The stately coach rose up over the crest of the hill that swept down into a fanning of streets along the cobblestones to market. The beat of hooves was steady, as Ko Baris led the rope. Their Driver, tall, coats billowing, jostled the reigns as the dust passed over his boots and back and somewhere was an echoing and the peeling back of tree bark, but he kept on.

Long had the season been with memories dislodged canvases in a tired and weary mind. His house was empty but for a bed in the upstairs room where he had view of the WestEnd. Where he could see the sky, keep his eyes from the ground.


"Min Char", he scowled as the rumbunctious one shook his head regally, imprestuously, pacing towards the right. Ko Baris whinnied and the troupe became unsettled. Bernie pulled at the reigns with a firm lift and a click of his tongue. Min Char began a canter and the rest followed suit.

And across the wide city they went. A stranger and his mystical companions, Men in cloaks of Horse, Forecasters, men who knew the desert like their own tongue, rounding out the landscapes as they spoke out loud a forsaken, dusty consciousness. Bernie mused, watching them creep their silhouettes past the many buildings. There was a sailor and a seer he missed. So much had been vacant in between the avenues of his soul, and here in this city the lack of familiar presence unnerved him. He'd forgot his moorings, and out to sea, in strange fury tides, he was back and forth, rip-havocked, so that when he dismounted he was frayed, clothes rumpled, eyes only black, nothing there, no stories, no stars.

He walked to the door and rapped across it. And held his breath.