The Rise of Troy

Yuri carefully took his boots off inside the front door, made sure they were positioned squarely on the plastic mat, and then left his coat, gloves, scarf and backpack in a long, winding trail across the living room floor. By the time he made it down the short, cluttered hallway to Hugo's room, his face had already warmed up from the outside chill.

His friend was in the same place Yuri always found him when he came over, hunched over the worktable against the back wall. Whatever project Hugo was working on was the only well-lit thing in the room. His friend spoke to him without looking up, "Did you leave your boots on the mat?" Yuri sighed. "Yes. Your mom's going to have to find a different reason to kill me this time."

Hugo swung around, the magnifying specs he wore while he worked transforming his eyes into huge, blinking windows. "Good. Because she *will* kill you," he deadpanned.

Yuri half-grinned and reached for a spare chair. "Yeah, yeah. So, what's so important?"

"It's not what, it's who," Hugo said, having already reassumed his former position. Yuri could now see what his friend was curving his spine over; on the pitted, flash-burnt surface of the worktable was a thumb-sized, insect-like contraption with many reflective surfaces.

"Cool, is that a drone?" Yuri asked, leaning close. Hugo put out a protective arm to block his friend from getting too close to the little machine, prompting a little sigh from Yuri. "Come on, it's not like I'm going to inhale it or anything. Wait, did you say *who*? And shouldn't that be 'whom'?"

Hugo carefully picked up a miniature screwdriver and continued what he had been doing when Yuri came in, which was adjusting something inside the thing's opened carapace. "I did, and maybe," he said calmly. "Yuri my friend, what if I told you I had an answer to our Ortiz problem?" This was the best news Yuri had in weeks. That guy was making their lives hell at school, and the idea that his reign of terror over the two friends might be over was more than he could have hoped for.

"Excellent!" Yuri crowed. "So, how's this little fella going to take him out?"

Hugo paused in his fine-tuning, as if taking a moment to process what his friend had said. Yuri knew that at these times, it was best just to wait and let Hugo catch up. Actually, a better description would be to wait for him to come back from wherever he had mentally run ahead to. "It's not what the insect-cam will do," he finally said, "but rather what the insect-cam is going to show us."

Yuri was starting to understand. He stayed quiet and let his friend make the necessary adjustments, not speaking again until Hugo snapped the robot's tiny shell back into place. "So where do we start this path to Ortiz's destruction? I'm freakin' sick of that guy."

Despite his hatred for the boy, Yuri acknowledged that Ortiz was really what had brought he and Hugo together as friends in the first place. Being equally victimized by a bully was really underestimated as a common bonding experience between bookish teenage boys.

"It begins with opening the window," Hugo said, yanking off his magnifying goggles and gently cradling the tiny robot in his palm. Yuri jumped to attention, crossing to the small window that was the only spot in the walls of Hugo's room that wasn't covered by shelves of random parts, gadgets, and old-school tech manuals. In the beginning of their friendship, Yuri asked him why he kept real honest-to-G books on these shelves, but Hugo insisted that he knew them so well that he could actually find info he was looking for more quickly than looking it up online. Yuri eventually got the idea that Hugo considered his room as just an extension of his brain.

So when the window was opened, Yuri felt the change in air pressure and obliquely wondered if the high, cool air was actually changing his friend's thought process at all. Then Hugo was flicking his cupped hand at the open portal to the building's airshaft, and the little insect thing disappeared utterly in the darkness.

Hugo dashed over to one of the monitors that were constantly on, to the side of his workbench, and Yuri could now see that one of them was displaying a tilting, wheeling image of the world just outside the window; clearly, it was the insect-bot's onboard camera.

After a few seconds of observing the camera's gimbals working to right itself and the nighttime window lights turn from streaks into stable, recognizable squares of light, Yuri whispered to his friend, who was watching the screen intently, "Where is it going to go?"

Hugo nodded approvingly. "Not far. I've got to pilot it, but I wanted to make sure it could orient itself properly first." With this, Hugo reached out and grabbed a wireless Playstation controller off his workbench. He began manipulating the twin thumbsticks, and the camera's view swung around first in one direction, then the other. Then it began to rise. Yuri watched, rapt.

Passing windows, each cascading down the screen as the camera lifted, gave only the most fleeting glimpses of the lives going on inside them -- someone standing at a kitchen sink, someone reading a book at a dining nook table, light from a TV flickering in a doorway. A moment of utter blackness, and then the drone was above the roof line, showing the city spreading out in gridded lights. As soon as he saw this, Hugo started piloting the drone sideways, spinning it around to get his bearings while raising it even higher above the apartment building's roof.

Yuri saw the first orange flash before the camera's eye stopped swinging. "Whoa. What's that?"

He could hear the smile in Hugo's voice as he said, "That, my friend, is Ortiz's worst nightmare." With this, he gave another tweak to the controller that clarified the situation.

In the monitor, Yuri was looking at a part of his apartment building he had never observed before: the roof. It was a plain of tarred gravel, stitched together with an elaborate array of randomly placed pipes and conduits. But there was one area that might have been the largest uninterrupted flat space in the entire building, maybe the entire block. In the middle of it stood a man, effortlessly juggling five little balls of fire.

It took a few seconds of watching for Yuri to accept the fact of what he was seeing. The figure was facing away from the camera, the shadows of the five burning orbs making his shadows roll across the floor around him in a staggeringly complex pattern . The balls themselves arced almost perfectly from his hands to a spot about two feet over the curly mop of hair on his head, and came down just as steadily. His arms moved with utter confidence, swinging through the air seemingly without thought.

"What the... what's he doing?" Yuri muttered.

"Precisely what it looks like he's doing," Hugo said, concentrating on keeping the floating camera steady. And for a few long moments, they just watched the young man, mesmerized. The flaming balls never faltered in their arcs, transferring from hand to hand over and over again. It might have been a process that had been going on forever, and would continue indefinitely into the future.

All this time, Hugo had been slowly letting the camera drone drift through the air, but Yuri didn't notice until he realized the monitor was now showing the young man from the side. Even though his profile was being buffeted by the five competing light sources constantly spinning around it, there was nothing to read in his features but calm and mastery of his movements. In a city where it sometimes seemed like everyone's expression rode the fine line between rage and confusion, Yuri was mesmerized by witnessing someone's utter peace.

"Keep watching," Hugo said, and started to move around to the front of the young man a little faster. Yuri saw the precise moment when the subject became aware of the camera, his eyes flicking away from the distant hills to focus seemingly directly on them.

"Shit, look out!" Yuri yelped, but it was too late. As easily as he had been juggling the little balls of fire, the young man altered the path of one of them, flicking it directly at the hovering drone. The ball grew larger and larger in the monitor, arcing toward them along a perfectly crafted path. The light grew, grew, and suddenly went out.

Yuri involuntarily flinched, unable to help it. But he immediately realized that, although the fire had disappeared and partially overloaded the camera's optics, the effect was repeating; the other four fireballs were coming, in rapid succession. Yuri took a half-step back every time one appeared to hit the camera, but by the end he noticed that Hugo hadn't moved an inch. His hands were as steady on the controller as ever.

For a moment, overwhelmed by the accumulated bright light, the screen registered nothing. Then, after a few blank moments, tiny spots began to return to several spots around the screen. They were still and steady, and after a few more moments resolved themselves into the familiar gridded pattern of background city street lights.

"He's gone!" Yuri yelped, once he had gotten himself oriented to where the drone was, and where the young man no longer stood.

In response, Hugo dropped the drone down to the roof's surface, and set down the controller. "He just ran while the camera was blown out," he said, already half-jogging out of the room. "Come on!" he called.

Yuri followed him out of the small bedroom, through the apartment, and out onto the landing next to the stairs. In a flash, the pair assumed casual poses, pretending to be looking at something fascinating on Hugo's quickly-produced phone. After only a few seconds, the young man from the roof, looking both taller and gaunter than he had in the multiple sources of pure orange firelight, came down the stairs. None of them looked at the other, and the fire-juggler passed right by them, continuing down the stairs to the next floor.

"That's some good fire-work," Hugo said, loud enough to be heard but still staring into the depths of his phone.

The young man stopped, and it was all Yuri could do to keep from bolting away down the hall. He kept his eyes fixed on the little screen Hugo held as well.

When the young man's voice reached them, it was deeper than Yuri expected, sounding almost sepulchral in the concrete stairwell. "So that was your camera."

Only now did Hugo look up to meet the young man's gaze; Yuri still couldn't summon the courage to. "Yep. Tonight was just the first time you noticed."

Yuri resisted the urge to just grab Hugo's arm and drag him back into his apartment. What the hell was he thinking, antagonizing this guy? Although he still didn't dare look directly at the young man standing a few steps below them, Yuri did notice a thin stream of smoke leaking from inside the sleeve of the young man's combat jacket. It rose through the still air in a straight stream, and started to pool on the underside of the concrete stair directly above him.

"You go out there most nights," Hugo said, emboldened by the silence. "Sometimes you juggle, like tonight. Sometimes you roll balls of flame across the floor, and you can sometimes get them to turn corners. One time, you used your finger to make a huge loop of flame that stayed in the air long enough for you to step through it."

Another long pause followed. "And?" the young man said. Something had changed in the tone of his voice that made Yuri finally raise his head -- a kind of resignation, or maybe relief that his secret wasn't entirely his anymore.

"And," Hugo said, as if he had prepared the words long beforehand, "I wondered if you might want to try using your talents out in the real world." Then came the longest silence of all, only broken when Hugo continued, "We can pay you. There's an injustice that we need to make right, and we can't do it ourselves."

Yuri finally looked at the young man's face. His expression was hard to read in the harsh shadows on the stairwell, but behind the annoyance there seemed to be a mischievous smile trying to break through. "What did you freaks have in mind?"

---

The three of them sat on the cool grass, shielded from the sidewalk by two lines of shrubs that had carefully curated into squared-off shapes. Yuri noted that, when the young man (who eventually volunteered that his name was Troy, shortly after he had agreed to come with the two of them on this errand) sat crosslegged, his legs curled around his long form in such a way that he looked like little more than a teetering bundle of sticks. The guy clearly had nutritional issues.

Seeing him this way, idly poking his fingers around in the grass, evaporating the late-night dew just enough to create a low-lying fog around the trio, gave Yuri courage. Or he was finally seeing that Troy was just another guy, like him and Hugo. In any event, he was able to ask, "What do you make them out of?" Hugo asked.

Troy turned to the questioner, a puzzled look on his face. "I don't make them out of anything. Look." He turned his right hand palm up, took his left hand -- the one he had been touching the steaming grass with -- and placed the tip of his index finger in the very center of the raised palm. He held it there, then slowly, purposefully began to lift it. In the gap between the fingertip and the palm, a tiny sphere of light appeared and grew, dim at first but gaining brightness along with size, until it was like a ping-pong ball, which Yuri realized was the exact size of the ones he had been juggling earlier that evening.

"Whoa," Hugo breathed. "That's so cool."

"Here," Troy said, and jerked his palm, tossing the little fireball into the air. It landed squarely in Hugo's lap, right down into the gap of his crossed legs. The boy yelped and started to flap his legs, but before he could really move the fire was gone. It just disappeared. Yuri wondered how much control Troy had over how long it lasted once it left his hand.

Troy barked a laugh, and even though it was little more than a chuckle, making the shock of longer curly hair above his forehead flopping down, it was the most exuberant display the boys had seen him make. They were too surprised by the sudden outburst to really react to it.

Troy picked his hand up, turned it over as if he himself were trying to understand his power. "I could always do it, I think. My mom told me stories about how things sometimes would heat up around me when I was a baby. Nothing major, just little things. A blanket would start smoldering, a plastic block would melt. Sometimes she said she'd have me in my lap and she'd just start to sweat like it was the middle of summer. I think I did my first fireball when I was, like, seven."

Yuri had been going over Hugo's plan in his mind, not really paying attention to the young man. Ortiz would be coming out of his apartment building any moment now, heading down to his late-night job at a local bowling alley, which usually left him nodding, half-asleep, through his first few classes.

Troy's was continuing to talk. "That reminds me. There was this one time, when my stepdad--"

"Ssh!" Yuri said, having heard the door of the building behind them opening. Recovering quickly, Hugo was swinging around on his knees, trying to see through the hedge whether their quarry was coming into view. He held perfectly still for a moment, and then his shoulders sagged. "Nope. Not him."

As Hugo settled into his old posture, sitting on the grass so that Troy was between him and Yuri, he said, "Okay, you're clear on what we're doing, right? We're not trying to hurt him, just scare him."

Troy sighed, still seeming to have some reservations about what they were about to do. "So what did this guy do to you, anyway? Just regular bully stuff?"

Yuri took no time to consider what he could have said before he blurted out, "Yeah, but he's, like, really bad. And it's not just us, either. He terrorizes everyone in our grade." This was stretching the truth, but the opportunity Hugo had managed to grab was just too good. He couldn't stop picturing the look that would appear in Ortiz's eyes once he realized that his victims now had someone with literal firepower on their side. And the way the lighting on his face would change as the fireballs got lobbed right at him... Maybe the show would be so good that the bully would pee himself a little bit. That would be so cool.

"Yeah?" Troy said, still sounding skeptical. "So, he knocks your books out of your hand? Pushes you into lockers? What are we talking about here?"

Hugo jumped in, sensing that Yuri was doing more harm than good. "He's a holy terror. Even the teachers are scared of him. He slashed one of the vice principal's tires two months ago. There are rumors that he didn't get expelled because the school board is afraid of what he'll do for revenge."

Yuri couldn't help but put in, "And the teachers whose classes he's in get paid extra to put up with him." That was just a rumor too, but it was so pervasive it had to be true.

Troy kept looking back and forth between them as they gave their reasons for wanting the fear of God put into their fellow seventh-grader. His expression became less and less puzzled as they explained, which Yuri took as a good sign. And yes, what they were telling him wasn't precisely true, but it might as well be. The bottom line, the most important point they had to get across, was that Ortiz was a menace that no one wanted to put up with, and everything would be better if he were put in his place. And Troy seemed to be the only one who could give them any chance of doing that.

After they had fallen silent, Troy took one more look, from one to the other, as if to verify that their store of mostly-truths was spent. Then he said, "So what do you think is going to change, if I do what you want and scare this guy good? Will he suddenly become a better person, or will he just realize that there are now two people out there who are actually a threat to him?"

Hugo shrugged, and Yuri said, more honestly than anything he had said since sitting down, "I just want him to stop messing with us."

Troy sighed. "Look, fellas, I've been in situations like this before. There was this one kid, when I was a little younger than you--"

There was a click from behind them as the apartment building's door opened, and even though they were still hidden from view behind the hedges, both boys froze and their eyes went wide, as if they had been caught spraypainting the principal's car. Hugo threw up a hand to keep Troy from making another sound, accompanied by a quick "Shh!"

Troy did as instructed, and dropped his story. Hugo half-turned toward the apartment building, bobbing and weaving his head to see through the hedge's sparse branches. Once he had confirmed who it was coming out of the building, he turned back to the others. "It's him!" he stage-whispered, equal measures of fear and excitement in his voice.

Then Yuri was turning around too, anticipating the start of the action. He had just noticed that Troy wasn't moving to join them when Hugo stood up and called, "Hey, Ortiz!" His friend's voice was surprisingly loud in the mostly empty street, echoing off the flat faces of the rows of identical apartment buildings. Then he was standing too, swiveling around to face their common nemesis. "Yeah!" Yuri crowed, just to hear his own voice bouncing back at him in the same, powerful way.

The figure coming out of the building nearest to them stopped in mid-stride and turned its head their way. It was Ortiz, all right, his hands frozen in the process of lifting the furred hood of his ubiquitous puffy orange jacket over his head.

Out of the corner of his eye, Yuri saw Hugo nudge Troy with his knee. The young man was still sitting on the ground, and didn't look like he was thinking of getting up anytime soon. A little claw of panic caught in Yuri's throat.

"The fuck'ziss?" Ortiz said, not even trying to match the boys' volume. He seemed genuinely puzzled that someone would show up outside his house. Once he had stopped he just hovered there, making no threatening moves, just assessing the situation.

"We got something to tell you!" Hugo said, and Yuri couldn't tell if his friend was mirroring Ortiz's tough-guy accent consciously or not. "And we brought someone along to help us!"

Yuri was starting to become afraid that Troy might not stand up at all. He might just flat-out refuse to do what he had agreed to. But, just as the last remnant of Hugo's call was fading out, the young man unfolded his gangly limbs and stood, turning around as he did. Yuri hoped that, from where Ortiz was standing some forty feet away, it looked as though a tall, menacing figure was sprouting up out of the bushes between the two of them.

"What's your story, Stretch?" Ortiz said to Troy, letting his hood fall back, turning toward them and puffing out his chest defensively. "What are you hanging with these stains for?"

At this point, Troy was supposed to start his juggling act. He had been instructed to accumulate as many flying orbs as he could (he claimed his personal best was eleven), and then lob them one by one toward Ortiz like he had done to the camera drone, making sure that they landed on the sidewalk, getting progressively closer and closer to the bully, like he was being strafed from the air. This, Hugo envisioned, would send his adversary running back into his building, and likely would mark the end of his ever messing with either he or Yuri again.

Troy didn't do this, however, at least not right away. Yuri found himself holding his breath, waiting for the moment when the young floppy-haired man would begin to perform his magic. The moment drew out longer and longer.

"I heard that you're being a real dick to these guys," Troy said, his voice carrying clearly across the long space even though he wasn't speaking particularly loudly.

Ortiz considered this, then shrugged, his entire coat moving up and down as one unit as he did it. "Yeah," he said. "Maybe they deserve it."

"How so?" Troy asked. Yuri and Hugo looked across their new acquaintance, jaws dropped, unable to understand what was going on. Was Troy actually having a conversation with this juvenile delinquent, their arch-enemy?

Ortiz really seemed to be thinking this question over, as if no one had ever thought to ask him before. Finally, he said, "I don't know. Maybe I'm sick of them having their own little conversations, like they're better than everyone else."

"Wait a minute!" Hugo blurted out, his voice no louder but sounding much more desperate than Troy's. "We never did anything to you!"

Ortiz's dramatic eye roll was visible even from that distance, because he did it with his entire body. "Man, you don't even remember? Last year, you two were talking about Masterson's test? I came up and tried to join you, but you barely even noticed I was there. You went right back to your own private little discussion."

"Until you smacked us on the back of our heads!" Yuri shot back.

To which Ortiz immediately responded, "Yeah, but you noticed me then, right?"

Hugo was drawing in breath, ready to launch another verbal volley, but Troy lightly touched a finger to his arm and Hugo decided not to continue. "You're right," Troy called out, "They're not too good at listening, are they?"

"Nope," Ortiz said.

"I mean," Troy continued, "here I am, a guy who can do this--" His hand on Yuri's side turned palm-up, and for the briefest instant a bright beam of light shot up from it and went straight into the sky, piercing the high, uniform layer of clouds that had draped itself across the city that night, then just as quickly was so gone that Yuri had to force himself not to instantly forget it had been there, "--and they don't even ask any questions. About who I am, why I can do it... They didn't even bother to find out what my name was. They just wanted to get me to come down here and scare the shit out of you."

Ortiz had changed his stance during the split-second display, backing one of his feet away into a more defensive pose, but his face had managed to remain calm. Finally, he said, "Well, what *is* your name? And how'd you get so awesome?"

Troy lowered his hands, and looked from his left to his right, locking gazes with first Hugo, then Yuri. Finally, he turned back to Ortiz. The young man only half-attempted to step gingerly through the hedge separating them from the bully, ended up breaking several branches as he passed through. Then he was walking right up to Ortiz, saying, "Thanks for asking. It's actually a pretty fascinating story."

Hugo and Yuri just stood there, not daring to move. Was this a trick, some sort of ploy so that Troy could get close enough to really put the irons to Ortiz? The two older boys met where Ortiz stood, and continued their conversation, turning away and walking off down the sidewalk, like new friends.

"What the hell just happened?" Hugo said, watching the two shapes fade into the night.

"I don't... we him asked what his name was, didn't we?" Yuri wondered aloud.

"I'm sure we did," Hugo said. Then, after a pause, "I think."

Neither of them moved, not knowing whether their bully problem had just been solved, or if they had stumbled into a much worse, brand new one.

To Dem or Not to Dem

The 2018 Congressional election primaries are tomorrow, and the elections a little over three months away. My mayor has come and personally knocked on my door, and oversized postcards outlining candidates’ positions are landing in my hands almost every day. There’s a huge influx of new Democrats running in all states in the country, which I’m not sure is going to be a good or a bad thing. There might be too many choices to find among them a candidate with a clear chance of winning, or maybe the country might just be fed up enough to see lack of experience as a plus. In any event, they all have jumped in the race with one goal in mind: Flip Congress. Getting Democratic control of the legislative branch – the Senate in particular, although the House is still a mathematical possibility – is the one thing that the anti-Trump segment of the country definitely agrees on (and it’s ironic that I say “segment”, because it’s actually the majority).

So I’m going to vote Democrat in the primary, and I’ll vote for as many Democratic candidates as I can in November. But I’m wrestling with the idea that this might be the last election I participate in while officially a Democrat. The reason? Because I’m starting to doubt that it’s enough to fight tooth and nail, just to not lose more ground on the issues I care about. And right now, that’s the Democratic method of operation. They talk a lot about progress and hot-button issues (guns, public schools, LGBTQ rights) to get people on board, but the closer to the finish line we get, they gradually move more toward the center, looking for ways of offending the least amount of people in hopes of coming out on top.

So now that I’m thinking about it, what are the issues I really care about? Basically, it’s these: I think that guns need to be harder to get, their effects should be studied more, and play as small a role in public life and policy debate as possible; I believe that women should have more (if not all of the) say in their reproductive health; public schools need to be near the top of the best-funded programs we have; universal health care in general should be a thing, along with the closing of gender pay gaps and a minimum wage that will keep the majority of us out of poverty; I think that America needs to stop pretending that Christianity is the only religion worth protecting the freedoms of; find the appropriate balance of ethnic diversity in public organizations, and penalize those that don’t conform to it; legalize recreational marijuana, using alcohol as a model, and remove mandatory minimum sentences for non-violent drug offenses; standardize the immigration process – because right now there’s literally no “line” to get into, despite what most people imagine; eliminate not only gerrymandering, but also unlimited corporate donations to political causes, and the electoral college entirely; and above all, realize that America’s best financial prospect for the future is to incentivize, develop, manufacture, and export clean energy and improved infrastructure technologies to the rest of the world (instead of, oh, I don’t know, hobbling the EPA and giving huge tax breaks to the fossil fuel corporations that are keeping climate change on a fast upward track).

There’s more, and they may not be stated perfectly, but those are the top ones, and I don’t particularly care anymore what the name of a system that heads in these directions is called. I grew up during the Cold War, but you can’t throw some form of the word “socialism” at me and expect me to duck. If that’s the word for what I just outlined, then that’s fine. Let’s just get it done.

Here’s the thing: I believe *most* people in America want these same things, and the only reason they don’t trust the government to handle it is because we don’t trust the government the way we used to in general. Through many hard lessons, we’ve learned that our current political climate is more representative of what big businesses want, instead of us the people. Unfortunately, that means “Democrat” is no longer a name that can rally enough people who will turn out to overcome the hurdles that have been put in place to keep things the way they are.

That’s the crux of my dilemma… Is it enough to win? Is it even possible to win playing by the current rules? And now that we’re thinking about it, does a prejudiced system deserve to be played in at all? What if the only way to properly represent the people is to totally upend the current state of things? Shouldn’t we be fighting to become the country we want, even if lowers our chances of winning?

All these thoughts are making me lean harder toward the more revolutionary side of things, and I by that I mean changing not only the mindset of the government, but maybe even redefine the role that government needs to have in people’s lives. We’ve seen what happens when capitalism is given too much rope: everything gets privatized and run by the money motivations of fewer and fewer people, instead of by improving the general population’s lives. On the other hand, I heard a quote recently, attributed to Cyril deGrasse Tyson by his son Neil: “It's not good enough to be right, you have to be effective.” And now I have to decide whether I agree with that or not. If I do, then I should stick with the Democrats, because we all saw what happened with the Jill Stein voters in the last presidential election. And if not, then I have to stand behind progressive causes without willingness to compromise, regardless of how futile they might be.

It’s just so frustrating. Some days I can envision so clearly, up against the stark contrast of reality, what I think this country should be. See the third paragraph to get an idea of what that vision is… and I feel we’re letting opportunity after opportunity pass America by. We could be a world leader again, if the people we elect weren’t so afraid to piss off the big corporations with decisions that stand up for average citizens and the environment, if they weren’t determined to secure their jobs by playing into the nostalgia of an idyllic country that never existed – well, not unless you were white and at least middle-class. Our current president is a perfect example of this, someone who still has the mindset of doing what he wants, throwing an expensive legal team at the resistance, and usually getting away with it. It’s how businesses used to be run, but not governments, and not in the here and now. Part of realizing that all people are equal means that you might have to *become* equal with others. There are two ways to do this: either give up your inherent advantages, or work to raise everyone up to your level. Neither is easy, but the results are at least sustainable.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again… If government doesn’t continually improve its ability to help people in their efforts to make their lives safer, easier, and happier, then what’s the point of its existence?

Genesis 3:6 [Draft B]

He found her sitting on the bank of their favorite stream. They liked it most out of all the myriad streams that flowed through the garden, because only its surface was slow enough that they could look into it and see themselves.

When he walked up, she heard his bare footfalls on the grass, and turned her head his way a little to greet him. When she did, something that was hung around her neck clattered. He sat beside her without a word.

He reached out and tentatively touched the tip of a finger to the clattery thing. "Is this new?" he asked.

She had returned to looking out over the calm surface of the stream. "Yep."

He waited a long time for his follow-up question. "What is it?"

She looked down at it, as if seeing it for the first time. "Oh. It's bones."

"Bones?" he asked. "From where? I don't think I've ever seen ones like that before." It was true; the bones of the animals varied greatly, but these were all almost exactly identical to each other, a long line of them strung on a blade of river grass and resting in a loose loop around her neck.

"They're from that serpent thing," she said nonchalantly, tossing her hair to expose more of the ivory cylinders to the bright sun. "You remember, the one that was in that tree over there?" She waved a hand behind them, the vaguest of gestures.

His brow furrowed. "Wait... you mean the tree that... that weren't not supposed to eat from?"

"Yeah," she said. "That's the one. I told you before about the conversation I had with the serpent that lived in it."

He nodded, puzzled. "Right, I remember that, but... so it died?"

She shrugged. "I guess."

A long pause followed, with him trying to figure out how to draw more information out of her without revealing how concerned he was becoming. Finally, he said, "You didn't eat the fruit, though, right?"

Now she looked at him directly, annoyed. "I'm not stupid, you know. Like you said, it's forbidden."

"Right, I know," he said, backpedaling quickly, "Of course you didn't. But that was the whole point, right? The serpent was trying to convince you that you should. Eat some, I mean. And that I should too, isn't that right?"

She didn't look away, as if daring him to tell her she had done something wrong. "You remember that right."

"And we talked about how weird it was that out of all the animals, this was the only one that could talk."

"Yes, I admit it was really weird," she said. "And I didn't like it. That's why we usually don't go over there anymore."

They turned back to the stream. "So, how did you know it died?"

"Hm?" she responded absently.

"The serpent. Where did you get the bones from? Did you go back over there?"

"I did, as a matter of fact," she said, as if it were none of his business. "I was chasing rabbits."

"Oh," he said. He often would lose her for entire afternoons because she couldn't keep from dashing through the ferns, laughing and pursuing those fluffy little things.

She said, "I wasn't paying much attention to where I was going, and when I looked up I was back at that tree. The serpent was right where I left it. But, you know, this time it was, like, all bones." With one hand, she lifted the necklace up off her bare chest as if to demonstrate, then let it fall back with that disconcerting chattering sound.

"You... It was just dead and turned to bones?"

She nodded, still looking out over the water. "Mm-hm. The last time I had talked to it, it was still pressuring me to try some of that fruit. It said that if we took a bite, it would give us knowledge."

He hadn't heard this part before. "What kind of knowledge?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. Something about geography, knowledge about the stars in the sky. It went on and on about catalytic something-or-others and quantum... thingys. I don't know. Anyhow, I didn't like the way it talked. Or the way it felt, for that matter."

"Felt?"

"Yeah, it slid down onto my shoulders as it was talking, kind of wrapped around me so it could whisper in my ear." His own skin started to crawl, thinking about what that must have been like. "In that little hissing voice," she continued. "I didn't like the way it did that."

"So you killed it," he said.

She was quick to correct him. "No. No, I did not. Because you and I both know that's against the rules, just like eating from the tree. But what I did was... I kind of grabbed it while it was sitting on my shoulders, and threw one end of it up over the branch where it had been sitting. Then I grabbed both ends again, and I sort of twisted them together... like this thing you invented with that long blade of grass." She showed him the spot on the necklace where she had fastened it to itself. "What did you call this again?"

"A knot." He said, then pondered this for a moment. "You tied the serpent into a *knot*? Around the branch of the forbidden tree?"

"Sure," she said. "You probably would have done it too, if you had heard it talking like that, and it was starting to drive you crazy. I wrapped it around the branch, pulled it tight, and just left it there." His stunned silence prompted her to follow with, "But it wasn't me that killed it. Apparently it wasn't as smart as it thought. Couldn't even untangle itself. So much for secret knowledge, right?"

"Oh," he said, and looked with her out over the water for a long time.

"I really like this garden," she said. "We get to stay here forever, don't we?"

He nodded. "That's what I was told." He sat and thought for a long time, not sure why the news that the talking serpent was now dead, and its remains hanging around his companion's neck, should bother him so much.

"Is everything okay?" she asked him. She always seemed to be aware of his emotions, even when he wasn't very sure of them himself.

He frowned as he continued to look into the distance. "Maybe... or, I don't know. That serpent was the only other thing that talked here. I don't think... maybe it... shouldn't have died." He chose his words very carefully, but felt the silence between them turning to stone. He quickly followed up with, "I'm only saying, that I know animals die all the time... just not the talking ones."

"It was the only one we've ever met," she said flatly.

"Right," he said. "That's why I thought it might be something special. That's all I’m saying." He shrugged. "I don't know what I mean. It just seems like... I kind of assumed that the serpent was some sort of guardian for the forbidden tree."

"If it was, it didn't do a very good job. Now its job is being jewelry." She shifted around and shook the bones again. The sound made him cringe. He couldn't help but look over at the necklace, seeing the way the strung vertebrae emerged from under her hair, sweeping across her skin in a graceful, pale arc.

"Do you think..." he began, then stopped. She didn't urge him to continue, but he did anyway. "Do you think, now that the tree's guardian is gone, that the fruit is still technically forbidden?"

"Huh. Hadn't thought about that," she said. She arched an eyebrow over at him. "Why do you ask?"

He met her gaze, for the first time in a long while. "It when we first saw the tree, I thought the fruit looked pretty good... that's all I'm saying."

The smooth face of the water began to ripple as a light wind stirred up. He thought about things a little while longer, and then started to stand.

"Where are you going?" she asked.

He swiped his hands nonchalantly against his thighs several times, brushing the loose bits of grass away. "Nowhere. I'm just going to wander around a little bit. I'll be back in a little while, okay? Maybe I'll grab us something to eat."

She let him go, then sat smiling in the sun with her new necklace, and watched the surface of the water as the wind began to kick up a little more. She couldn't see herself in the surface anymore.

The Burden of Sir Bruinn

Sir Bruin of Fordscross was quite aware that, even were he able to stumble back to the mouth of the cavern and out into the blessed sunlight, no amount of fresh mountain air would ever clear away the stench. He'd never be able to get the smell of his roasted comrades from out his nostrils. In any event, such musings were futile; he honestly doubted he could marshal the strength to lift his bulk and walk out of the cave under his own power.

Even though they had numbered over twenty, each of them the bravest and truest knights their Holy Liege could find, the cursed Wyrm had ambushed them from the darkest recesses of its cave with a primary weapon of fire, immediately igniting their greater number in the first instants of the melee. Bruinn had not been in this unfortunate group, was left instead to be assailed with the cries and screams of the doomed being immolated inside their armor. The field of battle had fallen silent since then; as far as he knew, he was the only warrior who had survived.

Since the day of his beknighting, Bruinn had often had dreams similar to those experienced by all men who understand that each mission might be their last, and now it had seemed to come to pass in reality. In these dreams, he would bear some mortal wound -- that would never hurt as much as he estimated it should -- and then he would lie down and remain still, merely because he knew it was his duty as a knight to do so, to fall and die for his country and crown. He would never really be dead, but the skewed logic of his sleeping mind would already have accepted he was merely performing a dumbshow, fulfilling the expectation of his society and his class.

Perhaps this was why it had taken so long for him to realize that he was not dead after all, continuing to breathe and sweat and tremble on the floor of the hideous beast's cave. However, when he made attempts to rise, imagining himself courageously continuing the battle solo amid his fallen companions' bodies, he found he could not. He felt his muscles moving, tightening and relaxing inside the confines of his armor, but some magic kept him strangely still. This brought him some solace; apparently it was not for lack of courage that he now lay, face-down and still, on the floor of the cave. While it was a fortunate happenstance and likely had saved him from being finished off by the terrible Wyrm, this infirmity was created not by choice.

Since they had been children, he and his fellow knights-in-training had heard tales of the riches of the Wyrm's cave, of the vast hoard of purloined treasure it sat atop. Not even the king's wisest consuls understood why such creatures cared for shiny gold and jewels; the one thing they did understand was that not even the richest Wyrm could have any use for such wealth. Perhaps the answer lay in the way treasure glittered... but then why submerge it in the darkness of a cave? In any event, what the king had tasked them with retrieving this cursed day was not anything fashioned of precious metal, but most precious to the kingdom nonetheless.

When Bruinn and the others had finally breached the dimness at the end of their long overland journey and stepped over the cave's hellish threshold, swords drawn and shields raised, their bodies encased head to toe in weathered steel, they had found the rumors to be true. Their booted feet had stepped almost immediately on vast, undulating drifts of gold coins and objects that had formerly occupied every treasure store within a day's flappings of the accursed reptile's titanic wings. But as much as they endeavored to step lightly, the clinking of metal against metal, and the tiny landslides of gold that necessarily followed, had brought down a swift conflagration on them all.

Bruinn, as has been noted, was not dispatched by the first sweep of demonic flame, borne by the Wyrm which swooped upon them from deep within the cave, already emanating its sulfuric breath. It did, however, cause his sword to begin to lose shape and his shield to warp as the concentrated wave of heat passed no more than two arm lengths from his side. He dove away, as did all the others who were not squarely caught in the focus of the Wyrm's horrid breath, and escaped the first blinding scythe-sweep of death that filled the cave that day.

He landed face-down on the nearest low pile of golden treasure, his head pivoted instinctively away from the searing heat of the conflagration, so that the view from within his visor limited showing him only more useless riches sloping away from him into the distance, caught by unholy illumination. His sword had flown from his grasp, lying weakened nearby but tantalizingly out of reach.

In the first moment after the attack, Bruinn feared that he had been cooked alive inside of his own superheated armor, for the multiple washes of heat he felt over every inch of exposed flesh did not seem to diminish with time. At the very least, he thought, his relatively unprotected eyes would be boiled in their sockets. But the flames, and the light, eventually faded away. Long moments passed, in which he could actually feel the searching gaze of the huge animal passing over him, a presence like a thick and viscous fluid.

Then -- and he instinctively knew would have nightmares about this for the rest of his life, however long or short that might be -- he heard the vast nose of the cave's lizard-like denizen sniffing, huge huffs tinged with the smell of brimstone. It came from above him, first on one side, then the other, and he could sense the immense, ponderous weight of its head swinging back and forth through the air. He heard that broad head stop, dip, and then something awful crunched and buckled between its powerful jaws, teeth puncturing armor, cooked meat, and bone alike.

Lastly came a self-satisfied "hmph" -- the loudest, deepest sound he had ever heard that could still convey living emotion -- and the sound of massive scales sliding over metal, causing strewn golden goblets to ring and gemstone necklaces to grate and chatter like disembodied teeth.

Then it was over. Bruinn's teeth had rent tears in his lips during the ordeal, forcing his screams to stillness even as he bitterly, desperately wept for how easily his entire regiment, friends and fighters he had known since boyhood, could be so casually swept from God's Earth by such an uncaring force of blind nature. Eventually, the silent hitching of his ribs ceased, and Bruinn began to strategize, determining how he could most quietly get up, sneak into the deepest part of the Wyrm's lair, and plant the point of his forlornly sagging blade deep between the thing's slumbering eyes. He had no idea how many hours passed before he was ready. But his first attempt to rise from his supine position proved even such a simple task impossible, as has already been related. It was not that he had been so badly injured that his body could not move -- he was actually pressing upward against the backplate of his armor, his forearms pulling hard to retract his armbraces from their splayed position. But no part of his armor would move more than the slightest bit. It were as if he had become part of the ground, forever frozen. Or perhaps -- and the old fear began to seep back into him as he thought -- he had truly died, and this was what death was, forever staring at the patch of ground on which you perished, unable to move but forever trying, trapped inside your body as it decayed around you...

"Psst," he heard a voice from nearby, startling him. "Stop struggling. You're well stuck."

He knew the voice immediately. It was high, thin, frightened. It belonged to the Prince, the very treasure the King had sent his knights into this infernal fray to liberate.

"Your Highness," Bruinn breathed, his voice surprisingly strong despite his rising, clutching panic, "we have come to rescue you." Wincing at the woeful inaccuracy of his pronoun, he tried to rise again, hoping against hope that he might be able fulfill his charge. Unbidden images of himself striding back into town, the Prince seated behind him on one of the fallen knights' horses, all of which had been left well outside the cave and which he would leash to his own steed's bridle, flashed through his mind. But to enact such a triumphant return, he would first have to rise from the floor. He heard the weak creaking of his armor as he tried yet again.

Then the Prince was diving down next to him, planting his hands and knees, bending into his field of vision. The young man, with whom Sir Bruinn had before this moment never been in such close proximity, slid close to him on his stomach and hissed harshly, "I command you to lie still!"

Bruinn obeyed, at the same time realizing how young the Prince truly was, a frightened child in relatively unsinged raiment. He took a long, slow breath, preparing for the worst, and asked, "My Lord, why can I not rise?"

The Prince rose slightly to look Bruinn over, then brought his face down close to Bruinn's visor again. The young man's breath carried a weight that might have been by the initial stink of starvation, having been missing for almost a fortnight. "You're stuck," he repeated. "I shall attempt to get you out of this armor."

The knight's vitals filled with ice at the words, terrified at the thought of being unprotected while having to face down the Wyrm again, and alone. Before he could whisper a retort, the young man was fumbling at the buckles and straps along his side. "Halt!" Bruinn barked. "Will the beast not come back?

The Prince sat up a little, looked off into the dimness of the cave. When he looked back down, regret filled his eyes. "No, we have some time. She's... She's being fed."

Bruinn wondered which of his companions were comprising the meal, and shuddered, quietly rattling in his metal prison. He allowed the young royal to resume the attempt to free him, struggling to suppress the queasy mix of humiliation and dread that continually threatened to force a scream out of his throat. In a short time, he was beginning to feel additional room inside the armor, and arched his back against the rear protective plate, assisting in its removal.

All at once, he felt the cool cave air rushing inside his opened carapace, delighting the flesh that had grown accustomed to suffering from the residual heat of the thing's horrid flame-breath. As soon as the shell was off his back, he began shifting back and forth with renewed vigor, striving to free himself, although he could not get his arms or legs to budge more than a fraction of an inch from their previous fixed positions. Just as quickly, he felt the young prince's hand on his back.

"Shh, shh shh," he was told, "you cannot make so much noise!" And it was then that Bruinn realized he truly was; as he shifted his weight around on the pile of golden treasure he had been felled upon, the coins and cutlery beneath him were shifting around, whispering across each other, sometimes producing a high-pitched squeaking or clattering.

"Yet I must rise, your Highness," Bruinn stated, his voice flat and determined. "I am your only avenue of escape." And with this, Bruinn focused his exertion solely on his right arm, the one he could see, pooling his strength into the effort of lifting that one limb, slowly and steadily. And, after much striving, it began to move.

The Prince, sensing his resolve, rebuked him no more. As Bruinn felt the incredible weight of his arm shift, he began to understand why it was so difficult to do so; the heat of the Wyrm's breath had softened and partially melted the treasure pile so that parts of it bonded to his armor, coagulating its still-distinct shapes into large golden masses that adhered to him. He was presently lifting a sizeable volume of various precious metals along with his arm. When he finally was able to free his arm, it was surrounded by clumped masses of gleaming gold.

With the aid of the Prince, Bruinn found that his other limbs came free more easily. The leverage that could be gained with the use of one free limb beget a second freed one; and the second, a third; until the valiant knight was standing once again, resurrected, his arms and legs sparkling, tottering under the weight of new armor. He tried not to look at the bodies of his fallen comrades, elected instead to focus his attention fully on his King's son, who was gazing upon him more in fear than in relief.

"Come, my Prince!" Bruinn whispered to him. "My orders are to return you to your father." He extended one hand, a gauntlet now clumped with thickly solidifying chunks of gold.

The Prince, for his part, did not gratefully reach out and take it immediately. Instead, the young royal threw furtive looks over both shoulders, toward the gloom and distant grotesque sounds coming from the rear of the cave. "She'll be done eating soon," the young man's voice squeaked. "I can lead you out of here, but we must be quick. And silent."

In a flash, the Prince rushed past Bruinn and began tiptoeing at running speed across the length of the cave, nimbly stepping over the half-melted suits of armor that lay in his path, thick, nasty smoke still spilling out of their joints and visor holes. Sir Bruinn resisted the urge to call out, to grab at the Prince's clothing and haul him back, so they could work on the most likely plan to get them both out of the dragon's lair alive.

Unfortunately, the barefoot young man could move much more quickly than the knight, now laden with armor newly plated with gold. They did not head directly toward the mouth of the cave, but instead travelled crosswise, forming a path that Bruinn thought he understood; they repeatedly ducked behind piles of plunder that towered above their heads, most likely shielding their progress from the vast lizard that he could still hear munching somewhere back in the darkness.

Their path was so circuitous, and Bruinn so focused on his attempts to follow without losing sight of the ever-receding Prince, that by the time they reached a wide crack in the cave wall, Bruinn could not with confidence say where they were. The Prince was waiting just inside the gap, looking back with dubious but hopeful eyes. Bruinn was breathing heavily, having run so far under his new weight, but endeavored to do it as quietly as he could. He was thankful for even a brief respite, and braced himself against the cave wall as soon as he reached the Prince.

Bruinn was encouraged to find that, even as the stale, warm air of the Wyrm's cave heaved laboriously into and from his lungs, the prince hardly seemed winded. "What is this place?" the knight asked, wearily lifting his weighted hand to indicate the crack they had entered.

"It's a secret way," the prince whispered, "one that none but me know of."

Bruinn nodded his head, placing one hand on the young man's shoulder. "Excellent," he said. "I doubt we could exit through the cave mouth. The thing will be on guard for a second wave of attackers."

"She," the prince corrected. "The dragon is a she. And, is there?... a second wave of attackers, I mean?"

He forced himself to raise his heavy head, one side of his helmet laden with clotted gold. "I'm afraid not, my lord," he said gravely. The prince's countenance did not change as Bruinn reported, "I am the sole survivor of this damned sortie."

The prince considered this, and nodded. "Then there's no reason to linger," he said. "Come. We must push farther down this way." He began to back toward the rear of the narrow cave, disappearing into the murk. The way was narrow enough that Bruinn expected him to be stopped at any moment, having retreated as far as humanly possible, but the prince kept going, until he was entirely invisible to sight.

Steeling himself, Bruinn began the final push into daylight, which he already imagined he could start to glimpse the farther back in the narrow crack they progressed. It was only the continued recession of the Prince's dim outline that convinced Bruinn that they were not going to become irrevocably stuck in the passage.

He was surprised to find that, over the sound of his armor and remaining clothes scraping against the occasional protuberance or crag in the uneven stone, the prince was whispering again, leading him forward. "Not far now," the young man was saying, "continue to follow my voice."

Bruinn knew that there were scarcely any alternatives to this course of action, but courteously replied, "Of course, my lord."

A long moment of progress passed, and the Prince spoke again, sounding closer to Bruinn now. "My father wishes me back this desperately, does he? Enough to send his finest knights to rescue me?"

"Absolutely," Bruinn answered. "a dozen of us. I already regret the look that will be upon his face when I inform him that only I have returned." Then he added hastily, "But of course, such sorrow will be overshadowed when he sees you."

"I do not doubt it shall," the prince said, in an oddly flat tone. "Tell me, Sir Bruinn, was any inquiry made into the manner of my disappearance?"

Bruinn thought it an odd question, but considered it honestly. "I don't believe so, lord. We were called into the court and given our instructions, but not given any background to the incident itself."

A few moments of scraping along the passage followed, and the distant light seemed to grow marginally brighter. Bruinn found he had to twist and turn his body to navigate a few of the more narrow corners, but managed to keep pace with the ever-receding prince.

"I called her," the young man said finally.

"Who, lord?" was all Bruinn could think to say.

"The dragon," the Prince said. "I went up onto the roof with my father's old dragonstone, and summoned her."

Bruinn's brow furrowed in the dark. He knew that the King had been in possession such a thing, a sift-sized crystalline engine plucked from the breast of a dragon he had vanquished decades ago in his reign. It was known that such stones powered a Wyrm's fire when the creature was alive, but retained little power once removed, other than becoming a sort of beacon, detectable by other such creatures. "You... called this beast yourself?"

"Yes," the Prince said, continuing to back into the growing light. "Sir Knight, I have lived a very sheltered life. And I wanted to perhaps see one of the wonders this world has to offer."

"Sheltered?" Bruinn asked, becoming more puzzled with each step. "Protected, one might say instead. Protected from fearsome beasts such as the one that has kept you here in this cave for the past fortnight!" Against his better judgment, his voice began to rise in frustration.

"And I did regret it," the prince replied, his tone even as ever, "when I saw the huge thing come swooping down at me. But then I was being borne within her claws, and she was flying me away, rising dozens more feet into the air with each flap of her immense wings..." His voice drifted off, as if in pleasant reverie.

"My lord?" Bruinn asked, trying to pick up the pace of his pursuit. He meant to catch up to the Prince fully, to grab onto his collar and physically refuse to let the young heir go until the two of them were both safely returned to the royal court. But as much as he attempted to hurry his progress, the Prince continued to back away.

"For the first time in my life," the Prince continued, "the entire world lay out before me. And not like it is from within the stone arch of a high turret window, with more towers and walls blocking the way... but no longer behind barriers, all of it rushing by beneath us, green and present and alive. I was suddenly part of it all, and it was part of me. That's the gift that She gave to me that day -- She who you crudely call Wyrm, as if that word could diminish her power. Now I am out, and I really don't intend on going back."

Bruinn felt a freezing chill run through the marrow of his bones, stark contrast against his remaining armor, still resonant with the dragon's unholy heat. All he had done, and all his fallen comrades had sacrificed, were now in danger, and he realized he must choose his next tack carefully. "You intend to go out into the world, to leave your father's kingdom and wander for a time? Some future kings have done such things, spending years of their young adulthood venturing out, learning firsthand of the lands which he will one day rule."

The prince sighed, already exasperated. "No, Sir knight. What I am saying is that I intend to leave permanently. And I will rule the land one day, not just this one but many more. In this endeavor She will be my guide, companion... and leader of my armies."

Even with the turns the conversation had already taken, it took Bruinn an incredulous moment to realize which "she" the prince was referring to. "The... the beast?" he asked.

"Yes, if She is what you mean by the reductive term 'beast'!" the prince bleated. "To speak honestly, She has treated me with more kindness than most of the adults I have met in my life."

"How can that be?" Bruinn was fairly lunging forward now, trying to grasp the child -- and he no longer thought of the prince as anything more than a spoiled, naive child, to say such things -- but his gold-laced armor repeatedly clanged and sparked off the erratically-shaped walls of the ever-narrowing crevice. "My lord, you know not of what you speak! It -- She -- is a mere animal! A living, breathing machine of death!"

The prince stopped moving for once, giving Bruinn a tantalizing chance to close the gap between them. "May She blast you again for saying so! She could have slain me immediately, yes, but instead brought me to this cave of wondrous beauty. She has fed me with roast animals, protected me, taken me on the most incredible flights. I daresay I have seen more of this world in the past few days than thou hast in thy entire life, bondsman!" His language lapsed into the high speech of his father, now that he had become agitated. "The best nanny I have had in my eleven years, She has been! No ward to be sated and tolerated, I, to Her! Love, pure caring love is what She has given me, the kind of love my negligent royal parents could ne'er deign to!"

Bruinn's hand was almost upon the sleeve of the distracted, angered Prince, but at the last instant before he could touch him, the youth dropped back a few more feet. The light had continued to grow about them, and now Bruinn was aware of the specks of light his newly acquired gold was casting about the rough walls like sparkles off waves. His hand fell on the Prince's shoulder, and the knight's fingers were about to clamp down...

Suddenly, they were out. The walls of the crack fell away, and intense sunlight dazzled their eyes. the brightness came seemingly from everywhere at once, and Bruinn was forced to relinquish his grasp on the Prince, instinctively raising his hand to his eyes in order to shield them. It did little to diminish the glare, but the next few stumbling steps he took following the vague silhouette of the Prince told him precisely what he needed to know.

Bruinn was once again stepping through low drifts of piled gold treasure, the familiar sound of his feet kicking pieces of it aside brought ever more dread into his heart.

They were not outside, but instead within a chamber. The crack had not led them into the very heart of the demon's lair. There was a ragged hole in the ceiling where the fissure they had been following picked up again, zipping up and back out into the world, allowing in a bright sliver of the day's sunlight. This shaft fell fully upon the largest heap of gold that Bruinn had seen yet. And atop it lay the satiated, slumbering Wyrm that he had followed here. She was coiled like a cat, long graceful neck and tail wrapped tightly around the house-sized bulk of her body, orange-red scales gleaming almost as brightly as the treasure she slept on.

The prince continued to back toward the giant thing, spreading his arms out with pomposity. "Behold her grandeur! She is the true ruler, not my father, the weak little man who sits on his throne and proclaims himself so! Her power is beyond any kingdom's!"

Behind the young man, one ruby-red slitted eye the size of a hearth's mantel peeked open lazily, fell upon the pair of them, then shut again.

The prince continued to bellow, loving the way his voice grew older and stronger, echoing and deepening in the cavernous space. "She will share her secrets with I alone! And then I shall become the most high and powerful!" He reached into one of his pockets and produced what must have been the heartstone he had used to call her. Bruinn stopped, transfixed by its beauty, multifaceted and internally luminous, even in this comparatively blinding place. "I summoned her with this, this proof that She and I are kindred spirits! Proof that our destiny is to lay our shadows across this world together, a world that is ours by right! Together we shall--"

Quicker than a snake could strike, the dragon's neck extended and her jaws slammed shut sideways around the prince, removing him from the world entirely within an instant. Then, as slowly as if she had merely swatted a bothersome fly, the dragon turned returned her head to its former position, the tree-think muscles in her jaws shifting only a little as she worked her meal around, crushing it fully inside her mouth. Bruinn imagined he saw her scales bugle slightly along the length of her neck as she worked the bundle down, until it finally disappeared into her body. She gave out what might have been a twitch and a hiccup then -- no doubt settling the second heartstone into place, presumably alongside her own -- before lowering her head into the groove it had worn around the top of the treasure hoard.

That immense eye peeped open one more time, then closed just as slowly, dismissing him. Bruinn stood there for a long time, watching the body of scales slowly expand and contract, as the giant creature lightly dozed in the aftermath of her fine meal. Then, as quietly and respectfully as he could, Bruinn unfastened his gold-encrusted armor piece by piece, and set it down among the rest of the dragon's treasure. He then followed the crack in the wall back to the place his rescue team had first been attacked, and out to the bone-scattered field before the mouth of the cave.

The horses were still there, tethered a safe distance away. He set them free, and watched as, per their training, they trotted back toward the castle, every saddle marking a knight who had fallen this day. He watched his own horse disappear amid the tiny herd, and stood there until the clouds of dust in their wake had dissipated. Then he looked out across the land, and at the farthest mountains, never realizing until this day how much he wanted to learn what lay beyond them. He stood still, thinking again, for an even longer time, then turned, and walked back inside the cave.

Xus

XI reported to the storehouse level, as xe requested. Among the enormous number of shelves filled with objects held there, XI easily found xer. Xe was being mysteriously opaque about what xe wished to discuss with XI, but XI assumed it was because xe had almost as much of an affinity for artifacts as XI do.

Xe looked up from the miniature globe xe was holding as XI approached, turning it over in xer hands, studying it. Xe and XI had spoken before about how unusual a planet it had been, so unique in its features and arrangement within its system. It had silently circled its star like a fat blue jewel, amid so many planets offering nothing but pale brown blankness... a true treasure. But of course, that was the ultimately the reason it had been necessary to clear it.

"It is beautiful," XI said, breaking the stillness of the overstuffed storehouse. There was no echo from any of its nearly-endless aisles.

"It is," xe said, spinning the globe again in xer hands. "Walking and perusing would be enjoyable," xe invited, gesturing with a graceful antenna toward the infinite shelves and carefully curated stacks. XI nodded in reply. Having reached an understanding, xe put down the globe and stood, joining XI on a walk down a random aisle.

Xe noted something and mentioned it before XI could. "They seemed to have great reverence for these bound documents." It was true; the shelves in this area had a preponderance of packets of rectangular cellulose sheets, imprinted with row upon row of their glyphs, protected with treated animal hide.

"They chose them so carefully," XI said. "In the end, did they really think it would matter?" To XI, every volume looked essentially like any other.

"Consider their position," xe said. "When suddenly faced with the destruction of one's home planet, what should one choose as the singular object that would survive?"

XI had considered this at the time of cleansing, just as all of Xus had. Of course, such an idea was hard to comprehend. "It makes no sense not to choose something of utility," XI said. "Many of them took that option, after all. They were quite an inventive people." XI picked up exhibits from the shelf next to me to demonstrate, one identified as an "egg beater" and a holo-schematic of something called a "hydro-electic dam". "From small, elegant machines, to memorials of elaborate, efficient infrastructures. They had so many of them. But in the end, so many instead chose what they called..." XI momentarily groped for the foreign word, "...Art."

Xe ran xer fingers along the spines of the written works as xer ambulation continued toward the far-distant end of the interminable aisle. "What XI find most fascinating," xe said, "is that so many of these documents are not historical accounts. The scholars who have studied them, enough to understand their language and usage of it, say that it's impossible for them all to be true. Most concern times, entities and places that never existed."

XI am confused. "An account of history that never occurred? What would the purpose of such a thing be? And why would any of them want to save it above all other things?"

A peculiar emotion came across xer face. A long time went by. As further selections of objects drifted past... mostly colored canvases and multiform sculptures, which only occasionally seemed to resemble the real-world subjects they were intended to represent. Xe seemed to draw resolve from their proximity, and finally spoke. "The scholars are beginning to understand that question, too. You must consider the conditions these people lived under.

"Imagine living as they did, on such a gifted world: water and nutrients in abundance, near-infinite diversity of living things, producing an exquisitely balanced ecosystem -- even despite their missteps in its management. But for all this privilege, they were able to experience nothing but the smallest part of it, only what each individual could draw through their own senses. Their sense organs were quite underdeveloped... you only need to look at the narrow color palette they utilized as an example of this."

XI looked along the shelves xe and XI passed, trying to imagine their state of being as xe described. What if XI was unable to feel the emotions of any of Xus at will, or experience through other senses? It was hard to fathom, but by reaching out to xer particular feelings, XI was able to grasp at least a part of what xe was saying. Xe could imagine it more vividly than XI could, so XI took her view.

And such a bleak view it was... Xe was envisioning a world where the only senses were those of XI, where in fact there really was no XI, but instead a true, isolated "I". To be the sole owner of thoughts and feelings that would never be experienced by any other, derived by one meager set of input, with no true communication with any other of Xus, doomed to be forever trapped inside the singular crudeness of the body...

XI backed away from xer shared understanding. "How awful," XI understated, feeling the truth infinitely more deeply. And awful it must have been, for even in the brief emotional glimpse XI received from xer, XI had never felt so alone. It was a tangible relief to feel the companionship of all of Xus flood back into XI when the thought experiment was over. XI felt "XI" falling back into its rightest place, linking back into the vast network of all of Xus that XI had been part of since the moment of birth, and would be until death.

XI took a moment to reacquaint and reassure XI, making sure that all of Xus were still there. XI shifted experiential focus, swept through all the levels of Xus in the span of a few wingbeats, from the scholars that xe had mentioned who studied the doomed planet's artifacts, to the navigators who carried the Colony through the spaces between the stars toward its next destination. XI felt the comfort of each individual presence, the elegantly woven whole of Xus, and felt each reaching back, feeling XI's in response. XI's body immediately relaxed.

XI turned back to xer. "How did they live in this fashion?" XI asked aloud. "How could they, and not despair?"

Xer antennae waved knowingly. "It appears that they did. Despair, that is. Much of the time. In the midst of all that planetary beauty, they often acted in irrational ways, because they did not -- *could* not -- fundamentally understand one another. They could not see themselves as Xus, but as fractured parts called 'I' and 'we' and 'them'."

Although XI was fearful to, XI dipped into xer thoughts once again, wanting deeper comprehension. Xe was drawing xer thoughts into shape, creating a mental analogy, beginning with the way Xus felt about the inhabitants of the now-ruined planet. Xus could not meld with them the way Xus melded with itself, and as a result, those beings were forever remote and unknowable, therefore untrustworthy. Now XI fully explored xer projected feeling of that awful separateness, that sense of sensing the purely *alien* from everyone around XI, all of the time. XI couldn't help but shudder with a chill that was not indicative of the temperature in the storehouse.

XI mentally drew back again, running for the safe haven of the presence of Xus. Xe must have felt it this time, too, because XI sensed a new warmth emanating from xer as xe shared in experiencing the comfort of Xus. XI looked around at the shelves with fresh horror. "No wonder they were so broken," XI said. "Is this inherent irrationality the reason that they chose to save histories that are not histories, representations of objects that are not objects, accounts of people who were never people?"

"XI don't think so," xe said. Xe moved on, leading me. "Come look. XI wish you to observe something as first." Xe moved with purpose, with a clear ending point in mind. XI reached for xer emotions to learn where xe was taking XI, but clearly it was something Xe felt XI needed to experience with XI's primary senses. Out of respect for xer wishes, XI complied, eschewing secondary sensation from xer.

After many turnings and switching of aisles, xe stopped before a sparsely populated shelf. "Observe as first," Xe said, gesturing toward two adjacent objects set there. XI did, and for several long moments could not determine why xe had chosen these objects. One of them was a narrow color-bandwidth visual representation on cloth, depicting a procession of strangely-attired alien figures, arranged between arches above and a covered table below.

"This is a fictional artistic representation of a planetary scene," xe said. "It was created by a painter with identifier 'sal-va-dor-dah-lee'." The meaningless sounds paraded in near-unutterable succession from xer mouth. "The Art-work's identifier is 'Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire'. To the painting's right is a sculpted representation of a nonfictional textual artist."

XI looked back and forth between the two pieces of Art, first the flat colored fabric, then the white chunk of rock in the form of the upper portion of one of the doomed people. All the while I could feel xer looking through XI's eyes, anticipating some spark of recognition... and then it came clear. XI felt a not altogether unpleasant shift inside XI's self-mind, and XI realized that the "painting" had two levels of context. One contained the procession of figures XI had seen initially, but with the shape of the white sculpted figurine freshly imprinted in XI's eyes, XI could see an additional, deeper one... The white spaces left uncolored in the painting outlined a two-dimensional replica of the sculpture!

"It is a hidden representation created by what is called 'negative space'," xe told XI, after giving XI a moment to savor the unexpected visual treat. In response to XI's turning around, searching for more examples of the effect nearby, xe assured, "No, not all of their Art is like that. But is the feeling it evokes understood?"

"Yes," XI said enthusiastically. "It felt like... Xus!" Xe could tell what was meant more from XI's emotional state than words. In that moment of realization concerning the painting's dual nature, XI had felt familiar comfort. It was, in fact, similar to the comfort of XI returning to Xus, after the loneliness xe had evinced when describing the everyday despair of the planetary denizens. XI could clearly see how such a moment of clarity brought on by the Art-work, for a solitary person like those depicted on the canvas, might momentarily, fleetingly, dispel that sense of isolation.

XI understood that this lesson was the reason xe had for summoning XI to the storehouse. Only a moment before, it had seemed to be filled with so many inert objects. Now, a potential for nearly infinite richness and depth presented itself. "Was that the ultimate purpose of their Art?" XI asked xer aloud.

Xe followed XI's thoughts closely. "XI have come to believe so," xe said. "Most of the time, at least, in myriad ways that are not always as obvious, but yes." Xe slid one of the animal-hide documents off a nearby shelf. "Even in these, fictional stories are told that mimic the paths of actual lives, in an attempt to share themselves, in the manner that Xus can with no effort. The results always fell short of that connection, ultimately, but with its sheer volume of attempts, these selections must represent the best they could accomplish."

XI was suddenly in a cavern of wonders. XI's self-mind reeled at the sheer amount of possibility, knowing that any one of these chosen objects could hold a small measure of the momentary joy XI I had found in "Slave Market with the Disappearing Bust of Voltaire".

Then a sudden pang of regret struck XI, when XI realized the people who had created this Art, every piece filling this storehouse, had been summarily destroyed. As part of their decommission ritual, they had each been given the opportunity -- as every sentient race conquered by Xus were given -- to each select one small piece of their world that could become part of this eternal storehouse, each an exhibit in respectful memorial to their civilization. However, the shelves that comprised this storehouse -- unlike the countless other storehouses adjacent to it, representing countless other lost civilizations -- contained evidence that they had at least *tried* to match the perfection of Xus, despite whatever physical limitations they may have had.

This was the reason xe had brought XI here, why xe had not merely let xer own realization propagate as all thoughts did, through all of Xus. This understanding had come to xer by degrees, and xe understood that in order to make Xus take notice, xe needed another to experience it all at once. Xe had chosen XI for that purpose.

XI felt the hopefulness emanating from xer, observed the way her antennae twitched in anticipation. In response, XI leaned forward and allowed the tips of XI's to touch xers -- a strong, respectful gesture of connection and reassurance. Then XI spoke, in order to add to the urgency of the message xe was attempting to draw Xus's attention to.

"When the time came for each of them to choose their artifacts," XI said, "they brought forward *these* particular objects. From the sheer amount of what they called Art, its value to them is clear. To create Art in all its many forms... that was they lived for, the only thing that could take them beyond and outside themselves. It was their Xus."

Xe nodded triumphantly, and XI felt satisfaction that XI had assisted her. XI was already beginning to feel emotional feedback from all others of Xus who were receiving the message at the same time. That feeling was disrupted when xe then asked, "Then XI ask, were Xus correct in destroying them?"

After a long time given to thought, XI answered. "That is a matter to consider. It could be argued that they had to be destroyed. They were imperfect, after all."

"It was not the perfection of Xus," xe said, in slow, measured syllables. "But they may have been progressing toward some other kind of perfection. Is the perfection of Xus the only kind there is? And if not, then how are Xus better than they were? Are we not guilty of the same crime of artificially creating an 'us' and a 'them'?"

XI felt all of Xus, all of its constituent mind-parts, shudder in unison, in horrified revelation.

Lunch with Hiroshi

Hiroshi lived for lunchtime. It was the only time he could enjoy any peace and quiet. His workfloor had an entirely open plan, which meant there were no layers of protection between him and all the noise and movement and conversations that swirled around him the entire time he was trying to concentrate on his work. There was always a nearby phone conversation being held at too loud a volume, or warehouse traffic rumbling by in an adjacent hallway that he could feel through the soles of his shoes, or gossip that everyone heard but pretended not to hear flowing around him in hissing whisper-waves. Of course, none of it was about him, which was all he was truly concerned about, but the distraction was persistent. He tried to keep his focus on the screen before him through the long hours before it was time for lunch, and he could find his personal oasis.

He had worked in the building for five months before he found the outdoor patio. Only the very corner of its perimeter fence could be glimpsed through a window as he walked down the rearmost hallway, and only if he turned his head at just the right moment. One day, when he decided to try pushing open the poorly-lit door near the end of that hall, he nearly gasped in delight when he saw what lay beyond. It was the first sound he had needed to utter so far that day.

There was a small paved patio, hemmed in with a five-foot wooden fence, nestled in a happenstance angle where the two wings of the building met. Two octagonal picnic tables, stained dark under two folded umbrellas that looked like giant slumbering bats, occupied an area that could have easily held three times as many of them. They looked brand new, which led Hiroshi to believe that this small piece of tranquility had been designed, built, and then merely forgotten about behind a disused door. Flicking a quick look up and down the interior hall to make sure that no one was looking his direction, he stepped through and into the fresh air.

The door closed almost silently behind him, and he was alone. Finally, gloriously alone. He began to wonder just how long it had been since he had been entirely beyond the range of human voices. Out here, there was nothing but wind and distant birdsong. Being on the fifth floor of the building, only a few of the highest tree tops were visible above the top of the fence, and being at the rear, most of the traffic noise was muffled. The patio's only roof was a blank slate of late-spring sky. It was if he had found a pocket universe of blue and green and white sunlight. It was perfect.

He began taking his lunches out there the very next day, waiting until everyone else was embroiled in the furor and arguments of which local restaurant they should order group lunches from, or possibly drive to, all in separate cars. It was surprisingly easy to slip away from them and through the unnoticed door, shutting everything else out, and sit on one of the lacquered, sun-warmed benches. It took him sixteen lunch intervals to try each section of both tables, testing which he found to be the most pleasant.

It was the solitude he enjoyed the most, more than the natural sunlight, even more than the birdsong. He sometimes looked up to see a small coterie of serenaders sitting along the top of the fence, quizzically posing musical questions to him. He imagined that they were all typically bird-like questions -- How did you get up so high? and Are you going to finish that?

For a long time, Hiroshi just sat and ate his lunch, in no way missing half-heard television shows piped through someone's phone and shared among slurping, chewing clusters of co-workers, determined to believe they were sharing some kind of communal experience. Out on the forgotten patio, everything was clear air and sweet nature sounds.

Of course, after a while, it wasn't enough just to sit and eat. He began smuggling small books outside with him, hiding them however he could, packing them in his insulated lunch bag when they wouldn't conveniently fit in his pockets. But he often found his mind wandering even as he read, clearly not requiring an imagined world inside of this new, idyllic real one. So his progress was slow, having to re-read passages over and over until the timer on his watch let him know it was time to return to his other, less comfortable chair.

Lunches were his heaven after that, until the day when he found an interloper sitting out on the patio when he stepped through the unremarkable door. She was at the far table, sitting so that she was facing the door. Alongside her lunch was a thick book that she was almost halfway through, and she let it lay flat and open as she dined. She did not look up at Hiroshi as he came out into the sunlight.

He halted for a moment, unsure of what to do. How had this woman -- about his age, dressed in blouse and skirt, only as formal as necessary, straight hair surgically trimmed at her collarbones -- found out about Hiroshi's sanctuary? Had he been seen ducking through the door? He tried to think back through the last few days. No, he had been as careful as always to make sure that no one saw him when he did. But still, here she was... perhaps she had found the place entirely by herself, and was currently just as confused by his appearance as he was by hers.

Whatever the reason, a full five seconds had passed by this time, and neither of them had tried to make eye contact. Hiroshi stepped to the near table, sat down at it, and opened his lunch. He carried on as if she had not been there, and she did the same for him. After a few minutes, he felt just as relaxed as if he were alone.

She was there again the next day, and the next. She always sat in the same place, the only difference being the clothes she wore. He could tell by the pace that she was working her way through her book that lunch was the only time she had to read it. He wondered at many points whether he should talk to her or not, but at none of them did he feel comfortable enough to do so. In the first few days, it was because he didn't know her, and after that too much time had passed and his first words would have had to couch an explanation for why he had waited for so long. So he remained silent. Even that did not seem too uncomfortable in this open air space; in truth, it seemed designed for silence. Maybe she understood that, too.

The lunch periods passed, the ritual always identical -- he arriving with the woman always in place at her table, the two of them never making eye contact when she walked past him to go back inside, five minutes before his own lunchtime ended -- and always silent. The only deviations were when rain made going outdoors impossible. On these days, Hiroshi always took a circuitous route back to his desk through the building's public corridors; perhaps she worked at one of the other companies whose offices were nearby. He began to wonder if she passed by him all the time, but he was simply incapable of recognizing her in any environment other than natural sunlight.

There came a day in late spring when he finally resolved to speak to her. This idea always came to him when he was anywhere other than their mutual lunch spot, most likely because then it was entirely impossible for him to act on it. He knew his mind well enough to understand this. But one morning, the apparent simplicity of the act remained with him through his morning rituals at home, followed him on his commute, and sat at his elbow all morning long, instead of fading like it always had before. Something was different about this day, and the feeling seemed to conspire to keep his co-workers quieter than usual, conversations more hushed and less frequent. There was an unusual lack of comfortable smiles, but as long as it kept the general office volume down, he didn't care.

The clock hands crept, and people seemed to begin gathering around their common screens a little early. Hiroshi decided to follow their cue and head out to the patio a few minutes early. Perhaps the woman wouldn't be there yet, and when she did arrive the deviation in schedule would give him the perfect excuse to look up and say hello. She would be approaching him instead of him approaching her, which seemed infinitely less intimidating. For some reason, the sense of fear and awkwardness was still staying away. He had no understanding of why, and didn't even want to question it too deeply for fear that would wake it up.

The sky was unusually clear as he stepped out, so clear that he imagined that, if he were to stand on his toes and look over the top of the fence, there would be no world below, only sky and more sky. He almost did just that, walking up to the vertical sun-warmed boards before stopping himself; he became aware that he was very near the unknown woman's usual lunch spot. What if he were to place himself, before she arrived, in the spot right next to it? Something about the day's clarity of air seemed to be brushing aside every last ounce of self-doubt, and he did just that.

He hadn't seen the patio from this particular vantage point since the first days after its discovery, when he had tried out every available spot. He tried to imagine, as closely as he could, what he would look like to the woman each day as he sat in his usual place. That is, if she were ever to look up from her book.

He was so deep into this fantasy that he actually saw his imagined self look up, startled, when the door opened. The woman came out onto the patio and stopped short, looking at him sitting in her place, clearly thrown by the fact that the dining area was not empty as it always was.

Hiroshi opened his mouth without thinking, without knowing what he was going to say. But as soon as he did, a far-off sound began. It started out low, buzzing, but quickly rose into a persistent howl that seemingly came from everywhere at once. Hiroshi had never heard it before, but his head cocked in a similar fashion to the woman's as it filled the empty space between them.

Just his luck, he thought, for some industrial machine far below to take this moment to intrude. He figured it must be some overly loud garbage truck or loading dock maneuver, and would soon subside. But not only did the mechanical whine go on and on, now other sounds -- car sounds -- seemed to be intruding from the outside world far below: the slamming of doors, the start of engines, a few screeching tires.

Hiroshi realized that, to his lunchtime companion, it must have looked like the sound was coming from him. He managed to shut his mouth before he snorted a laugh at that thought. And then she smiled back. He had been watching her face for so long, catching glimpses of her when he dared to look up from his lunch and book, that he had never even considered her expression in any other configuration than bemused concentration. To see the corners of her mouth turn up this way was entrancing, and the fact that the cause and direction of it was him, was a revelation. It almost made his jaw drop open all over again. He wondered about the possibility of never looking away from her again. How feasible was that?

Somewhere beyond the fence, the noises were growing. The slamming of more doors, more squealing tires, something that was maybe a distant crunch and tinkling of glass. There seemed to be a sense of hurry washing up from the world far below, and Hiroshi wondered what it could mean, when his world hung suspended here on the patio, entirely outside of time.

The sky brightened for just a second, like a flash of lightning, even though the noon air beyond the fence was perfectly blue. Although he never turned his gaze from the woman, her eyes flicked over and beyond him reflexively, searching for the source of the already-vanished illumination. He saw her expression change as her eyes locked onto something in the sky, something that took away her smile as quickly as if a raptor were already descending toward her, talons extended.

Hiroshi turned and followed her gaze, hoping there was something he could do about whatever had disturbed her. Then he saw that the sky, while he had not been looking, had split. An off-white seam had appeared down the middle of it, emerging from behind the building and arcing high over their heads until it disappeared behind the fence on his right. While the rest of the sky was utterly still, that thin line seemed to shift and roil within itself, chaos churning within that thin form, miles overhead.

Then, from behind the building on his left, Hiroshi's eye caught another line like the first, just starting to form. This one was thicker, growing in a tendril that arced above him. He wasn't sure if he could make out a tiny, dark something at the lead of the smoke pillar -- for now he understood that that was what the line was -- as it tracked parallel to the first one. With surprising speed, much faster than a plane, which was the only thing that his mind could attempt to compare it to, it followed the first, descending until it vanished below the level of the fence on his right. Almost without thinking, Hiroshi stepped up onto the bench of the picnic table he had been sitting at, and then onto its wooden surface, his eyes wanting to continue following the white column.

He did gain a few more moments of witnessing it, but there was something more puzzling revealed which shifted his attention. It was a black cloud, as far away as the unseeable horizon must be, just rising over the top of the fence, lifting and expanding with inexorable slowness, right around the spot where the first smoke-line disappeared. The line he was following seemed to be headed to almost the same spot, and was eventually lost behind the wooden planks. A few seconds later, there was another sky-covering flash, originating from a point just out of sight.

Hiroshi finally understood. So it was all coming true. There were only a few seconds left before the building-shattering sound and the superheated wind would reach him. For a moment he considered running, like the others below were still doing, the horns and the screeches and the crunching becoming only more audible in the pre-firestorm hush, but in the end did not move, because he couldn't think of a better place to run to than this.

He felt pressure on his hand. The woman -- whose name he realized he would never know, and also that he didn't need to -- had stepped up onto the picnic table next to him, and had pressed her fingers against his palm. He turned to her and looked into her eyes, closer and clearer than they had ever been. He hoped that she saw in his what he saw in hers: an apology, for the time they had lost by not doing this sooner; but also relief that they had found each other, at least soon enough to wait there together, standing on a picnic table on an otherwise unremarkable Tuesday under a cloudless sky.