Short Story - You in Me

Do you remember that narrow little pathway we followed on those muggy summer nights?  Do you remember how it weaved perfectly through the starry blue-berried juniper bushes of your neighbors' yard, just so that neither side, north or south, could notice our trespassing?

We used to navigate through inconveniently cast shadows, drawn on by obnoxious porch lights, while they obfuscated the rocks and roots jutting out from the dirt path where we descended to our own, secret beach.

Do you remember the halo of orange from the city bouncing off the smooth ripples along the night blackened bay?  Sure, the water seemed friendly, enclosed in a landscape embrace of city, forest and beach, but it was only a temporary visitor, on its way to that vast, unknowable ocean.  It was that ocean, that Atlantic Ocean, that I learned to hold in fearful respect.  Day in and day out it dragged the waters of sound and stream from the safety of their watery abodes to the abyss beyond the continental shelf.

But that beach was ours.  I remember when you brought me to that beach for the first time.  It was probably about 6 months since I had moved from Monterey, but who really counts that sort of time at that age?  I just remember that it was late spring, and our school days were showing signs of wear at the edges.  In a couple more weeks, we'd be free; free as the waters of the bay into the ocean.

You later told me that when you first saw me, you were disgusted.  Navy brat though I was, you hated how much I brought my past life east with me.  It wasn't just my clothes - the down jacket I wore in class every day because your early November days were the coldest I had ever felt in my life - you said it was everything, from the way I spoke to my sun-kissed skin.  You told me that in those first few weeks, I wore my homesickness like a cloak, and if I spoke at all, I spoke of sand between my toes and the sounds of seals upon the rocks.  If I wanted out so badly, you thought privately, I should just go back to California.  New England was only for the strong.

But slowly, my classroom reports on life along the golden coast became of interest, and while many of my sentences begun with the phrase, "In California, we..." my stories became a window to another world, one you hadn't considered before.  I got you more curious than irritated.  The invisible wall I never knew existed finally began to crumble when a class project lumped us together, and finally you learned that I was a person.

I was oblivious to your derision, but perhaps that fact allowed you to dismiss the feeling later when you needed to.  No regret, no nostalgia.  You simply responded to what you knew.  I think later, every time you told me of this story, you secretly loved it, scientist that you are.  Your understanding of me had been wrong but you took pleasure learning something new.

Embedded in murmurers about Bunsen burners and dissection scalpels, I told you that more than anything, I missed the ocean.  I told you that I missed walking along the rocks and smelling the mild sea breeze and the fragrant response of the cypress and the manzanita.  I missed walking on sea saturated sands with my bare feet, forming perfect imprints of every toe detail, and then watching lapping waves erase the evidence that I had ever been.

That afternoon, we skipped our final class and walked all the way to your house.

It was one of the few times I saw the sun and our beach in the same sight.  I started to feel my heart drop when we got there.  Yours were not the smooth beaches of my memory.  Jagged rocks jutted from seemingly everywhere, and various hues of cobbles threatened any barefoot adventurer.  But you dug at the cobbles and unearthed some sand, and cupped my hands, smothering a fist full of course sand into my palms.  I felt the tiny pebbles slip their way past my fingers like a sieve.

And in a voice just under normal, barely over whispering, you told me, "I've brought you the ocean."

With no reason other than my sublime gratitude, suddenly I loved it.  This ocean, this Atlantic Ocean, with its salty smell hanging more heavily in the air, it's waters rougher and darker than that of the mild Pacific, and small rocky beaches, hidden away from the world, unwelcoming to all but those who needed no welcome.  It was the perfect place to learn about you, and myself on those dark summer nights.

There was that one time we went, after we had escaped the rusting metal, greasy vendors and salty sweet smells of the waterfront carnival the town put on every year.  That was the first time I found out you smoked.  Do you know how much you threw my world upside-down that night?  How you cracked my carefully constructed sense of the line between what I knew of goodness and despair, of the wall that separated that which held promise, and that which was forsaken.

How could it be? I pondered to myself.  My sheltered world I knew no longer made sense.  You were smart.  You were fair, honest and rational.  Those with intelligence, those who were going places, going to see the world, knew better than to smoke.  At least that was what the posters said.

You said you planned to quit at age 27.  Why age 27?  I never asked, though I think I know now.  Until age 27, you knew you'd be immortal.  You knew that until the age of 27, you'd live forever and you'd still be travelling the universe with eyes unshackled by decay.  I wonder if you are still smoking?  I wonder if you are still immortal?

But I gained more from you than the mere shattering of my simplistic world.  In our limited time together, we explored the cosmos with our words, pondered the injustice of a civilization based on justice, examined the fine line between knowledge and fantasy.

I remember one night in late August, the last month we had together before we began our final year in high school.  That's when I realized that when we headed of to college, going our separate ways, life without you was going to be as strange as that move from Monterey that was forced upon me so many years prior.

I sat upon a large boulder of granite, feet submerged in the gentle lapping tide.  I never tired of this.  Monterey knew little of summer and heat, but the hot days of summer I knew from family camping trips in Yosemite were poor teachers of a New England summer. Hot days persisted into hot nights, instead of being vaporized by cloudless skies.  But here, to my continued delight, sunshine or darkness, the water was comfortably warm.  To feel my skin surrounded by a loving watery embrace under the starry sky, knowing the cold of space away from the warmth of the sun, gave me hope that even during the darkest moments of our lives we might find oceans of life where the water was still warm.

You asked me about the future.  You asked me about my future.

I was bland, reciting the list of colleges I was going to visit and the studies I was thinking of pursuing.  The future seemed like some far off tomorrow that threatened to arrive, but never quite did; something we all knew was a farce anyway.  I barely knew what I was doing, but the adults of my life had given me a good enough script to play the part well.

You told me you were going to become the foremost pimp north of the Mason-Dixon.  I laughed.  Lucky at love you were not, though you had your own sweet charm.  You didn't crack a smile, but I knew you were laughing on the inside.

The moon reflected in smoothness of the bay and I played with my toes, making new ripple patterns that broke its light into pieces.  That night, a near full moon, it lit up the whole sky.  Your voice didn't change when you smoothly announced that you had met a girl earlier that summer.  You were thinking of moving in with her at the end of school.

You were staying here?  You weren't going to university?  I sat still swirling my toes in the water, thinking of my shock, but not saying a word.

I didn't need to say a thing.  Whether you knew what I was thinking, or you had grown accustomed of others in your life disparaging your choices, I don't know, but you said, "When she first slept over, she left a sweatshirt behind.  I tried to return it to her, but she told me to keep it.  That way, the next time she stayed over, she'd had something to keep her warm.  That scared me." you admitted.  "My hand was played.  At the very least, there was going to at least be one more next time that she'd be there.  I didn't want her to get so close.  I was so afraid of losing myself, of letting her in." you relayed to me your fears as if you were reliving them all over again.  But whatever hold those fears had on you, melted when you said, "I just never knew a person could be so amazing."

I had never been in love before, so I didn't recognize it in you.  If I had, would I have said something differently?  I don't know.

"She is just so perfect." you confided to me.

"What is so amazing about her?" I asked honestly.  Could she hit a baseball at 80 miles per hour?  Did she speak 5 languages including Arabic and Chinese?  Did she master Advanced Calculus?  Any of those qualities would have been amazing to me.

It was only thanks to the moonlight that I saw your furrowed eyebrows.  But you forgave me for my indignities.  "I can't explain it.  You just have to know."

It was a weird answer coming from you.  You, who as we debated the inevitability of existential nihilism in modern society, never failed to demand the full articulation of every thought I lobbed at you.  You, who prized clear thought and demanded a defense of any assertion, were casting a hazy fog on your own behavior.

"Oh." I conceded defeat quickly, unwilling to drag out the uncomfortable situation; something you would have normally chided me for.  I looked up at the stars, or rather, those that had survived the journey of billions of miles in space in addition to that of the orange shield; the glow of the city.  They always looked so few and lonely to me compared to the abundant stars I'd see camping in Yosemite.  But in that moment, those stars and I shared a misery, to see friends so clearly, yet to be light years away from any kindred spirit.

"Anyway," you told me, changing the subject "I'm still going to school.  I'm not that stupid.  I'll just be local and commute."

I never learned exactly how this girl was so amazing.  That was our last trip to that beach that summer.  We were mostly in separate classes that year.  When I think back to that time, it seems like there's a gap in my memory, where you would have been.   But it isn't that my life was empty.  Far from it.  Those twilight days of my childhood sped past me as I watched those last few months in New England turn from reality into memory.

I got the impression that it was time for girls my age to get interested in boys my age, so I started dating too.  My own efforts led to no boys that could hit a baseball at 80 miles an hour, nor speak 5 languages, nor master Advanced Calculus, but they helped force me through an unspoken ritual that initiated me into the world of adults.

But I got a call from you that winter vacation.  "Meet me at the beach in an hour." you said and that was all I needed to hear.  It was an overcast day, where the greyness of the rippling clouds reflected in the ripples of the grey waters, making it seem as if heaven and ocean extended into infinity.  It was one of those winter days when your skin feels stretched and brittle, scoured and windswept from the crystalline air, so I made every attempt to cover my exposed face with a woolen scarf of plaid.  We did not need the cold of the night sky to chill our bones further, so we huddled in the muffled sunlight of a wintry afternoon.

"She's pregnant." was all you told me before the smell of slowly incinerating cloves reached my nostrils."

I elected to concentrate my efforts on seeing if I could manage a cloud of frost breath through the scarf I was wearing.

You turned to me.  "Are you even listening?"

I nodded.  I was, of course.  But the only thing I could think of was all the wasted talent.  High grades in physics and chemistry didn't pay for diapers.  Not while we were so young.

"The baby is due in late August.  I don't know the first thing about being a father.  I don't get why this happened."  I ended my frost breathing experiments and looked at you with new eyes.  For the first time, I saw a kid, scared of adulthood.  Where I once saw my guide and mentor into the cold culture of the northeast, I saw someone as lost as I had ever been.

"I guess I'm lucky." you said, but your charisma had been scraped raw by the recent events and your words sounded hollow.  "Her dad is going to let me work at his insurance office.  So my kid won't be destitute."

I winced at that most of all.  In the span of five minutes you had turned from wise friend, to scared child, to walking corpse.  Your life was over, at least as far as I knew.

And suddenly I missed our philosophical discussions at our summertime beach.  Somehow, all those things we talked about, those grandiose theories on life and the universe seemed trivial compared to the story of one lone homo sapian in the history of human kind; your story.  What is the death of a star in comparison to the short changed dreams I had for you?

But whereas before we'd talk out the silly thoughts going through my head, bringing them to a purifying daylight, I said not a word, and those thoughts festered into pity.  It was a pity that I used to retroactively paint every memory I had of you.  It was a pity you neither asked for, nor wanted.  But it was a pity you also were never aware of, so it was never exposed and laughed away.

"Who knows.  Maybe after a year or so you'll have saved up enough to get back on track.  It doesn't have to be hopeless."  I finally spoke.  But not an ounce of my words were said for your benefit, I realize now.  They were said for mine.

"No." you said, with a new resolve.  "It doesn't."

We stayed there for an hour or so, with the edge in your voice slowly being worn down to a smooth calm.  We talked about how maybe one day you'd bring your kid here, to this beach under the stars, and talk with him about life and the universe.  My stomach turned at that thought.  The beach was ours and to be unfaithful to me, even to your own flesh and blood, made me feel robbed.  But again, I did not say anything.  I simply starting drawing shapes and patterns with the heat of my fingertips on the frost covering the granite.

But by the time we left that day, I was feeling better to have seen you and our beach as we had a hundred times before.  Though the glow behind the grey blanket of clouds above us had dimmed by the time we left, I felt warmer.  I wasn't going to watch you change the world, but that day I did watch you don a cloak of humanity.  You had me in your confidence, and while I understood that the nature of our relationship was going to be forever different, now we were truly friends.  Equals.

Spring came and went and as graduation loomed in the near future, we started meeting again at our beach.  By then I had grown to more than simply love a New England spring, I had become addicted to the feeling of a summer long promise of new life after surviving an unforgiving winter.
I had come to understand the world differently in the 5 years I had been an New Englander, I realized.  Like the ebbing and flowing of the seasons, the theme of hardship and renewal was ever present.  It calmed me, I realized.  Sure, I had grown to understand that as much as I may have longed for the warmth of summer in the dead of winter, joy in late spring soon turned to oppression of humid July and August, and though during those months thoughts of arctic refuge, the relief of a cool fall soon led to frozen toes and icicle tears.  But so too, packaged in those private miseries, was a promise: Spring was just around the corner; the refreshing breezes of Autumn were not far away.  Nothing is permanent.  Neither fire nor ice.

And when I came to the conclusion that our friendship had very much followed this model: closeness and distance, encouragement and disappointment, it gave a sense of stability that only comes with accepting the wild unknown that is life.  Though there would be times that we did not speak, though there was a time that you hated me, or ignored me, and perhaps, you'd give away our secret beach to someone who could never understand its significance, there would always be a spring, just around the corner.  We'd always be tied together, we'd always make up a part of each other: me in you, and you in me.

You didn't speak of your child to me in those final weeks of our own youth.  Whatever had scared you so in the winter melted away with the promise of a new Spring.  But no longer did we find ourselves climbing separate branches of a tree, or perching on opposing rocks when we chatted at our beach.  Something had changed that winter, and suddenly we were sitting side-by-side.

I remember that one night, where talk had turned to exhaustion, and in the hour we had left, we dozed under Cassiopeia's benevolent gaze.  It was always much easier to make out her stately "W" in the light polluted sky, rather than the populated skies of Yosemite that I had recalled from my childhood camping trips.  That was how I knew she was watching, and remembering.  If we failed to remember our friendship, surely she'd remind us.

So it was no doubt that she saw me curl up into your arms.  And it is certain that she saw you pull my shoulders close to your chest.  And in that way we remained until your cell phone alarm began to screech a half hour later.  You got up, dusted yourself off, and mumbled something about "paperwork mines".  We never spoke of what had happened that night.  Not to each other, not to anyone.  It is the one thing in the universe that is our knowledge and ours alone.

Your touch was a warm day in Spring.  Intimate, caring and comfortable, but I knew better than to expect anything further, and nor did I want to.  Only the claustrophobic smothering of a dense, hot summer air followed the joys of Spring.  So I was not surprised when it did not happen again.

Summer held us apart for other reasons too.  You shed your motor-board for an oversize suit and tie, and joined the cubical serfdom your child's grandfather had offered you.  While I spent those last few months of New England enjoying the company of friends, and flirted with the world through a variety of adventures, your world had been crammed into a box made of plaster board.

We made it to our beach three times that summer.  The first, was to celebrate our graduation.  We smuggled a box of cheap wine and I saw a silly side of you I had never seen before.   For two hours we delved into the finer details of what we thought the British meant by the words "wanker" and "poofter", and we argued passionately about just how large the largest domestic cat in the world was.  And we laughed.  We squeezed 4 years of laughter between friends into one night.

The second time was in early July.  Night offered little refuge from the heat, but neither of us stayed long enough to commiserate.

"It's time to stop being children." you said.  I laughed.  You had often railed about the arbitrariness of the line drawn between children and adults.  You'd often lamented about how much adults thought they knew more than they did, and how little they appreciated the developed minds of our age cohort.  So surely, your words had to have been in jest.

But you continued, "I don't have time for this anymore.  I've got less than 2 months to learn how to be a father, and here I am acting like a high schooler."

I laughed, more out of shock than amusement.  "I didn't realize the past month and a half had imbued us the wisdom of the ages!  Chill out."

"I'm not joking.  You have no idea what my life has been like these past few weeks.  You haven't a clue what it means to have someone depend on you.  I'm not doing this anymore!" The rock you had been worrying in the palm of your hand made a splash as you threw it into into the shallow waters of the beach, before turning around and storming off.

That time, we didn't leave the beach together.  As I listened to the cobbles crunch beneath your shoes, I sat, throwing acorns into the bay, using the best of my vision to follow them as they floated along the current.  I wondered how long it would take for a tree sprout to look around and see nothing but a lonely ocean for miles.

I was hurt.  This was the darkest winter I had faced with you by far, and I felt helpless to stop it.  I was sure that the Spring would indeed come, but I worried.  I was going to university before the end of the summer, back to Monterey to be near my grandmother while I studied "Human Communication", whatever that meant.  I feared that Spring would come, and I would not be here to witness it.

I knew that I had to end this fimbulwinter myself, or it would be doomed to go on forever.  "Meet me at our beach." I said through a text less than a week before my cross-country voyage.  Somehow, you neither ignored me nor chastised me for dragging you back into my so-called immature world.  You gave me two letters, and that was all I needed.

"Ok."

I waited for you, sitting with legs in the lapping water and a book in hand in case you decided last minute to avoid me afterall.  One way or another, I was going to make my last memory at this beach, a good one.

I heard cobbles crunch beneath your feet as I ritualistically turned pages in my novel, and a let the feel of the of the grainy weave rub against my fingers deliberately before ending my date with Proust.

It was strange.  We had last seen each other only a month prior.  We had gone for months during school when we'd do little more than wave a hello from across the hall.  But time does not pass in the same way when you've been sentenced.  "I missed you, so very much." you whispered huskily into my ear.  "You don't know how much I have missed you."

Your breathe smelled of cheap vodka and I could tell you had been smoking.  You were standing on the precipice of a life you did not ask for, but that you were determined to meet.  The pressure was wearing at you.

You gave me an intimate embrace; a deep, all-encompassing hug that had me trapped, but gave me no incentive to leave.  Seconds passed by like hours, and it seemed an eternity had gone by when I raised my eyes to you and spoke.

"You will remember me fondly when I leave?"

I recognized the look in your eyes.  I had seen it before in some of the boys I had dated in my final year of high school.  I saw that hunger to find a connection that surpassed all other forms.  I saw those boys mistake that for lust.  I had seen myself mistake it for lust, but it was something far more primal.

Months of practice had given me an instinctual reaction to your silent cues.  I brought my lips to yours and waited, having been convinced some time ago that it was my role to wait for your move.  Don't worry, I grew out of that.  But you did respond that time as your lips pressed passionately onto mine.  Beneath the grainy smoke of cloves and your sugar shit alcohol breath, I could taste the ocean on your tongue.  The Atlantic Ocean.

I knew then that would be the last time I ever talked to you.  I knew that though spring had come, and though I had been there to witness it, it was fleeting as always.  The oppression of our distance would cast into a mold our memories.  As autumn turned to winter, I could not be assured that your face would put an end to the cold, but I'd forever have these last memories of you to keep me warm.

 I want you to know that there was a time when I talked of you to others, fondly.  Any close friend in my next 4 years of university learned about the bricks you built in me to make me the woman I am today.  I even spoke of you to every boyfriend, though each telling of our discussions at our beach became shorter, and more abridged, until they turned to lip service designed solely for myself.  But words of you in me never made it to either of my girlfriends.

But sometimes, as I gaze out on Monterey Bay, listening to the seals I find myself wandering back to those outings of ours, if only in my mind.  I've never forgotten your ocean, or the sanctuary of our beach together.  I still remember the taste of salt in your breath and the dim stars that watched us that evening.  But I've made a new sanctuary, founded a new beach, and when we kiss, my wife reminds that there is more to life than the choppy waters of life along the Atlantic.  The taste of the Pacific on her lips are enough to let me know that I've come home.

Chapter 12 - Part IV

"We have been compromised.  Yes."

"Then listen to one who will soon be your keeper.  We will tend to the woman, and bring her, and ourselves to Pho-boteth."

This time, it was not Anita, who stood at a loss of words, but Davin who spoke up.  "You are not yet bei'thal, foreign male.  You hold no power over us." Agitation tried to force its way into his speech, though he had long forgotten how to be agitated.

Without thinking, Davin balled his hands into fists; tapping his foot softly, nearly imperceptibly, he furrowed his eyebrows unseen beneath his chiffon headscarf.  Anita's ears perked at the movement of her partner, but the darkness of the moon-shadow obfuscated his erratic behavior to Keubroc.

"Put away your weapons" Keubroc intoned to Davin with the authoritative voice that had carried him through the early years of the Three-Pronged War, "we are bringing this woman to justice."

"Justice.  What is justice?  This word means nothing to us." Davin barked.

"Then perhaps you do not need to know it." Keubroc replied dismissively.

"Zhijfr."(Snake/deceit) he muttered even more softly than the tap of his toe, but Anita heard it.  With hyper sensitive ears bought and paid for at the cost of her soul, she was the only one who could possibly hear the words of the man her mind once loved.  But her once native tongue now sounded foreign and harsh to her ears.  "Zhijfr vz Akly'ln abh" (Snake on feet the(definite article-plural) mine/our)/ proverb that indicates not just danger, but that careful action would be needed to extricate oneself form the situation - articles come after the noun, are definitive and generative (a/the) and are always required, even when using a possessive)  He brushed her arm gently to call her attention.

Unfortunately, these were words that could not be absorbed by the blindfolded woman.  The wounds had been too deep, the scar was calcified and she had forgotten their meanings long ago.  But for Davin, nourished with the fresh scent of days gone by, could feel the last vestiges of his humanity well up in his heart.  "Zohdil abh affa, Zhijfr vz Akly'ln abh." (Heart of mine forever, there is a snake around our feet)

He speaks a phesra! realized Reiba, after some thought, a forbidden language; a language of those so thoroughly conquered that Pho-Boteth wanted to forget they ever existed.  Which one, it was impossible for her to tell, but what would an agent of the Empress be doing speaking a forbidden tongue?

"Cut out your tongue or I will cut it for you.  We do not know those words anymore!" Anita screeched her reply in Yibouhese.  When the blindfolded man did not comply, she added emotionlessly, "You will do this now.

"I cannot do what was asked of me." he replied, still frozen in a stance of attack.

"Then there is one duty left." Anita recited words that had been burned into her mind and Davin's, and into the mind of any who might be called Bei.  "When the breaking has broken the broken shall be destroyed."

Keubroc stood entirely befuddled with what was transpiring between the two, that is, until the daggers in Davin's hands dropped unceremoniously to the ground.  Reiba relaxed and collapsed into a heap, trying to tend to her wound and stop the bleeding.

"Zhijfr!" barked Davin loudly at Reiba and Keubroc but he followed his orders nonetheless.  He pulled from a long thin satchel of black, hanging around his torso, a jyangye blade, a long, ceremonial dagger too thin to serve any purpose in combat.  He brought the blade to his collar bone before Keubroc understood his intent.

"What is he doing?" Keubroc, "This is pointless.  We don't have to shed anymore blood."

"You do not understand.  You are not yet bei'thal." she jeered at him and put.  "The breaking has broken.  He is useless and must be discarded.  Discarded and hidden."

Davin slid the needle-like blade into his chest cavity with the precision of his training.  The dagger would eventually pierce his heart, and when it was pulled free, his life would quickly drain, leaving behind a nearly unmarred corpse that offered few answers to whomever found it.  This was one of the first lessons Bei learned after they had been freshly compromised.  It was, after all, the most important.

The hilt of the jyangye dagger protruded from behind his collar bone, and he stood, the needlepoint blade now the only object preventing his fluids from gushing from his body.  "You do it, Ehrnyi. Pull it out and end this grey dream."

Anita complied, walking to the man who was once her husband, and placing her grasp on the dagger that would end his life.  As she did so, he whispered so softly that only Anita could here.  "Ehrnyi, Ehrnyi Khelbl, that is your name.  Do not forget it again.  It is too precious to me."

Without ceremony or warning, Anita pulled free the blade and Davin crumpled to the ground.

Hope

The first thing I remember is looking at the rock.  It's pitted surface was now glazed with congealing blood that filled its mini craters with ponds of crimson.  Poor little Rebs. To her credit, she said not a word, which at any other time, would have been unusual.  She was always quick to run home, telling Grandma Evelyn what a bad boy Owen was being.  Now though, she packaged away her 7-year-old smile when she pursed her lips firmly shut.

"I need to go away." I said, and she murmured an unintelligible sound as a response.  I knew she understood.  I had to run, to take myself as far away from that place as swiftly as possible.  Maybe I could outrun my guilt, my fears and my thoughts that turned poisonous on me.  I couldn't bring myself to look at the body, crumpled in the distance between the patches of sweet smelling sage.  I didn't want to believe what I did.  If I didn't look at it, I wouldn't have to face the hopes and dreams I ended with one blow.  I didn't want to contemplate the thousands of happy futures I ruined in my one act of selfish thoughtlessness.

 "You run home now." I commanded in the most adult voice I could muster, but she shook her head ferociously, clinging to her tattered little skirts with white knuckles.

"You can't come with me." I pleaded with her to leave and forget about me.  "Let me wander out and become a wild man like they said old Uncle Eddie did."  I knew they were lying.  Uncle Eddie died after the mine collapsed.  But it sounded better than the truth, and I think Rebs still believed it.  I hoped she believed it.

"I'm leaving!" I screamed at her, in her face.  She brought her little cherubic face down and pulled her skirts even tighter, as if she was turning herself into a ball of iron; immune to my anger.  I put my back to her, put my back to the sun, and sprinted.  Dead twigs of buckbrush and artemesia crunched beneath my feet as I tried to outrun just as much the accusations and guilt of the dead body, as the unquestioning loyalty and unconditional love from little Rebs.  Both were equally painful.

I already knew what I was capable of.  Murderer at age 12.  What other horrors would await my cousin if she stayed by my side?

I stopped and turned around, hoping to see that she had decided I was never coming back for her.  I hoped now she had the sun in her face, and the bright future she always deserved on her path.  Of course, she hadn't made a move.  I knew she wouldn't.  She'd called my bluff before I took my first step into the darkening east.  She knew I wouldn't leave her out here all alone.

"Fine."  I yelled to her.  "Come with me."

Hours ago, she was skipping around patches of dead, yellowed grass, landing on bare soils so dry that every step produced a tan cloud at her feet as we played tag and chased each other.  I took that away from her when I threw that rock.  I stole the spring in her steps.

I waited for what seemed like a lifetime as she slowly paced through the desert following the steps I had run in haste.  Her hands still stayed by her side, not moving at all while she gripped those dusty skirts.  By the time she had gotten to me, the sun had already engulfed the top of the mountain with an orangey halo.

Her left hand released her tattered skirt, and caked with sweat and grime, the skirt kept its crumpled form.  Forcefully, she grabbed my arm with her free hand.

"I did it." she whispered.

"Don't be stupid." I rebuked her, more forcefully than I intended.

"Owen, I did it.  I killed that little boy."  I winced.  Rebs couldn't have stabbed me worse.  I didn't want to know.  Dead bodies weren't human; they weren't boys and girls.  They were rotting flesh, nothing more.  Dead bodies won't run and play in the sun, they won't tease their sisters, they won't climb trees and get read bedtime stories at night.  Little boys will.

"Rebecca, listen to me," I turns to her, knelt down and looked her straight in the eye, "You didn't do anything wrong.  I threw the rock over the cliff.  The rock that hit his head was mine.  Not yours.  None of this is your fault.  You never touched it.  You didn't do anything."

"I laughed.  I told you to throw the rock as far as you could.  I bet you that Lily's brother could throw it further."  Tears were streaming down her face down, but she didn't make even a small whimper.  "

I pulled her into my scrawny arms and hugged her tightly.  She didn't resist, but she didn't melt into my embrace either.  Everything in her little frame told me she needed love and support, but she was too deep in guilt to think she deserved any of it.  I didn't care.

I let her go and looked into her eyes again.  "I love you Rebs."  I wiped the tears from her eyes with my dirty fingers, but I knew she wouldn't mind.  "And I am going to take care of you.  I'm never going to let anything happen to you."  Rebs' eyes looked unfocused, as if she were dwelling in another, distant world comprised of her own imagination.  I knew she was getting scared by the quiver of her fingers so I squeezed her hand gently, just to remind her that I was there.

She sniffed. "We are in this together, right?" she asked, but really it was more a statement than a question.

"Yeah." I sighed as I placed her tiny right hand into my left,  "I guess we are."

The second thing remember, when my mind floats back to this time, is the campfire ablaze against the blackened sky.  The sparks flying off of the brittle desert sage branches joined their sparkling cousins the stars in the sky for brief moments of orange brilliance.

This was when I could no longer run away from my thoughts - when the clarity of the cloudless sky couldn't obfuscate my sin to god, to myself.  And I found myself staring deeply into the glowing coals of the fire, hoping for some kind of purifying burn to cleanse my heart of my deed.  I hoped in vain.

Murderer.  It was a cloak I now donned.  It was a word that yesterday could not be used to describe me, but today my name was irrevocably carved in stone next to its definition in the encyclopedia of the universe.  I was so many things before today.  I was the second baseman last week, the catcher on Saturday.  I was a student, I was cowboy in training.  But now I would be nothing but murderer.  Even if I could return, even if nobody knew of the crime, the world would silently condemn me.  I'd never just be a student again.  I'd be a murdering student, a murdering cowboy.  It was inescapable.

Perhaps this was simply somebody else's story I was living.  I could believe that, so long as I didn't have to look at the face that killed that boy.  What questions would that mirror reflection have to answer?

"Owen?" my own cousin whispered quietly, shaking me out of my reverie.

"Yeah Rebs?"

"I'm hungry." yet even then my thoughts returned to that boy who would never be hungry again.  A boy who would never get to satiate that hunger with a savory bite of chicken leg, or grilled rainbow trout.

"I know." I admitted to her eventually.  My own stomach growled at me angrily, though I was too consumed in guilt to care for it.  "We'll find something tomorrow.  I swear it."

Surely, I knew my promise was a hollow one, but I had to make it.  I had to convince myself more than I had to convince Rebs, or I'd not be able to lie to her so easily.  But reality doesn't follow the whims of the deluded and neither the next day nor the following did we find so much as one morsel to share.  It was mere luck that we found the snow melt stream or we would have died.  Though perhaps the greater luck would have been to die quickly and die together.

"I think," Rebs muttered to me in a fugue state that night, "I think we would have been friends."

"Go back to sleep, " I shushed her, re-positioning her small body along the rocks of the cave we had called home that night.  She looked so uncomfortable, but she wouldn't move a muscle on her own.  She couldn't anymore.

"A friend in exchange for a rock.  We exchanged a friend for a rock." she continued, delirious.  I don't know if it was her stomach, or her heart that was talking.  "I think I would rather have the friend.  I think I'd rather have the friend, than the rock.  It would have been better than this life."

I wish I could have answered her, but I was never strong enough to speak plainly to her.  I couldn't comfort her, so I said nothing.  I couldn't be her armor, so I didn't want to risk hurting her.  I was too afraid to see her cry.

But mentally I screamed.  There are no take-backs.  There is nothing we can do now to bring that boy back!  But there were so many points, so many junctures that day where a different choice could have meant the difference between life and death.  All I had to do was say I wanted to eat lunch on the porch instead of suggesting we play by the boulders that afternoon.  I could have offered to play cops and robbers, one of Rebs favorite games, instead of showing off my throwing arm.  If I hadn't thrown that ball to third base, if Robbie hadn't been able to tag Jeff out, if we hadn't won that game Saturday, I wouldn't have been so full of bravado.  I wouldn't have shown off to Rebs.  We'd be begging Grandma for a bedtime story right now instead.  That little boy would be tucked in bed, sleeping soundly as his mother looked on.

My mind reeled back to the minutes and hours before I threw that rock.  We were laughing.  How is that even possible?  We were running and playing, smiling only moments before it left my hands.  What gave us the right to smile?  Ten minutes before I killed, I was no better a person than ten minutes after I killed.  Ten minutes before, a little boy played in the desert, living the very last moments he ever would live.  Blissfully unaware that his existence was about to come to a violent end.  How could I have been so callous?  How could I have let my selfishness roam so unchecked?

The third thing I remember are words I never thought I'd hear escape her lips.  The creaked out of parched lips and blew through emaciated cheeks.

"Do you want to die?"

I panicked.  "Don't give up on me Rebs.  I know you are hungry.  I'll find you some food.  I'll go back to town tomorrow and get help.  I promise."

Her little head shakily turned to me.  "Not me Owen.  You.  Did you want me to go home so you could die?"

What was a 7 year old speaking of life and death like this for?  Was she yet another victim?  Did I murder a little boy's body and a little girl's spirit?

"I never intended to die." I told her, and it was the truth.  I never wanted to kill myself.  I never wanted to again take a life, any life, and I certainly never wanted to face my own mortality.

But I did want to stop living.  I wanted to quietly quit life.  It was the only way I could stop being a murderer.  I wanted to stop thinking of that boy, but as long as I was living, I didn't deserve to bury my guilt in forced amnesia.

"Ok.  Don't die then.  I would rather be friends."  As if she were reading my very thoughts she added, "You can't change your mind if you die."

Those were her last words to me.  When I woke up the next day, she didn't respond.  I shook her gently, but her eyes remained shut.  I whispered in her ear to get up, but she didn't stir.

The last thing I remember was me laying naked in the snow.  The high altitude sun was shinning on this late spring day, so my body couldn't have been that cold, but I wouldn't have felt it anyway.  I didn't remember climbing this high.  I don't know how I did it, being so hungry and tired and worn, but I remember the perfect indent my body made upon the old snow.  On occasion, I gently tested the confines of my iced mold to see how much effort I'd need to make to break this outline of my body.

I was exposed, ready to let the sun purify my soul and bleach my bones.  Let the crows take bites of me and fly to away spread this murderer to parts around the world.  I destroyed a unique human being and all the promise he offered the world.  I took away the future husband of the mother of his future children.  I robbed his parents his love and affection as they grew to old age.  Let me offer myself in sacrifice, to honor his loss, I thought.

I thought to close my eyes one last time, to let the sun blanket my body while I left it quietly.  I thought to let the cold wet moisture of the melting snow creep through my skin and slow my blood to a standstill.  I thought of worlds beyond to shut down my ears, my fingertips, eyes nose and heart.

That is probably why I didn't hear the grunts she made.  It is probably why I didn't hear her boots hit the rock fall, even though she did so with little grace.

First her head went to my heart.  I am sure she heard something; a slow, faint beat, growing weaker by the second.

Next her fingers went to my head, examining for injury and blood, but settling on my eyelids, which she pulled open to examine my dilated eyes.

"Wake up." she commanded and slapped me in the face, hard, but I didn't respond.

She pulled a thick woolen blanket out from her pack, and began to wrap it around me.  She brought forth her waterskin and brought it to my parched lips, and finally, I felt her presence.  The cool water flowed down my warm, dry throat, pumping new life where hope had all but been abandoned.  I coughed, and opened my eyelids as far as I could.

I saw my rescuer.  She had dark, taut olivine skin etched with faint creases and raven black hair which she bound in a simple braid.  And her black eyes bore through my delusion and my mental fog, but offered no judgement.

"Don't bother." I croaked, "Don't waste your time with me."

She shushed me, harshly.  "Your daddy thought you'd been murdered, boy.  Don't make me make it so."

She picked me up.  I must had lost a lot of weight because she bore me with little trouble.

It was nightfall by the time we made it down.  A lone horse served as my welcoming committee, upon which she unceremoniously foisted my weak body upon.

"Don't make me go home.  I killed them.  I killed them both.  One with my hands, Rebs with my words.  I don't deserve to live.  Rebs.  I can't take you back." I started mumbling before I finally, mercifully, lost consciousness.

-----------
The first thing I remember was the eyes of Rebs' uncle on me, scanning my body in the hospital bed with concern.  He grabbed my limp hand and held it tightly.  The warmth of his palm spread through my fingers and shot up my arm.

Father, I wanted to say, I'll never be the man you wanted me to be.  I am a murderer.  But I couldn't.  Every time I tried to get the words up, my body failed me.  Every time I felt my lips move, I lost the words.

The second thing I remember was turning my head away from my dad, in shame.  Instead, my gaze was forced to fall on the twin bed at my side, and the tiny blonde body that occupied it.  The white sheet rose and fell slowly, but rhythmically.  Her eyes were still closed, but I could see the color in her cheeks.

That little boy was never coming back.  His family would have to mourn him, and I would have to spend the rest of my life honoring his memory.  Nothing was going to change that.  But across from me, lying peacefully on that bed, I realized, finally, that hope still lived.

Chapter 12 - Part III

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Well beaten game paths of roots and hard-packed soil had long ago given way to steep, exposed terrain.  Keubroc had to tread carefully over rocks and loose sand.  He was in his element on the field of battle, not on glorified piles of stony rubble.  Too often he would have slid into a messy death had he not been clinging on to boulders and grabbing twisted tree branches that stuck out in seemingly random intervals.  He was glad at least that the waxing major moon set the treacherous hillside aglow so he could find life-saving outcroppings and holds in the rocks.  The city woman, Reiba, must not have been struggling, since she maintained her distance, but as to how, Keubroc could only guess.

The woman still hid far too much to be trusted, and in honest moments with himself, Keubroc suspected she would hurt the cause more than help it, with her rash behavior.  White Feather had placed far too much trust in her, and he surmised he might end up with a knife in the back for his efforts.

In love, sorcery or with the arrow or blade, a woman trusted is a man betrayed. Keubroc thought of the old adage to himself, but not without mentally noting that whatever her politics, Reiba was making herself useful at the moment.  But this creature, this gegleth, he could not make sense of.  He couldn't even begin to fathom how long these creatures had been co-opted by the Empire, nor what information they might be giving to her wisdom.  It worried him.  He'd had to find a way to inform White Feather or at least someone else of the Hawks of Chosen.  But White Feather chose the time and place to meet him, not the other way around, and few Hawks gave freely their true names.  Keubroc had no idea who else might be his ally, and who his enemy.

What he was sure of was that the former Lady Archne was not.  At least, though it appeared their goals might align, whomever her friends were, they weren't the Hawks.  Keubroc had visited Reiba at the Archne Estate to find out if she might join their ranks.  Even now, after all they had been through with Vaughn, he couldn't give White Feather a clear answer.

She's a very smart whore, isn't she.  Reiba had taken to those throwing daggers he gave her very quickly.  And for a woman who had never stepped out of Eirdred, she was adapting to the new environment quite well.

But she could also be very stupid.  Impulsive even.  He did not know much of women for sale, but he found it difficult to comprehend how she had managed to be so successful in that life.  Seduction is normally thought of as a subtle art, yet he'd not seen a moment of discretion from her.  She would not have lasted long in battle.  he thought, harking back to his memories of the Three-Pronged War.  The gegleth must have gotten suspicious because one night it had left a primitive pit trap in its wake.  The injury she sustained when she fell in was minor, but it was enough for her to chase down the gegleth and put a gash on the creature's face.  Keubroc had caught up and stopped her, yelling at the blueish bug-man to run away and seek safety.  Now instead of heading in the direction of Pho-Boteth, a relatively flat journey, the creature veered due west and up the imposing ridge of sky scraping mountains.

It had been her idea to split up and maintain at least the illusion that Keubroc chased Reiba, and not the creature.  It was a good idea, if only he could trust her.  Somehow, she could follow the gegleth's travel path.  That was a mystery still needing to be solved if he did find a need to remove her.

He was still considering the woman when he heard the struggle.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
The sound of heavy panting - a product of the steep climb and the thin mountain air - was soon accompanied by a tired face, to the surprise of only the gegleth.  In unison, their heads covered in blue-black chiffon shifted slightly to face Keubroc, by habit, as their visual senses told them no more about the visitor than they already knew.  The light of the waxing major moon illuminated the pair, but Keubroc found no recognition in their covered faces.

Reiba, daggers, one in each hand, crouched like a coiled spring.  From her side sprouted a small throwing dagger and a small blossom of blood, and Keubroc realized that her stance was merely for show.  The next blow would be the last, and she would have little means to defend herself.  She faced the male of the pair though Keubroc's arrival had stayed both of their hands for the moment.

"The other is here!" Anita screeched in an even high pitch in fluid Yibouhese that bore an uncustomary coarse accent, baring her teeth in aggression.

"They can see!" Reiba said to Keubroc forcefully, "They are not blind!"

Frozen still, he coughed out to Reiba in the tongue they both knew, Eirdren, "Where is the creature?"

"He is in one of those ruins.  Don't underestimate these two.  We need to get through them to get the creature."

Though their eyes were hidden beneath their headscarves, he made a gesture of open palms all the same.  He lay his short blade down, slowly, and the steel clinked against the bare rock.

"What are you doing!?" Reiba yelled, her voice incredulous with a feeling of betrayal.

He did notice that it was only at this moment that the female relaxed, ever so slightly, but he said bluntly, "We both serve her Wisdom.  I see no cause for violence." he responded in Yibouhese.

Davin and Anita cocked their heads to each other in confusion, as if to simultaneously defer to each other to make sense of the situation.  If Reiba understood the language of Her Wisdom, she did not appear to absorb his words and remained in her hobbled defensive stance.

"Capture this woman.  She is responsible for the death of Vaughn bei'thal and will stand before the Light of Heaven for her crimes." he ordered, mustering the commanding spirit he once embodied in warfare.

"We are revealed to an outsider." Anita whispered, horse from her prior screams.  "We know this one, Zaexyl, of house Archne.  Formerly Reiba, courtesan and madam.  The order is clear.  Those who are not to know, when come to know, must die with the knowledge." Davin nodded and Anita turned to Keubroc with a louder voice, "Your request is impossible."

"What benefits the empire is to have her live.  You say you know this woman, then you know the trouble she has caused.  We cannot get answers of her crimes from the dead, but alive?  That is is a far more useful proposition."

"We do not know you." she said, practically sniffing the air around them, searching for a familiar scent.

"You do not need to." he did not so much ignore the question as recognize that his answer would not have satisfied them anyway.  His name was a mere collection of sounds holding no meaning.  But he had the sense that there were a collection of sounds they did long to hear.  More importantly, hands still open, he reached into his pack and produces a sack of linen cloth, the same sack that had once held the provisions of the dead bei'thal.

Keubroc was gratified in a slight tilt of the heads of the man and woman before him.  "This we know." Anita snatched the sack from the SecondSword and sniffed it, taking in the scent of cheese, acorn pancakes, and Vaughn bei'thal.

Her face perked up, like a dog hearing its master's call from far away.  "You say he is dead?" Anita asked methodically as if reading off a mundane list of banal questions.

"I was witness to the deed.  He is dead."

"Then he cannot command us anymore." replied Anita without emotion.  "And you are not bei'thal, but you have said their title."  She drew a small dagger.  "Davin, remind me of our first mission."

"Unseen, unheard, unfelt.  And to those who do, unmerciful."

"This is disobedience," Keubroc yelled, but he made no move towards his weapon.  His heart beat threatened to leap out of his chest, but he suppressed it with a calming exhale. "Your master, Vaughn bei'thal, pursued this woman to bring her before the Light, and you will make his effort be in vain?    You are defective bei if you cannot follow simple orders."

"You do not command us.  Only the bei'thal." Anita gritted her teeth in a display of of agression, but Keubroc kept his gaze at her strong and resolute.

"For failing your master, will be flayed, striped of everything, bare to your soul, your own masters will crush what is left of you to make fodder for beasts.  You know this."

"This has already come to pass.  Your threats mean nothing."  she responded, but nevertheless she stayed her hand,  "You do not smell like bei'thal."

"Not yet."

Anita froze, caught in a quandary where the tools she needed to decide friend from foe were stripped form her long ago.  Tension hung thickly on the cold night air and a slight breeze through the abandoned village produced a whistling noise that reminded Keubroc how inhospitable this place was.  After a long pause that could easily be misinterpreted by others for deep thinking, she finally re-sheathed her dagger.  "Very well.  We will not kill the one who sounds like bei'thal.  We will let him finish his service to Vaughn bei'thal."

"I'm not sure." Davin responded softly, but his hands moved to the knives slung around his waist and tapped them gently.  "The man must die.  The woman must die."

Unexpected words from Davin caused Anita to turn to her partner, "You are not sure?" she repeated with an echo of accusation that was interrupted by the sound of crushed pebbles beneath the clawed feet of the gegleth.  He slowly tiptoed out of the abandoned house he had been hiding in.

"Tkkt tkkt," his antennae rubbed together, drawing attention to himself from Keubroc's intense, darkly lined sandy brown eyes.  His voice, much more composed now, flowed smoothly with a measure of confident charm in Yibouhese.  "The Archne is dangerous.  It should be done to not trust the Archne.  The Archne is not to be trusted.  Such a female even the drones would not take.  But the Nüdwuob was friend to the bei'thal Vaughn."

"Return to your hiding insect," Anita venomously spouted, "When it is safe, we shall call for you.  You have the same duty as we."

"This one has no fear, for the others have already seen." he said, but he retreated nonetheless.

Keubroc used the opportunity to command the conversation once more. "I shall take the prisoner, I shall take the creature, and if you desire further orders from our masters, then we will travel together to Pho-Boteth, where the bei'thal will direct you bei.  For that is what you are, isn't it?  Bei?"

Chapter 12 - Part II

"Someone is near." Davin's ears perked up as he scanned for the alien sound of sentient life miles away.  His compromised ears poked out from underneath the scarf that covered his charred eyes and he inhaled deeply, seeing if his nostrils could provide more information.

"He comes from the northeast.  Quickly.  Panicked." Anita relayed to her companion, "He is coming here.  A gegleth." and she turned her back to him once again, humming a forgotten tune as she entered one of the hut ruins and proceeded to thrust her hands into a long empty basin of stone that once served as a vessel for cool, crystal clear water from the nearby springs.  Her pretend basket of berries she submerged and retrieved several times, clearing the imagined debris to prepare them for cooking or drying.

Then suddenly, she stopped.

"Two more.  One soldier in armor.  One young man, or maybe a woman." Davin acknowledged her report, though he could not verify her claim with his own ears yet.

"How much time until they arrive?"he asked, as he followed a whim to go through the motions of cleaning the carcass of a mountain goat that had existed only in his mind.  If he were alone, he might have resisted, but the allure of falling into their old routine was too powerful with her going through the motions in the kitchen.

"At least 8 hours.  Considering the gegleth will not travel during the heat of day, I do not think it will arrive until past midnight." she continued to shake the water dripping from the basket until she was satisfied that not one drop of imaginary water was left.

Davin stopped his motions and looked at her in her trance.  "What should we do about it?"

"I don't know."

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Heavy panting cleanly echoed off of the sweeping granite walls of the alpine valley.  The major moon was high in the night sky, giving off a radiant glow of moonlight on the silent ruins of the old Woodswalker village.  Minutes later, the blue antenna of the gegleth could be seen.  The two bei had been waiting for him, silently laying where once their bed of down and fleece stood.  The straw roof long gone, their dried out eyes pointed directly to the stars, though they could not see them.  Sound, touch, smell and taste could not travel so far from the heavens.

They got up to greet the gegleth in the village's path.  They could sense the sweat beading from the creature's forehead.

"He smells strangely." Anita whispered in the ear of her fellow bei.  "Where is his usual scent of lilac blossoms?"

"It is fear." Davin replied simply under his breath, "But I have never smelled the lilacs before."

"They all smell of lilacs."

"I see."

They were interrupted by the gegleth when he approached them.  "The woman follows." he said in desperate, scratchy and broken speech,  short of breath.  Not at all the charming voice Anita was accustomed to hearing.  "She was captured.  Escaped?  Unknown.  Tkkt tkkt."

"Sit down and rest insect." Davin ordered though his voice was devoid of condescension.

The gegleth looked at the two bei with a measure of offense but said nothing.  The gegleth creatures and the bei often crossed paths in their service to the bei'thal and the Empire, but never had cause to interact.  Yet this was the only option available to him now.

"You are the gegleth who dug the tunnels at the Archne Estate?" Anita accused, frustrated perhaps at her inability to distinguish the smells of the gegleth with his mask of fear.

"Tttcchhkkt." he sighed, "No... not all gegleth look alike kind lady."

"It does not matter.  We cannot see." Davin informed.

A pause between the three of them lingered uncomfortably for the gegleth as he anticipated further questions, but got none from the two.  They waited patiently for something to happen, but seemed unable to serve as catalyst.

"Chtrttcht is the name.  Humans cannot say it, so call this creature Chet."

"Your name is not interesting." replied Anita before the creature finished the last syllable of his sentence.

"The bei'thal no longer act in shadow.  This has been learned for the bei'thal."

This sentence finally won the attention of the two bei, though the victory was only momentary.  "Do you have orders from a bei'thal for us?"

"No.  The Vaughn bei'thal ordered a return to the Pho-Boteth place.  But shouldn't the one who is yourself concern themself with the news this one brings?"

"That information is useless to a bei.  Tell it to a bei'thal.  Why have you not returned to the city?" Anita questioned.

"The Archne follows."

This also won another few moments of undivided attention, but the bei did not know what to do with this information.

"The Archne comes here." he added.

"We know." Davin arched his head to better hear the two humans in pursuit.

"I cannot hear its voice.  Where is its guiding song?" Anita whined to her counterpart.

"The Silent Scholar cannot hear us." Davin reminded her.

"And we have no bei'thal.  We cannot help you insect."

"Perhaps you will stay in this house." Davin pointed to one of the ruins.  He, like Anita, had no ability to plan what to do, but his instincts told him that if he and his former love put themselves between the quarry of the Archne woman and Zaexyl herself, a situation might resolve itself.

"She is here." Anita noted without warning.

Chapter 12 - Part I

Grey skies had filled the shallow valley leaving smooth sloping walls of granite feeling robbed of life and dull.  High above jagged windswept ridgelines and peaks, the sun usually bore down with burning intensity, though the ambient air could rarely be considered warm.  Blue-green mosses and native grasses clung tightly to the greys, pinks and tiny crystals of the imposing rock, lest they be swept away by frigid alpine winds.  Gusts of biting air chilled Anita to the bone, even while thoughts of the ice and snow of ColdTide celebrations of the coastal folk were still a minor moon away.

It was already much later in the season than they would have stayed, even if any of them had still been alive.  Somehow, she knew that seeing the village this time of year would have comforted her.  The two rows of granite houses had long since been washed of the blood that stained them, the ash of burned straw roofs had not lasted long in the wind.  She could have pretended that nothing was different, that her people were simply in the hollows below, in their iconic houses of the madrones, maples and giant firs; the lifestyle from which the Yibouhese had named them.

IunDzuehr - Woodswalkers - they foisted the name on them just as they had done so with Anita and Davin when they began the process to become bei.  Anita could no longer remember her name, nor that of her people, but in a different era they had called themselves Nedjleen.

The Yibouhese, like those of Eirdren, and most coastal peoples, celebrated time with the phases of the moons and the swelling of the oceans while the Nedjleen saw the passage of time with the coming and going to the chill winds and ice, and their annual migrations back and forth to their alpine and wooded homes.  As such, the coastal peoples prepared in these months for the ColdTide celebrations - the one night when the major moon was highest in the sky and the minor moon could not be seen so long as the sun was gone from the sky.  But for Anita's people, the festive time of Descent was over, and when the sun fell, the constant moonlit sky was an ill omen of hunger on the way.

They had been an old people - well older than the clever agrarian folk living further down in the valleys and plains who eventually built a shining city of marble white.  While it stood at the crags at the base of mountains, Woodswalkers had been pushed further up the hollows and further from the mighty firs their ancestors once used for homes year-round.  For hundreds of years, though she encroached further and further, Yibouh did not bother them in the summers when the Nedjleen inhabited this Alpine refuge.  Here, they collected the blueberries and mountain cranberries that grew in the meadows and glacial bogs, and caught fat little rodents called marmots or the occasional bear - all of which they dried and cured to bring down in the winter months for as long as it would last them.  Here they were allowed to make a life for themselves, until little more than a decade ago.

Anita strolled though the forgotten village, as she did when she was still a maiden.  Her hands extended out, as if she were carrying a basket heavily laden with sweet berries of the summertime, though she neither recognized her actions, nor could she recall those happier days even if she had.  The blindfold about her head whipped in the winds like her headscarf might have once, but the familiarity had long since been scorched away.

They always seemed to come back here though.  As they awaited the call of the Silent Scholar, Anita and Davin usually wandered up to this rocky grave of the Nedjleen, ever since one particular mission saw their bei'thal slain and them aimless without instruction.  Somehow Davin had found enough articulation to request these visits whenever they were unoccupied, and while most of the bei'thal feared desertion or violence from an unguarded bei, the Silent Scholar held no such concerns.  It knew too well that a lost dog wants nothing more than to go home.

Davin made mental note as the woman who was once his bride shuffled down the sandy path.  She did not know what she did, but for him, feeling her existence there was his only tenuous connection to life.  He felt a desire to pick up his spear and join his fellow scouts, the arms and lets of the Nedjleen, in stalking fish in the glacial lakes, and while the knowledge that his fellows were dust saddened him, it was a feeling.  In a reality of numb, the sadness was addicting.