2021-04-06 - Don't Throw Rocks at the Selkie's House

Sun's out, guns out!

Okay, the sun is...only mostly out. It's not pea soup fog full of brilliant joys and brutal nightmares, at least. The high, thin clouds do let the sun peak through now and then. It's maybe 64F, tops, the Pacific's not-precisely-warm breeze blowing, so a hoodie isn't the worst idea.

The guns, however, are most definitely out. The fog fucked off and it's not sleeting, which means the whole town has declared it to be summer. A tourist could be forgiven for thinking it is given the number of people in tank tops, shorts, even the much maligned PNW special which is sandals with socks.

Fortunately for anyone who knows him, August has long since gotten out of that habit. He's in urban hikers, in fact, because it's not quite warm enough to warrant Tevas. Simple black tank top with a side-cut, topographic map of the coast, labeled The Juan de Fuca MEGATHRUST: COMING SOON, and worn, dark gray cargo shorts. This allows easy view of his newest tattoo, a brilliant fancy guppy on one shoulder. He's walking along, a scratched and dented HOH RAIN FOREST water bottle in one hand, looking out at the ocean. Thoughtful, almost pensive.

Not least of which Barnacle Bill the Sailor. Joe's a shaggy, scruffy, disreputable-looking creature now, in comparison to the clean-cut and upright man that showed up in Gray Harbor, sailing out of the teeth of a Pacific winter. There's the clump of his boots along the dock, and then him crunching along gravel and sand. Presumably he's been working on Surprise again.

He's in t-shirt and jeans, his only concession to what his blood insists is a spring chill a blue chambray workshirt thrown over it. The t-shirt depicts Vader hovering a glass over one hand and reads 'I FIND YOUR LACK OF BOURBON DISTURBING'. "Roen," he says, scratching at his jaw with a fingernail'; he's let the scruff return, it's almost reached proper beard status.

Itzhak comes crunching over the pebbles and sand, wearing the battered GHPD hoodie with the hood pulled over his head. Not having much hair makes your head cold, it turns out? He changes course towards August, and not coincidentally, Joe. "Hey guys. Jesus, what a mess."

Between the three of them it's not hard to tell who grew up in this neck of the woods; this is barely a couple notches above swim trunks and shirtless weather. (One of the college kids shouts something and runs into the water, sans shirt, so maybe he's from BC or Alaska.)

August half-turns at the sound of Joe's voice, smiles at him. "Hey. How the hell've you been." Itzhak gets the same smile, though it becomes amused as August sees him with the hoodie pulled up. "I'll say. Did someone do anything to make it go? It kind of felt like..." He hesitates, eyes narrowed, shrugs with that newly tattooed shoulder. It's the causal sort of gesture he'd normally not make with new ink from the pain alone. He doesn't even have it covered with saran. "I don't know, but it felt like something happened."

"You mean when Grant Baxter asked Baba Yaga to unfuck all those broken Baxter souls held in limbo on the other side?" supplies Captain Helpful Redneck. Joe may have been quit, but he's got that pack of Luckies in his shirt pocket and pulls it out so he can tap one free. Itz will no doubt take it from him, but maybe he'll get a puff in.

"I'm a'right," he adds, with that lazy good nature. The ribbing he got from the witch is spot on; the air of languor surrounds him like smoke. "How 'bout you?" HE's already reaching up to ruffle Itz's short hair, for the hell of it. Only then does he spot the new ink. "What's that you got there?" he asks, angling himself around to get a better look at it.

"Yeah. That." Itzhak pulls a face. "The worst part is, I can't even be that mad at him about it. That's tikkun olam, right fuckin' there. Good kid. Dumb kid." Joe reaches to ruffle his hair, and he permits this exactly as long as it takes for Joe to have a puff on his cigarette. Then Itzhak plucks it from him and takes a long deep drag. But, wonder of wonders, he lets him have it back. Must be feeling generous. "Abildgaard keeps tellin' me Bubbe Yaga's a sign of change. Well, Grant Baxter's the agent of change."

August blinks slowly at Joe, taking in that quick summary with the kind of radical acceptance you get comfortable with real fast in this town (or die refusing to). "Well who the fuck let him talk to Baba Yaga, that's a disaster waiting to happen."

Itzhak is who, as it turns out. August gives him a tired look which isn't quite the Face (because he sort of can't totally blame Grant either), watches the cigarette tango with wry amusement. "Well you definitely have to be someone who wouldn't know fine print if it bit them on the ass to have Baba Yaga fix something." He makes no air quotes, letting his tone suggest them instead. He takes a drink of water, offers the tumbler to Joe and Itzhak. Joe's comment has him pulling a face.

"Remember when you were a cat, and I was Aidan's sister?" He tips his head at the shoulder. It's as good a quality as anything he's come back from Oregon with, except it also looks perfectly healed. "Woke up with that. I think the one writing that wanted to stamp us." He manages to not call it branding. Just barely.

"Well, Abildgaard the sage also pointed out that Bax is the kinna rube she's got a soft spot for. I mean, hell, most things in fairy tales do - the purehearted young idiot succeeds where the knowledgeable and corrupt get eaten by monsters, 'r whatever," One puff, and then it's plucked from his hands. He accepts it with evident greed.

"Yeah. It's gonna be hell on wheels," he says with that can only sound like relish. But then, he's the guy who actually kind of misses the Asylum, of all places. He accepts the tumbler, takes a sip, hands it back. "Huh," he says, to that answer. "Damn."

Itzhak takes a swig from the tumbler. Then up go the eyebrows. He reaches out to touch the new tattoo--jerks his hand back, don't touch the fresh ink, yutz. "Wait, you got that in a Dream? Is it--is it a real tattoo?" What qualifies as 'real' is a good question that he doesn't address. He shrugs, though, uncomfortably. "I don't 'let' that kid do anything. He just does stuff. He's awesome like that. I wish I could do the kinda stuff he does, actually."

Yes, Itzhak Rosencrantz just admitted to admiring and envying Grant Baxter. For daring to make a wish to fix the world.

August sighs, regret and fond at the same time. "Well you're both going to save us all or get us blown to hell. Guess we'll see which of those will out." He's never smoked, but God does he feel the itch for a second or two. He gives a half-shake of his head at Itzhak's self-reprimand, prods the tattoo of his own accord. "It's real, but it's like I've had it for a while." He snorts. "So I guess at last she spared me that at least. Whoever the fuck she was."

He eyes it again. As much as one of Them--if that's who'd done this, maybe not?--put it on him, it's growing on him. Which was no doubt the point, making it irritating in turn. How dare They, or whoever, do something to him that he might be okay with. (This fucking town, as Itzhak says.)

He makes a low sound about hell on wheels, eyes the ocean again. "I had a dream that night it cleared up. A real vivid one. And the day before, this big deer...thing tried to..." He stops, looking unsure. Then, "It wanted to eat my Song. Take it."

The sailor's long face is somber, lids drooping, as he listens. He's smoking with the haste of a man who's sure someone's going to stop him - Itzhak, by the glances he gives the taller man, out of the corner of his eye. He nods, flicks ash aside with a little motion of a fingertip. Very practiced, very cool...

....all of which goes by the board when August says that. "What'n the hell?" he demands, eyes widening. "How the fuck does that even-" But then, he's had it done to him. Just not permanently. "I've given it up, at times, but it's always come back. You mean...like...for good?"

Itzhak then goes ahead and touches the brilliant guppy, stroking August's skin delicately and kind of inappropriately. He don't care about the people seething around them on the beach, even when a couple of the college kids give him a weird look. Really he's just as bullheaded and outrageous as the kid he admires, but he doesn't always see it. "Well, it's gorgeous," he says, eyebrows canted. "I mean, you could do worse, right?" He ruffles his own hair, still struggling to get long enough to curl.

He snatches Joe's cigarette again and informs him, "You quit." Inhaling it--ugh, Lucky Strike, gross, but sacrifices must be made--he looks between August and Joe. "Big deer thing? Was it like, half fish, or snake, or something?"

August gives another half-shrug. "Yeah, I mean, it could have been," he waves a hand, because all three of them, as possessed of tattooes as they are, are well aware of what bad ink looks like. Not just poorly done, but poorly chosen as well. Also, deep down, he's afraid if he gives voice to the awful possibilities he'll wake up to find them real. No one can even call him paranoid for that, either.

"Yeah, like when the girl from the Asylum was unfucking our minds," he says. "It came back. But this was," he licks his lips, "it felt different. I don't think this was like donating blood or plasma. It wanted the whole nine yards, promised me it would make my life suck less." A corner of his mouth turns. "Hell of a sales pitch, let me tell ya."

He stares at Itzhak a second. "Yeah. A good," he gestures, "twenty-odd feet tall. You seen it too?"

"It is good work," Joe agrees, holding out his hand just in time for Itz to snag the cigarette. HE assumes an expression of put-upon patience. "But I think I'll still get mine the ordinary way, if I can. I mean, not that I need anymore." He has plenty.

A look at Itz. "I did," he agrees. "I just didn't stay real quit, did I?" It is awful. Unfiltered Luckies are terrible. But then, Joe is a masochist. He doesn't solicit the cigarette's return, letting his hands fall to his sides. "Damn," he says. "To give it up for good, to opt outta this game?" He doesn't seem tempted. Not a whit.

"Yeah. I seen it. In a Dream. It wanted to eat up ya Song?" Itzhak considers that, smoking the rest of Joe's disgusting cigarette. "For permanent? Ugh." Whether that's for the stag-creature or the cigarette is debatable. "Way too much talk of giving it up lately. Way too fuckin' much."

Irritated, he crouches to pick up a round flat rock, rises and flings it out over the water. It skips a couple times, tumbles and sinks.

"Well, be quick about it, or she'll get it for you." August bobs his eyebrows. Would Joe wind up with a very nice and well-designed tatt, or a truly gauche rendering of Tournee du Chat Noir? (Though now that he's thinking of it, a cabaret performance troupe ad from the 1800s would make for a cool tattoo...)

He mmms at Itzhak, toys with his ring finger, watches the rock fly out over the water. "Sounds a bit like we're being given a chance to bail or go all in." The waves smother the ripple from the rock, the college kids either yell at one another about it being too cold to go in the water or tossing one another in. A life guard watches them with narrowed eyes.

"I shot him," August continues by way of saying which he picked. "For all the good it did. I'm not sure what he'd've done to me if he caught me, but I got away."

Joe would likely end up with either a Russian prison tattoo implying he's ten kinds of a bitch, or maybe something else in that old-fashioned sailor style he favors. He sucks in a breath at August's account, shakes his head. "Two tears in a bucket, motherfuck it, like one of my Navy buddy's used'a say. I didn't come this far just to stop now," he notes, with a shrug. "Yeah. I don't know what They want, but I don't trust someone offerin' to take all that off my hands for me."

"He can come and try to take it." Itzhak drops to find another rock. One unearths itself from the sand and he picks it up, stands and gives it a hell of a side throw. Whizz it skips over the water. Right on course for an unaware college girl, looking the other way and yelling at her friends. Itzhak winces. The rock flips itself high into the air, avoiding her via a big jump, then hits the surface several yards beyond her. Ploonk.

Itzhak, blushing, tries to pretend that totally didn't just happen.

August looks down at his boots. "He might," he says, though can't bring himself to sound certain. It had demanded his Art...but had used the word 'give'. "I wasn't going to stick around to find out." Oh, there's the Face, in 'don't either of you dare' mode.

The rock is on a collision course, August is wincing at the upcoming calamity--only there isn't one. He relaxes, coughs a laugh. The girl startles when the rock lands in the water, promptly blames some of her friends on shore. "You'll make the life guard think we're drinking!" she shouts, annoyed.

"But we are!" a Chad shouts back, totally innocent paper bag in hand. August rolls his eyes.

Joe watches all this with purse-lipped amusement, tensed as Itz manages to fend off beaning the girl in the head with a stone. "Nice save, buddy," he congratulates him, clapping Itz on the shoulder with a long hand. He favors August with his best innocent expression, before he glances back at the swimmers. "I was that young and dumb once, I know it, but I find it so hard to remember or believe," he says, wistfully.

"Awww shaddap," Itzhak mutters, elbowing Joe back. Some people would scold him for such a minor use or misuse of the Song; he always laughs at such scoldings, but Joe's congratulations makes him fluster. Then he really does laugh at Chad's response. Grinning in one corner of his mouth, he looks at August and gives him one of those elaborate, insouciant shrugs. "I ain't gonna have to do nothin'. He'll come for me."

Well, it's probably true. Itzhak, one of the brightest-burning candles in the darkness, gets the attention of things from beyond just by breathing.

In a drawl as fake as can possibly be, August murmurs, "Oh were you? I can hardly believe that," to Joe. It's not sarcastic, not really, just ribbing to go along with what Itzhak's getting. He sighs, shakes his head. "Just be careful. I didn't get the impression going at it with the Art was going to amount to much. Felt like sticking my head in ice water." His nose winkles at the memory, which he subsequently shrugs aside.

Since he likes to not be a hypocrite when it's possible, August of course offers no censure for casual use of the Art. You pay your money you take your chances, as the saying goes. "So. Did it work? The fixing Baxter asked for?"

As if on cue, one of the rocks Itzhak tossed shoots up out of the water right at him.

Joe's never scolded him for it. If anything, there's a faint envy for someone with power enough to spill it indiscriminately. He elbows Itz again, just for sheer cussedness, as if they were both the same age, and that age twenty years younger. "Yeah, you pretty much do have MONSTERS EAT HERE written all over you," he agrees.

"'mazin', right?" Joe agrees. "You shoulda seen me back when," He was, no doubt, beautiful and completely insufferable. Itz, at least, has seen the pictures. Then the rock appears and he's batting at it with his power. Not that it gets anywhere near Itz, but still.

"'Work', define 'work.'" Itzhak wobbles a hand--then one of the smooth flat rocks erupts from the ocean and rockets towards him. "Gevalt!" An instinctive curse comes out on a yelp as he ducks, folding over his tall lean frame. That rock doesn't get anywhere near him; he collapsed like a folding ruler. It hisses past and hits an evergreen, causing an explosion of shredded bark.

August flinches in surprise as Joe swats the rock aside and Itzhak becomes Neo for half a second, twisting and turning himself clear of any and all comers.

One of the college kids in the water gasps. "Oh my GOD Tom, you almost hit those old guys!"

"I didn't throw that," 'Tom' calls back towards the shore. To prove it, he bellows to Itzhak, "Hey sorry man that wasn't me!"

August watches this exchange with the kind of look that proves he is, indeed, an 'old guy'. This means he misses the half a face glaring at Itzhak from between the gentle waves: a pair of gleaming orange-yellow eyes gleaming in a golden-brown face, a cloud of black hair hanging in the water around it. Who- or whatever it is glares at Itzhak and then Joe, sticks out its tongue, and and dives beneath the water. Is there a brief flicker of black-brown, sleek, wet fur and a pair of flippers? Maybe.

Old guy, indeed. Joe snorts. Look I so old to young eyes? Yes, apparently. "When eight hundred years you reach...." He intones, under his breath. "'s all right man," he calls to the younger Tom. He does not, however, miss that face. "Shit, dude, I think we're playin' ball with selkies. Or else you been breakin' some mermaid's windows."

"WHO YOU CALLIN' OLD!" Itzhak hollers back, still crouched, long arms wound around his head. He cautiously uncoils, knees hitting the sand as he dares to lift his schnozz in the direction from whence the rock came. He catches just the glimpse of a sleek brown head and the eyes glaring at him. Comically he winces, hands cringing into his chest. Then he yells, "SORRY! I DIDN'T KNOW YOU WERE HOME!" because, well, why not? What harm can it do?

Still careful, he gets to his feet, dusting damp sand off his jeans. "Uh, jeez, I ain't had somebody glare at me like that since the time I disassembled my bubbe's grandfather clock."

August coughs a laugh as Itzhak gives the college kids a much better reason to think they're all old. Sure enough, Tom nods at Joe, giving a thumbs up, only to crack up at Itzhak's yelling. "My bad, my bad, I didn't mean to like, call your uncle there old, or anything." The girl in the water next to Tom grimaces comically, offers an apologetic wince of 'sorry, his second brain cell doesn't come in for another ten years'.

"Selkies?" August eyes the water. "There was that time Baxter and Vidal and Abildgaard and I all got turned into mer-people." It comes off as something of an accusation. "Wonder if they're coming back for round two."

Joe rolls eyes heavenward, beseeching some unspecified deity for something like patience. Visibly biting his lip to keep from guffawing, before he looks down to see if he can spot more faces in the waves. "Man, I been sailin' a long time. Sailed from Savannah to here. Don't know that I ever saw merfolk 'fore I got here. Bet they saw me." Like he's that much of a celebrity that they were trailing in his wake.

He shoots Itz a sidelong glance. "I'm your uncle, now," he informs the New Yorker. "You heard 'em say it."

"You think the stories are true?" Itzhak's eyeing the place where the...whatever that person was, surfaced. Like he's thinking about just wading in and finding out for himself. Then he double-takes at Joe and gives him a narrow look. "Yeah, I'm gonna make you call uncle, you keep that up."

Tom is laughing, suggesting he was mostly joking; the girl keeps cringing, plainly aware it doesn't matter if he was, which means at least one of this pack of college kids has some emotional intelligence.

August looks askance at Itzhak. "Definitely. Or, you know, true the way anything from Over There is. Ellie got turned into one." He thinks that over. "Twice, actually, so I wonder what's up with that." Men become mer-people, women become selkies? And seals eat fish, so...he's just going to not follow that thought any further.

"Excuse me," he says, holding up a hand, "I think those kids are way too young to hear you two discussing your wild kinky shenanigans, thank you."

"That's exactly what I'm after, babydoll," Joe informs Itz with exaggerated casualness, slanting the younger man a look full of cool challenge. Hey, it's true.

Then he turns a hand at August's comment in mute agreement, like a magician demonstrating he has nothing up his sleeve. "That's a way of thinkin' of it. True as much as anything in that realm is true." A bob of a nod, and then he adds, "Won't hurt 'em to confront the reality that people over thirty have sex. I mean, I didn't believe it when I was twenty-two, but...."

Itzhak snorts, but he's blushing across the bridge of that fine nose. "That's enough outta you, Cavanaugh." He glances at August, eyebrows tipped up, considering what he's saying. Then his text alert goes off and he digs his phone out of a too-tight hip pocket to check it. "Gotta go, guys. Don't be late for dinner, huh?" And off he goes with that cryptic remark.

August tilts his head like he's thinking. "I think I was too beat up at 22 to think people over 30 didn't have sex. I already felt 30, and like hell I was going to stop any time soon, you know?" A sly smile for those wild college years of yore. A party queer who got old indeed.

"Yeah yeah saved by the text," he calls after Itzhak, kicking a little sand after him. "The cook's never late for dinner!" He has a bit of water, nods in the direction of the coffee shop. "Want a coffee or anything? I've got an hour or so before Ellie's shift's done."

"I'd like that. Boy needs some time to go ride Javier like a circus pony 'fore I show up," Joe allows, in his driest voice. "He's like a time-share Mexican." Itz is gone, but Joe doesn't seem at all inclined to light up again. "I spent my twenties so busy with women I couldn't even imagine life beyond thirty....let alone findin' myself in my fifties unmarried, queer as a three dollar bill, and in a negotiated menage a trois." He shrugs, broadly. Already turning for the coffee place.

August chokes a laugh. "I'd threaten to tell him you called him that except it wouldn't be a threat, just me offering you what you want," he manages between chortles.

As they walk along the hardpack sand he toys with his wedding ring, expression thoughtful. "I definitely didn't imagine anything like this. Wasn't really thinking beyond college either. It was, wall to wall classes getting caught up, Dot Com Boom parties on yachts, nights out at clubs..." He shakes his head, angles their path towards the stairs that head up past the boardwalk and out onto the sidewalks that lead to the little strip mall. "I don't miss it, but sometimes I feel like that guy was someone else, you know?"

The older man's pace is easy, as if for once his old injuries weren't hurting him. "Yeah, me neither," he allows. "I don't miss it. It'd palled before it was done," he admits. "Didn't help that I was already hooked on Javier 'fore I was twenty-five. There's an old Japanese poem about how making love can be like trying to slake your thirst by drinking sea water. It was like that....no matter who else I turned to, they weren't him. And I did a lot of turnin'. It came easy enough. I looked good then, and courtesy of Mister Tom Cruise, all I had to do was show up at a bar wearin' wings and a smile." That comment about yachts makes him glance over at August sharply. "What was that time like for you? I realize I don't know much about you at that age."

August grins, shakes his head. "Yeah I bet that movie did get you laid like pipe. You and every other fly boy. And the sheer number of immitation films that came after it." There was the one with Nicolas Cage and helicopters, the one with boats, the one with motorcycles... He remembers them as a blur amidst parties and dancing and long nights studying for exams.

"Me neither," he says, of missing it. "It was what it was, and I wouldn't take it back, but I wouldn't go back either." He pulls a face. "Except, maybe to get some of the muscle mass back." He pats his midsection; he has photographic evidence of having been huskier in his youth, but you'd never believe it now.

He has a drink of water. "Well, Seattle, during the Dot Com Boom? That place was crawling with rich nerds who liked to have a damned good time and did not much mind who they had it with." He raises his eyebrows, suggesting Joe no doubt knows the type, even if he might not know them Biblically. "And if you don't know this about me, well, nerds are my type. So I was in hog heaven, and I was making up for lost time--also..." He gives Joe a sidelong glance, "a bit of the trying to ignore other things, like you were. Though in my case it was," he waves a hand around them, meaning the town, but really what he means is a proper urban area. "Being in a city like that for almost seven years--Corvallis, then Seattle, it was more than I should've put myself through. Easiest way to deal with it was to get loaded and party hard when I wasn't in class or studying."

Joe laughs at that. "It sure did. Did ninety percent of the work for me. Heady days. Yeah, I wouldn't go back, neither. The military was fuckin' torment in so many ways, but you know, you served. I mean, it'd be nice to not have implants 'n shit, but....it's also nice to be done. My career's over, and while I woulda liked a few more years, it's nice to not have a choice about it..."

He listens with that little grin on his lips. "Yeah. Hard on you, huh? But you came early and young to the power, didn't you?"

"Yeah, I can say good things about the service, but," August kicks at a rock, "a lot of bad things too. In some ways I was lucky, getting out when I did. I'm not sure how long I could've stayed in; sooner or later, I'd be looking at a Section 8 or depression." He cuts a look at Joe, suspicious he might, in fact, be describing Joe (or de la Vega's) own situation.

"Hard, as in," he shrugs, one of those gestures meant to minimize something which is anything but minimal, "after Sarajevo being in an urban area's kind of..." He falls quiet, like he's listening for something, relaxes. "It's better than it used to be," he continues. "But, the Art, that started, mmmm...I might have been eight, maybe ten. I could feel animals, tell how people felt about things." He huffs a quiet laugh. "I got into so many fights by just, saying shit I didn't realize I shouldn't know. You know, like, 'nah she hates that gift' or 'yeah he thinks you look fat'."

He gives a little whistling breath at that. "I can't imagine what that was like. Ever' time someone tells me what it was like to get it so early, I can't think but that it was hellish. Explains a lot of why Clayton is like he is."

There's a click of his tongue. "I managed to keep a lid on long enough to get through it, get to Houston, which was....it had its own burdens, plenty, but....it wasn't like service. More privacy, for one, though not as much as a civilian gets...."

"Honestly?" August gives Joe a wry look. "It felt pretty normal. I mean, maybe it's because I got lucky, having parents who didn't think it was weird their queer secular kid got into fights because anyone giving his sisters sideways looks was suspect and he didn't know how to keep his stupid mouth shut. And I had a queer Aunt who taught me how to hunt and shoot and camp, and spent summers with her, which kept me out of the trailer park, so out of trouble. The Art, on top of all that, was just," they turn out onto the little stretch of quaint downtown, coffee shop in the distance, "yet another way my life was what it was. But it wasn't real strong, not until." He stops there, because that he need not get into, he suspects. "And then, I was dealing with all the bullshit from that, so it still didn't stand out."

He thinks over what he's just said. "What I mean is--and I'm sure you know this about other things, Cavanaugh--when you're born and raised in the briar patch, you just figure the whole world is one, and you get really good at ducking the thorns, or used to bleeding a lot." He shrugs, somewhat helpless in the face of this reality. "But hey," he looks around them, "got me here, didn't it? So maybe it was worth a few black eyes when I was 12."

It's not pitiable, so there's no pity granted. August came through, he survived. He's become who he's become. "Yeah," he says, softly. "I've only had my shine a few years now. Four, in fact. Came late and after damage, and I nearly died under its coming." The scars are on his arms, undeniable. "But I'm here now, and it is good, even though it's been hard here, too." Voice soft and low. "I did what I set out to do, I got as far as ever I could."

But August might remember it, vivid as one of his own memories, the sight of a sunrise conducted in only a minute and a half, over an impossible horizon....and the stars unveiled by atmosphere, the earth shining below.

August glances at Joe, studies him a handful of seconds. "It's like that, when it comes in a big moment, or bursts out into a new level." No pity, just solemn agreement. On a sigh, he concludes, "Merciless as fuck."

He does remember, the sight of Joe talking quiet like that reminding him that this, here, is someone who's witnessed something only a few handfuls have and, in all likelihood, ever will. Still, he arches an eyebrow. "As far as you ever could?" He thinks back to his dream the night the fog went away. "When that mist cleared out? That night I had a dream. Not one of theirs, but, realyl vivid. I saw a sea shore like a sky--all black and full of stars, with a pier. The ocean was rolling in with a big storm surge, and fire was raining from the heavens. And hey, maybe that was my mind just making shit up. But," he gestures, "maybe, also, this place has a lot more to show us. To show you. So you might not even be half way." Sounds like someone is aiming to end Joe's retirement.

But now, they're at the coffee shop, the rich smells and cozy interior beckoning. "Who says space is the final frontier, anyways."