No Friday update this week.  May or may not have an extra update next week to make up for it (we’ll see.  It’s inventory season at work).

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Seventeen – 02

[This post is from David O’Credne Miller’s point of view.]

You have to find them before it’s too late.

But too late for what?  Too late how?

And how the hell will I know what it is or how or when it’s too late?

No one had been able to tell him, to teach him how to handle what he saw and felt, the gut feelings and the glimpses of otherwhens.  His father had tried, but Gray Miller only had so much expertise in that realm.  Aunt Teca hadn’t been able to offer much additional insight, either, though she’d tried—they’d all tried.  Every adult in his life had tried.

Except his mother, vanished when he was barely old enough to remember having a mother at all.

He’d only asked his father about her disappearance once, when he was ten years old, and then never again.  Even at ten, he saw the pain that it caused his father and at the same time knew that he didn’t dare tell his son the whole truth of it.

That, he’d decided, was fine.  If his father wanted to protect him from something—or protect himself, as the case might have been—that was perfectly all right with him.  His father, after all, had never done anything to hurt him, had only ever tried to help.  Most hard truths were ones that his father told him.

If whatever circumstances had precipitated his mother’s departure were harder than those truths, there must have been a damned good reason for it.

A fresh chill shot through him, the sensation nearer now.  The tumbling images were starting to ebb like the tides drawing back from the water’s edge.  In part it was a relief, but also a frustration.

Whatever had been just beyond his grasp was still out there, still beyond his reaching fingers.

Maybe it’s not time yet.

That realization didn’t make much of a dent in the pressing feeling that time was running out, though.

The chill he’d felt started to become more localized, closer and closer.  He didn’t shiver, though he wanted to.  Oddly, it felt good, as if cooling the summer heat.

It was summer, wasn’t it?

It would be great not to feel so far gone half the time.  It must be summer.  Right?  Right.  It has to be.

It was a hand—the chill was someone’s hand against his face.

In a rush, the images washed away and pain filled the gap where they’d been.

Consciousness flooded in with it.

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Seventeen – 01

[This post is from David O’Credne Miller’s point of view.]

There were voices at the very edge of his consciousness, but they were muffled, far away, lost in the midst of a thousand images that flickered behind his eyelids, though his mind’s eye.  It was the same jarring kaleidoscope that he’d been dealing with since he was a boy—if he were honest, since he was young enough to barely remember the shape of his mother’s face.

That was something he didn’t talk about, though.  It was a secret that was his and his alone—how long these images had been coming.  It didn’t make sense to worry anyone more than they already did.

Only sometimes did he think that perhaps knowing how long he’d been wrestling with them, how used he’d become to it, might be reassuring to the people who loved him.

Only sometimes.

Another step on the journey.  Another road.  A signpost.  This is it—X marks the spot.

He shivered despite himself, tried to curl up.  His body didn’t listen, responding instead with the same bone-deep ache he’d been feeling since they’d run afoul of raiders on the road.  How long ago had it been?

It could be months, for all I know.

But could it?  Months?

If he had been awake, he would have frowned.  Clawing his way back to consciousness was too great an effort, though, especially when the deluge was still crashing over him, threatening to sweep him away with the wash of images that swirled around him.

No, not yet.  Not until he could make sense—

—make sense of what, exactly?

He couldn’t remember, but it was something important—something beyond finding the place called the Valley, the place he’d seen in whispers of dreams and flickered images, the place he’d seen in a thousand visions of the past and the future and the now over the course of his admittedly short life.  But there was something there, something like the voices he could just barely hear, muffled and indistinct, just beyond his ability to hear.  There was something that hovered just beyond his reach, beyond his knowing.

He needed to know.  He needed to find out.

Time, he feared, was running out.

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Sixteen – 09

[This post is from Bryant Tapping’s point of view.]

“What happened to them?”

He knew that he shouldn’t have asked the question.  It simply slipped out before he could think too much about it, and as soon as the words left his lips, he regretted them.

Pain flickered through her expression and she shook her head.  “That’s too long a story for this early in the morning.  They’re…well.  I haven’t seen them in a long time and I don’t expect to soon.”

“But you still—”

“I know.  It’s silly.”  She shook her head, not making eye contact with him.  “But it’s just one of those things.”

Whatever words that were coming shriveled on his tongue.  He knew that feeling all too well.  There were a lot of things in his life that had been ‘just one of those things’ and it was nothing that he could begrudge her.

It wasn’t something he could begrudge anyone, nor did he want to.

“You should wake your friends,” she said softly.  “Get something to eat.”

“Probably,” he agreed, glancing at his slumbering companions again.  “But if I go, who’ll look after David while we’re gone?”

One corner of her mouth curved into a smile.  “I take it you don’t trust me?”

“Not that far,” he admitted.  “Not yet.”

“Paranoid,” she said, though there was a hint of humor to her voice, as if she found it amusing.

Bryant just shrugged.  She wasn’t wrong—not by a long shot.

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Sixteen – 08

[This post is from Bryant Tapping’s point of view.]

Her hands were deft, her movements certain—she knew what she was doing, he had to give her that.  Bryant could tell that much easily enough.  While he didn’t have his father’s skill or much in the way of training, it was easy to see that she’d been a healer for a long time—perhaps as far back as the end of everything.

She seems like she would be a little young to be like Dad, though.  His lips thinned despite his attempts to keep his expression impassive as he watched the stranger work.  There was something oddly comforting about it, something that if he reflected on it a little more would certainly be less odd.

In her mannerisms and her actions, she did remind him of his father.  It had been so long since he’d seen him, it was enough to make him ache somewhere deep in his chest.

For a second, he closed his eyes.  When he opened them, it was to see her watching him, her expression soft, sympathetic.

His brows knit.  “What?”

“You just seem sadder than you were a moment ago.”

He forced a smile and shook his head.  “It’s nothing.  How is he?”

“I’ll need to mix up a few things to try,” she said.  “Hopefully they’ll help.”

Bryant nodded slowly.  “Have they helped your friends before?”

“A few times,” she said softly.  “But it’s been a long time since I’ve had to mix up any of it, so we’ll see how it goes.”

“But you still have what you need?”

She smiled wistfully.  “Of course I do.  I live in hope.”

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These environs are actually the inspiration for The Valley.
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Photo post in lieu of Monday update.  Wednesday and Friday should be on time.

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Sixteen – 07

[This post is from Bryant Tapping’s point of view.]

“You’re  afraid of that cost.”

“Shouldn’t I be?”  It was keep a bitter note from his tone, and despite his efforts, it leaked in nonetheless.  “Look at what it’s already costing us.”

Her lips thinned as she looked back to David, her hand drifting to gently stroke the sleeping teen’s hair back from his face.  “I suspect he knew the risks when he started on the road.  He sees things, doesn’t he?”

Bryant startled slightly, a fresh chill sweeping through him.  “How did you know?”

She offered a faint smile.  “Oh.  I might have some experience with folks who’ve had that singularly troublesome gift.”

That sounds vaguely ominous.  Frowning, he quietly drew up a chair next to David’s bed, trying to not be in her way or to disturb Issy.  “Really.”

She nodded slightly.  “Oh yes.  Though I doubt that you’d know about them.”

“You could try me.”

Her smile was rueful and she shook her head.  “Let me see if there’s anything I can do for your friend right now, then we can talk about that.  Just trust that I have some experience with these things.”

“I can try to take it on faith,” Bryant said, “but I hope you won’t be offended if I keep a close eye.”

“Not at all,” she said.  “Not at all.  I would expect it.”

He nodded and fell silent, watching as she got to work.

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Sixteen – 06

[This post is from Bryant Tapping’s point of view.]

“It’s not an easy responsibility to shoulder,” she said, her gaze still on him even as he assiduously avoided returning it.  Bryant kept his eyes trained on David, watching his friend in the faint lamplight as his eyes darted beneath their lids—caught in another dream.

Always another dream.  Always another something.  Always looking out for them because no one else can the way I can.  None of them ever really trusted any of the actual adults—not really, not completely.  Everyone just seemed too closed off after Aoife left, and the ones who didn’t know her very well just thought we were all weird, I guess.

“No,” Bryant managed to say.  “It’s not.  It’s always been hard, but I—I don’t know.  At first it was just because all of the adults in the room always seemed to have more important things to be doing.  It just got worse after David’s mother left.”

“Aoife.”

A chill shot through him and he stiffened.  How could she know that?  “We never said her name in that meeting, did we?”

“You didn’t,” she confirmed softly.  “But I can see her brother in your friend’s face.  I’m sure if you looked at Phelan long enough, you’d see it, too, and I’ve spent a lot of time looking at that face.  I would know his nephew—Aoife’s son—anywhere even though I only met her briefly a long time ago.”  She smiled slightly and her gaze, too, strayed back toward David.  “Gray is his father, isn’t he?”

Bryant swallowed hard and nodded, feeling oddly numb.  “Yeah.  How do you know?”

“They came here once,” she said.  “It was a long time ago—before any of your friends were born, obviously.  I imagine that she was probably pregnant when they finally got back to wherever you all were raised.”  A soft sight escaped her as she looked back toward Bryant again.  “You know, every time Cameron rode out toward the east, he would always look, always listen, hoping to find some trace of where you all were.  He’s neve been able to find it.  That place where you all were raised must have been pretty isolated.”

“It was,” Bryant said, lips barely moving.  “But that’s how they wanted it, I think.  I don’t know why, but I think it was a choice.  I never had the guts to ask.  Maybe—maybe someday if I get back there again, I will.”

She nodded.  “You’re safe here, you know.”

“I know.  But we have our quest and it needs to be fulfilled.”  He swallowed hard against the rising lump in his throat, staring at David.  “No matter what the cost.”

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Monday update will be on Tuesday this week.  Wednesday update may go up Wednesday or it may be up on Thursday. No Friday update.

Thanks!

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