The strap on his bag is loose; it keeps unhooking itself. There's nothing breakable in there, but it makes him nervous. //Mindfulness//, he thinks. Never forgetting. It slipped off his shoulder at the last bus station, and made it down almost to his knees before he caught it, slinging his backpack to the floor in the process. He was embarrassed, although nobody was looking. He has a habit of feeling watched even when there's nobody around. This bus, the only one that ever gets as far into the Hills as he needs to go, has been going since eight that morning. Everyone was so sleepy, then. Like a team, colleagues or... Now they are each alone together, waking and drowsing, all on their own schedule. He misses that feeling, sixteen hours later; [[that adventure]] they were all on.His feet crunch the calichi and gravel at the depot. Not even a soda machine, the comforting buzz of electricity; clank and sweet thumping release when you've made your selection. Anything to feel like he hasn't left the real world altogether. If he weren't worried about getting lost or stranded, or hounded by wolves, he might play music from his phone, just for company. He's already missing them, his sixteen-hour family; he wishes them a weak good luck. Past the fences to the south there is the sweet, acrid smell of [[brackish water|South]]. The white stones of the road are lit to the west, like a snowy path under a full moon. What this will look like next week, when the moon is at her fullest. Like a path to [[a magical realm|West]]. [[East]] lie the barns, stables, silos. Their long dark stains and rotting wood. Quaint, old-school signs point north toward the village, although [[there is no light|North]]."Professor," the little boy says. It isn't a question, but he nods anyway. "I will take your bag. I'm strong." He doesn't want to hand the shoulder bag over to this little boy, not with the strap misbehaving; but his backpack could tip him over altogether. They haven't even spoken and already at an impasse. The boy lunges, taking the shoulder bag in his arms like a toddler carrying a family pet. It'll keep. "You're here to study me? Study us? What are you a professor of?" The little boy's accent is barely comprehensible; there is Appalachian drawl there, strange clipped vowels that remind him of an Amish group he studied up north, a few other ingredients. He'll have to buckle down on that, really pay attention. Get fluent, or they'll think he's rude. Or worse, slow. "I am here to get to know you and your family, yes." The boy nods, taking his diplomatic tone into consideration. He can tell the child is sly, which means he's not as sly as he might think. [[He's quiet for a while|walk]].He is surprised to see them all, lined up outside the door, when the little boy returns with him in tow. It's so late, after all. But their welcoming smiles are real, not faded with exhaustion quite yet, and there's a smell and sound and smoke that says dinner is waiting, or nearly ready. [[Mother|Mom]] and [[Father|Dad]] of the crew split the homemaking responsibilities pretty evenly, he's surprised to notice. After a few days it will make more sense, as he sees what they see in each other. But that first night, he mostly feels strange about assuming it would be any other way. He knew from their welcome letters they were fairly forward-thinking, compared to the village itself, which was another surprise but a welcome one. The eyes of the older children—a [[sister of nearly twenty|Older Sister]] and [[brother|Older Brother]] not quite two years younger than the "Professor" himself—stared out from those first photos, uncanny and clever. These dinners blend together, as the family spends its days close by one another but working at their individual tasks: Every dinner is the same dinner, picking up conversational threads put down the night before. Weaving themselves together into warmth and casual intimacy, and himself woven too. [[At home|At Home]] and at rest, so much more quickly than he ever could have imagined.Mother is curious about [[memories|Sharing Memories]]. She can often be found with her geneology notebooks, exclaiming excitedly when he offered to help. She likes passing things down, keeping stories clear, close to the bone. Sister is a little dubious about [[academia|Academia]]. She says he often seems divided, compartmentalized. She wonders what he thinks of them all and isn't saying. Brother too, in a few words, notes the way the Professor seems [[afraid|losing control]] sometimes. He wonders how to earn his trust. Father says we turn other people into stories to [[run from our own sorrows|narrative of subjects]], and right down the middle, the baby wants to know exactly what [[those sorrows|his sorrows]] are. They agree that the outskirts are best, for people like them, but that what's forgotten is often what's most dangerous. And so there comes a night, just before the true Full Moon, early in his visit but //well// after he has fallen completely in love with them, where things are [[different|Visitors]].The night before the full moon, after the fire has gone down and the boy stops staring at him, so wisely—and Older Brother's breathing has stopped, and his own heart has slowed—there is a sound from outside. Little boy sleeping peacefully, he goes to the attic dormer window, and all he can see is light, reflecting on the road from an angle he can't see from upstairs. As he watches he can see it flickering, and realizes it is flames. Shoving himself down the wooden slat steps of the stair to the attic, down to the second storey where the rest of the family sleeps, he finds them bundled up in wool, glumly listening to the hoots and carousing outside. "What's going on out there?" Elder Sister smiles, wanly for once. Not defeated, but tired enough. "Pitchforks. Torches. The usual." They are strange, but certainly not that strange. Out here on the edges of town, with their strange pets and smells and foods. Their little pack, that's let him in. "//Usual?//" Mother smiles, and pats his arm awkwardly. "Don't be too angry on our account, little warrior. They'll be home in bed, soon enough." "Come out come out, wherever you are!" A flame like a Molotov cocktail sails by the window, and he gets scared. "But surely they can't... I will go to the town, get the cops." Father shakes his head, less cheerful than usual. "They are the cops. Outside you have five men, the oldest in his fifties and the youngest still hairless. One of them a police chief, the rest... They are like children. Don't go outside, you could get hurt." The professor is enraged. They're taken aback. "I could get hurt? They're lighting fires out there!" Elder Brother puts a warm, soft hand along the back of his neck. He tingles at the touch. "You're so kind. Sweet to worry. They won't do anything. As long as you don't volunteer, you won't get hurt." "How can you just sit still for it?" The things they're yelling are hurtful, for certain. Some graphically sexual, about the family. Mother and sister, yes, but all of them really. All of them together, in some cases, or in various combinations. //Monsters//, they say a lot. He is worried the little boy will hear, and be frightened. Of them all he is most terrified for the boy. Eventually they get him back upstairs, shushing and cosseting as though he's just had a bad dream. [[Eventually he lets them.|Next day]]They smile and tell him, ask away. Even as they prepare, burning unfamiliar herbs in the fireplace, simmering unfamiliar ingredients upon the stove. Even as they drink their foul tea and run strange ointments on one another's skin. Even as they're taking off their clothes, unblinking, they smile and say, //Ask what questions you have. There are no secrets here. There never were.// [[Do you hurt people?|Q1]] [[I'm here to do a job. I love you.|Q2]] [[How do I know I can trust you?|Q3]] [[Did you seek me out?|Q4]] [[Why does anything have to change?|Q5]] In the end, their answers [[satisfy|Transformation]] him. He has made his decision.//There is some kiss we want with our whole lives, the touch of Spirit on the body. Seawater begs the pearl to break its shell. And the lily, how passionately it needs some wild Darling! At night, I open the window and ask the moon to come and press its face into mine. Breathe into me. Close the language-door, and open the love-window. The moon won't use the door, only the window.// —Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi Something about a recognizable corporate logo, barely recognizable in the distance, is enough to get his head back on straight for a while. That juxtaposition of the rural and the urban, the global and the painfully specific. His area of study is about the hard, fast numbers of poverty. He habitually says it's too boring and esoteric to bother explaining but that's not the reason he doesn't like to talk about it. He knows how it sounds, to treat people, the poor, like they're numbers. He knows how it makes him sound. To explain himself—that he loves the poorcraft of historically crummy areas, the adaptability, the flexible resourcefulness, the strength of community—would take too long for real. Assuming he could say it in a way that wasn't just as nasty-sounding, to someone outside the discipline. There is nothing here. Nothing he couldn't have found just as easily back home. [[Outskirts]]This village has a pretty vibrant history, violence and scapegoating. Not Shirley Jackson, nothing too fantastical, but it's there nonetheless. Stains on the tapestry, only visible from certain angles. His professors told him in a situation like that, to get a real read—to get useful data, to provide academic service—you can't stay in the village itself. Too much community energy, so sweetly focused on whitewashing history and leaving the painful bits behind. The nearest barn, he sees as he approaches, has almost no roof at all. It bites at the sky, decaying, wide-open. To tell a story about outcasts you must be with, you must find, those outcasts that remain. It wasn't easy to find them, but he did. The family underbid his offer to hostel with them for the season, which in turn made him raise the offer substantially; they provided board and sent pictures of their home, a cabin much too small for three children, much less a fussy fourth. So it was perfect. [[Outskirts]] The white path to the west could lead right up to the Moon's front door, almost. Powerlines cutting through a clear sky, and more stars than he has ever seen. If this is west, he thinks, their homestead would have been in this direction. He'd rather have thought they would send someone to pick him up, after all. But if he'd been assuming one thing and they were assuming another, of course, it never would have been clarified. //You don't know what you don't know//: his least favorite saying from his most favorite professor. But it's true. On the road, illuminated and punctuated by the shining whiteness: An abandoned shoe, like someone amazed. Like someone murdered, under this moon, leaving only one shoe behind. He doesn't see the [[little boy|Boy]] until he's nearly underfoot.The smell of urine at a venue, piss-troughs at a rock show: This is enough to turn his stomach. But out here in the brisk and moving air, the water past the old woden fences, reeds clacking softly, smells good. Or if not good, alive. Or if not exactly alive, at least fair. It is at least a just and realistic scent, here among the reeds and quietness. The frogs speak to the stars and the wind whispers in response, and all around, under this moon, things are dying and being born. He feels dreadfully alone, for a moment. Not as though he trespasses, it's too immense out here for that: As though he is forgotten altogether. It is awful, but it is wonderful too. [[Outskirts]]//Mother is a little wonder//, they say, all the time, love and pride brimming them like cups. //Our little mother//. She is like nothing so much as a great oak, quiet and strong and built down to the Earth's very core; she shades them with her branches, she sees hiccups or mistakes, unpleasantness coming, from a mile away. Pulls them out by the roots before they can blossom. If Father is a quiet farmer, raising them like crops and tending them like beasts, then Mother is clan chief, war leader, //generalissimo//, putting into words what her man better says with a look, or a soft touch. Her daughter takes after her, and the chattering, funny baby. Her eldest son can be found often at her elbow, silent, like a loyal hound or a lieutenant. The professor likes to see him there, quietly at attention, chest sometimes puffing out as they make their plans for the day and execute them: [[Strong first son of a little wonder|Dinner]].Father is, along with the youngest boy, the most interested in the Professor—not how he fits in, or even how he studies them, but who he is when he's alone; when he's home, back in the real world. At first it feels strange, suspicious, but as he watches them at play he realizes it's because the rest of them are content as they are. Father, happy as the rest, loves the outside world for its entertainment value; the professor soon realizes that he is more like a pet than anything else. He does not mind the feeling. At times he likes it a great deal. This first night, they stick him in the loft with the youngest, there to room for the duration. He's surprised by this, not because he expected his own room&;space is at a premium, and the three bedrooms below take up most of it&;but because if he were meant to room with anyone, he figured the boy closer to his own age. But when he's shown the ladder, and told where he will lay his head, his questioning look to the older boy is mirrored back with a fraught intensity he cannot decode—to be entirely honest, he'd say, his first thought was of confirmation bias, against which we are cautioned strongly and often—and he didn't bring it up again. He hopes the little boy was capable of sleep, which seems unlikely. Mostly, it makes him like them so much more: Imagine a house in the city, the family sticking a bare stranger in with their youngest child. //Not in this century//, he thinks. //Not without the cops showing up//. It's nice to know [[they think he's okay|Dinner]].She regales him, the biggest talker after her little brother, throughout dinner with stories. At first it feels intimidating, aggressive, but eventually he realizes she's trying to make him at home: Making it about their house and family, situating him within it, rather than an interrogation. Five pairs of eyes, staring like wolves by candlelight: It could be overwhelming. Thanks to Older Sister, it is less so. There are little things that trip him up, beyond the strange accents and unfamiliar loanwords. The pets they keep, long dusty hares and great slow lizards. The food they eat, not all of it recognizable or entirely comforting. He'd considered before arrival that not every smell would be his favorite smell, but the food is always delicious and enticing. Older Sister in particular enjoys teaching him this part of their world; ordering him around the kitchen, to fetch and chop and stir. It will become [[his favorite part of the day|Dinner]], as the first week ticks by.These eldest, he hoped, would be the most valuable resource, being so close to him in age, but he knew there was a decent chance they'd find him boring, burdensome or worse. They are so strong and healthy, farm kids, which to his eyes, who never lived on a farm, reads "jock," which scares him just enough he clams up when they address him that first dinner. The sister doesn't seem to mind much, or wants to be accommodating of his anxiety at least, but the brother... There is a brooding that sets in, early on, eyes dark as bruises, that seems menacing at first. It is only as they're clearing up afterwards, after the necessary etiquettes and rituals and shibboleths are performed—"Guests don't work in this house!" from one and "I'm going to be here for a while, let me earn my keep" the other—and he's left alone in the tiny kitchen with this hulking eldest, choreographing their labors with a silent cheer, that he'll realize he was reading it wrong: This quiet boy wants to //know// him. A soft hand to the back as he passes, to keep him from stepping on toes; a grinning reach past an elbow, to take up the silver: It will be the most at home he's felt since he got on the bus, a lifetime ago. Maybe a good lifetime before that, even. This will not be so bad, he thinks. This and many [[dinners|Dinner]] to follow.Her way of being is quick and strong, and so she speaks in a quick, strong way. Nothing wasted, ever. "School fucks you up. You think your life is a house and everything goes into a separate room. Things that make you happy in one room. Things you're ashamed of, that goes in the bathroom. Things at night, bedroom. But your life is not like that. Your mind is not like that." She thinks it's unhealthy to compartmentalize, he knows. But what she might not, herself, understand is that she's partly reacting to his professionalism. She doesn't want to think there is a part of him sitting back, observing without reacting, because it would make her feel inferior. So she has to take back the power. He likes her more at this time. Of them all, Older Sister is the hardest for him to grasp. He may like her the most, but that doesn't mean he understands her. And maybe she's right. Maybe [[he doesn't need to.|At Home]]Father is like an old wolf or hound, snuffling and whiskered. He looks young, young as the rest of them, their little pack, the heels he nips. He's not a close-talker but he is a sudden-hugger and from this our hero knows him to smell of the ocean, fresh and brine at once. His voice warm as fur and slow as blood. "Specifically, what did you leave behind?" Is he implying that there's something to fear, back home, or to regret? And would he be correct? Or is he implying that there's something to fear here? You get all kinds of ideas late at night, howling wind and chattering reeds. "All alone in the world," he could be saying, "With no one to miss you." Or perhape he means to make an invitation. Or perhaps all three. If on that lonely road there were two shoes instead of one, it wouldn't seem like a murder at all, would it? [[It would be a gift.|At Home]]"Tell me about your sorrows." He shakes his head at the little boy, still confused by this turn in the conversation. He has no sorrows. He remembers a shoe, in the middle of the road, all alone. "I wanted something once, from a friend. I wanted to know that I was his greatest friend and ally in all the world." The boy's older brother goes very still, looking past his head into the fire. Barely breathing. "I wanted to own him, I suppose. In the way I felt that he owned me. And he knew what I wanted, and I think he felt threatened. Like a man among the bears, about to be eaten. Or the sun when the moon eclipses him. That was a sorrow." "But that's not a //forever// one. You wanted something but you knew you couldn't have it, not really." He takes a while to think about that one. If you rule out the things you know are safely futile, what's left? [[What then can sorrow mean?|At Home]]"I think you have no sorrow," the brother finally says, speaking so rarely. "I think your sorrow is that you have no sorrow. I think what you have is a fear." [[He frowns.|addiction metaphor]] "It's easy to judge, hidden away under the moon. Harder to be true to yourself when you are out there, in the real world." [[He smiles.|get flirty]] "And I suppose you'll say I want more than anything to lose control? You're probably right. That would be a shame.""How is it done in your family?" she asks, touching him softly. She smells a little bit of browned meat and dill, all the time. It's a home smell, a kitchen smell. A happy smell, cozy and quiet. "We don't really talk about it much, I guess. Pictures? There are photo albums. We look at them, without talking." He can tell she approves. "It's important to pass things on. Even more important to remember that words are not the world." She says that tradition is itself the point: Not what the tradition symbolizes, or even how it started once upon a time. Simply that we do things, reaching back into the past like a tree reaches down into the earth. "I remember. That's the thing that I do. What will you do?" [[He doesn't know.|At Home]]"If the fear is losing control, that's one thing. That just means you don't know yourself yet." The Older Brother leans into his shoulder when they talk about this at the table, standing behind and to the right, sometimes facing the others, sometimes facing the fire. He is like a soldier, this brother. Like a friendly hound who puts himself under your hand, or a young child that leans back against your knee. "If you knew yourself completely," the Brother says, in a voice that is not used to speaking and does not wish to lecture, "You would know for certain what you can and cannot handle. You would not be estranged from these unpredictable future versions of yourself." Isn't there a kind of valor in abstinence? //It's not the last drink I worry about//, one of his mentors used to say, //But the first one. Because I know I can't stop.// "And they could trust you, too." //That's not how I was built.// [[losing control|At Home]]After the full moon, he will meet this man in the shade of a blackthorn tree and know him in a new way. He does not know how or why he will have to wait, only that the invitation has been extended, and he's inclined to accept. It doesn't make sense to get so close to the subject. But he's there, it has happened. Here on the edge of the village, where the moon walks its paths no matter what the rules say. Older Brother smells of lilac and tobacco and sweat. Motor oil and apple blossoms. You could build a life here. You could [[lose control.|At Home]]"Maybe you're right. It doesn't mean we love you any less." The Elder Brother in particular is sad to see their Professor go. There are promises made, letters to be sent and gifts exchanged. But these last few weeks of the waxing moon, they're over now. It was only a matter of time, and that time is come. Before the full moon rises, the little boy walks him back to town. He could find the way himself, he knows the roads now well enough, but he'd rather walk back with someone. Father would be too sad, and Mother too disappointed. Sister would be too angry to talk, or perhaps even walk. And it would hurt Elder Brother too much to see him off. And so it is the little boy. They walk in quiet, but a kind one. Children watch from the hedgerows and corn, neither angry nor afraid. Simply watching. When they reach the crossroads, he notices the lonely shoe is gone. Perhaps taken by a magpie for its nest. Perhaps reunited with its mate. He can't believe he was ever afraid: Of this town, of this family. The boy doesn't speak, not even when he bows and opens the door to the lobby of the motel, the better to wait for the evening train. The sun paints gold and red across the green of the world and its blue shadows through the glass of the motel lobby, past the steel of cars and the dust of the earth, as he watches the boy make his small, tired way back up the shining road and into that night's full moon. The boy doesn't turn around, not even when he gasps back a breath and puts his hand upon the glass. Soon the boy is gone altogether. [[Only the student remains|Coda]]."Do you hurt people?" They look at each other, grinning. Elder Sister speaks first: "Find out!" It's not comforting; they seem less human, for a moment. He loves them less than he remembers having done since his arrival. But he doesn't quite bolt, not yet. //Hear them out//, he thinks. //Be a student of this moment.// Elder Brother takes pity on him, as the little Boy absently takes hold of first his brother's hand and then the professor's, uniting them sweetly: "You knew you were getting into something. That first night, when my little brother found you. The shoe, you thought it meant someone was murdered. And last night, you were ready to run out into the mob. You knew. And you weren't afraid. Why now?" [[I'm here to do a job. I love you.|Q2]] [[How do I know I can trust you?|Q3]] [[Did you seek me out?|Q4]] [[Why does anything have to change?|Q5]] In the end, their answers [[satisfy|Transformation]] him. He has made his decision."I'm here to do a job," he says. And then, unexpectedly, "I love you." Mother smiles. She's learned to read the words behind his words, quick study that she is. "You want to keep this academic. You want to find a way for this to live just in your head and not your body. But that's not how secrets work, nor mysteries. You can't breathe on the Moon, there is no Air. No swords nor staves." Father, although it breaks his heart, holds up one palm to the rest of them. "Now, //don't// feel you have to do this just to make us happy. You are part of us, regardless. You needn't be a part of everything we do for us to love you, either." In some ways it's a comfort. In other ways, he finds, he's disappointed to still have options. At some point, some doors most close. Else how would you ever find your way out? [[Do you hurt people?|Q1]] [[How do I know I can trust you?|Q3]] [[Did you seek me out?|Q4]] [[Why does anything have to change?|Q5]] In the end, their answers [[satisfy|Transformation]] him. He has made his decision."How do I know I can trust you?" From the second the words leave his lips, he knows it was a mistake. Their eyes go cold a little bit. Their bodies smaller in the firelight. "Well, that's always the question, isn't it. The wager. How do you know you can trust us? By asking how we can trust you. And how can we trust you? By asking how you can trust us. In a four-way wager like this, like Room 101, or God's existence, one must tend toward mutuality. You know what I mean? The best possible outcome and no downside is believing. Faith, in the thing outside yourself. Whether it's another person or an institution or a family that's come to love and respect you." The little boy shakes his head, impatient as ever with his father's sophistry. "This isn't about the moon, it's about fire. You are thinking of werewolves, I see it in your mind. Some blood pack. It isn't like this." But what the professor really means, and it quickens Brother's breathing when he realizes it, is this: //How do I know I can trust myself?// [[Do you hurt people?|Q1]] [[I'm here to do a job. I love you.|Q2]] [[Did you seek me out?|Q4]] [[Why does anything have to change?|Q5]] In the end, their answers [[satisfy|Transformation]] him. He has made his decision."Did you seek me out?" It was a string of coincidences, from the fellowship to the hosteling to the shoe in the road, and now the moon. Strange he should find exactly where he would and should belong—that happiness, itself, a disappointing coincidence. "My God. It's nothing special about //you//," Sister laughs, sweetly. Her eyes wide with affectionate embarrasment. "It's not like, bloodlines, or fate. That's for them out there, trapped in towns. Thinking they can't be like us, and deciding to hate us instead." Mother agrees. A rarity, although she admires her daughter's mind most of all. "The dark side of the moon protects as it hides. You fear what you don't know, but that only goes one direction. That's a road with an ending. Because once you do know, you don't fear." Something Sister says a lot, actually: That the world only seems like it's ending at the moment of your crisis. And then it's just the world again, and all your fear nothing quite so fearful. Funny, usually. Mortifying, always. That's just her way. But he wonders. [[Do you hurt people?|Q1]] [[I'm here to do a job. I love you.|Q2]] [[How do I know I can trust you?|Q3]] [[Why does anything have to change?|Q5]] In the end, their answers [[satisfy|Transformation]] him. He has made his decision.He realizes he's a bit horrified. The smell of meat, somehow, and blood. As though it were there, all along, just in the walls or under floorboards. Smell of char. "Why does //anything// have to change?" What Elder Brother says is, "I want you to know all of me. and vice versa." And while this touches him in a nervous place, he can't help thinking of the question behind it, always lurking; on the dark side of the moon, in the pooled shadows of what could be his shame. "Don't you want that for yourself?" [[Do you hurt people?|Q1]] [[I'm here to do a job. I love you.|Q2]] [[How do I know I can trust you?|Q3]] [[Did you seek me out?|Q4]] In the end, their answers [[satisfy|Transformation]] him. He has made his decision.Currently wakeful and realizing with a growing panic that she's going to need help charging her phone soon, the girl fidgets. Hands like doves, like pigeons, darting, unresting. She could be a fugitive but probably she just wants a cigarette. Her sweater smells like burning, like a fire that never really goes out. He can't decide if her hair is colored that way on purpose, or if he is looking at the faded remnants of a decision made with confidence she's since lost. Maybe several of them, accreting in ombre like a sedimentary record. So hungry for love she'd be willing to change shape, or set it all ablaze. Anything for [[that adventure]].Snoring softly, several seats ahead on the aisle, is someone's mother. Perhaps someone dead, or someone she hasn't seen in a long time, or both. But her hands wring tissues apart like she's shredding romaine, and this says motherhood to him. She looks young, one of those old women who still looks young, as if surprised by age, or by sorrow. A fairy princess, held against her will, subjected to time by her captors, bathed in it. Baptized. Waterboarded. Growing old around an eternally young soul. Quickness behind the eyes and... It isn't shame, but something like it. Difficulties. [[Borrowed sorrows.|that adventure]] This terrified boy seems alternately fascinated and repelled by our hero, staring and looking away in equal measure. He was sitting in a closer seat when this trip began. It's possible our hero may never know whether he looked back too long, trying to decide if the boy, buck-toothed and hungry, with a cheap haircut, were all that good-looking. Sometimes in the Hills they start one way and then, by twenty, are all the way over on the other side. Black swans, and black swans in reverse. (White swans? His shoulders, the length of his back, are at least that delicate.) The boy must be working something out; his mind working furiously. He wonders if meth has made it into this community. It's not what he is here to study, but it's part of the larger narrative of the Hills. He wonders if the boy has ever done drugs, and if perhaps that explains his skin. It's not a kind thought, but the bus is silent and nearly blackout dark. It's okay to have thoughts, he thinks. [[A shifting sound draws his attention|that adventure]].By far the most interesting //looking// person, in terms of appearance, is the wild creature forward of them all, on the long night's journey: A powder-blue tuxedo and wilting bouquet, blinking tears from his eyes when he isn't staring, unseeing, at the rest of them. He seems capable of anything, until you look closely and see him in there, looking back: Wounded, righteous. Whatever the unanswered question, or the unrealized fear, the unreciprocated love, whatever it is, he is in the right. Possessed of all his faculties, a white knight on the night bus, ready to [[slay dragons|that adventure]].The zealot clutches at hand-scribbled notes, damp with palm sweat, shuffling them like a Vegas dealer, like a nervous Best Man. A type easily recognizable from college, from anywhere we can fool ourselves that we are saving the world. Putting on a show. Even if he were right, that's what our student always thinks: Even if the madman on the streetcorner is right, even if the terrorist sees something the rest of us missed, even then, that doesn't mean you aren't crazy. //Puritan or Marxist//, whatever your poison, he thinks: //The eyes of every zealot shine just the same way//. How dreadful to think that the world around you has somehow fallen; how heavy the burden of redeeming it must feel. [[This adventure|that adventure]] is making him terrible, but he knows that's just travel stress. He will go back to being Zen chill, nonjudgmental, //vipassana// silent, once he's had a shower and a snooze.Closer still, just close enough that when he angle is right he can see his profile: A sweet-eyed screen idol with brilliantined hair, in his early sixties. He smells like someone's grandfather, like Valentino looks. Keeps his phone turned on and reads the screen each time it rings, never picking up. The man's haircut and the strength of his body betray a certain cultural capital, he thinks. Such strong, young hands. Perfect nails and spatulate thumbs. Not too soft, just hard enough. //We three academics and a silver fox//, he thinks, //And then there are the rest of you, who belong here//. He doesn't much like the voice in his head that has these thoughts, but he knows it's better to be conscious of them than [[otherwise|that adventure]].A stern-faced woman in glasses, a grad student like himself, who pulls out a small notebook every few miles before putting it away again, without opening it to read or write. Perhaps she is not stern; perhaps, he thinks, and not unkindly, that's just her face. A //handsome// woman, he's always thought, would be a wonderful compliment, if we didn't love forcing women into other shapes so much. She would be the voice of the oaks, cardinals and bluejays arrayed along her limbs, as she spoke her slow and creaking truths. [[Stop staring, before she notices.|that adventure]]The Moon Won't Use The DoorJacob CliftonAs a youth, and still, he likes to pretend strangers were magical beasts. A trick of the light was all it might take to reveal the tusk of an orc in a grocery-bagger's smile, that the wheelchair crossing the street at the light were a great hog in disguise, bearing its master upon its back. Wonders and horrors. It makes him like them more, to pretend. There is the smell of popcorn, not quite burnt and sickly, but strong and a little greasy. Some of these cross-country busses, he has learned, never quite lose the funk particular to them: A melancholy mix of grandmother and comic book convention. Every stop feels wrong, which means when his stop //does// come it will also feel wrong. He can imagine a circumstance in which, rather than being wrong in front of these strangers, he stays on the bus through the night, ending up in even a stranger place than the one he's going. Currently wakeful, staring around for a way to charge her phone, [[this girl|smoking]] fidgets. There is [[the blond boy|catfishing]] that wouldn't stop staring earlier. The [[woman|poet]] with the notebook. The wild-eyed [[romantic|wedding]]. The [[fanatic|zealot]]. The sweet [[old lady|prison]] and the angry rich [[old man|land baron]]. He watches and he [[dozes]].True to form and his prediction, when the bus arrives at his stop, it still looks wrong somehow. He gets off anyway, not wanting to ask questions or look stupid. Not even in front of these people he's already written off. If he'd stay on just one more stop, go into town proper with the rest of them—just taken the night at a motel alongside them, he has the money—things would go very differently. He can't know that. But he feels it, just the same, and he is not wrong. The bus depot is a gas station that might well look just this abandoned come morning. The name of the town doesn't matter. [[Outskirts]]"...And what makes us interesting? What do you study?" The little boy's offhand manner is rehearsed; his bowl-cut hair shines in the waxing moon, the near-black brown of the rest of his family's. His snub nose is adorable, but lends itself to the oddly persistent illusion every word is a lie. "Is it because we're poor? Because we live outside the village? They hate us, is that why? Those are the reasons, I thought. I figured. As I was walking." Three good reasons, and the boy's not wrong. But he's not right either. There is nothing but dignity here, our hero says to himself. Then again, to make it stick. "You say poor, I say //resourceful//.You understand the land. There's no poverty in that. As for hate, I guess we'll see." Either way he is intrigued enough to stick around. "Guess we will," the boy says sarcastically, propping the bag on one raised knee as he yanks the drawstring on his pants taut again. Shoes without socks, pants without a belt, and all manner of chores to be done, he thinks. [[They grow up so fast here|Dinner]]."Tonight is the Full Moon," Elder Brother says, offhand, as they're doing the morning's washing up. As though it were a casual but necessary piece of information, like what's for dinner or what would be on television if there were a television. "Is that special?" Brother smiles. "You know that it is." He does. He knew it, but he wanted to hear it. Somehow he feels he's been waiting to hear it since the first night he came. "First Full Moon since we met. Since I came here, I mean." "You've become a big part of the family," Elder Brother says, still addressing the sink. Is he nervous? He seems almost coy. The professor feels like a girl being asked for something. "I don't trust myself around you," the professor says, unexpectedly. "It's not just me that wants you," says the quiet fellow. "I said I would ask, but it's all of us." "If I did it, I would be doing it for you. With you. I love all of you. But I would be doing it because you asked." He grins, like a wolf. "That's why I said it should be me that asked." [[It isn't that I don't want to. But I'm here to do a job.|Abort]] [[I don't know how I'm supposed to know the difference between self-control and just... Fear.|Decision]] [[I'm already too close to this. To you. I've got to be objective if I'm ever going to help. Last night showed me how bad it can get.|Abort]] [[Tell me what I need to do.|Decision]]From the center courtyard he can feel their warmth, and smell their dreams. In [[Room 10|romantic]] a man uses a time travel device, powered by a dirty wedding gown, to save the daughter he never met from growing up into a monster. [[Room 12|smoking girl]] holds the nightmare of a woman whose lover knows a nasty secret which, when uttered, will cause her parents to change shape. Scattered around the floor of [[Room 6|prisoner]], which in the dream is less motel suite and more like a nexus for many filthy bathrooms, are pictures of something very bad being done to an unfamiliar body. They burn but do not burn up. Though well past childbearing age, the woman in [[Room 4|new mother]] meets her daughter at the edge of a misty lake, and is given a baby boy to protect from the hoards of wolves and horses on their way. She produces a sword, and though she knows not where it came from, she knows it belongs to her and always has. The boy in [[Room 1|blond boy]] is not quite asleep, but dozes. Sick memories of what he did, what he allowed be done, flash through his body as he breathes, willing himself not to quicken. All this time it was a man he was falling in love with. He wants to be ashamed and he wants to be ashamed that he is not ashamed. When he dreams, it will be of falling through a series of unlocked doors, gravity pulling him past flames, into breathless void. And still falling. [[Room 8|grandfather]]'s old man dreams of postcards from far-away, full of epithets and rage. Begging him to never come home. Each picture is of himself, and every signature on every card his own. The poet in [[Room 7|poet lady]] puts words to paper about things she shouldn't know: The fidgeting girl. The grieving woman. The delightful secret. The crazed, lovestruck eyes of a wedding crasher. The terrible fear of a man's own body. The hope of the elderly disappointed. How does she knows their secrets? Their sorrows? Even in the dream she knows they'll fade before she wakes. This is the fate of her now, this poet's dry reservoir, no thoughts, no dreams. Only death. Finished with the motel and its denizens, but his hunger not yet sated, the professor follows the scent and warmth of his family into the center of the [[village|TOWN]].The professor joins them in their monthly rounds, padding through the streets with a moonlit crunch and shuffle. Great paws leaving traces no one can explain tomorrow. In through windows, mirrors, screens: Anything can be a passage for them. The eaters of sorrow. The ravagers of pain. They lick and burn at memories and shame, they slice skin to ribbons with moon-bright claws of steel. All night, it takes, from house to house: Here a man weeps out his grief, there a woman finds a memory sticking out from under the bed, where she left it long ago. Some patrol their houses, lighting candles and watching them burn. Some dream great conflagrations, or floods, or rains of swords, or fields of daisies awash with blood. There is no language of dreams, no shared memory beyond what we already know to be true. Pretend it's something you can know and you will lose it. And under the full moon there is no room for that, either. Mother says, in her dream language, angel of the moon, growls and cries, blood and fire: Traditions don't mean anything themselves. The doing is enough. [[THEN]]But even so, after all this: The men and women who speak such open hate about this new family of his, the way their dreams and pain go down like wine, there is still something on the edge of hearing, some sharp edge of the moon's light that lies in wait. The last house they come to is the house closest to their edge of town. He can feel himself returning to his body; his skin calling out for him to come back home, and put it on, and pretend this is all that we are. He knows they are close to home and to another month of living, as they do. Elder Brother under the blackthorn, dancing in the moonlight as it wanes and waxes, soon enough. And this means, then, that they were saving it for the last. They draw close to this window as a family, peeking inside, slavering jaws, drooling tatters, teeth like knives and eyes like lanterns: The police chief, the most frightening one of all. The cruelest, the first to arrive with the fire and shouts, and the last to leave, daring the rest of them on. Hoping one day to burn the house down rather than merely pretending it. You can hear it in his voice when he is shouting, and see it written now in the strength of his sleeping body and the cruelty of his breath. Echoing the most graphic of the sexual jokes and the most frightening threats against the young ones: This one means to kill. And one day, he might. And so perhaps, the professor thinks, if we are to hurt anyone to night, and still look one another in the eye come morning, it would be this man. For the village itself would be better off, would it not? Beyond just the family, this poison man, this thorn in the village, this venom, there is no part of him that is worthwhile, there is nothing that he adds. Listen closely, under the moon, and you can hear his son's ragged breathing: He hurts the boy. Terribly. Without provocation, not that any provocation would justify it. Surely this man we will kill. We eat sorrows, he thinks, who is this but the sorrow of a town? He looks carefully, gingerly, tenderly around at his people: Mother and Father, Elder Sister and Little Boy. The great strong body of Elder Brother longest of all. And they shake their heads at him, knowing what he's thinking, sensing it in the bunching of his body, his vibrating tendons, his quickening heart. They shake their heads, proud of him for wanting it but looking just past it to this: Of all these people in the town, from the privately miserable to the openly monstrous, like this one, they all need it. They all dwell in unnecessary sorrow, and deny themselves unimaginable bliss. The one who deserves it the least, the one needs it most. And so they fall and rush upon him, less like devouring and more like kisses, on the forehead and soft, chuckling belly of a newborn. They eat and eat, sucking it down like blood, like wine made of fire, until even their hunger is quenched. Something he would never have imagined possible, as he laid aside his skin: They are sated. They roll, more than walk, home as the moon is setting. Drunk and loving, colliding shoulders and hips. They'll sleep all day and through the night, he knows. They told him this part. But back at the redding edge of the village he can just hear them breathing, finally. No smell or scent of fire or blood, no shame and no sorrow. All of them, as if gathered in a single dream. At peace with the moon, [[for now|Coda]].The fire banks itself, shrieking. House unrecognizable now, angles twisted and turning. Flattening, curving, touching itself. Skin begins to tear, with a gibbering laughter. Brightness obscures, like a moon of steel. What was human is animal now. No talking. Laughter like singing, like screams. What was animal is something more. Fire and a burning in the eyes. It is not the moon or blood, it is fire and joy. Smoke. Skin tearing, moonlight slicing it to ribbons. Blood like a molten river, and nothing at all. Great leathery wings, flapping under the night. Tatters. Tatters of flesh, and the world become teeth. And all of this, flame also. Quiet as anything. White as the moon. We are engines of desire. And destruction. And so we run, hungry. Starving. Hooting, laughing, on the edge of everything. [[He sees the motel, strangers and innocents arranged by room.|MOTEL]] [[He follows his new family into the town, pitchforks safely stowed and torches quenched for bed. Sweet night air and open windows, unafraid.|TOWN]]Through the window, opened easily enough, a wild-eyed lover dreams of a woman lost to him forever, and how with just a will he could turn back time to save her from herself. To be the version of herself he prefers, the one who doesn't see the nasty selfish bits of him he wishes were a better kept secret. The professor puts his great and slavering maw against the throat of this man, tasting his sorrow. Running one claw along his side, down past his boxers and a thigh, to his knee; back up, as he feasts. The dreamer groans, only once, only at the bite. And then he is still. The heat breaks. She smiled at this new man, the romantic recalls, one day outside a museum when he ran into them as if by accident. Just an offhand grin, just an inside joke. And without his sorrow in the way, our dreamer realizes that she never once smiled at him that way. It must be love. And so, he must wish her well. Or it was never love. And in [[Room 12|smoking girl]] the girl still smells of smoke. Down past the stairwell in [[Room 6|prisoner]], that zealot remains a prisoner of his own body. Full of its hate and its desires. [[Room 4|new mother]] holds the sound of a mother weeping. [[Room 1|blond boy]] seems poised for masturbation, almost chuckling to itself. In [[Room 8|grandfather]] it's only dust and a voyage no one will ever hear, or wonder, about. And between the zealot and the grandfather lies a [[paralyzed poet|poet lady]], dreaming everyone's dreams and secrets. Tasting sorrows without eating. Finished with the motel and its denizens, hunger not yet sated, the professor follows the scent and warmth of his family into the center of the [[village|TOWN]].Her girlfriend's parents were never going to hate her because she smoked, and she knows that. Her girlfriend's parents were probably never going to hate her at all. But she works so hard on not hating herself, not putting words in her own parents' mouths or those of strangers or those she loves, that it was easier to be nervous about the smoking than about anything else. She used to control her food this way, wanting it so badly it hurt and only eating once she had passed entirely from that situation to the next. Then it was the cutting, which she barely remembers. Now it is cigarettes. She dances on the edge of that desire, this painful and unpleasant thing she loves doing to herself, knowing there is no positive aim to it, nothing it gives her she wouldn't be better off without. Her sorrow, he tastes, crawling out of the television she leaves on every night that she's alone, is that if the girlfriend's parents don't hate her on sight, she will do everything in her power to make sure that they do by the time the visit's over. She won't want to, and she'll never be able to make it up to her girlfriend, who gives her life and forgives her everything she can't herself forgive. But it will happen. She is sorrowful for knowing this, and it creates itself. But when he is done, and it is running down his chin, she feels weightless and, drowsing, not quite awake, thinks for some few minutes that she is dead. And when she realizes she isn't dead, or even paralyzed as the medication sometimes goes, she will send her mind out to the tips of fingers and of toes, into all the scary and rope-taut parts of her body she likes to ignore, to see if there is safety to be found in pain. And instead she will know the safety is already there. And where the sorrow at this has gone, she will know nothing either. She will spend that half-hour searching for shame, something, sickness—that old familiar refrain, "I'm crazy, I'm sick, I'm sad"—and come up with nothing. And the sorrow for that being gone, that will be gone too. Like a house cleaned from top to bottom, in celebration of the spring. The heat breaks in [[Room 10|romantic]] as the wedding crasher wakes, remembering the smile of her in love, and how she never smiled quite that way at him. Down past the stairwell in [[Room 6|prisoner]], that zealot remains a prisoner of his own body. Full of its hate and its desires. [[Room 4|new mother]] holds the sound of a mother weeping. [[Room 1|blond boy]] seems poised for masturbation, almost chuckling to itself. In [[Room 8|grandfather]] it's only dust and a voyage no one will ever hear, or wonder, about. And between the zealot and the grandfather lies a [[paralyzed poet|poet lady]], dreaming everyone's dreams and secrets. Tasting sorrows without eating. Finished with the motel and its denizens, but his hunger not yet sated, the professor follows the scent and warmth of his family into the center of the [[village|TOWN]].His mother was not an unkind woman. You would think, the way he looks at them&;the way he speaks and writes about them, about their bodies&;"This is a man whose mother did a number on him." But that's not actually it. She was soft and tender, and much too kind. For she saw the way her husband, his father, looked at other men. And she reasoned, well, if he has this in him, and doesn't know or want to talk about it, perhaps by thinking about the differences between men and women is his way of thinking or talking about it. By saying, over and over, what men should do and what women should do, he is reminding himself of who he wants to be. Who he needs to be. And so when his son, this man in the motel tonight, whose sorrow drips out of him like liquid rust, when his son was too much like a girl, he would shame him. And when his son was too close with other boys, he would do the same. To this man's father it was all the same: Men act like men, women act like women. And when women didn't act like he wanted them to act, they were either men or they were whores. Often, as he grew older, both. And until the day she died, this mother, this wife of a terrified man, would think to herself, "It could be so much easier than this." But she was kind, and tender, and loved him too much to stop him from turning himself inside out, ripping his skin to shreds. And she never saw what it did to her son, either; because she loved him so much that he was perfect. And after she died, that son took his father's shame and pain and his messages and his great love of the world and he brought them out into the open. How to save everyone, how to save men and women from themselves and each other, all of it. Selling the message anywhere he could, trying to remind these soft men and sick men and hard women and whores who they could be, if they were not weak. But his sorrow was that he was weak. This man who was perfectly, obnoxiously, typical. Who happened to be born in exactly the shape his father could have wanted. Who had no reason to be afraid, even in the sick and exacting cage he had inherited. This man who couldn't bear to catch his own reflection, to look at or touch of smell his own body: Who was not weak, at all. Just afraid, a pioneer of new ways to hurt himself and everyone around him. This sorrow is almost too bitter to bite. But the professor gets it down. Finally, through the layers of clothing and strange underwear and then the skin and muscle and bone, biting down to the very center of this man, the holy light within him all that skin and rage and pain was covering up. Bright as a star. The heat breaks in [[Room 10|romantic]] as the wedding crasher wakes, remembering the smile of her in love, and how she never smiled quite that way at him. And in [[Room 12|smoking girl]] the girl still smells of smoke. Full of its hate and its desires. [[Room 4|new mother]] holds the sound of a mother weeping. [[Room 1|blond boy]] seems poised for masturbation, almost chuckling to itself. In [[Room 8|grandfather]] it's only dust and a voyage no one will ever hear, or wonder, about. And between the zealot and the grandfather lies a [[paralyzed poet|poet lady]], dreaming everyone's dreams and secrets. Tasting sorrows without eating. Finished with the motel and its denizens, but his hunger not yet sated, the professor follows the scent and warmth of his family into the center of the [[village|TOWN]].She had been meaning to visit her daughter's love for months. He didn't even know about the child, how close it had come to surviving. His child. He would have liked pictures of that, perhaps; perhaps, if she'd not been so angry, she would have shared it with him all along. Let him grieve, along with her, as her daughter slipped away into peaceful and sweet death. He was confused, when she came to visit: This strange old woman, never very good with words, a little awkward and a little cold. And the confusion made him angry, and the anger made him ashamed, and the shame made him send her away. He gets so few visitors in prison that she was most sorrowful for that: She thought she was there for herself, to see a glimpse of her sweet girl in the eyes of this stranger who'd loved her. But when she left, harsh words ringing in her ears, her only sorrow was for him. And so the professor slides out, while she is sleeping, from beneath her creaking bed. There is a wind, rising, outside in the moon. And he lays down beside her, arranging his young slender self along her aching back and sagging bosom, and softly breathes her in, first biting and then chewing at it. And when she wakes, in the dead of night, she has realized something new: She may have no daughter, and no granddaughter after all. But she does have a son. Whether he likes it or goddamn not, he belongs to her now. They need each other. They will not be strangers for long. The heat breaks in [[Room 10|romantic]] as the wedding crasher wakes, remembering the smile of her in love, and how she never smiled quite that way at him. And in [[Room 12|smoking girl]] the girl still smells of smoke. Down past the stairwell in [[Room 6|prisoner]], that zealot remains a prisoner of his own body. Full of its hate and its desires. [[Room 1|blond boy]] seems poised for masturbation, almost chuckling to itself. In [[Room 8|grandfather]] it's only dust and a voyage no one will ever hear, or wonder, about. And between the zealot and the grandfather lies a [[paralyzed poet|poet lady]], dreaming everyone's dreams and secrets. Tasting sorrows without eating. Finished with the motel and its denizens, but his hunger not yet sated, the professor follows the scent and warmth of his family into the center of the [[village|TOWN]].Was it truly a surprise, he wondered. His last thought before sleeping. Or if surely a surprise, could he say it was a shock? He'd fallen in love with her months ago, kept up running text messages all day and all night, as they talked history and books, childhoods and movies, all the tiny shibboleths and references, and what lies beneath them, in the truer places. He was the first, this blond boy, of the two to pledge his love. And when he had she vanished, for a night and most of a day, before agreeing: This was what they were, what they had. It was love. And when she answered her door, she was a man. Not a woman blooming into her new form, not a gay man looking to score or trick him—he promised—at least, not by any useful measure. His profile pic was a woman because he liked talking to girls, he said, and friendly male avatars were dangerous and pushy. As a woman, he said, he'd experienced this, and come to understand it. And so that too became research, as he related to other men as a woman, telling new stories, trying to learn so that he could be a better man. And into this trap they both fell. The boy in Room 6 was angry for a moment, quietly, and then only sad for the girl he'd never get to meet. But they were friends, after all. And so close. And when the other boy invited him inside, for a drink, he went willingly. And when they made love that night, that was willing too. He got back on the bus with a heavy heart, full of sorrows and fears. Wondering if he'd have to rewrite both his history and his future, to account for this new change. It wasn't a shock, he decided. But it was a surprise. And so as the professor steals into his room, through the moonlit angle of a mirror, it is not that sorrow that he offered up, to willing lips. The only sorrow here is that they cannot see one another again. Or if they do, it will be different. That closeness, the breathless beauty of it, cannot live alongside fear—and by the time it does, by the time these contradictions are reconciled and balanced and they can see themselves clearly, they will have passed each other by, forgotten in the rush and track of time and routine. And so this is the sorrow the professor eats. When the boy wakes, his beloved friend's kiss tastes like months, not hours, ago. He thinks only fondly of it, and wonders if he will taste it again. Remembers the way his grandfather spoke so softly of these things, men he had loved, back in the war, before the world got scared and hard and mean. //Sometimes things just happen//, he thinks, and there is no sorrow in that. Only love. The heat breaks in [[Room 10|romantic]] as the wedding crasher wakes, remembering the smile of her in love, and how she never smiled quite that way at him. And in [[Room 12|smoking girl]] the girl still smells of smoke. Down past the stairwell in [[Room 6|prisoner]], that zealot remains a prisoner of his own body. Full of its hate and its desires. [[Room 4|new mother]] holds the sound of a mother weeping. In [[Room 8|grandfather]] it's only dust and a voyage no one will ever hear, or wonder, about. And between the zealot and the grandfather lies a [[paralyzed poet|poet lady]], dreaming everyone's dreams and secrets. Tasting sorrows without eating. Finished with the motel and its denizens, but his hunger not yet sated, the professor follows the scent and warmth of his family into the center of the [[village|TOWN]].The silver-haired man, oh his family just hates him. Sometimes because he is jagged and quiet and hurt, others when he is boistrous and shouting. His passion, his worry, expresses itself in anger and what his daughter calls "micromanaging." He lectures them on self-control and self-respect and all they hear is hate. He wants them to feel loved but he never learned the language. What he wanted to do was fake his death entirely. But that would never do. He needs money to travel, to find out how to be human. So instead he wrote them little notes, nothing too loud or soft. Read and reread them, over and over. They seemed a little polite but that was better than the usual mess he made. And when he dreams he dreams of a tree without soil around its roots, without leaves upon its branches. He just kept having children, his poor wife, hoping that one of them would be a natural fit and by loving that child he could love the rest. But it never came. He was so alone, in the loudness and the cold. When the professor opens the door, easily as a shadow slipping over rocks, the silver-haired man lies naked on his back, arms thrown wide, as though he is the only person in the world. And so he kneels, between those legs, crouching on hands and knees above him, and begins to feed. And this sorrow is perhaps sweetest of all, being of so old and musty a vintage, and he lingers over it. Sopping up every drop, like the juice of a steak, until it is gone. When the old man wakes it will be to brightness, filling this perfectly chosen corner room in such a way that he'll think he has gone blind. And without his sorrow he will be left only with an aching. He won't send postcards, but will make calls instead. One after the other, until every single person has heard exactly what he thinks of them. And some will think he's gone insane, it's true; but they will still be grateful. And come the holidays, they'll want him in so many places at once it will be easier to gather in one place. He will be the center, the warm hearth, for all the days left here on this earth. And whenever his children, and theirs, and even theirs, are feeling lonely and cold, like a tree with no soil around its roots, they'll remember how old you can get, before you find your way home. That there is no time past which your sorrow is required. It was never necessary. It was only wasting time. The heat breaks in [[Room 10|romantic]] as the wedding crasher wakes, remembering the smile of her in love, and how she never smiled quite that way at him. And in [[Room 12|smoking girl]] the girl still smells of smoke. Down past the stairwell in [[Room 6|prisoner]], that zealot remains a prisoner of his own body. Full of its hate and its desires. [[Room 4|new mother]] holds the sound of a mother weeping. [[Room 1|blond boy]] seems poised for masturbation, almost chuckling to itself. And between the zealot and the grandfather lies a [[paralyzed poet|poet lady]], dreaming everyone's dreams and secrets. Tasting sorrows without eating. Finished with the motel and its denizens, but his hunger not yet sated, the professor follows the scent and warmth of his family into the center of the [[village|TOWN]].She has no inspiration and thus, she thinks, no right to live. They tell a story, the youngest ones, of a woman mugged, held at gunpoint. When the muzzle flashes she screams, "Don't shoot me! I'm a writer!" As if this could ever save you. As if any one thing could ever earn you the right to exist, over any other of the infinite qualities we collect over the course of a life. "Don't shoot me! I was a child once!" you might as well say. "Don't shoot me! I feel pain, like you do!" But the youngest writers, they see themselves in this story: Imagine themselves as the gun is produced, saying the same exact thing. And what this means then, for those like our poet who has not outgrown this, is that if you are not writing, not producing, not publishing, therefore you do //not// deserve the right of existence. A handy little trick, a trap. And this is the sorrow that our professor eats, perched on her sleeping humped back like a beast, like something from a nightmare, sucking at the back of her neck where the hair curls in its wisps. In her deep slumber, fists knotted as she rolls and bucks atop them. You could hear her from outside, her body telling stories to itself as she sleeps too deep to hear them, but tonight, as he eats her sorrow and she fucks herself, it is silent as the grave. Tomorrow morning, free of the fear and of thinking that her work will save her, she'll create the greatest art of her life. Writing before she's even gotten up to pee. She'll write through the day and into the night, speaking aloud, laughing at times and crying at others, until it is complete. Not alive because of her great art, but creating her art because she is alive. The heat breaks in [[Room 10|romantic]] as the wedding crasher wakes, remembering the smile of her in love, and how she never smiled quite that way at him. And in [[Room 12|smoking girl]] the girl still smells of smoke. Down past the stairwell in [[Room 6|prisoner]], that zealot remains a prisoner of his own body. Full of its hate and its desires. [[Room 4|new mother]] holds the sound of a mother weeping. [[Room 1|blond boy]] seems poised for masturbation, almost chuckling to itself. In [[Room 8|grandfather]] it's only dust and a voyage no one will ever hear, or wonder, about. Finished with the motel and its denizens, but his hunger not yet sated, the professor follows the scent and warmth of his family into the center of the [[village|TOWN]].