platedlizard

Nanowrimo

Tue, 11 Nov 2008 03:56:02 GMT

Okay, so I'm really, really far behind this year. But, here's what I got so far. Warning. Tea Shops. And chest-bursting demons at some point in the future.

Alana looked up when the bell on the door rang, a pleasant smile and words of greeting freezing on her lips. The first man though the door wasn’t anything out of the usual for dockside district, he was a guardsmen, possibly from one of the city regiments or even the Mage-Guard. Wait, definitely Mage-Guard, the little glow of magic about him was absolutely indicative. His short black hair and hazel eyes spoke of noble blood, perhaps from the wrong side of the sheets. If so, he didn’t seem embittered by it, his open countenance was welcoming and he met her delayed greeting with one of his own. It was the second man who froze the breath in her throat.

Noble, yes, there was no doubt about it, and not just one of the half-bloods or lesser lords that occasionally came by. No, by the cut of his clothing (plain, but well tailored and was that silk?) the gold enameled clip holding back his black hair, enameled with the colors of one of a scion of the Four Houses, and, above all, by the power that swept into her tea shop with him. Magic. And not the level of the average corner store magus or even the Mage-Guard. No, this was the power of those who could trace their linage to the Heavens.

In her little dockside tea shop.

She forced herself to smile at him, and showed them to her most ‘private’ table, the one in the corner by the hearth, and took their orders. This time of the day the tea shoppe was usually empty, mid-afternoon, after lunch but before the dinner crowd. She took their orders and all but fled to the back, the noble’s magic all but choking her with its intensity. Most people would have barely noticed it, but she was more sensitive then usual and the oppressive atmosphere felt like it was crushing her.

With a shuddering breath she forced herself to pour the hot (not boiling, hot) water into the tea post, but the ‘best’ she had was which probably didn’t at all compare to the pots the noble lord used at home, but were quite serviceable. At least her tea was good.

Papers littered the table when she came out to serve them, papers and notebooks and what looked maps of the City’s leylines.

“Here, here, and here,” the guardsman said, pointing to spot on the map. “Looks like they correspond with the storm overflow.”

“But not the sewers or drinking water lines.” The noble sat back and thanked her absently as she slid the tray into place and poured for the both of them. His power swirled slowly, almost thoughtfully and she hastily pulled her own in, it wasn’t a crime to be an unregistered mage, but it wasn’t encouraged, either. Not that she was trained. Alana curtsied--it had been years since she curtsied, but she still remembered how, and turned to go back to the back room. The dinner crowd would be coming in just a few hours and she needed to be ready for them.

“Hey, Miss?” the guardsman’s voice stopped her.

“Yes?” she said, returning to the table. The noble was frowning at a chart, a cup of her best tea cradled in his hand. The first man jabbed at a map. “That’s te warehouse that burned down two days ago, know anything about it?”

He turned his hazel eyes toward her and Alana felt her mouth go dry. Everyone in the neighborhood were talking about that fire, it was only three blocks away.

“Only what everyone else is saying,” she said slowly, to hide the trembling. ‘Everyone’ said that it was set, but no one seemed to know by whom. Alana suppressed the thought that followed, it was only a dream, after all. She sensed the nobleman lean back in his chair and regard her curiously.

“Fire, like water, cleanses,” the nobleman said. His voice jolted her straight to her core, low and deep and dark. “By the time our investigators arrived all magical traces had been burned away.”

She froze. They weren’t asking her if…

“We were wondering if you…felt anything last night.”

So, they must have sensed her power, too. Funny they were asking her instead of the dozen or so mages who worked with the Harbor Master to inspect the ships that came in. Or maybe they had, and found that those men lived elsewhere and weren’t in the area when the fire started. Or maybe they were going from business to business, looking for witnesses. Or… She mentally shook herself, useless to speculate, really.

“I wasn’t ever formally trained…”

“I’m Kaiden,” the guardsmen interrupted, “and this is Lord Lucien, my commander. We are in the Mage-Guard, as you probably guessed.”

She smiled slightly, and went to the door to flip the sign from ‘Open’ to ‘Closed’. These men weren’t likely to leave until she told them what information she had, and she didn’t want any of her regular customers walking in and learning her secrets. Mages were accepted as mages, but many people had superstitions about them serving food. Her shop was small, and there were times when she had to skimp on her own needs and comforts in order to pay the rent, if enough people found out that she was a mage and took their business elsewhere…

“I’m Alana,” she said as she took a seat. “I don’t know if I felt anything, I was asleep.”

“Perhaps you had a dream?” Lord Lucien said.

Alana flinched, Too close.

“Yes,” she said, then deliberately took a tea cup from beside the hearth and poured herself a cup from the ever ready pot of puer-er tea she kept warming there, and took a sip.

Kaiden smiled at her, she got the impression that he did that a lot. The Lord, Lucien, watched her with his dark, dark eyes.

“We’re investigating that fire and we turned up a few unusual things, but…” He shrugged expressively.

“Were you ever tested for mage powers?” the lord asked, and she flinched again, her heart pounding painfully.

“No,” she said, staring at the floor. They could probably see the lie in her aura, but even Mage-Guards didn’t have a right to question her about her education, at least, not without good cause.

“Ah,” Lord Lucian said, but she could feel his questions pressing down on her along with his power. Why was an untrained mage running a tea shop by the docks, anyways? Well, that wasn’t his business. For a moment she feared that one or the other would launch into a lecture about how she should go to the University and study magic. Get a ‘good’ job. All she would have to do is sign her life away for ten years and join the Mage-Guard.

Alana would rather die.

“It would be good to know if you dreamt anything when building burned.”

She shook her head, staring down into her cup of tea. Puer-er tea had the advantage of being quite mellow in flavor as well as being hardy enough to stew for hours. She swirled the dark liquor and inhaled the steam before turning back to the two men at the table. “Not jus that night,” she said, “I had been having the same nightmare three nights in a row prior to the fire.”

“You would be doing us a great favor if you tell us about them,” said Lord Lucien, and she shivered at the sound of his voice.

Alana swallowed, her throat going dy despite the tea. Those dreams weren’t the worst thing to happen to her, but only because they were dreams.

Better get this over with. They were the Mage-Guard and if they wanted to they could haul her in and force her to answer. Besides, it would be good to tell someone.

“I was someone else, in my dreams,” she said, “a man. And I don’t remember why, but I had locked myself in somewhere small and dark, so no one could find me.” That was so strange, she hated small places. “I, or rather, he was paralyzed. He couldn’t even scream.” Her dreamself had certainly wanted to. “He-it felt like he was being chewed apart from the inside.”

“The fire,” Lord Lucien prompted after a moment of silence.

She shook her head. “I had the dream a few hours before. It felt like he was dying.”

“Like something was bursting out of his stomach,” said Kaiden, flatly.

Alana started. “Yes! How did you--?”

The men shared a look. “Go on, how long was this before the fire?”

“I woke up of course. It--I thought it was just a dream so I went back to sleep a little later, and I guess sometime later the warehouse burned down.

“A newborn,” Kaiden said. “The host hid in the warehouse, probably in a crate, and the newborn burned the place down to hide the evidence after it emerged. Three days is just about right for gestation.”

That… didn’t sound good.

After a moment Lord Lucien drew out an insignia and handed it to her. “Keep that on you,” Kaiden said. “and stay inside after dark. And if you sense anything else you want to tell us, let us know. We could always use more eyes around here.” The last said with a half-chuckle as if at a private joke.

“What was it?” she asked quickly, before they could leave. “What were my dreams about?”

The men looked at each other again and this time she could feel the current of communication flowing between them. Telepathy, she shivered, but she shouldn’t have been surprised. Rumor had it that if you weren’t a telepath when you joined the Mage-Guard they made you into one.

“We’ve been investigating localities of Shadowstain, and your dream confirmed there’s a demonling in the area.”

A demonling…Alana shuddered. It would certainly explain a few things that had been happening lately…

“Anyways, you’ve been very helpful, Miss,” Kaiden said. “Please feel free to inform us if you have any more of those dreams. And it might be a good idea to stay inside after dark.”

“I live able the tea shop,” she said.

He smiled, “So you should be fine.”

Well, this is a new development.

Mon, 27 Oct 2008 09:04:48 GMT

Note to self. PMS apparently now makes me suicidal. God, I love hormones.

[suicidal ranting]

Sun, 26 Oct 2008 11:23:03 GMT

Posting this here because my family watches my livejournal, and I don't want to freak them out again. Pretty sure no one watches this anyways so it doesn't matter.

For the last nine months of my life I went to a dental assisting school, did an externship, etc, all with the idea that I might have something of a career at the end of it. My second extern site even offered to hire me, when I got my radiology certificate. I got it several days after I finished externing, and immediately drove over with it (and with my final, which I had forgotten to bring in the last day I was there). Well, the office manager looked pretty busy so I left a note with my phone number and the final (which had the fax number for the school so they could send it in). And waited.

And waited.

And waited.

I got a call from the school telling me that they had all my other paperwork, except for my final. THis was a couple days AFTER I had left it. Okay... I guess it got lost?

So I called the clinic again. The manager was busy so I left a message. And she didn't call back. I guess I could have been more assertive, but I'm nearly phobic about making to anyone but my family, and to be honest I felt kinda like I'd gotten stood up or something. This was the place that had freaked me out the first week I was there, and now I'm seriously rethinking whether I want to work there at all, or even be a dental assistant.

My extern coordinator was on vacation, she comes back Monday so I'm going to call her then and see if she can get them to turn that final in. Even if I decide to, I don't know, go work at a call center or something, I fucking earned my EFDA and I want it framed.

But that's only part of the reason why I'm so fucking depressed, because the other reason is that I'm so fucking lonely. Most people have friends. That is, they have people that when they're miserable they can call and talk to. I don't. I really don't. All my closest 'friends' are on the internet, and there's only one who will reply to my posts with anything like regularity. I can only assume the others aren't particularly interested in my whining, and that's fair because it's not like we're at all close. It's still fucking depressing to know there's only one person outside my family who is interested enough in me to send me a 'I'm sorry you're feeling down' message when I post suicidal things on my livejournal.

Oh yeah, my family. I live about half a mile from them, and I haven't spoken to them for about two weeks. I'm not big on calling people in the first place, but Mom usually calls me about twice a week so I have no idea what's up. They never come over to visit. Well, sometimes Dad does, but only if I've posted something suicidal in my livejournal again. Never to just visit me for no reason. And, like I said, it's not like I have friends, so there isn't anyone else who comes over.

Anyways, tomorrow I'll go over with my dirty laundry and I guess I might talk with my family. I don't know.

Some days, like right now, I really wonder where I'm going with my life. I go through the motions of trying to find a purpose, but most of the time I'm just spinning my wheels, getting nowhere. I look at my future and I don't really see anything. No family of my own, no kids, no husband or even a boyfriend. Or girlfriend, at this point I'd turn gay if it meant I'd have someone to talk to. Just me and my pets. Right now my pets are pretty much the only thing keeping me from killing myself, mostly because they have huge cages and I'm on a second floor apartment. Before I kill myself I'd have to do the responsible thing and take them down to the humane society, and they'd need/want their cages, and those cages would be a pain in the ass to move. So basically at this point I'm avoiding suicide because I'm too lazy.

I've started biting and scratching myself again. Haven't really done that since High School. Why couldn't I have gotten the cool self-mutilation disorder? Cutters get all the attention, I swear. Sometimes I get so upset that I'm crying and the next thing I know my hand is jammed in my mouth and I'm biting as hard as I can get away with without tearing chunks out. Left a bruise two nights ago, fortunately it doesn't look like a bitemark. At least I'm not pulling my hair out.

And this brings me to another point of my current depression. If I died right now no one would notice. Well, my pets would because no one would feed or water them and they'd probably die too, eventually. No one would check on me until I started to stink, not even my family. I'm 28 years old and already a friendless shutin. What kind of life is that?

Anyways, I feel like shit and I may regret writing this tomorrow and delete. Or crosspost it to my livejournal so I can get the teeny bit of attention that's all I seem to get from people.

Fitness log

Mon, 22 Sep 2008 19:38:11 GMT

God, it's been a long time since I've posted to this journal. I paid for it, might as well use it, no?

lol, why does my connection always cut out when I'm trying to post things?

X-posted from my ElJay.

I'm getting lazy and fat again. Well, actually I've BEEN fat (verging on obese according to several BMI indexes I've read). So I've decided to up my exercise routine. Make it more routine-y, I guess.

Current weight: 165 pounds.
Goal weight: 120 pounds

Exercise: running on treadmill
Total calories: 265
Current time/speed: 20 minutes/5.5 mph (running) and 10 minutes/1.5 mph (cool down)
Goal time/speed: 30 minutes/6mph

Food eaten:

Breakfast: 1 bowl cereal/milk, 2 cups coffee/milk/sugar, orange juice

Lunch: spaghetti with sauce, parmesan cheese

Dinner: 6 jalepeno poppers (with cream cheese and bacon wrappers)

Snacks: 1 small bowl dry cereal. 1 cup yogurt. 1 peach. Raw broccoli (good!) with ranch dip (bad!) 1 cup milk. 1 cup OJ.

Alcoholic drinks: 2.5 beers.

I am so not going to add the calories up for all of that. But, no doubt, it more then counteracted the good of running. At least I didn't eat out.

random updates

Fri, 30 Sep 2005 07:19:59 GMT

I'm writing stories, sorta. I have two that I try to do something on every day (fat chance, but I do try), another three that are on hold due to lack of interest or frustration on my part. Oh, and I am starting to work on my NaWriMo outline. I might even cheat a bit and use one of the stories that I am working on right now for that, but I promise to only send in that new material, written in the month of November, to get counted. I'm a good girl like that.

Work is getting interesting, finally. They finally gave me more hours, the last couple weeks I have been working full time, and should soon have full time status soon. Even if I don't get enough hours in the store the head groomer said that she need more dog bathers, so I can get plenty of hours there.

I got a call last weekend from a guy in a total panic. His fish were dying in way that sounded like classic New Tank Syndrome. He thought they weren't getting enough air, that his air pump was faulty (actually, he thought someone had messed with it to kill his fish, but if someone wanted to kill his fish why would they mess with an air pump? dumping bleach in would do the trick much easier). It took me about fifteen minutes to calm him down enough for him to actually listen to me. I told him that he needed to stop messing with the algae blooms ('let them happen, they'll go away once the tank has stabilized') and do a 50% water change ASAP. I must have repeated that 20 or 30 times and when I hung up I didn't know if he had really heard me.

A couple days ago he called again. He had heard me, and it saved his fish's life. I feel so good about that. Moreover he was willing to listen to me when I explained about New Tank Syndrome, and I think I convinced him not to treat for algae or sterilize his tank again, as that would make things worse. I haven't heard from him since, but I'm sure I will eventually.

Speaking of fish. I got some pygmy corydora catfish in the mail the other day. I won them off Aquabid.com, and boy am I glad I did. This was the first time I bought fish and had them shipped to me, so I was very nervous, didn't know if they would make it ok, or stress out and die. Fortunately they all made it just fine, and have settled into their new tank with no problems. They even ate their first day here, which isn't normal for shipped fish, although it is a very good sign. They are in my third ten gallon tank, with the butterscotch male betta, and some potted dwarf sageretta and loose Java fern. The corys are wild caught, and I haven't seen many of them captive bred so it would be cool if I could get them to breed. They are very cute.

I want to add some Endler's Livebearers, too, which I think I will do tomorrow. They are expensive, which means $6 a pair, so they aren't, you know expensive expensive. One of the local pet stores (not the one I work at, which is a Big Chain StoreTM) has them, but I may go look for The World Of Wet Pets, which is supposed to be nearby... somewhere. Or just go to The Wet Spot, even though it is a bit of a drive. If I were smart I would quarantine the livebearers from the corys, but I suspect I'm going to be stupid about this. Also, there is the issue that the corys probably won't breed with salt in the water, which is what the livebearers kinda need. Damn, I wish I had thought about that more. Oh well, it's not as if I don't have three other tanks that I could have set up in, like, two minutes. Actually a bit more then that, because I need two two-way gang valves. But they're cheap.

Oh, and I love Progressive Talk Radio, go Air America!

random shit I have on my computer

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 03:12:00 GMT

Note: This is a story fragment that I wrote when I was in Hawaii for an internship. This is also about as far as I got into it. The writing is better then the story I’m working on at FF.net, and I might go this rout if I ever rewrite my current story. I’m not sure I like Amon being a police officer, or Robin being so depressed (which seems out of place for Maui of all places), but that’s what rewrites are for, aren’t they? Anyways, feel free to coment on it, not that I think anyone reads my journal, but don’t be surprised if I never update it.

Disclaimer: Witch Hunter Robin belongs to Bandi Entertainment, Sunrise, and now, apparently, the Sci-Fi Channal. This story was written purely for my own personal entertainment and no money has been, or will be made from the production of the story.

Living on Maui Time

It could have been a photograph, or perhaps a picture drawn for passing tourists. A young woman sat with her legs drawn up to her chin. It was a weekend, so it was somewhat surprising that she was alone on the beach watching the surf race up the sandy shore to wet her feet. The girl wore a dark blue sarong that primly covered her from ankle to waist, her matching bikini top which showed that she had just barely grown into womanhood. Loose auburn hair clung wetly to her neck from a recent swim.

A wave rolled in and soaked the bottom edge of her sarong, cooling her feet. The young woman let it trickle between her toes as she sat in deep thought, gazing at the horizon. It was odd, she thought, being here on a beach and not seeing any gulls. The ocean sounded lonely without them. For some obscure reason sea gulls did not live in Hawaii. The only birds visible were some tiny waders off in the distance and one lone tropic bird soaring high overhead.

If an observer were able to move closer to the girl he would have been able to see that her green eyes gave lie to her youth. In her eyes could be seen old pain and sorrow, as if the girl had experienced three hundred years worth of the tragedies of human kind, instead of merely sixteen, and not even the sun and ocean could sooth away the pain.

She grieved for those she had never known, for those she had once hunted, for a past life, and friends she had lost along the way. In her mind and in her dreams she could still hear the Witches, their mournful cries pleading and begging her for…something. What, she didn’t know. It hurt to hear them, and only the thousands of miles of ocean surrounding the island seemed to muffle it. Fortunately the few Witches on Maui, or indeed the whole of Hawaii, were relatively happy. There didn’t seem to be any Hunters anywhere in the state.

In the distance a whale spouted while the waves continued to wash the shore under the brilliant sun.

***

Being a police officer wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.

Amon sighed as he listened to his-partner-the-asshole give the girls at the Native Bird Conservation Center a bad time. It was ten in the evening and someone, one of the neighbors apparently, called in a noise complaint for the Center. Supposedly there was a party here, if so it was the quietest party Amon had ever seen. There were a total of two cars in front of the center, and one lighted window visible from where he stood. No music, shouting, or voices other then the two girls talking to them.

"Look, only five people live here, and we aren’t allowed to make a lot of noise! It’s breeding season and we have a couple of pairs sitting on eggs right now and we don’t want to disturb them, and besides our supervisor lives here too!"

"It’s ten at night, what are you doing here?" Asshole repeated, clearly not listening to the young women. Amon growled under his breath as he watched a long line of cars drive further up the road, probably heading to the real party.

"I just told you! We have an apartment and a cottage here; and here is where most of the staff and all of the interns live. I thought you guys knew that by now, given how often we’ve had to call you out, or have you forgotten the guy-with-the-sawed-off-shotgun incident?" The woman was clearly angry, and Amon really couldn’t blame her. There were times he wanted to shoot his new ‘partner’ himself.

For the hundredth time that day he found himself wishing it were Robin who was here, and not Officer Richard ("Dickhead") Bass. Robin would have listened politely to the girls, glanced around, drawn the obvious conclusion, and left to find the real party. Amon sighed again, being a police officer, let alone a rookie police officer, for a small town in Hawai’i was both boring and frustrating. Boring, because dealing with drunks, washed out roads, runaway livestock, and noise complaints was nowhere near as interesting as hunting Witches; frustrating because he had to enter the force as rookie with ‘no experience’, he’d never had a job before outside of the STN-J and being ‘dead’ prevented him from using that as past work experience on his resume. Fortunately Hawai’i was having a bit of a policing shortage or he wouldn’t have been hired at all.

Amon cleared his throat, "Bass," he said, nodding to the line of cars driving further up the road, "I suspect they’re going to the real party, perhaps we should follow them."

The senior officer gave Amon a glare, but couldn’t find any reason to argue. Without so much as a by-your-leave Bass stalked to the car, got into the driver’s side and slammed the door shut. Amon nodded to the girls, who if anything looked relieved that it was over, and got into the passenger side, resisting the urge to grab the non-existent wheel. Even after six months it still felt strange driving on the wrong side of the road.

As they pulled away from the Center they got a call on the radio about a domestic disturbance between two drunken brothers. Amon snorted, being police officer certainly wasn’t what it was cracked up to be.

***

Robin was soundly asleep on the couch in the living room with the light still on and several books on the coffee table in front of her when Amon entered the apartment they shared later that night.

It was odd; he thought as he paused to watch her sleep for a minute longer, how responsible he felt for her, not only as her partner and warden, but also as her legal guardian. He didn’t think it would have mattered much to him when Nagira had handed him the paperwork, after all it was only a formality to explain why a 25 year old man was living with a minor ten years his junior, but somehow it did. He worried that she didn’t seem to have any friends at school, she never mentioned school life to him, or went on any outings with friends or to any parties. Having never gone to a secondary school himself (SOLOMON having recruited and trained him at a young age) he couldn’t help her with that.

Just one of the many things he couldn’t help her with.

School work was another. Any subject that required her to be able to understand the instructor was difficult for her, and it didn’t help that many of her teachers and fellow students used pidgin. English, predictably, was the worse, but Government, US History, Chemistry, and Social Studies were also bad. Her ESL (English as a Second Language) class didn’t seem to help much. It was frustrating, watching her work hard at her classes, only to fail. He wondered how she could take it.

And then there was her Craft. The growth-spurt that had been triggered by the Methuselah Witch seemed to be continuing. Half the time it seemed like she didn’t even have to think about her powers in order to use them, and that frightened him. So far her Craft seemed to be under control, and she never seemed worried about it, but that just made him all the more cautious.

"Robin, wake up."

The girl murmured something sleepily, slowly opened her eyes, and gave a cat-like stretch. "Amon?" she yawned.

He frowned at her, but decided to save his lecture about hitch-hiking for later. "Go to bed."

She nodded sleepily and pulled herself out of the couch, pausing to stretch once more, her ribs barely visible through her lightly tanned skin. Amon found that he was staring a little too intently at her and forced himself to look away. He sighed as she stumbled off to her bedroom and wondered, not for the first time, just what the hell he was doing.

He worried that she didn’t seem to have any friends at school, she never mentioned school life to him, or went on any outings with friends or to any parties, but having never gone to a secondary school himself, SOLOMON having recruited and trained him at a young age, he couldn’t help her with that.

In other words, like every man from since the beginning of time, Amon found himself completely baffeled by a teenaged girl.

***

A/N: The incident with the asshole police officer, as well as the mentioned incident with the guy with the sawed off shotgun are real incidents at the place I worked (and lived) at. I have changed the name and obscured the location of the Center, although anyone who knows me can probably figure it out. And yeah, I’m one of the girls involved (lets here it for self-insert cameo appearances!)

Die Raven, Die!

Sat, 01 Jan 2005 02:26:10 GMT

Ok, is it just me, or does there seem to be a lot of 'Ravens' in Witch Hunter Robin fanfiction? I mean, my God, can you make your Sue anymore obvious? Ravens are cool critters I'll admit, but naming you fucking Sue after them is just stupid. And pointless. It isn't cute, or funny, or clever. Robin wasn't named after the BIRD, after all, she was named after a witch-king. At least name your fucking Sue after the Morrigan or something traditional. Or *gasp* use a normal name. Like MARY-SUE!!!

Robin was raised in a convent, and while it is possible that she was raised with other children, there it is extremely unlikely that she spent any time in the US playing with your Sue. Or that she met Amon before she came to Japan.

Robin is the most powerful Witch in several thousand years. DEAL. Your Sue can fucking died.

Amon is not in love with your Sue. The only acceptable pairs for him are Touko and Robin. He didn't respect Kate AT ALL, and didn't have any problem killing her when she turned rogue.

Doujima can be paired with either Sakaki or Nagira, I prefer Nagira, but that's just me.

Michael and Robin are NOT a pairing. Neither is Sakaki and Robin. She is too powerful to be with them. If she were to get into a relationship with either of them it would be terribly unbalanced, she would completely over-shadow the other two. Amon's dark personality and age acts as a counter-balance to Robin's Craft power and sense of destiny.

You know what they say about Drawves.

Wed, 01 Dec 2004 08:08:23 GMT

I wrote this for my Creative Writing class. This is the semi-edited version, put up for the edification of Robin Sena and the rest of the folks at Harry's. Some bits are true, some aren't, and it's up to you to decide when I'm lying to you. Enjoy!

***

The first clue I got that my dad was an alien of dwarf (the species, not the variant of human, think Tolkien) is really a funny story. I used to work at a petstore, this was a few years ago, and my dad walked in. I was surprised, Dad almost never came to the store when knew I was working. I walked up behind him and was about to say Hi and ask him what the hell he was doing there when he turned around.

The man wasn’t my dad.

It wasn’t surprising that I mistook him for Dad, they looked so much alike they might as well have been brothers. The were both short, shorter than me and I’m not exactly tall, had beards, hair the same color of used-to-be-blond, eyes that were Icelandic blue. How I wished I had gotten my father’s eyes! Instead I had my mother’s brown cow eyes. The man was waiting for me to speak.

"Oh! I’m sorry! Areyoufindingeverythingallright?" I asked in one big rush.

"Ah, yeah." He then told me he was looking for a cockatiel for his two daughters. I helped him choose a bird and a cage, food, toys, vet, all that stuff.

As I checked him out I commented just how much he resembled Dad.
"Oh, really?" he said, clearly bored.

"Yeah. He’s a rockhound."

The guy blinked, "Really?" he said, finally interested. "I collect pyrites, but I don’t have time to go out into the field."

I laughed a bit, "he also has a meteorite he bought off ebay, 42 pounds."

Now he was laughing, "Mine’s bigger, 58."

"Ebay?"

"Yeah."

Hilarious.

Later that night I told my parents about the Guy Who Was Like Dad. Mom looked slyly at Dad. "Maybe he’s related to you!"

That was my second clue something was up, even though at the time I wasn’t collecting clues.

A couple weeks later I was reading the newspaper. There was a story in the paper about a man who had died in Eastern Oregon, searching for Josephineite, ‘a rare mineral from the earth’s mantel,’ the story read, and as usual it was completely wrong. Josephineite was from the Earth’s core, not it’s mantel. And it’s an iron/nickel alloy that is only found one place in the world, Josephine Creek in southern Oregon. This is what happens to children of rockhounds, they know geeky rock stuff. The photo of the guy looked just like Dad.

Okay, I thought, this is starting to creep me out. How many guys are out there who love rock and look just like my dad?

That weekend Dad hauled me off to the Rice Museum, over in the Rock Creek area. Mr. Rice was a guy who was into rocks in a major way, and upon his death he had his house and collection turned into a museum for other rockgeeks, I mean rockhounds, to come and drool over. This month there was a fantabulas exhibit of fossilized wood on display, on loan from a married couple of fossilized wood geeks. Naturally Dad dragged me along to go see it.

I wasn’t that I wasn’t interested, mind you. I actually do kind of like this stuff, although the extent of my ‘collecting’ was picking up a couple of rocks that might look good in one of my reptile habitats. I’m more of a live-animal type person myself. It’s just that there is only so much of the rock-geek stuff I can stand. It wasn’t so bad when we went out camping, while he hunted for thunder eggs I would be turning over stones looking for snakes and lizards, but a museum? Sheesh. Oh well, I love my dad and I do love spending time with him so I’m willing to put up with a few boring times in my life.

We got there and started looking around at all the various rocks on display, or at least he was. I was looking at the people. Or rather I was looking at a certain type of people, suspiciously Dad-like people. Who looked like Dad, and were also looking at rocks.

Um. Okay, that’s just plain weird.

There appeared to be at least four of them, the museum was rather crowded thanks to a story in the newspaper, and I thought one of them might have been the guy I met at the petstore. If he was he didn’t recognize me, which wasn’t too surprising since he was drooling over a display of pyrites. Nice big floaters too, I could see, perfectly cubic.
I heard Dad call my name, apparently it was our turn to go down and look at perfectly ordinary pieces of wood that had been turned into stone. Or something. I walked over to him like a dutiful daughter (I hope he noticed, it isn’t often that I’m dutiful), and then followed him down the stairs into the special exhibit hall. On the way down the stairs we passed one of the Dad-clones, as I was beginning to call them in my own mind, and I just so happened to notice him palming a note to my dad. Neither of them stopped to talk or even appeared to notice the other.

It was this point that I decided that I had entered The Twilight Zone. I swore I could hear the sound track.

The wood was indeed wood. It looked like you would expect would to look like if it got turned to stone. Not particularly exciting. I preferred the opal camel’s tooth we found in an opal bed we found at the Sheldon Wildlife Refuge in Nevada. A camel’s tooth that was made of opal is so much cooler then a bunch of wood. I did like the fossilized pinecones, however.

On the way home I asked Dad about the Dad-clone on the stairs (of course I didn’t call him that), and what that note was. Much to my surprise Dad denied getting any note from anyone, let alone a stranger who happened to look like him. That was an outright lie and he had to have known it. I was hurt and angry and thus said a few things I perhaps shouldn’t have said. As a result neither of us spoke to the other for the rest of the day.

I like to stay up late and Dad likes to go to bed early, so it was much to my surprise several days later when he didn’t go to bed when he normally did. For some reason mom didn’t seem to mind and went to bed at her ordinary time. Me and Dad had our usual silent battle over the Internet (yes, we still have dialup), and I lost, mostly because I wanted to work on a story. I continued working, just as I’m doing now, and almost didn’t notice when Dad left the house.

I heard the back door shut and a minute later one of the Suburbans started up. I raced outside to see Dad start to drive off in the ’69. Curious, I hurried out just in time to see him disappear into the darkness. Looking down I found a piece of paper that had been carelessly dropped on the ground. I picked it up and read it.

"We’ll meet you at your mine. Family business."

I knew where his mine was, but why was he meeting those guys there? Plus there was the fact they invited him, not the other way around. More-over, I know who my family is, and none of these guys were ever introduced to me at a family gathering. I just didn’t get it.

I never read Nancy Drew as a kid, but if I did I’m sure I would have read a story similar to this one. That is, Nancy would not have gone back to bed and waited for her father to return and refuse to answer her questions. No, she would have done what I did which is to get into her car and take off after him. Fun stuff never happens if you sit on your butt at home.

So that’s what I did. I didn’t bother trying to follow Dad, I knew where he was going. His mine, which wasn’t really his, was way out past Eugene on a gravel road as close to the middle of nowhere you can get without leaving the Willamette valley. The mine was an old barite mine, which is a type of heavy crystal he digs up and sells on ebay. Why he does this, I haven’t a clue. It’s not as if the crystals are actually good for anything other then the fact that the smaller ones make good paperweights. I guess there’s enough people out there just like him (and how like him are they? I wondered) who just plain like to collect rocks, and it doesn’t matter how useful they are.

So I get to the turn off for the gravel road and I stop. There really isn’t many places to park and I was suddenly afraid that if I parked on the road someone would wonder who was driving the Chevy Cavalier, and ask questions and find out that I was spying on them. So, I decided to park it in a parking lot a couple miles up the road and hike in. This lovely plan would allow me to hide my presence, but, on reflection I abandoned it because that meant I would have to walk something like seven miles one way. That would be enough to tire me out and I still might be discovered as they drove past me. Plus, I might miss the meeting.

So I ended up driving the car up the road to the mine. I did park a ways from it in the hopes that they would mistake it for a late night fisher or poacher and be too lazy to call the game warden. Not that I would be in trouble, given that I don’t have a gun. The mine was up on the left side bank, away from the river, and I had to climb upwards trying to avoid the poison ivy and the blackberries. My dad does this for fun, mind you. He even brings his friends out here. I seriously don’t get it.

Any ways, after some scrambling and more then a few scratches I finally get to the mine and found that the gate had been locked. The gate was placed there by the Forest Service people to keep vandals and dumb kids out of the cave, but they routinely cut the lock. My dad, acting on his own, bought a better lock and upgraded the gate, which was quasi-legal but the Forest Service people he talked to didn’t seem to care. He was the only rockhound who used the mine on anything like a regular basis so I guess he thought it was his by default. Even though the Army Corps of Engineers owns it, even though the Forest Service takes care of it. Apparently going inside it and collecting rocks isn’t illegal, even if they did put a gate and lock up. Yeah, I don’t get it either.

The mine itself was surprisingly big for something that had originally been dug out by hand through basalt by one man back in the late 19th century. It is apparently bat habitat, even though it is too wet most of the year for bats, and has the usual assortment of creepy crawly things inside, which is why I like it. There’s nothing quite as cool as cave crickets, with their long spindly legs, or the occasional tree frog.

Any ways, the gate was locked and I didn’t have a key, but I could hear what was going on inside. Not that any of what I heard made sense. There seemed to be a group of men, perhaps a dozen, who were talking in a strange language. One of them was my dad, I recognized his voice, even if I couldn’t understand what he was saying.

Now, I know what many different languages sound like, even if, like the average American, I am monolingual. I used to work at the zoo (retail, nothing exciting) and me and some of my coworkers once made a list of all the languages we heard spoken by different visitors. Every time we heard a language we didn’t recognize we would go up to them and ask what they were speaking, I suppose that might have been a bit rude but no one seemed to mind, and we would always show them the list and just about everyone thought that was cool. We had over a hundred languages before the list was lost. Whatever Dad was speaking now didn’t match any of the languages I heard.

Hell, I knew he used to speak Spanish (Spain Spanish, not Latin American), but not as much anymore. I’d never heard him speak whatever it was he was speaking now. Not even once. It didn’t even sound as if a human had created it, although at the time I didn’t think that could possibly true. The Bushmen’s native tongue, (whatever that was, like I said we lost the list) also doesn’t sound like what a human would create, but it most definitely is.

I wanted to break the lock, but couldn’t. I wanted to understand what they were saying, but couldn’t. So all I could do is stand there and wonder.

***

I waited until the voices had gotten stronger and it was clear that they were starting to leave. I hurried down the hill in an effort to get to my car and drive off before they did, I didn’t want them to see them, but especially Dad, to see the Chevy.

I think I beat him home by about ten minutes, if that, but it was long enough for me to get inside and up the stairs and into bed without him knowing about it. Mom was still asleep, which was good because I didn’t know how I was going to explain spying on Dad to her. I suspect that she wouldn’t like it at all.

The next day I didn’t say anything to Dad. There wasn’t much point, I suppose, and I was feeling a bit guilty about spying on him. It wasn’t really right, and it wasn’t fair to him. That didn’t stop me from being more curious than Kitty, though. I decided to set up a discreet surveillance, in the hopes that there would be more mysterious meetings. I’m not a very patient person, but the curiosity was eating me alive.

About a month later my patience paid off. When I got home from work one day there was a mysterious message on the answering machine for Dad. A man’s voice spoke, first with a sentence or phrase of that strange language, then in ordinary English.

"Meet us at the mine tonight," he said.

I smiled, Nancy Drew was back in action. Rather then inaction. Heh.

This time I made plans. I packed a sack dinner and a couple bottles of water in a backpack and headed out to the mine. Dad wasn’t home yet, so I knew that I would probably have at least four hours once I got there to get ready myself. I just hoped that the others would wait until after dark to make their move. I drove several past the mine up the gravel road, to where no one but a fisherman would go, or so I hoped. I then hiked back down the road until I got to the mine. There was no sign of anyone else around, and while the air was cool, the day was nice and sunny. A lovely autumn.

I scrabbled up the slope to the mine again, and found a hiding spot high up in an old yew tree. I hoped that as they arrived I would be able to sneak inside, with any luck someone would forget to lock the gate or somehow leave it unattended. I wanted to get inside
I got my chance an hour after sunset. I had probably been sitting up there for more then four hours with my butt getting number and number. Trees are not fun to sit in for hours at time, and I was freezing my ass off. Oh well, that’s the way the world was, I guess.

One of the little men, not my Dad, arrived at the gate. He pulled out a key and unlocked the gate, which surprised me because I thought that Dad was the only one with a key. He went inside and left the gate open for me. Well, not really for me because he didn’t know I was there, but you get the picture.

I had to be careful because the mine wasn’t really all that big, just a couple dozen yards deep. The main part of the cave had already been mined out but it’s first miner, but there was a little side shoot by the entrance that Dad had been excavating for crystals. The hole that he had been working in was considerably bigger then the last time I saw it and I realized that it would make a perfect hiding spot. I climbed in and pulled my dark brown coat over myself and hid in the hole, praying that no one would want to hunt for crystals that day.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if I had been discovered by Dad? I don’t think I would have been able to deal with it.

One by one they arrived. They came in ones and twos mostly, gathering for who knows what. Dad was one of the last to come and my legs were getting tired of sitting there in the hole. He came in and locked the gate, which at least told me which asshole had locked it on me the last time. My legs were cramping, and I was cold, and I wondered just why the hell I hadn’t given up on this spy job so I could be lying in my warm bed. I guess I’m a bit of a masochist.

Dad locked the gate (I could see him if I peaked out from under my coat) when it became clear that he was the last one to arrive. Then he walked over to the rear of the cavern to where the rest were gathered. I snuck out of my hiding spot.

***

Ten little men, all of whom were exactly like my dad, stood in the middle of the cavern. Squinting, I tried to make out which one was Dad. I thought he might have been the one in the red plaid shirt, it looked very much like the one I gave him two years ago for Christmas, but I couldn’t be sure. Whatever these guys were they had exactly the same kind of fashion sense, or rather lack-there-of, as Dad. It was entirely possible that one of the others was dressed in a red plaid shirt.

As I watched them it suddenly occurred to me that these guys weren’t human. All the stories of dwarves I had ever heard came back to me. Dwarves like mining, and this is a mine. Dwarves made swords and other things, which given that those stories were first told before Christianity meant that modern-day dwarves had to have advanced beyond sword smithing to other things, such as engineering. Dwarvish magic was that of made things, rings and jewelry and swords and other bits and pieces, and certainly everything my dad made had a certain level of awareness to it that an ordinary object should not have. A certain sparkle not normally seen in a water purification plant, for example.
And, well, you know what they say about dwarves. They were always male, and little dwarf babies have to come from somewhere.

Did Mom know about this? I wondered. Why not? I suppose in this day and age it would be wrong for a man to keep his wife in the dark about his true origins, even if he wasn’t human. I wondered, though. Dad had two girls, and no boys. If it was true that only boys were dwarves then he hadn’t done his duty to his species. I don’t know if that mattered or not.

I didn’t know why I was hiding. Certainly Dad was one of the ten, and I couldn’t see him harming anyone, let alone me. I guess I just wanted to see what they would do without outside interference. If they really were what I thought they were than they weren’t human. Was I? After all, half my genetics came from Dad, and if he wasn’t truly human…Well, you know what they say about dwarves. Perhaps the girl-babies are human like their mother, and all the boys are dwarves like their father.

Peaking around the corner I listened with interest to their conversation. I still couldn’t hear what was going on, but I could see what they were doing. It looked like they were holding a debate of some kind. Did dwarves hold elections? I remembered the dead guy in the newspaper. Wild fantasies (which I learned later where not so wild after all) of him being their king, or president, or mayor or something and now that he was dead they had to elect a new one. Maybe that’s what explains all these mysterious meetings, although it did not explain why they were being held in Dad’s mine.

Maybe he was the only one who had one.

They moved around in no real order that I could see and each took a piece of paper and wrote something on it before dropping it into a beat up cowboy hat someone had donated. One of them pulled the papers from the hat one by one, read them, and then made several different piles. All at once the men started cheering and the next thing I knew one of them was being hauled to the front of the group and was handed a random piece of rock. Everybody cheered except for me because I still have no idea what the hell was going on. Was this guy their new leader? A sacrifice to the mountain gods? What? I didn’t know. He looked happy, from what I could tell in the light of the flashlights, so maybe it was okay.

Maybe these guys were human after all, weren’t dwarves supposed to like their mead and feasting? They didn’t have anything to eat or drink, just filed out of the mine one by one. Dad was the last to walk out, still holding his rock. I stood up and didn’t bother trying to hide from him because, well, he was Dad. I decided it was better to fess-up, and maybe not get kicked out of the house, then to forget myself in ten years time and open my dumb mouth.

He smiled at me and didn’t look surprised to see me there. "Did you like the show?" he asked.

"Um, yeah," I said, "how long have you known I was there?"

"Oh, we all knew. I had to talk fast to allow you to stay, but they gave in when they found out you were my daughter."

"Oh," I said. "So what was that about?"

He laughed, long and low and it reminded me just how much I love my Dad. "Boring stuff," he said, "make up your own story, it’s bound to be more interesting."

So I did.

A work in Progress

Sat, 27 Nov 2004 21:51:06 GMT

This is a work in progress and is by no means done. The first two chapters can be found at http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2134126/1/ . I'm thinking of doing some drastic changes to this chapter, deleting Robin's POV scene that is right after Mrs. Smith's scene, for example, and adding something to further the Nagira-subplot. You're comments would be appreachated.

Chapter 3

Mechanical Firefly

Nagira didn’t come back.

Amon and Robin stood in line at the airport to check in for their flight. Amon carried the bags, Robin still seemed out of it despite the three hours of sleep she had while they were waiting for Nagira to return. She was drinking a Bepsi, and Amon was relieved to see that she could keep it down. They were both tired. He hoped he would be able to sleep on the plane.

Nagira was missing.

Amon had waited as long as he dared for his brother’s return, then dialed Nagira’s apartment. Nothing. No answer, and the message sounded different than the last time he had called. Amon then tried Nagira’s cell, only to get the voice mail message. He hung up without leaving a message, he didn’t dare.

They left. Robin was still groggy and slightly feverish, although not, thank God, as blazingly hot has she had been. His shoulder hurt, dammit, but there wasn’t anything he could do about it. He was wired with exhaustion and fear, and sick with worry over his brother.

Amon couldn’t get that out of his mind. It was bad enough that his parents were dead, that he never got to know his father, that his mother had Awakened and changed, and was killed. Now his brother was missing, and they had to run. He had raided all of his hidden catches of money, he had over twenty thousand dollars waiting in a bank in the US. That was it, for money. Hopefully it would be enough to tide them over until he could get a job.

The line moved forward, and Amon found himself looking at the lady at the counter. He wondered what it would be like to have that kind of job, where screwing up meant you got fired, not killed. Where your fifteen-year-old coworker could go to school and make friends her own age and not lose her childhood. A job where his brother wouldn’t disappear because he, Amon, had threatened or angered the wrong people.

Grief and guilt tore at him, but he was used to that. The grief of losing his mother, the awful gut-sucking guilt of shooting Kate and letting Touko get shot. The horrible numbness as he led Robin to the warehouse, like a lamb to slaughter. At the time his mind simply could not deal with the emotions and had stopped sensing them, like burned pain nerves that no longer could transport messages of damage to the brain. He was a damned man, he knew and accepted it. The only thing he could hope for was the chance to do one good thing in his life.

He felt Robin slip her hand under his jacket and wrap her fingers around his belt. He looked down at her and draped his arm around her shoulders. If he could do one good thing…

Robin leaned into him and sighed, her warm breath puffed into his shirt. Amon vowed silently that he would give her the chance at a real childhood. One that didn’t involve the people she cared about dying or trying to blow her brains out. He had lost his childhood when his mother had Awakened, and it was utterly destroyed the moment she was Hunted. Amon didn’t want Robin to lose what was left of hers.

The line moved forward another step.

His shoulder hurt. He was exhausted. Robin was sick, and he didn’t know what they were going to do in the US. He just wanted to get away. It was somewhere else, some alien world in which brothers don’t disappear and trustworthy friends weren’t on the other side of SOLOMON’s laws.

Amon found himself face to face with the woman behind the counter. He handed her the fake IDs he had made weeks before, when he realized that they might need to flee the country if Juliano was wrong about Robin. He felt a slight twinge of anxiety as the lady ran the IDs through the computer, but as promised the machine binged happily and the woman accepted the payment for two seats to the US. The next available flight was in four hours.

Security was a breeze, the guards allowed them through while the searched a white-haired old lady. Once through Amon steered the girl to one of the multicultural restaurants, whether or not she was hungry, he was starving. The restaurant clearly served the American tourists and businessmen. They sat down and Robin looked at her menu blankly before putting her head on the table and closing her eyes.

"Not interested?" Amon asked.

Robin shook her head negatively in response.

He frowned. "You should still try to eat something."

She shrugged. "Soup, I don’t care what kind," she answered.

He ordered for both of them. Tomato soup for her and something forgettable for him. The food arrived after a few minutes and they ate in silence, Robin consuming the soup with no sign of illness. He hoped that Nagira was right, that it was just dehydration, and that once she had replaced the lost fluids she would be fine.

He suddenly lost his appetite. God, Nagira. Somehow, without thinking about it, he had made another decision. He had decided that his own brother was not as important to him as Robin. He felt like he had betrayed his brother by leaving the country, rather than staying to find him. Amon looked across the table to the girl, and found that despite the guilt and shame at leaving his own brother to whatever destiny Fate had in store for him, he still felt like he was doing the right thing.

It almost didn’t matter. Nagira was still gone.

………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………

Being a school teacher meant that Mrs. Smith had plenty of time during the summer to travel the world, and yearly trips to see the relatives kept her Japanese fresh. She sat in coach and tried to read her Beatrice Small novel, but she was distracted by her seat-mates. On her left in the center seat was a girl who couldn’t have been older then fourteen or fifteen. It wasn’t that the girl was noisy or intrusive, quite the opposite actually. The girl had fallen asleep as soon as she had sat down. Before she had fallen asleep Mrs. Smith had noticed the glassy look of her eyes, perhaps drugs the woman thought with disapproval. Mrs. Smith had certainly smoked a few joints during her hippie years, but the things children were doing these days were far beyond anything she had ever done, even as a college student. Really, it was their parents’ fault.

There was a rather intimidating man who looked, excitingly enough, like the hero in Love or Die, sitting on the other side of the girl. Mrs. Smith supposed they might be together, although why a young girl would be with such a dangerous looking man was anyone’s guess. Lurid tales of innocent young women seduced away from friends and family by dangerous older men danced her in head. She frowned, those tales were all very well and good Romance Land, but not in real life.

The meal cart came by and the man woke the girl up so she could eat. Mrs. Smith put down her book and concentrated on her food. Despite the stereotype airline food wasn’t really that bad, she had read somewhere that the reason why it wasn’t as flavorful as food elsewhere was because of the dry air up here, which carried fewer odors. Less smell equaled less taste.

From the corner of her eye Mrs. Smith watched the pair. The girl just picked at her food, occasionally taking a bite, and then stopping. The woman wondered if she was anorexic, she certainly looked ill and thin enough. The man had wolfed his down, and was now watching the girl impassively. He said something to her that Mrs. Smith didn’t quite catch, despite her command of Japanese. The girl sighed, and took a larger bite, and then another and another, slowly working her way through the meal.

Mrs. Smith must have been staring too intently, because the pair suddenly turned and looked straight at her. They said nothing, simply gave her a look that told her she snooping where she didn’t belong.

She pulled her book up close to her nose and started reading furiously, Lord Ryan and Annette the chambermaid were suddenly so much more interesting.

Really, she thought, I should have brought along a Nora Roberts novel. I never meet odd people when I read Nora Roberts.

Robin sighed with relief when the woman finally looked away. Her scrutiny had been unnerving, causing both her and Amon to wonder if they had somehow been found out. Fortunately it appeared that the woman was simply nosy.

She glanced sideways at her partner. Now that they were finished eating Amon was staring straight ahead, his face wearing it’s usual scowl. And yet, something had changed about him. There was a feral edge to his movements that hadn’t been there before, it looked very much like desperation. She wasn’t certain of the reason for his sudden paranoia, but given the last few days it wasn’t terribly surprising. She just wished that they had been able to say goodbye to Nagira.

She was tired. Robin closed her eyes, feeling every ache and pain in her body. If she was tired, then he must be ragged with exhaustion, she didn’t think he had rested since their escape from the Factory. Certainly he had not even tried to go to sleep on the plane. Surely they were as safe here as they could be, even if there was a Hunter on board, ready to capture or kill them at the first chance he had. Not even one of SOLOMON’s top Hunters would Hunt them on a plane, not with all the potential witnesses. Such a Hunt would be publicly known, and broadcast around the world within minutes of the event. No, they both knew that they were safe for the time being.

Yet he didn’t try.

Her stomach gave lurch, and she wondered briefly if she was going to be sick again. It settled down quickly enough when she took a sip of pop. It was her fault Amon was so miserable, if she hadn’t accepted his offer (not, a small voice inside her whispered, that she had a choice) then perhaps he wouldn’t have been separated from the only family he had left.

Perhaps. And perhaps not. There was nothing they could do to change the past.

She hoped that Nagira was all right. Amon didn’t say anything after he woke her up, but that fact that Nagira wasn’t back yet alarmed her. She remember Nagira calling Amon ‘Little Brother,’ Amon wouldn’t leave his own brother if he was in trouble, would he?

She just didn’t know. All she could do is trust that he knew what he was doing. And pray.

Robin had a feeling that they would all need lots of prayer.

It was, strangely enough, the pervious day. Somewhere in the flight they had crossed the International Date Line, and time had slipped backwards. The exhaustion that had lifted slightly during the flight had returned at full force. The plane had finally landed…somewhere. Robin wasn’t quite certain where they were, and she didn’t much care. Later she could worry about things like where they were and what they were going to do.

Sometime, on this day, Robin had incinerated everything that was between them and freedom. If she closed her eyes she could see herself, burning through the tunnel step by step, feeling everything that made her her slip away, until there was nearly nothing left. She had an odd feeling that if the hall beyond the metal door had not been clear, and she had needed to keep burning, then she would have been lost. Her personality would have burned away like the chaff in a wheat field after harvest. She would have been nothing. A void.

They were standing inside a cheap motel while Amon spoke with the old man at the desk. Robin was too tired to try to make her English work well enough to understand what the men were saying. It didn’t matter.

A moment later the man handed Amon a couple of keycards for the room and gestured toward the hall, before turning back to his magazine. Amon didn’t even turn to look at her, he simply trudged down the hall, trailing her in his wake. The moment he entered the room he crossed directly to one of the beds and flopped down on it, lying face down, and not bothering to even turn off the lights. Robin stood at the door and stared at the room blankly. There was nothing here, just cheap furniture.

Without conscious thought she drifted into the room, the door closing on it’s own behind her. She could feel her heart pounding in her chest and throbbing in her temples, like it was some savage beast trying to get out. She was tired, and yet was far to keyed up to sleep. She touched the TV and the empty bed before going to the bathroom, hoping that a nice long soak was what she needed. A moment after she turned the water on in the tub she turned it off again, frustration boiling beneath the surface of her mind. She didn’t know what she wanted.

By their own motivation she drifted out of the bathroom again, to find that Amon was still in the position he had laid down in. Her feet walked across the room and took her with them, and she found herself sitting on the bed next to him, one hand on his back.

"Amon?" she said softly, hoping not to wake him if he was asleep, but still wanting to talk to him if he wasn’t.

"Yes?" His voice was somewhat muffled by the pillow.

"What happened to Nagira?"

The ex-Hunter turned his head to look at her, charcoal gray eyes meeting green. Robin thought she saw a flicker of emotion in their dark depths, pain or fear or grief. She wasn’t sure which. He sighed deeply, his back under her hand rising and falling.

"I don’t know," he said, "I wish to God I did."

"Oh." The girl tried to think for a moment, but found herself staring at the wall. "Oh," she repeated. She bit her lip, not noticing Amon’s sudden smile at that. "If you didn’t know where he was, then why did we leave Japan?" she asked finally.

"It was too dangerous for us to stay."

"But what if Nagira needs us?" she asked plaintively. "If he’s missing then there’s something wrong!"

"And do what, exactly?" he answered. "We’re both exhausted. I’m hurt, and we don’t know what’s wrong with you. Nagira’s an adult and a lawyer, he’s going to have to take care of himself. He would not thank me for letting you get killed." He breathed in deeply again, and let it out in one shuddering whuff of air. "We can’t do anything for him."

Robin was silent. She wanted to argue, and knew it was foolish. The time for argument was long past, they were here now (wherever here was) and couldn’t go back.

She was too tired to argue, any ways.

"Robin, go to bed."

She nodded mutely, flicked the switch near the head of the bed off, and curled up next to him, her back pressed against his side, and then shifted around, trying to find a more comfortable position.

"Robin?"

"Hmm?"

"The other bed is empty," he pointed out mildly.

She stilled. "Do you want me to leave?"

"Heh. You should," he said.

She sighed, disappointment washing over her, and stood up. The room tilted crazily around her, causing her to sit down abruptly on the bed again.

"Robin?" Amon prompted.

"I’m sorry…I’m dizzy."

He grunted in reply and then there was silence for several minutes while Robin waited for the world to stop spinning. The sheets rustled and a moment later Amon appeared at her should. She smiled at him shakily, and then remembered that he couldn’t see her in the dark.

Amon placed a hand on her shoulder, and then touched her brow. "Jesus. It hasn’t gone away, has it?" he said, and then continued before she had a chance respond, "We’re going to have to find you a doctor tomorrow."

"I’m sorry."

"I just wish I knew what was wrong with you."

After several more minutes of silence Robin finally felt strong enough to try standing again. This time the world did not tilt and everything seemed stable. She lay down in the empty bed, feeling oddly drained and cold.

It was a scene he was strangely familiar with. They sat in a waiting room for a doctor to see them. The glaringly bright lights reflected off the strained expressions of the patients, and the forced cheerful expressions of the receptionists only seemed to confirm that impression. In the corner of the room were toys for children to play with so they wouldn’t bother their parents, and outdated magazines sat on a nearby table.

He remembered the fist time they had sat in a waiting room like this. Robin had been annoyed, indignant at the though that there was anything wrong with her eyes. He had made her go, privately hoping that her poor aim was the result of an organic cause, and not because she was losing control. He hadn’t wanted another Kate.

The second time was after a Hunt, during which she had injured her arm. The Witch they had been Hunting had sacrificed himself in order to save her life. Amon sometimes wondered about the kind of man who would do that for an enemy.

Beside him Robin stirred slightly while she read a travel magazine. The pictures of a brightly lit Mediterranean village reminded him sharply of how homesick she must be. He turned back to the papers the receptionist had asked him to fill out. This was going to cost them a great deal, they had no health insurance and they still needed to find an apartment near good public transportation, or buy a car. The $20,000 he had managed to hide in bank in the US didn’t seem like such a large amount of money, now.

He could only hope that money was the least of their worries.