that he was no more than a candlestick sitting upon the table, burning an even glow.

To be kissed on the cheek made him feel like a person again. Not simply smiled to or regarded in the way people do a dog with passing remarks and nods. It had lifted his spirits to feel, again, that he was a man.

That something about him still required affection.

He sighed and hoped the gesture was one that hadn't a trace of pity to it. If she were to pity him he wasn't certain he could hold his head up.

It was after walking the property and doing the landscaping of his home that he sat under one of the oak trees, feet crossed. It smells like musky acorns and the dirt felt like a dark, healthy sponge to sit on. His arms crossed over his chest and his weight leaned back against the tree. He hadn't even known he was falling asleep until he was well into a dream.

Sometimes you can watch a dream pass right over someone's mind. Like ghost cloth over his face, his eyes behind the lids tracking it down. His right thumb twitches sometimes when he dreams. Maybe he was grabbing something, or playing piano. When he hand hovers his eyebrows knit like something had changed the dream. Some great force his mind and he could no interpret and there was confusion. In a land of free juxtaposition, odd colors and senseless phrases which all seemed perfectly fit and logical, there was some influence which even that world was arrested by.

There's a brush of warmth on his cheek. He isn't startled but opens his eyes slow and looks up at her. The expression looked defeated— that she had taken something from him when he slept and now he just wouldn't be whole without it. Then, the distant remark of a smile.

It was strange to feel a hand liberally glide down the old leather of his jacket, slimming into his pocket with that soft piece of gold that disappears past her lips. Lips.

It's what he thought the difference between a woman and a girl was. The lips. Dolls and such lacked those lines of definition that said "this is what my smile is now, and this is how it falls on my face." There was no determination of what they were, shiftless and ghostly in their youth. A woman, though, there was a slight line. Not a wrinkle or even a grove, but her smile was....her's. It would not mutate into something else or be different in five more years.

So it was her smile that told him first she was not the ghostly Madi searching for her bus anymore. The sharp turn of her hip and willowy height now like one with the trees.

His voice is the gravel of someone who first wakes up, "How long have I been sleeping?"

It was like seeing a kid from his orphanage years later, stand in front of him. He could not deny that he recognized them, though the world of change from child to adulthood had taken place. It was, perhaps, that experience which armed him well to handle her change with such an accepting air. He wondered, briefly, if five years had been slept away. It would have not been so difficult for him to believe.

He takes her hand and uses it slightly. His weight was still much in comparison to her's, though she was but exactly his height now. It was good she wasn't the sort to wear heels or she'd be looking down at him. He noticed women seemed disappointed when they looked down at him.

Supported by her arm he looked at himself and then back to her. Falling asleep on the ground had gotten him quite dirty. He might not have had the most elegant clothes to boast around town but he did attempt to stay a neat and collected figure. His smile was a slight and dry one, "I will change, and I will meet you at the other bar." That is, not the one at the Inn, which was sure to be hustling. He had gotten only a few paces from her when she asked him about his dreams.

To which he stood there like a statue but still with a life quality. Fistfuls of leaves fell like a veil between them and disappeared when they scattered across the ground. He looked up to the sky like the dream were there and all he had to do was drag it towards her with his gaze.

"I saw small leaves on the ground and when I grabbed them and pulled, they were rooted deep. So I kept pulling. The more I did, the more of the tree I kept pulling out of the ground. I kept grabbing little leaves and pulling until the woods were very thick with the saplings."

Then he left, home those yards to change and meet with her again.

Stars End Bar. With a frightening sliding door. She was already there, playing pool and he went to the bar, not having seen her and ordered his drink. Little had changed between them except that, well, he had to acknowledge how womanly she was now. That the strange father-daughter aspect of their friendship had died with those years she left behind. In some ways, he felt that he could not be as honest with her. He could not call her beautiful without feeling he was going to overstep his bounds. They talked about reading and of all the paper bound lovers she had experienced and wanted him to experience. She quoted a man she believed when she told him that words would bleed if you cut them. He believed her.

He thought, also, that she would as daughters do, shed him. That as a woman now she would naturally seek a male companion with which to talk the nights away and that Tag, now, was an obstacle for that. That to stand beside her would wither her chances of a man approaching and accidentally he would doom her to be single. He didn't want her to be lonesome, though she indicated that emotion very little. He thought maybe he was becoming a burdening friend. That like Magenta he should be more brass, more outspoken, more rude to capture the imagination. Whatever did a vivacious woman want with a shadow?

They bid farewell and she told him they'd have moonshine when he got back. They didn't. An argument he could not grasp entirely ate up the air and when they left he told her, like a weak reminder, that they had not drank the moon as promised. That was for another day.

The next morning, when Tag awakes and wanders out onto the porch with his coffee, there is something on his chair, wrapped in cloud colored tissue paper. Upon opening it, he found a leather book of deep burgundy with a golden pen clipped to it. The pages are lined but empty. There's only the musk of unwritten words, if he were to lift his nose and breathe in the scent of fresh paper.

Slipped inside, on a piece of pale blue is written..

This will be a good book

He stares at the note a long time and goes to Lilli with it. Still childish in what he can accomplish as a reader but wanting desperately to know. When she tells him he smiles distantly and keeps nodding in agreement.

At home, the sun tipping its hat to the horizon he looks down at the book and says, "I hope so."

He thought about all the books in the library and wondered if any of the authors there had ever felt this way. He tears out one of the pages and goes to the blue warehouse and, tearing that one gold lined page into bits, pastes it over the branches of the tree of life so it is full of tiny, asymmetrical leaves that jump off the wood of the door.

It reminded him of what it was like after a war.

Walking down the road where large tree limbs, as big around as a child, were scattered along the ground. Large, displaced lumps of leaves like bodies gone still along the ground. The wisps of gray in the air like a whisper that said the army of the wind passed through here.

He stepped carefully along the ground like people do when they don't want to step on a grave. He saw tiny items, ones he imaged had belonged in a well loved home. A picture frame. When he crouched down to pick it up the back was ripped off and the half of it that appeared submerged had actually been gone. He thought it had been a handsome, proud color of blue once. He hoped the owner disliked the picture but couldn't bring themself to throw it away. That the storm had done away with it and given them relief from the memory.

Along his home had been fallen trees and a roof that needed work again. Parts of the fence had to be redone. When he looked to the sky he saw what always surprised him, that the hollow-boned birds had survived and picked over the wreckage as though it happened when they were out of town.

His steps left shallow puddles behind them. Up to the warehouse that stood adamantly, but slightly without the indication he had been there. The painted image pressed with fifty years of fading and the leaves all but gone from the face of it. He wondered if this is what it felt like for Madi, who had all the time in the world. That she would blink and the things of yesterday would be fifty years older.

It was the best he could do in terms of leaving her a note. In uncertain form with a left sway to it he wrote. Be okay. It was the first letter he'd ever written someone. Slid it in where the door pressed to the warehouse itself. Did she ever miss anything"

On the way home he was distracted. On thoughts of home, on what had to be done and what was changing and whether he was part of the change. From underneath the debris a metal-toothed bear trap jumped up and broke three bones in his foot when it shut its mouth. He'd never been dropped to the ground so instantly. It went through his shoe and when he tried to move it it felt like trying to open the jaws of a monster much greater than he was. The heels of his hands were starting to bleed from his attempts to open it, the cold making it go old and brown quickly like reddish dirt.

When did soldiers get vacations"

Tag didn't scream or cry. It wouldn't have seemed much like him to do that. It was through his eyes and the strictness of his lips that there was an expression of pain. His hands shook some, or had he just been there so long pulling at the metal jaws that his hands were telling him enough already. The emotion under his pain was a river of embarrassment.

He didn't move his foot when he straightened out his leg. He was trying to hardly move the foot at all, so it was his body that adjusted to the foot. When she shot he looked away, the metal got hot and jumped, twice, around his foot. He thought he felt a spark jump on his hand but when he looked there was nothing. Suddenly the pressure dissolves and the trap, a monster he couldn't defeat, now looked like impotent bits of metal strewn before him.

He hadn't been there long, but it was already red and swelling up. Down his temples crawls sweat mixed with apprehension. He leaned down to untie his shoe. It was hard to slip off. He took in a breath and then pulled. His exhale was broken pottery. He peeled off the wet-dry blood sock that wanted to stay forever and be part of him. He used it to tie around the large gouges in his foot to discourage the bleeding. When he looked at her he spoke shortly, like his voice might give him away.

"I need to get somewhere."

He takes any help she gives him to get to his feet and wraps his arm tight around her shoulders. Madi was surprisingly strong, well, stronger than many of the women he'd met anyways.

It is hard to gauge when a quiet and subtle man is falling asleep. His natural tendency to be quiet and still mingling with the insidious intent of a failing body. It was as though someone had given him a very complex math problem and he was solving it to save himself. If he was aware that he could slip out from under his own mind he didn't say it.

Just as they walked there was an unusual relief from the pain and he felt like his arms and legs were drifting away from him. He knew his arm was around her, held her, but he couldn't feel it anymore. He squeezed his hand and knew he squeezed her shoulder but that was just him knowing what he was doing. He didn't know if he was exhausted, dehydrated or if the little bits of him that were slipping away were too much and the whole of him couldn't make due without the part.

From far in the slush and mush of sensation comes a beacon like a string he holds onto and guides through. Invisible string, drawing him into focus. Made of notes and a tune that Madi somehow got past her lips while they worked their way along. Then he feels it, his feet under his steps and he realized he'd been gone from his body he didn't know how long but, he was back now.

And it hurt.

When she drops, he does too. There was no gasp or scream but very obviously he held his breath. Then a slow, patient exhale. He'd dropped to his hands and knees. When she apologies, he looks confused but doesn't say anything. Drawn back up with her and proceeding that very last bit to the house. Once there it was like some of the confusion lifted and he realized that something had to be done. He tries it on his own, a one-foot hop to the door. The toes of his foot brush the ground and draw a wet line behind him. It's not all blood, some is moisture and dirt from the leaves they picked up along the way.

"Thank you but, but, I must take care of this. I will see you again, tomorrow," he promised her without saying he promised her. He didn't want her inside, with him while he went through the painful process. She had carried him far enough and he felt he could not ask for anymore. Mostly, he wanted to be alone so that when he made his stitches it'd feel all right to scream, or swear.

As soon as he could bid her farewell, he did, and made to the bathroom quickly. The door to the house almost shut behind him and the water in the bathroom running. There's blood and dirty and scabs now, all getting washed away. With a dull butter knife he scoops around the mouth of the incision, pulling out anything necessary. He was glad he'd tied off his circulation earlier before making the trek. Even now it seemed like blood was everywhere. He hurried to make the stitches. In all, it was only three deep marks. One was at the bottom of his foot while the other two were at the top. When he felt his foot he felt a weakness in its structure he'd never experienced before and presumed it to be from broken bones. Atleast it wasn't gushing blood. Atleast he hadn't lost his foot.

He stitched it up quickly and carefully that night. The most difficult being the bottom of his foot where there didn't seem to be enough skin there to bring it back together. The angle of it was also difficult. Some metal shark came up from the ground and bit him and somehow he survived.

That night was one of the hardest sleeps he'd even had. His whole body demanded it so that he found himself fighting to stay awake until...

....he woke up on a sun painted morning.

Beginning days are fevers that sweat away the day, weight, and then leave him slight, more robust man. He found he could get along with a cane, though he could not hide his limp. He wondered if everyone who limped had a battle wound to show for it or if a way of walking just wore the body down that way, into its own sway that when the sixties hit became more of a limp than a swagger. He had not wanted to see a doctor for this, but Madi was right.

It brought him to the face of the Riverview Clinic. Tired, hesitant. His gut instinct telling him that hospitals were a place of evil. A place of wounded trust and fear. Though nothing about the building or the staff told him that the feeling was a persistent one. He sucked in a breath and stepped in, nervous and wanting something to go wrong to justify just leaving.

It was a nurse that spotted him, seemed to notice how rigid he was because surely he wasn't the only man who came into a hospital with that strictness about his face. She seemed to know that he needed to be guided along and it was through her kind behavior that he moved on to getting shots and taking a bottle of pills for antibiotics. One offered him a magic healing but, well, he said no. He had always thought that the process of healing meant something.

In a couple days the limp became him. His stride was less awkward and of a quicker pace. The cane he used was made of birch and some of its sides still had its bark. The hand curves like and L and worn smooth and polished from use. Today he could lace a shoe up, though he kept a brace tucked in. She'd told him not to let it move too much, that bones were healing and likely to crack again if he wasn't careful. Walking came at a steady, thoughtful pace that suited him. Down along the path, strewn with candy wrapper leaves he worked his way along to where Maranya's stables were. He hears the motion of another person but he thought it was Ian that was working today.

"I'm back." He had, of course, not been working the past week. It was like a small homecoming. Returning soon enough that he was missed and not forgotten. Greeting the unseen with the horses the way men do, which wasn't too different from how he and Madi regarded each other anyway. He set his cane down to shrug off his jacket. He wasn't prepared to exercise the horses, but he was ready to work on some of the chores required, simple as they were. Like sweeping down the hall carefully, most of his weight on one leg while the other strayed back for balance.

It felt good to be out of the house.

"They miss....having someone to pick on," his voice came across the air, not indicating that he was surprised to see her there though he was. He finished the last of the sweeping and leaned the broom up where it belonged. The cane taken back up, like a tree branching up from the ground to steady his leg.

Shadows like a cape from his shoulders, lacking their usual ominous connotation by resting like limp whispers. He looked down at his foot when she had and then back to her face. He smiled in that distant way he had, "I am feeling better. Thank you."

There is a change in the wind. The temperature of the current. Though his lips don't move his smile hardens and he looks away. The tone would have sounded casual to any fly on the wall, "I'm sure Ian will handle it well. Everyone needs....a couple days." When he said days, it sounded like years and his contemplation extends into the night.

Could Tag have understood her explanation' The vast maze she had with those kindred women whose siren tongues haunted Madi, still" He thought himself not much to her, this rock in the stream of her thought that kept pulling her back from where she was beginning to flow. Her eyes could tell him the bible and he would have stood soundless to see her unravel it all. Whatever it was, it was substantial more massive than him. Most of the stomach knots of her life was. Did she feel like a fractured person' Existing here at Maranya's stables and also in the supernatural wars of the vampire" How long would she be gone" Her eyes didn't specify, just tell him it was so, and he turned like he were addressing other chores which needed to be done and told her, perhaps the closest thing to a goodbye he'd ever managed.

"I'll try to be here when you come back." It was something like a promise, though touched with what sounded tentative and unsure. He told her take your time, isn't our time infinite" with his shoulder drop forward and eyes that dropped on the freshly swept ground.

He can forget how small the gunslinger is on some days. Her personality projected her bigger than life, a voice, a consuming voice that could swallow and entire room. Then when she warps her arms around him and he returned the gesture, his arms feel as though they are coming about a body that was too small for the personality. Sometimes he did not embrace her in return, like he was a teddy bear that smiled and absorbed her affection. Today he held her back. That his worry wrapped her up, that he must exchange this embrace with her because what if it were the last?

"The lives you lead do have a way....of catching up to you."

His arms dropped away, realizing he had squeezed her and held like it would somehow secure her, keep what was now, real. Force bricks aside and pull her back into the fuzzy edge of a polaroid without knowing he did it. Polaroid, always doomed to turn into a fuzzy image, dissolve into itself to where even the owner couldn't recognize the image.

"Next Friday, is when," and he looked at the paper she offered him and took it like a secret that goes into the inner pocket of his leather coat. He thought that he wouldn't look at it the wedding day or after. He'd wait and on one of those times she was particularly far away he'd open it to see what it was. Sometimes holding off reading an item made it new once you knew what it was. That the paper could yellow but when you read the words for the first time it was new, like they had just written it to you and were sitting beside you as you read it.

The flinch of his smile and he looked away as though to prolong his gaze on her would have resulted in a confession. Absently, the way people remark upon the weather, "I'll be here."

Days ago he had shoved all of his clothes into a canvas duffel bag. While he could have never said with certainty what the matter was with him, he only know that something had rotted what had been his relationship with Rona. Their history was a long and winding one. Full of love. Full of neglect. There were all the things that they said between each other and all the silences which had gone on to sabotage. Was it that his past life still and always would control his present' Or had Tag simply not been honest with himself" Not spoken about the things which bothered him until they became fatal infections"

It was difficult, packing all of what was his into that duffel bag. Rona had done nothing and yet he was leaving. He should have spoken up years ago. She didn't deserve it, but he couldn't be cheap and false with her.

What would become of the house with the long, humble fence and the vegetable patch to the right' The one that had been repainted and taken care of? Tag would leave everything behind save a few items which were his. An empty book that would have an amazing story in it, one day' His two swords like a backbone for the duffel bag. His clothes, all looking the same except the ones Madi had mended. The young pony named Hope was Rona's, which he thought was more than suiting. As he shoved his last undershirt into the bag he paused to look at the red ribbon bracelet.

When Rona left he'd taken one of her ribbons and worn it around his wrist. It told him that foolish men prayed for what they could not have and only dreamed about what was beyond them. Was it true" Did he pursue the idea of a wife and kids so loyally because it was something about him, the world, the situation, that made it an immortal goal" He didn't think so....he hoped not. He thought that it couldn't be the case because he had once tried to marry Rona before and it hadn't felt like this.

Perhaps that rejection, so long ago, had been far more hurtful and significant than he was willing to admit.

He hauled the duffel bag onto his shoulder and bent down to write to Rona, in a penmanship that was still findings its way. The paper left upon the bed. It would be no surprise. Not after his discussion with Rona. The soft sound of paws on the floor made he look down to the large rabbit and he smiled, bent down and scooped up Mr. Chewy. His fur and body length such that it spanned his whole forearm.

It was that way that Tag left his home and walked the winding path, again.

Halfway along his walk he set the large rabbit down. Though it had been his pet these past months the goodbye wasn't tearful. Rabbits were like that. It hesitated, worked his nose in the air several times and then flew into the first cover it saw. Tag tipped his head to the rabbit as though it understood that this was goodbye. The weight upon his shoulder from his bag was pressing.

He worked his way along until he reached the old blue warehouse that Madi had fixed up. He tested to see if the door was unlocked. He thought that....when Madi was lost she had stayed here and since, she had found her way. His fingertips brushed the old metal of the door, under the tree that had almost all its paper leaves gone and the paint decayed fifteen years old from the storm.

Could an old blue warehouse been a place of renewal"

The door sounds loud. Not loud because it was old or rusted, it was both of those things. It was loud because of nightfall and because the only noise that filled it were the ghosts of sounds before. He rolled over, knowing the door had opened but not knowing who to expect.

While he had always thought of this blue warehouse as being Madi's, he could not say that there were friends of her likewise familiar. Or, less than friends. Those unfortunate others that she was taken away towards, whoever they were.

He took out the spine of his bag, the sword, sheathed, and crept to the edge of the second floor perch. Just at the top where the ladder met it and looked down at the door. Crouched like a coil and realizing it was her, was struck with the sudden sensation of how odd it was that she had come here at all. Posture relaxed and he set what looked like an exceptionally lacquered and straight stick down on the ground and climbed down the ladder he'd propped up.

"You're back," like it were the real surprise in the situation.

She comes near like an apparition in the warehouse. Once she had appeared to be part of its fabric and now she was an alien visitor. A clean, grown gunslinger whose eyes could be so far away. He felt integrated with wherever he was. It was not do difficult to be part of this place's blood flow. He had been here before, known its proportions before.

This large empty place that now had him, a tiny heartbeat and small whisper of warmth returning life to it.

What was going on. He wanted to tell her and yet there was a sort of uncertainty behind his eyes. That he either didn't know the words or wasn't sure if he should tell her at all. Then, his breath drew in like a bear, deep and full of rest.

"It seems that the unanswered parts were greater than I thought."

He wet his lips and he felt, suddenly, nervous and exposed. His hands grabbed the ends of his jacket like he were going to pull it around him cause of some sort of breeze. He looked away like there was shame in being here, in being seen like this and then, with a great exhale, moved to embrace her. His head so low his chin was at the back of her shoulders. He didn't hold her long, but the motion expressed better than anything he could have said that he was glad he wasn't alone, this time.

"Of course, I will be there."

He had felt dispossessed since his decision to pack everything up in his bags and leave the house. Liang wouldn't like it, he was sure of that. The man practically demanded that Tag stay in Rhydin before but....this seemed more natural. His response had come so quickly it was as though he had been waiting for her to ask.

She could have told him that they were to crawl through the bowels of a cave rotten with disease. It could have been that there was a sweet house that sat in the country and waited for them to reach. Or something more abstract, like a reconciliation. The details of the journey were not ones which seemed so much to matter to him.

After all, it had always been being around her which was his interest. Tag held no one obligated to explain themselves to him. Most of the time explanations didn't mean anything. It was always the interaction, the air of it and the intention. He looked up the ladder, his dark eyes following each step to the top before regarding her once more.

"I have everything with me."

He wasn't saying it, but his posture, the lean of it and the gaze that was on her, said that he was ready to go now if only she asked that it be now. The dark man was more, he was sewn to the bottoms of her toes and now, her shadow, if she could even feel the small transition. It was much like the fulfillment of what had always been.

He stands for a long time, watching her face change, warm, grow and then move with the effort of relief. His face, not changing quite so much when he observed her and still, yet, behind his eyes the movement of the mind when it observes with great detail. He knew where to meet her, so he nodded and turned, looking up the ladder and checking it was still planted.

He had to stop to look at the coin in his hand. His fingers curled around it, half obscuring it past his worn down fingernails. Slowly, he pulled back his fingers until it sat there, plainly, staring up at him and still indifferent to him being there.

Comedy.

He shoved it into the front pocket of his pants and ascended the ladder, which swayed a little under the drift of his weight when he climbed. Whatever things he had taken out of his bag were jammed back into it as he worked. It was quick work, of course, but he paused to look at the place he had been resting in for several days. Sometimes he wondered what would still remain when he got back. Sometimes he wondered if he ever intended to get back. Their destination might just be a place that keeps him for awhile, the way Rhydin kept him here and there on scattered years. Each place he went had a claim to him, each asserted an importance to his soul and none were willing to admit that they would be a passing interest. Each said he would die there and rest as dirt and bones in its land forever, integrated more deeply than any two mortal lovers could ever be.

The sides of his ankles straddled the ladder and he slid down it, to the floor of the warehouse with a loud rush-scrap of boots and wood. He stomped his feet twice to set the dirt off them right and then turned around. Before he could go there, though, there was one more thing he had to see to.

Hope.

This was a place to call home, these rusted walls worn and sometimes trendy in what was modern taste. He lived in the warehouse well enough, he looked like he had always been there. Her rustic sort of statue she hired to decorate up the place. Her statue. There were times he felt he was her lover, though he'd never kissed her. At times he watched her body bend for others and felt he was the brother. The sensation that there was affection, however, never dwindled, though it was fickle in the mask it wore.

These were the days of rain and forgiveness and he was beginning to think it was time to shrug off his burden of shame. He could regret for eternity what had happened, but he didn't feel it did anyone, even victims, any good. Those who suffered what he'd done wished more pain, those who benefitted held him on high like a brave savoir. It was all far away here, fighting each other without a clear winner. He had always decided that the punishment, the shunning, was what he deserved. He sympathized with the families that had lost those they loved, to the point of condeming himself.

Perhaps he could wear a suit and leave the armor of his black leather jacket's guilt hung up on a rung and for once, for a chance, he would meet Madi on common ground. Neither with armor or resentment for what went on in the books of their past. She never explained herself. He never asked that she should. These days coming were hot ones and they whispered encouragement that there were things now that needed to be left behind.

So he did.

He hung up his leather coat on a nail in the warehouse, staring at its contours. His contours, where his flesh and blood rested so many nights it and it still held the phantom of his body without him. He reached out to touch the leather, felt it was oily and dry, beaten and protected by the years. His grey cotton shirt fresh and clean in a morning when he had yet to do any work. His callous hands brushed the back of his neck and he examined the door. It was time to walk.

It was time to abandon the era of self-punishment and self-blame. He had lived in it for over a decade and finally had come to the feeling that enough blood, sweat, tears and solitude had been paid to it. A wife given up to his own sense of tattooed melancholy at what had been that could neither be prevented or erased. Children not adopted for a feeling that he lacked worth. The time he sat with Madison on the steps and she had kissed him and he, still, felt himself to be so not worthwhile that he could be the inanimate object which didn't kiss back.

When he shoved open the warehouse door to step into day, he thought for the first time in eleven years....that his penance had been paid and it was time to be more of flesh and blood than of scarse shadow.