Holy Days - Easter

She kept asking herself throughout the night, on Thursday, on Friday, did they believe? Did they believe he was the messiah? 

And as much as it hurt, Mary had to admit, of course not. That was the whole point. Even the disciples hadn’t believed. Not really. Not even Peter. John? Had John believed? At least he’d been there. In the end.

And she asked herself, all over again. Had she? 

Since she had first been told. Yes. Yes, she had believed. It had been a terrible burden. She’d known, all his life. She’d known how it would end.

For the world, his death was just another crucifixion, just another dead messiah. It was easier to end the story that way. Everyone was happy, then. Everyone would forget. That was how it always went. The day they died, that was always difficult, but then, there was always so much company.

She wondered what motivated them. Why so many boasted in the streets. It was a deep yearning, of course, an ancient one, and a horrible burden of a tradition. Their people had escaped from bondage many times. But the world always set another trap.

She’d known. She’d known from the start. And even if she hadn’t, he spoke openly of it, eventually, and eventually even in terms others would understand. It did not blunt watching it play out. Watching him torn. Watching him pierced. Watching him. Die.

Listening to him. She had spent his lifetime listening to him. To the end. To the very end. He’d always had something to say. She always had the time to listen. He spoke to her, from up there. He spoke to John. He spoke to others. He allowed himself to grieve. For him it was a moment he was experiencing for the first time, too, despite a lifetime of anticipation.

She wondered how she still managed tears. Watching it. Holding his body, later, when it had been taken down. While she waited, his body in the tomb. One night. Two nights.

Then this morning. She wasn’t among those he appeared to. That burden, among others, he had passed on to John. Perhaps that’s what he’d meant. Perhaps he knew that if she saw him, again, she would never be able to let go again. She had spent his lifetime giving him to the world. It seemed too much. Because no one had seen him the way she did. 

She waited, still. She waited to see him. She knew she could wait the rest of her life, and she wouldn’t. But she had lived with anticipation before.

She had her faith. It sustained her.

Holy Days - Saturday: An Easter Tale

By then he was dead. 

Some things, perhaps most things, are on a relative scale. Joseph’s doubts about Mary, his difficulty accepting the circumstances of her pregnancy, of needing to be persuaded by the visit of an angel in a dream, none of this should project an image of a man who was in any way unworthy to raise Jesus. In another age, in another context, a fictional one, Joseph is Jonathan Kent, adoptive father to Superman. 

Superman, Clark Kent, is often depicted as gaining his moral character from Pa Kent. Jesus didn’t find his character through Joseph. What he learned was how to be a man.

His mother, Mary, spent her life encouraging him, believing in him, knowing all the while the destiny that awaited him, in this world, in this life. She was, and Joseph was, firmly rooted in this world, this life. This is what they knew. Mary had extraordinary faith. Joseph, meanwhile, was the first model of what a good life could look like.

In those days it was usual for the husband to be older than the wife. Joseph was in his thirties, and Mary not yet in her twenties. This is to say, Joseph was established in his practice, as a carpenter, when Jesus was born, when they made the journey to Bethlehem.

When Jesus was a boy, Joseph was approaching middle age. When Jesus approached his thirties, Joseph was, for that time, an old man.

He had already done everything he could for his son. He led a life of quiet dignity. Joseph didn’t understand the larger concepts of faith any better than anyone; he knew them as well as Mary, certainly, whose faith was less informed by temple worship than in her son, in his destiny. 

Joseph saw how wise his son was. He didn’t try to understand it himself. In fact it was something they never really talked about. They spent their time together in idle chatter, Joseph about the many people he knew, Jesus often quietly, or sharing mutual jokes. They had an easy camaraderie that maybe wasn’t easy to see. It wasn’t for others, anyway. Maybe Joseph took it for granted. He wasn’t alive when his son went out. Perhaps his death was necessary for it to happen. They shared the work together, until it was time for different work.

Time didn’t have as much meaning, in the place where Joseph found himself, after dying. At some point he found himself face to face with his son again.

They didn’t say anything. Jesus hugged him. Joseph tried to understand what he saw in his son’s face. It wasn’t the face he remembered. It wasn’t so much older. But it was sadder. It was also filled with a kind of joy Joseph couldn’t begin to describe. It reminded him of the face his son had had when he was a boy, when he had been found after lingering in the temple. That had been the day everything had changed, when the whole family knew, for the first time, what lay ahead. That is to say, when Joseph knew his son understood his destiny for the first time.

Joseph hugged his son in return. He didn’t want to let go. Not again. Jesus gave him a gentle smile.

Then he was gone.

Holy Days - Good Friday: An Easter Tale

He was an old man, then. He’d been the oldest of them, all those years earlier. He’d known about the Hebrew culture, had studied it somewhat extensively, out of idle academic curiosity. That was why he’d chosen myrrh, then. He’d been led to believe they were going to find a king. He’d chosen it so they could anoint him.

Today, he was a much older man. His bones ached. It hurt to move much at all, and so he was content, most days to not move much at all. Today, though, Balthasar thought about other things. It was early, yet, still very early in the morning. But he’d received news. 

They’d found themselves talking about the old days, this week, revisiting that journey, all those years ago, the baby they’d found in a stable, whom they’d paid homage, even in such a state, to whom they’d given their gifts, the gold, the frankincense, and yes, the myrrh. They’d all had a sense of foreboding. Nothing they’d seen, no signs. They’d heard the rumors of the authorities in Jerusalem.

It’s not true, what they said even in those days, that no one talked about the man, that he existed in a vacuum, that his life was unremarkable in his lifetime. There are remarkable people you treasure whom no one would think to record for posterity. That will always be true. The scale shifts. The everyday kindnesses that are so easy to take for granted, the wisdom that comes from sources outside traditional roles. These are things that can leave a profound impact on the world. They called Balthasar a wiseman, but he thought, he hoped, you didn’t need to be one to understand such things. He knew he was wrong about that. He knew that was the true distinction.

This man had made an impact, and he had inspired fear, not because he led an insurrection, either against Rome or his own people. No, never anything like that. Those are the things that wind up being recorded. They don’t talk about love, about compassion, the things so many people yearn for, so easy to ignore, why they’re so precious.

But that was what had happened to the man. All through the night he’d been undergoing a trial. He’d been arrested. Outside, in the worlds untouched by the circles within Jerusalem, it had quickly become a scandal. Word reached Balthasar quickly, much more quickly than the distance should have allowed. He was worlds away, in so many ways. None of this should have concerned him, and yet it had, many years ago, and even a wiseman couldn’t really have appreciated, then, the implications, so seemingly regional, irrelevant.

The man was going to die. He was going to be executed. He would be long dead before Balthasar could muster himself to undertake another journey. The Romans were a bit too predictable. The authorities there knew how these things worked, all too well. They’d conspired to rid themselves of a pest, who had threatened their peace of mind, their complacency, a man who had dared gather the lost flocks of their society and given them hope. He would end up on a cross. The landscape had begun to look naked, Balthasar was told, if there weren’t at least a few of those about on any given day.

No, he hadn’t considered the myrrh for its other applications. He’d gone in search of a king. Depending on how long it took the man to die, if somehow his family still had the myrrh, it would be used for something very different, before this day was done.

Balthasar found himself ashamed. Ashamed for humanity. Ashamed for his own weakness. Weakness in body, now. Weakness in spirit. Then. Weakness in spirit even this week. They had all undergone a journey when this man was born. They hadn’t bothered, when they knew he would die. No one had. He would die alone. He deserved so much better.

He felt very old. He still didn’t understand faith.

Holy Days - Thursday: An Easter Tale

In those days he had been young, and when he looked back, now, he felt he must have been a child, and he could still remember his elders in the fields, with him, except they were old men, now, and he was in charge, and had been for years, and struggled to remember when it had been any different. When you’re a shepherd you know how your day’s going to go. There’s not much mystery.

There had been, that night, all those years ago, that star shining so brightly, and the angel…Later, he’d told himself he’d imagined it, dreamed it. Anything but admit that it had really happened. Alone, or alone now among those who had experienced it, it was easy to pretend. It had been a lifetime ago.

Anyway, he still occupied the same fields, still there in Bethlehem. Today he was asked to sell one of his sheep. The request came from people he’d been hearing about the last few years, people who had been traveling about, a network, agitated people. It wasn’t hard to find the like. Everyone was agitated these days. No one was happy about the Romans. If he kept to himself, paid his taxes, he’d found he didn’t have to worry about it too much. 

Why someone would want one of his sheep over in Jerusalem, he couldn’t say. Seemed like a lot of bother. He assumed it was for the Passover, but it was a little early, and they’d seemed to be in a rush. “The master needs it now,” they’d said, “He’s in a rush. Never seen him like it.”

There were a lot of masters about, but the one spoken about had tended to inspire a different response. Normally he inspired calm. The shepherd knew these people. These were common people, for the most part, some of them important fishermen from Galilee, sure, who operated in circles similar to his, but who had spent their lives in the same daily fashion as him, busy about their work, hardly the like to change the world. In normal times, anyway. These weren’t normal times.

And this was not a normal day. He wondered. What was so different? What so urgent? 

There was something in the air. A desperation. Something was going to happen. The authorities were frequently given to sudden gestures, to assure the population of who was in control, to solidify their position. These things followed patterns. Troublemakers were rounded up. The shepherd wondered if the master’s luck had run out. 

All that was someone else’s problem. He tended his flock. He sold sheep. The urgency, though. These people. They seemed frightened. This was a movement of common stock. No one usually bothered to include men such as him in important affairs. His fields had been occupied by these people, though. He’d watched from a distance, too far away to hear, but surprised at the level of calm as the crowds listened. 

He decided he’d ask around, in a few days. He led a simple life. But he could involve himself in something like this.

Holy Days - Wednesday: An Easter Tale

Thirty years or so later…

The innkeeper hadn’t much paid attention, at the time, concerning the effect his decision to give a young couple some space to sleep for the night. He’d certainly noticed the effect of Herod’s decision, very soon after. So many innocents lost. He’d heard about the birth that happened in the stable, that to his shame almost hadn’t even noticed was imminent. The couple had been so humble, he’d felt shamed into helping them. The census had made everyone a little crazy. He’d thought, at the time, he’d done nothing to be proud of, giving them that, of all spaces. No dignity. They hadn’t seemed to mind. He had. It bothered him the rest of that night. Then he forgot all about it. Life went on as it always had, in Bethlehem. A quiet place. Certainly no Jerusalem. That was what he’d always treasured about it. Yet somehow he ended up in Jerusalem anyway.

Somehow. Right. He remembered their names. The husband had been a carpenter. The innkeeper remembered that. His line of business? He could always find value in such a trade. He obtained a variety of products from the man, over the years. In this way he learned about the son, the baby who had been born that night. Again, none of this was intentional. A coincidence. The son developed a reputation, over the years. Most of the time, he kept to himself, went about his father’s business. He spent much of his time ruminating, though. Not like a rabbi, although it was often said he ought to follow such a path, take up space in the temple in an official capacity. But he was always humble, exactly as his parents had been that night. 

The years progressed. The innkeeper heard how the son went out on his own, how he walked away from his father’s trade, found a group of friends who liked to listen to all that talk. On this day the innkeeper found himself talking with one of those friends. They said this man wanted to rent one of his rooms.

Passover was approaching. Space was once again at a premium. The innkeeper, all these years later, found he had a role to play in this family’s affairs, one more time. This time there was no hesitation. 

They needed it the next day. He’d heard about what’d happened a few days earlier. He imagined what it must’ve looked like. For a lot of men, for too many, it would’ve been too easy. Basking in the glory. Well, not the carpenter’s son. No, the innkeeper thought it probably felt embarrassing. This man would need someplace private. Strangely, the innkeeper, perhaps too aware of history, felt a certain foreboding. Something bad would happen in the days ahead. He made arrangements for the room to be fitted out in such a manner for a man who had merited such a welcome into town. Fit for a king, the innkeeper thought. In case it was his last chance for such treatment. 

There was another Herod, after all, and, the innkeeper found, names being collected all over again. Support, this time, for what he did not care to know, to be a part of. He was a humble man himself. Went about his work. Tried to believe he’d always done the right thing. He knew he hadn’t. 

The friend of the carpenter’s son gave him a shy kind of smile, upon completion of the deal. He wished he could be among them the next day.

Holy Days - Tuesday: An Easter Tale

Caspar, too, was old. They all were. That was how he saw the world, now. It’s easy to see everything the way you are. This is not a failing. Even wise men can suffer from such vanity.

When he was younger, he had traveled far, with his friends, to a humble place. He had presented frankincense to a baby.

Frankincense had particular significance to the Jews, as he’d gathered, a kind of offering to holy places, to sanctify them. So his gift was more of an acknowledgment. He’d done his research. He was paying his respects. Candidly, he thoughts his friends had been a little eccentric with theirs. But he didn’t have to understand. He let them carry on. They had different ideas, but united in their belief that the world held sacred mysteries. He didn’t pretend to understand the mysteries surrounding this baby. He didn’t need to, he’d decided.

Like all of them he tried to keep tabs on what followed. Not because he became a believer, once he’d learned just what kind of a life that baby grew into. Remember, in the early days it was a mission to the Jews, a matter for Jews. It didn’t expand until later, and by then Caspar was dead. But that’s later.

Now, on a Tuesday in the early days of a week that would change history, Caspar had a chat with his old friend Melchior, and that was when he found out what had happened that Sunday, and what his friend thought of that, the foreboding he felt, the certainty that far from portending good things, it singled the beginning of the end.

Or maybe not. These two certainly had a unique perspective on all of it, a scholarly one, and they were peering in from the outside. They were free to speculate.

So that was what they did.

His friend seemed hopeful. Caspar wasn’t so sure. Anything could happen, right? And the world often seemed determined for the worst outcome, even when he claimed profusely otherwise. He didn’t want to call himself a cynic, but sometimes it seemed the only rational approach. And, well, he was an old man, now. He’d seen many things. They all knew what Herod had done, after all. 

He had to laugh. They had both been so hopeful, then. His friend gave the baby gold. Caspar had brought the incense. A part of him says he knew better than he knew. That part of him was faith. And it was right for him to struggle with it. That was what faith was all about. 

It was only when he had grown so old, that he allowed himself to admit such things.

Holy Days - Monday: An Easter Tale

Melchior was an old man, by then.

Someone told him about it. They told him about what had become of that baby they’d visited, all those years ago, those long decades. 

Each of them, all three, had agreed to bring gifts. He’d chosen gold. At the time he couldn’t really have explained, except the stories had said the baby would grow up to be a king, and so it had seemed appropriate.

But what he’d heard, since, not just what they all heard, later, about what Herod had done, not even to say how he’d tried to trick them, seemed to contradict that. He didn’t really understand it, hadn’t back then, either, not that it had mattered. A different culture, a different world. But in the final analysis, none of that had mattered. What he understood, then, was that he was simply paying homage. He saw no reason, now, to think otherwise.

No, that baby had not grown up to be a king. In that world, in that Roman world, after he’d thought about it, that had never really seemed likely anyway, or in any sense that would’ve been interpreted in that way, then, trivial. He’d heard all about the culture the baby grew into, its vision of the future. He listened as it was explained to him, what that baby grew up professing. He knew a thing or two about some of that, surely.

But he had never seen any of that in quite the manner he saw it from this new perspective.

And then he heard about what happened yesterday. Yesterday that baby truly had, for a moment, grown up to be a king. Melchior had to laugh. In a selfish moment he even wondered whatever had happened to that gold. Many men would have at least laced their attire in it. He didn’t see that as a possibility, here.

He would never see this man for himself. He saw him once, as a baby. He worried about him. He knew that culture, that world, everything that man had already struggled against. Such crusades were not meant long for the world. Or maybe.

He still could not escape this man’s story. Just perhaps, it was a story that would endure. Melchior had first read it before any of it had even happened. He followed a star to see its first fruits for himself.

He decided it wasn’t so hard to believe.

Holy Days - Palm Sunday: An Easter Tale

The angel Gabriel had almost literally seen it all.

Angels came forth sometime before the earthly realms. They were never God; they were never omniscient, omnipresent, certainly not omnipotent. But they were certainly privileged.

But they could observe. Gabriel had done a great deal of observing. He saw what humans got up to. He saw the many ways they envisioned faith. He saw the many varieties of religion, how they started, how they played out, the effect they had on humans. He knew God’s relationship with humanity was complicated. God didn’t just pop in for a visit with anyone. Most of the time it was completely a matter of faith, and believing what was said, and knowing what to believe.

Every now and then, Gabriel was sent to intervene. That was something he’d done, when Christ was born, into the world. None of any of that was a mystery to Gabriel. He knew from the moment of his announcement how it was all going to play out.

So on the Sunday before the end of that brief life on earth, he watched with some curiosity how Christ’s day progressed. He watched Christ’s friends procure the donkey. He saw the happy frenzy in the streets, as word spread. He may have watched humanity since its infancy but he honestly couldn’t say he understood it any better than he ever had. 

He simply allowed himself to get caught up in the moment, even knowing where it was leading. 

Humanity can be fickle. If the right people align, then it can be an organic miracle. That, he thought, was what Christ had always tried to say. If the wrong people align, it can be a disaster. That’s what he thought God had been trying to say since Eden., since the serpent, since Cain. Listen to the wrong people, get caught up in yourself…

But this moment, this perfect, impossible moment. For Gabriel it seemed to symbolize what Christ’s life was all about. Not what would happen in a handhold days, which again, even someone who doesn’t see all time all at once knew was coming, since for God, for Christ, was known from the beginning, and was an open understanding in Heaven. No. It was watching people be joyful. 

Which was really why he’d taken the assignment to announce Christ’s birth. It was indeed a privilege, getting to see these humans, who struggled so much, happy. They didn’t know what to expect. Gabriel knew and he was still happy. He didn’t know about this day, that this would happen, too. But he hadn’t needed to.

So that was also why he so enjoyed watching Christ make his way through the streets, through the palms. This was Gabriel’s faith.

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 10 (Conclusion): "Centennial"

Sia might never have seen Night again, but that doesn’t mean Oliver didn’t.

     A hundred years later, someone else was calling themselves Oliver Row, but as had long been tradition, they liked to think the life of a previous one was more or less their own, too, and so their lingering memories (every one of them kept a journal of some kind), and so the current Oliver was interested to know as the Oliver at the time what had become of Night, whether she had, as Sia had supposed, departed Earth, before the war, before everything changed, again.

     Of course she hadn’t.

     Oliver never even considered it a possibility.  He waited patiently, as it happens, for Night to visit him, as he knew she would, in her fear, her trepidation, her anxiety, same as anyone, human or Danab, or another other alien race, wherever their origin, the impossible challenge of processing such things easily, as Sia seemed to have, but had really been a mask, as so many choose to wear, which Oliver, then, had allowed her to keep, but had kept tabs on her, when the Danab came, when the war came, as he watched her devote herself to preparing elaborate meals, which, he noted, had become quite the obsession around the world, in households that had never so much as cracked an egg, before.  Nervous tension, the creator.  Eventually. 

   Oliver wasn’t so lucky, and neither was Night.  He worried about her most of all, not because he feared her people would decide to execute her, but that she would harm herself, out of shame, embarrassment, any of the lies she’d be willing to tell herself, this ultimate sense of betrayal, of whole planets, that she had so willingly plunged herself into.

     All because of a little curiosity.

     Same as anyone.  That’s what he told her, when she finally did come to see him.

     “You didn’t do anything wrong,” he said.

     “It certainly seems otherwise at the moment,” she said.

     “Forget the moment,” he said.  “You already did.  Your whole course of action defied all that.  Defied it because you knew it was going to happen.  You did think you were going to stop it.  You’re some kind of princess, aren’t you?  I bet you never told Sia that.”

     “I didn’t want to scare her,” she said.

     “Funny way of showing it,” he said.

     “You wouldn’t understand,” she said.

     “Listen, we’re all in the same boat,” he said.  “We’re all blood.”

     “That’s not what I meant,” she said.

     “I know,” he said.

     “She needed to see at a level she could understand,” she said.  “She had a much different life than either of us.”

     “I appreciate your saying so,” he said.

     “I wouldn’t say it if it wasn’t true,” she said.

     “There’s that alarming forthrightness,” he said.”

     “Probably something to do with my upbringing,” she said.

     “Yeah,” he said.  “Probably.”

     “I don’t know my way forward, Oliver,” she said.  “I’m frightened.  I don’t have a role to play anymore.”

     “Narrative horror,” he said.  “I read a book about that, once.  The author was more concerned about the past, but it applies to the future, too, I guess.  That’s the problem.  That’s, really, always the problem.  Right now, there’s fighting going on all over the world.  Sia’s not a part of it.  I’m not a part of it.  You’re not.  You think you should be.  You think you should be.  You think you owe a debt or something.  You think you caused it.  You didn’t.  This was going to happen.  You have no blood on your hands.  Maybe it’s the Danab in you, but there’s humanity, too.  I know what the humanity says.  Maybe the Danab does, too.  I don’t know.  You have to trust me on this.  You’re not to blame.  That’s just how we are.  We were like this long before those aliens took your ancestors into space.  That’s why they were, because they were fighting anyway.  A lot of trouble has been put into thinking about why this is.  Some people think our most cherished beliefs about it.  I don’t agree.  I think it’s just nature.  We can’t control it.  We can only determine what we do in response.  How we view it.  How we learn from it.  It’s not about when the fighting ends, Night, because that always happens, just as inevitably as it starting up again.  I never agreed with the notion that someday it’ll just wipe us all out.  Nature is too indifferent.  It has no role for us to play.  We just need to forgive ourselves.  That’s what you’ve got to do.  You can’t stop this from happening, you never could, but you can help people understand.  You can start with yourself.  Like the rest of your people, it was simple curiosity.  That’s it.  And that’s fine!”

     “You make it sound so innocent,” she said.

     “Innocence is always the first victim,” he said, “but it’s never taken away.  It can’t be.  It can’t be a casualty.  We just need to fight to reclaim it.  Sounds impossible.  But it’s the only inevitable thing about it.  That’s nature, too.”

     “Okay,” she said.
     “During the course of all this I acquired a nasty habit,” he said.  “Coffee.”

     “Anastassia introduced it to me,” she said.

     “The trick is, there’s always different ways to make it,” he said, “and you’ve got to find the one that makes sense to you.”

     “We don’t have coffee on Danab,” she said.

     “You already sound more civilized,” he said.

     “We have worse,” she said.

     “I’m sure you just haven’t figured that out, either,” he said.  “Don’t mean to be rude.”

     “I’m beginning to suspect that’s just nature, too,” she said.

     “Probably,” he said.  “Something like that.”

     They continued their little chat, and Night explained to Oliver what they did drink on Danab, something they’d developed long ago, on the spaceships of the aliens who took her people from Earth.  He suspected it sounded something like motor oil.  She laughed at that.

     She lived longer than he did.  That Oliver died decades after the peace was declared, after Earth was welcomed into a galactic alliance, full of wary members who had no idea what to make of these humans, who so quickly adapted to and then took over an existing space corps, despite even more begrudging acceptance into it.  Other Olivers followed, Olivia, sometimes Olive, Ollie, Ol, as it had always been, until a full century had passed.  Sometimes the current occupant merely retired.  It was another Oliver, from this vantage point.  Night had died, finally, not so long before.  Long life, along with all the other advantages, as he still chose to view them, as many jealous humans did.  Oliver’s wasn’t that choice, but rather admiration. 

     It had taken a great deal of courage.  Sometimes curiosity can produce wonders.  But it takes warriors, soldiers traveling along ancient seas, to brave such treacherous waters.  Sometimes we have the privilege to make the decision ourselves.  Of the three of them. It was Oliver’s opinion that it was Night who most closely matched that description.

     He tipped his cup at all three.  It takes all kinds.

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 9: "The Winds of Death"

When they met again, at the same coffee shop, Sia and Oliver each sat down with cups they intended to drink.  Sia noticed that Oliver didn’t add anything into his this time.  He seemed nervous, agitated, kept sipping at his cup.  He’d removed the lid.  She watched him with anticipation.  She held hers in her hands, and brought it up to her lips for steady swallows.  She didn’t much notice the temperature.  There was a single packet of sugar mixed in, a little creamer, which changed the color to a dark tan.

     “The whole point of all this is that there’s going to be a war,” he said finally.  “A war.  A full-on, all-out war.  A true world war.  It’s going to be all of us, all on the same team.  I’m not sure we have a chance.”

     “I actually don’t think that’s true,” she said.  “Why would she have even bothered.  Night.  Her name is Night.  In case you didn’t already know that.”

     “In fact I didn’t,” Oliver said.  “Feeling a little inadequate these days, thank you very much.  I was workshopping Danab Lady.  Or maybe Mad Lady.”

     “Night,” she said.  “She’s actually a very nice lady, when you stop worrying about all the horrible implications.”

     “I’m sure she is,” he said.

     “We had a little chat,” she said.

     “A lot of that going around, lately,” he said.

     “I’ve found them helpful,” she said.  “I mean, I don’t think we have to worry about it.  About the war.  I mean, there’s going to be a war, and it’s going to be worldwide, global, devastating, as wars go…but I don’t think it’s an extinction event.  I don’t think it’s about annihilation.   I don’t think it’s avoidable, no matter how you look at it, but that’s just how these things go.  That’s how humanity says hello.”

     “That’s awfully cynical,” he said.  “And also, since when were you the level head in all this.  I’m the one who was supposed to know what was going on.”

     “That’s awfully condescending,” she said.  “Since you asked…I guess I knew what this was all going to lead to, somewhere along the line.  At some point.  I kind of had to figure a secret as big as the one I’d stumbled onto was never going to be simple, not with that scrubbed from the historical record.  There had to be a reason, and…there was.  There absolutely was!  C’mon, you had to guess, too, at some point?  You know more than I did, for longer, and you’re going to tell me you honestly thought it was going to turn out any different?  That you thought it was really going to be like all those silly movies?  I mean, I’d love to see the movie, if I didn’t have to experience it, but I guess there’ll be a movie, eventually, anyway, humanity’s brush with its destiny!  From its past!  I’m sure it’s going to be horrible, but…Endurable.  They’re not going to just come wipe us out.  Weaponry has to exist on a scale that makes sense, if we’re essentially the same people.  And we are.  They can’t invent anything we wouldn’t be able to understand, or confront.  We already know this, Oliver.  Ollie.  Can I call you Ollie?”

     “Actually, I’ve been workshopping,” he said.

     “Night came here like she’d road a bus, took a cab,” she said.  “I don’t know, drove a car.  If she had been, I don’t know, part of a vanguard, she really wouldn’t have just orchestrated our bumping into each other like that.  Think about it.  I know I have.  Very little else.  Actually, that’s a lie.  I’ve been distracting myself a lot.  You have no idea.  You’d think I would be able to think about anything else.  But I had to.  I think that’s really how all of this works.  Some of us are able to cut through the chatter.  I guess somehow I’m one of them.  I know you are, Ollie!  C’mon!  You can’t tell me otherwise!  I don’t know you at all.  Really!  But I know you better than anyone.  I know the type.  I know you, Ollie!  I know you understand this.  It’s going to be war.  And then it’ll be something else.  We’re just going to have to learn to deal with it.  That’s going to be a whole thing.  It’ll get complicated.  That’s how these things work.  That’s how it always works.  It’ll be okay.”

     “It’s really supposed to be me,” he said, “explaining all this.”

     “Don’t be crass,” she said.

     “Suppose we’ll have to invite her over for dinner.  Also, each other.”

     “I don’t think she’s here anymore,” she said.  “I think she went back home.  Or somewhere.  I don’t know.  I don’t really know her.  I mean, I know her.  But she went out of her way to clarify how little I could possibly understand her life.  But that’s life.  Biggest story in history, and that’s what it boils down to.  I guess it figures.”

     “It just needed someone capable of seeing it that way,” he said.

     “I have no idea how it ended up being me,” she said.

     “I think if you thought about it enough you would,” he said.  “Coffee’s awful.  I don’t mean coffee in general.  I’m drinking plenty these days.  I mean the coffee here.  Just awful.”

     “You know what?” she said.  “I think I agree.  It’s just awful.”

     “Let’s not come here again,” he said. 

     “Agreed,” she said.  “Easily.  See?  Something ordinary.  Simple.  That’s how these things really are.  Just ordinary life, regardless of the circumstances.”

     “You still curious about Duende?” he asked.

     “I think I learned enough,” she said.  “For now.”

     “I know what you mean,” he said.

     “I’m not finishing this cup,” she decided.

     “A wise decision,” he said.

     They slipped back into the night, together, and then went off in different directions.

     In the ensuing years, Sia never saw Oliver, much less Night, again.  It’s not worth summarizing her experiences, here.  That would be another story, and really, Sia wasn’t a part of the fighting, and her life wasn’t significantly impacted by it.  Not anymore than it had already been, before it had ever begun.

     So the rest is mere epilogue, as, too, this, as is everything, mere prologue.

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 8: "The Winds of Fortune"

Sia had been feeling pretty small, which had made it increasingly difficult to think outside of her home, and really, much more than outside of her bed.  There was a knock at the door, late at night, one day, and she had really wanted to believe it was someone at the wrong door, because that was how she really wanted to view everything she’d been trying to do, that idiot search through her ancestry, that had led to all of this, and she wasn’t going to answer, and then she found her body moving anyway, opening the door, and there was, of course, the lady, who had exploded everything, whose existence, even if Sia chose not to believe anything else, presented the last piece of the puzzle, either of Sia’s loss of sanity, as something that had occurred years earlier or that night, or nothing much short of an intimation of the apocalypse…

     No pressure!

     “I’m going to simplify things a little,” the woman said, walking past Sia.  “My name, or so I’m going to call myself, is Night, and I really wish all I had to do was sing a song, nothing more simple or pleasant than that, but all this has been…something of a trap, and it’s caught all of us, all three of us, and it’s only going to get worse from there.”

     “I can offer you water,” Sia said.  “From the tap.  I have a variety of novelty mugs to offer you as well.  I don’t use them.  I don’t know if you have mugs where you come from.  They’re cups.  We use them to drink hot beverages.  I don’t like hot beverages.  I don’t know why I have them.  It’s the custom.  It’s expected.  I guess I figured if I ever had a visitor, I’d need them.  I’m babbling.”

     “That’s okay,” Night said.  “I guess I needed to talk to someone who would understand.”

     “Lady, you came to the wrong house,” Sia said.

     “You don’t understand,” Night said.  “You’re exactly who I need to talk to.  You’re the only person in this universe who could possibly understand.  A long time ago, when I was a little girl, I was told a bedtime story.”

     “Oh,” Sia said.  “If you don’t want a hot beverage, in a mug, I can at least offer you a seat.  You can see for yourself the options.  They’re sparse.  I’m sorry.  You’re my first guest.”

     “Nothing I don’t recognize,” Night said.  “The bedtime story consisted of a family tradition that had been passed down by every generation, and it was about a man named Duende, who had fallen into possession of a book, which itself had been lost, the Book of Danab.  I suppose it was a kind of testament, as close to a religion my people could formulate for themselves.  They’d seen too much of the universe, even at that very early point, to worry too much about such things.  They otherwise maintained the old traditions, from here, from Earth.  We’re really not as different as you might think.”

     “I think if you and I approached the same guy for a date, the guy would find it pretty easy to distinguish,” Sia said. 

     “Don’t be so petty,” Night said.  “Or so small.”

     “Easy for you to say,” Sia said.  “Actually, that’s kind of insulting.  Proves my point, too.”

     “You’re being provincial,” Night said.

     “Hey, you’re the one who came here,” Sia said.  “Only planet I’ve ever known.”

     “Not your fault,” Night said.  “Actually, I think that’s really the problem, here, why I had to come.  I worry about the future, Anastassia.”

     “We all do,” Sia said.

     “I think you’ve already talked about this with Oliver Row,” Night said.

     “You eavesdrop on top of everything else,” Sia said.  “Not cool.”

     “It was at least logical to assume you had,” Night said.  “You can’t just ignore everything you’ve learned.  I couldn’t.”

      “I could certainly try!” Sia said.  “In fact, that’s exactly what I was trying to do tonight, besides sleeping! when you knocked at my chamber door.”

     “I don’t understand the reference,” Night said.

     “I lend you a copy,” Sia said.  “Actually, you know what?  We could make all this a lot easier if you gave me a book.  Bridge the gap.  Know what I mean?”

     “That’s not why I’m here,” Night said.

     “You worry too much,” Sia said.

     “You have no idea what’s coming,” Night said.

     “That’s the point,” Sia said.  “That’s what I began to realize.  I’m kind of comfortable in my ignorance.  It’s actually better that way.”

     “You won’t have the luxury for such foolishness,” Night said.

     “Nothing I can do about it,” Sia said.

     “That’s…actually pretty accurate,” Night said.  “I came because…I had to see.  I had to see what was going to be lost.”

     “That sounds horrible,” Sia said.

     “Nothing so provincial,” Night said.  “I mean, what humanity is now.  Not what I can see on the surface, not the mere facts.  What it is.”

     “I guess that makes sense,” Sia said.

     “To put a human face on it,” Night said.

     “Likewise,” Sia said.  “I guess.”

     “I feel truly sorry for you,” Night said.  “I apologize.  You can’t possibly know.  I can’t show you.  I wish I could.  I can describe details, I can show you images.  You wanted answers.  I have them.  I wish I didn’t.  Not because I’m ashamed, but because the world is going to interpret all of it very differently.  I think you will, too.”

     “I think I crossed that threshold years ago,” Sia said.  “I have a face, too.  I see you.  That’s enough.”

     “It won’t be for everyone,” Night said.

     “That’s the way the world works,” Sia said.  “Your existence doesn’t change that.”

     “I wish I had met you earlier,” Night said.

     “Why?” Sia said.  “You said it yourself.  It wouldn’t change anything.”

     “It would’ve changed me,” Night said.

     “Ah,” Sia said.

     “I feared so much,” Night said.  “Looking at this, from the other side, I…never expected to find someone like you.”

     “Sometimes there are small miracles,” Sia said.  “I guess those are the only ones that really exist.  Why they’re so hard to see.”

     “I think I’ll take one of those…hot beverages,” Night said.  “In a mug.  I would like to…see your collection.”

     They sat in silence, after a while, drinking.

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 7: "Room"

Oliver found himself sitting in that office at his desk, which was cluttered with notebooks, not just his computer, since he happened to come from a time when one still very much made sense to him, and the other was used mostly for research. 

     What bothered him, at the moment, wasn’t so much shattering the worldview of some girl, but the other woman, the Danab, who had breached the protocols his office had begun to assume must exist, in a society his office could only imagine, filled with hunches and assumptions, which the presence of this woman, now, on Earth, and the manner in which even he had discovered it, now pierced like a flaming arrow…

     He didn’t even have a name for her.  Some of the agency’s conclusions seemed to have been confirmed.  Physically, she outclassed anything he’d ever seen, whether in person or out in the strange avenues of culture, real and fictional.  Well, maybe not fictional.  She seemed to embody the current interpretations of Amazons.  In ancient Greek times, Amazons were women driven to the edges of society, making all manner of decisions that would’ve made it problematic at best to reintegrate.  No, in the current parlance, this woman was a god.  A truly perfect physical specimen, taller, more muscled, in no way bulky but lean, useful, and obviously gifted with an intellect to match…Perfect.  Or someone’s idea of perfect, anyway. 

     A thousand years in the past, aliens had visited Earth and took what they thought to be the best of mankind then available, and then artificially selected, bred, a master race.  On Earth it would’ve been called, a century ago, eugenics, and it was a notion that had led to a world war.

     …The only problem with all that being that when it came right down to it, physical and mental attributes only account for so much.  Humans, as presumably any species, are riddled with neuroses.  Whoever those aliens had been, they’d had their motivations, probably trying to compete with some other alien race, and they were probably never even on the same track.  That’s really how these things tend to go.

     Which was why Oliver didn’t worry too much about this woman’s advantages, her attributes…He needed to know her, which was the only way he could understand why she’d come to Earth, what she hoped to accomplish, and…

     It struck him.  She must’ve been looking for Duende, too, must have looked at the same facts, from the opposite end, as Sia.  Simple as that.  They really had converged at the same point for the same reasons.  It gave him a little comfort to think so.

     She must’ve been some kind of rogue agent, the same kind of figure as Sia, but in the context of her society.  Oliver knew something about that himself, being one in a long line of Oliver Rows.  What he couldn’t bring himself to explain to Sia, what would be impossible to explain to anyone, was why the line existed in the first place, how it set him apart, had made, essentially, his whole association with House Argos meaningless, had exposed House Argos itself as meaningless, once he’d understood it himself…Tracing the history of the name (which would be an entirely different story) had been an entirely different mission, once he'd decided to look into it, putting faces to the lineage, that’d been the first step.  He saw at once how the whole business had driven his predecessors to distraction, how they’d been so busy justifying their existence, they’d never stopped to wonder why they did.  At the very beginning of the line had been a different name, which of course had been Duende.

     This was how he himself had become obsessed with Duende, what had led him to meeting Sia, meeting this mysterious Danab.  Duende had been among those abducted by the aliens, a Danish raider, a Viking, involved in a war with the French, who’d been a leader, who must have been important enough that these Danab kept visiting Earth, obsessively, as if to justify their existence, to see the fruits of what had happened here, in the line, so that they might better understand themselves, and…never found what they were looking for.  Eventually they seem to have given up.

     In time, since the origins of Oliver Row, like Sia, began with Duende, so that they were distantly related, as he had to assume the mystery woman was, too, a true family affair, someone in the line had put the pieces together, uniquely motivated, recruited by this point into House Argos, an otherwise meaningless organization given its true purpose in ensuring steady resources for the Olivers, and discovered why these alien visits had never amounted to anything, but in time, as with all patience, finally running out thanks to the ambitions of some upstart, the details of which Oliver couldn’t possibly know.  But some facts of history, by any reckoning, will repeat themselves no matter how much preparation takes part.  Chaos takes no heed of order.

     There really wasn’t anything he could do, now, having reached the culmination of all the work he, his line, and the agency had been a part of over the centuries.  It had all amounted to so much futility, as had to have been obvious, and just as obviously suppressed, all that time.

     He shuffled through some loose sheets, meaningless paperwork.  He switched on the computer and found the social media site he’d spent so much time talking with Sia, before any of them had become aware of what it all meant.

     She didn’t respond to his messages.  He wondered if she’d been scared away, if she was considering any one of a thousand rash and equally meaningless gestures.  The world doesn’t listen to nobodies, or agencies it doesn’t know exists. 

     Absently, he wondered if the Danab, if the woman, had ever been a part of the network, if these people had any idea such things existed, if they could possibly have cared.  Meaningless.  He suddenly felt that the only word in existence that mattered, the meant anything, was meaningless.  He had a strong sense of faith, but sometimes it felt more abstract than most people would be comfortable understanding.  He’d never suffered a loss of faith.  He figured, now, that it probably felt something like this.

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 6: "Primary Colors"

Oliver and Sia met for coffee, a few weeks later.  Sia wasn’t much for drinking coffee, had never really understood the appeal of it, had never particularly needed it, having a generous store of energy within herself and never, say, having had to work overnight shifts, but sometimes one agrees to things that involve other things in a fairly nominal fashion, and while both of them ordered coffees and drank their coffees, the coffee is to be understood as pretext, which is how they both viewed it, too.  Sia watched as Oliver stirred in a generous amount of flavored creamer, hazelnut, and several packets of sugar, or whatever it was that was inside them, and snapped the cap back on, take a sip, make a face that seemed to suggest pleasure, but then, for the next few minutes, he left the cup untouched, and not a single word was shared between them.  She got the sense that Oliver was comfortable in such silences.

     “The first thing you’ve got to understand,” he eventually began, his right hand invariably drifting toward the cup, as it had been in the preceding silence, as he continued, “is that House Argos didn’t begin, so far as I know, with the vital information that became its very reason for existence.”

     “That sounds like a contradiction,” she said.

     “It probably is,” he said.  “Though I’ve found that very few things worth preserving remain consistent with their origins in their current state.”

     “That sounds philosophical,” she said.
     “That’s probably about right,” he said.  “This is the kind of job that gives you plenty of time to think.”

     “That’s all of them,” she said.  “I don’t trust anyone who isn’t constantly thinking.”

     “You’re probably right about that,” he said.

     “You can generally tell the difference,” she said.

     “I hate them, too,” he said.  “Although it’s probably not their fault.”

     “It’s safer to assume,” she said.

     “We had other mysteries,” he said.  “We.  They.  It gets a little complicated, as I’ve suggested.  This is a planet, as I imagine they all are, filled with mysteries of its own, and some of them led to dramatically dead ends, the kind of nonsense conspiracy that’s popular among the riffraff you no doubt waded through in your own efforts.”

     “Oh, definitely,” she said.

     “There’s always the one seemingly innocuous clue, though,” he said.  “In your case it was a single name, the pursuit of which led you to everything else.  Or me, at any rate.”

     “Duende,” she said. 

     “Yes,” he said.  “That’s generally how it works.  You find the one true thing, and it leads to everything else.  For House Argos, it was learning about the other houses.  How we got our naming scheme.”

     “Are you just going to come out and tell me things?” she asked.

     “That’s the idea,” he said.  The other houses.  The ones that belonged to them.  The Danab.  The descendants of that ancestor of yours.  The branch that led out into space.  There are still things we don’t know.  But they’ve visited often enough, they left breadcrumbs.  Our friend, the other day, is hardly the first.  I suspect she might think so.  There’s a generous amount of time to account for, hardly the kind for anyone to have kept a track of, not at her level.  Too desperate.  She knows something that scared her enough to do something rash.  She was alone that night for a reason, Sia.  And she should be.  We’ve been following those breadcrumbs for centuries.  Nothing humanity was ever ready to confront.  We can’t even agree on basic facts of known history.  We allow our interpretations to be colored by petty squabbles we inherited from people who were actually affected by them, but arrive in the present with no more relevance than something happening right now in someone’s kitchen halfway around the world, a simple decision about what to eat.  The kitchen they’re in right now, up there?  They’re discussing truly consequential matters.  All I have is fear, but it’s legitimate fear, Sia.  You found me.  I found you.  She found us.  That’s too much happening.  This isn’t just some coincidence, not anymore, not at this rate.  We passed the event horizon, and we didn’t even know it.  Not even us.  House Argos.  Humanity.  Even them.  The Danab.”

     “You’re kind of scaring me,” she said.

     “There’s really no point,” he said.  “What’s going to happen is going to happen.  That’s what a lot of us have been trying to accept.  House Argos.  There comes a time, an event horizon of its own, when a little knowledge turns into a dangerous thing, and then simply passes…back into knowledge again.  That’s the hardest thing in the world.  It transforms from information to action and back into information.  That’s the way of things.  That’s what the whole sum of the modern age has been struggling to comprehend.  It’s going to seem incredibly meaningless, soon.  That’s what we fear.”

     “But then it’ll just be another piece of trivia,” she said.

     “That’s the idea,” he said.  “Some turning points, though, are so big, they warp everything around them, utterly transforming the world, and in our struggles to accept that they’ve happened, we risk losing more than we should’ve gained.  This is going to be the biggest event in human history.  This is truly going to be…the war to end all wars.  The biggest fear, the biggest fiction we’ve been telling ourselves for more than a century.  A war between worlds.  We kept telling ourselves, any civilization sufficiently advanced to travel easily through the stars, would necessarily have been sufficiently advanced…to make such a notion meaningless.  For us.  For humanity.  Get what I’m saying?”

     “But you’re saying they’re us,” she said.

     “Exactly,” he said.  “That makes it a thousand times worse,” he said.  “In every way possible.”

     “I opened a real can of worms,” she said.

     “That’s generally why we’ve tried to keep a lid on it,” he said.  “People are too good at panicking as it is.  You don’t want them to know that the thing they’re actually going to experience, sometime into the future, is worse than anything they’re already imagining.  We play through those scenarios, at the office.  It ain’t pretty.”

     “Yeah, she said, “I guess.”

     “So that’s everything you need to know, except all the little details,” he said.

     “It was just the little details I wanted,” she said.

     “Sometimes a little knowledge is a terrible thing,” he said.

     “That seems like an oversimplification,” she said.

     “Probably,” he said.

     He drank his coffee at this point, seeming to relish it.  She found hers to be cold, which made it easier to drink.  The thing she’s always least understood was why anyone would relish it hot.

Soldiers of Ancient Seas, Part 5: "In the Garden of Good & Evil"

They all met, one evening, strolling downtown, the sidewalks bustling, everyone chatting around them, and how it was that a conversation formed between them might itself be considered a story, because that’s the real mystery, the magic of how life works in its simplest ways, no matter how we might try to interpret it otherwise, how the world Sia was growing up in seemed to function at its core, without being explained, helpfully, by Sia and Oliver agreeing to meet up that night, because saying so would be a lie, and worse than what might be said about it otherwise.

     The truth of it was Sia, attempting to have something of a normal life, ventured out that day in search of something to do, and during the course of her ambling happened to spot the pin Oliver was wearing, featuring the logo she’d begun to accept as the only face of House Argos she was ever going to see.  She wasn’t going to do anything, say anything, when Oliver turned around and looked directly at her, as if he’d somehow sensed her presence, but the truth was it was only coincidence, and the force of her imagination that pressed the events onward, and the worst words expressed between them were an awkward apology, and somewhere down the street someone scoffed, and of course that was Night, and it was Sia becoming angry and confrontational that led to everything else.

     “Sorry,” Sia said.

     “No problem,” Oliver said.

     “Please!” Night said.

     “Excuse me?” Sia said.

     “Please,” Night said again.  “You don’t need me to explain.  You can’t be that dense.”

     “You’re being rude,” Oliver said.

     “I think you just need to move on, lady,” Sia said.

     “I think you need to wake up,” Night said.

     “That’s just uncalled for,” Oliver said.
     “Take a look at the pin again,” Night said.

     “How do you even know I was looking in the first place?” Sia asked.

     “I was watching, okay?” Night said.

     “That’s creepy,” Sia said.

     “I agree,” Oliver said.

     “You’re both going to need to be walked through this,” Night said.

     “Lady, you have no idea,” Oliver said.

     “Trying to play it discreet isn’t going to work here,” Night said.

     “You certainly made sure of that,” Oliver said.

     “That’s the logo,” Sia said.

     “Exactly,” Night said.

     “The logo of House Argos,” Sia said, “which is now a thing I’ve said out loud.”

     “It gets less awkward,” Oliver said.  “Actually, we don’t tend to use it ourselves, come to think of it.  No one tends to use the name of the place they work for, really.  It’s just too obvious.  You do tend to read it a lot, though.”

     “I’m trying to make this easier,” Night said.

     “You could’ve done a better job,” Sia said.

     “While maintaining your own anonymity,” Oliver said.

     “That’s the idea,” Night said.

     “Still very, very creepy,” Sia said.

     “Says the girl who just happened to bump into the guy she’s been chatting with on the internet,” Night said.

     “You kind of spoiled the curve a little,” Sia said.  “Whoever you are.”

     “I have some ideas,” Oliver said.

     “I bet you do,” Night said.

     “In my line of work,” Oliver said, “it’s usually expecting to see things that aren’t human.  But then you aren’t and you are, aren’t you?”

     “That’s the general idea,” Night said.

     “I have no idea what any of that means,” Sia said.

     “Care to field this, Field Agent?” Night said.

     “A long time ago, her ancestors were human,” Oliver said.  “Generally speaking, they aren’t anymore.  And they are.”

     “Which is the most racist way possible to put it,” Night said.

     “You’re speaking English very well, by the way,” Oliver said.

     “I try to blend in,” Night said.  “It’s not a very formal language, the way it’s used these days.”

     “You’re not human,” Sia said.

     “I am,” Night said.  “And I’m not.”

     “She’s the answer to everything you’ve ever wanted to know.”

     “I’m also the one who set all this up,” Night said.

     “You couldn’t possibly have coerced me into taking a walk today,” Sia said.

     “True,” Night said, “probably.  But I certainly had plenty of opportunity to influence your friend here.”

     “Oliver Row,” Oliver said.

     “Sia,” Sia said.  “Anastassia.  Hard name to pronounce, so I shortened it.”

     “I know,” Oliver said.

     “Of course you do,” Sia said.

     “It’s Greek,” Night said, “as I understand it.  They would’ve been nice to know, in their prime.  But that was well before my time.”

     “You wanted answers, Sia,” Oliver said.  “This lady’s capable of providing much more of them than I could.”

     “Right here on the sidewalk,” Sia said. 

     “No better place or time,” Oliver said.

     “I could think of a few,” Sia said.

     “Nobody’s listening,” Night said.  “Nobody cares.  They’ve got their own little lives to worry about.  The world could be ending.”

     “That’s an awfully specific hypothetical,” Oliver said.

     “An example,” Night said.

     “So you’d certainly like me to think,” Oliver said.  “The problem is, it’s been my business since well before my lifetime to worry about exactly that.”

     “You were looking for answers, Sia,” Night said.  “As your friend here suggested, I’m here to give them.”

     “Doubtful,” Oliver said.  “You’re not here on any official capacity.  You’d never have come alone if you had.  She would’ve seen it on the news long before she saw you on a sidewalk.”

     “That’s the wild imagination you humans have been so good at cultivating,” Night said.

     “Driving ourselves to distraction, I sometimes think,” Sia said.

     “All my stories involve the past,” Night said.

     “Must be boring,” Oliver said.

     “You’ve lived fanciful lives,” Night said.  “You’re hardly the best judge.”

     “This is going nowhere fast,” Sia said.

     “The only reason it hasn’t gotten a lot more complicated has nothing to do with me,” Night said.  “Your friend’s agency is just waiting to swarm.  That’s the real reason this is playing out so casually.”

     “She has me there,” Oliver said.

     He was the first to step away from the small group.  Sia was so busy worrying about her sudden sense of security slipping away, she didn’t even notice when, or how, Night made her exit.

     She expected to hear from both again.