Time Flies when you're having Fun.

Spinning, the coin scattered light around the room before falling back down behind the counter.  A soft smack of metal on skin.  It was a golden coin, well polished with the face of some long-forgotten empress on one side and a laurel wreath decorating the other.  "Heads again, huh?"

The man sitting behind the counter shifted the coin back and forth, playing with it in his hand before flicking it up towards the ceiling again.  Free of the shadows, once again the coin lit up in the light of the old fashioned chandelier that hung in the center of the room.  Then at gravity's behest, the coin fell swiftly down again into the man's waiting palm.

He was middle aged, though he had a bearing and a smile that made him seem young at a glance.  He sat leaning back, feet up on the desk while the top of the chair braced against the door right behind him.  slightly disheveled, his white button up shirt stood out against the dark brown wood grain of the room, though the sleeves and shoulders were covered by a serviceable, black jacket.  His slacks were almost a matching shade, complimenting the look with a kind of a fashionable wink.  All of it had slight wrinkles, the type that was smoothed over after the clothing had been put on in the rush to get out the door, though the man behind the counter didn't seem the type to rush anywhere.  On his feet were plain, brown boots, but the light sort that you could get around in as opposed to anything heavy.

The rest of the room was empty besides a door on the far wall and a single chair facing the desk, a sister chair of the one the man sat in.  The room was large enough to pace in, but not quite large enough that it felt overly empty.  The sound of traffic seeped through the wooden door opposite the man, though it was muted and distant.

Over and over the man just flipped the coin up, waited, and caught it.  It had come up heads the past two hundred tosses, which rather annoyed him.  It was a boring way to pass the time after all, and here his coin was acting up again.  It was bad enough that heads was an affirmative of if he should stay in the room and keep flipping the coin.  Every fifty or so flips he would switch it up and change the question slightly.  "Is there a reason that I should be in here so late?"  Heads.  "An important reason?"  Heads.  "Can I leave now?"  Tails. "Is this just some sort of mind game?"  Tails. Heads. Tails, Tails, Tails. And on and on.  Currently he had stuck to "Am I still supposed to just wait?" as his go to time waster.  And it was approaching two hundred and fifty consecutive tosses.

Just as he sent the coin up again, a man in a black hoodie threw the door open and stumbled in.  He looked exhausted, just a little bit entirely frightened, and had his right hand suspiciously jammed into his pocket.
"Can I help you?" asked the man behind the counter, distracted enough to let the coin drop to the floor.  Under the desk, out of sight of either of the two men, the coin bounced, twirled, and then came to a rest perfectly balanced on its side.

In the Concrete Jungle of the Night

Of all the things that I thought would go wrong tonight, the tiger is by far the strangest.  Sure, a store might have alarms, cameras, locking windows, that type of stuff, but a tiger?  That was new.  Worse than that, it not only embodies my fear of large predative felines, it happens to be some sort of ghost tiger too.

I got in the window easily enough, it was a cheap window on the shop, and I'd seen no security cameras last week when I'd cased it.  Just in case I was wearing a hood and a mask.  An Abe Lincoln mask, which I thought was a nice touch, what with my intent to "free" some property tonight.  It was an old, worn down shop in chinatown, the kind where you're not sure what half of the things even are, but I'd had my eye on some of the more expensive looking jewelry, and maybe a sword or two if my dufflebag would fit them, which it had.

The swords had not been the problem, they came off the shelves from behind the counter and slid easily into the bag.  The problem came when I picked up the necklace.  It looked old, Buddhist, but it was still polished and fancy looking.  Thing was, I head a low, deep growl when it left the shelf.  Maybe the "not for sale" sign next to it should have tipped me off.  Anyway, I knew enough to say that that was a very bad sign, so I bolted to the door.

I really shouldn't have looked back.  Slinking out from behind the counter, the tiger growled again.  The door wasn't locked, that was the first thing I'd done once I was in through the window, just in case I needed to get away quick.  Fear always seemed to make me think faster, thankfully, so the door was open, locked, then shut again and I bolted.  Farther down the street, I looked back again.  One of those reflex things that's half curiosity, half wishful thinking.

My eyes met the tiger's as it walked through the door.  It wasn't breaking through the wood or smashing the door open, it was simply walking through it.  Now I'm trying to outrun a tiger that can walk through walls through the streets of chinatown in the middle of the night with just a sliver of moonlight to guide me.  If I thought it would help, I'd probably be screaming right now.

Corners don't stop it, it just cuts them, though they do give me cover from its eyes.  Rather sure that it would pick me up by scent if it ever lost me for more than a second.  Pure adrenaline is the only thing that's helping me on the straightaway.  Still, it's catching up.  My best bet is to get back home and get my car and then get to the highway.  That's two more miles though.  Uphill.

I can hear it growling back there, so it hasn't lost me yet.  I'm drenched under my mask, under my shirt, in my shoes.  Each step I take, each short breath could be my last.  Tigers are fast.  I know the area though, the zigzags.  I practiced in case of police.  I figured I'd only use one or two, depending on where I was, but every single one on the way is a few more seconds of life.

My heart is going to collapse in another minute of this, my steps only slightly behind its pace.  Probably breaking some Olympic records here.  More growls. Closer.  There is no way that I'm outpacing this thing on my own.  It's gotta be toying with me.  It wants the necklace, but I think it knows that it can catch me.

Maybe If I let go of the thing?  Yeah, I'll just.  What?  Ok, it's stuck.  Stuck to my hand.  And glowing.  This is getting worse and worse by the minute.  I can hear the footfalls behind me now.  Closer to the house though.  Car's just up there, sitting in the street.  Do I have enough room to get it started?  Wind sprint at the end or nothing.
Key.

Door.

Ignition.

Growl.

First Gear.

Second.

Ripping rubber.

Flat tire, courtesy of the tiger.

Third Gear.

Barely driving straight.

Receding in the rear-view mirror.

And now it's just standing still.  Safety.  Freedom.  Oh crap, I forgot my dufflebag.

Sunset on the Fear-Filled Past: A Moon to Guide the Children of the Future.

Hurrying back through the forest, Carolus pulled his feathered cloak closer around his body.  It was a bright day, but so little of the sun's rays penetrated the treetops, evergreen roofs supported by wooden pillars.  It was approaching the equinox, and the snow turned the whole area white, obscuring his path back to the village.

Well, city would be a better term for it, but Carolus would always remember the village he knew and loved.  Trade had boomed after construction of the well.  That hole in the land, a land impervious to downwards movement past a a few span, stretched down and down.  The sheer tower that stretched down into the earth was a marvel.

A dangerous marvel the previous elders had said.  They had kept the whole village away from it, formed a great walled circle around the hilltop it existed on.  They feared to close it up though.  There had been prophecies, he had heard, though the elders had kept them to themselves, written them down on scrolls and hidden them away in their huts.  They had hoarded away the knowledge and spread rumors of boogeymen coming out of the hole to scare off the curious.  And then they died.

The fire had spread through the village burning homes indiscriminately, like a wave washing up the beach until the land was smooth again.  He still heard the screams of the burned in his head, still remembered sitting in the ashes of his home, wondering what he could do to survive.  That winter had been a hard one, though not quite as nippy as this chill he fled through on his way back from the southern kingdoms.

Walking ahead of him, the sun was quickly making its way downwards to meet the earth again, casting fleeting shadows back through the trees.  Then in front of him the treeline cleared and he saw the city.  It had grown much since he had left.  The wooden huts had expanded out into stone dwellings, chimneys sighing out smoke from warm fires.  Two stone walls rose up in front of him, one on the town perimeter to keep out the wolves that roamed the land, and the other stretching up to surround the hill in the town's center.  The gate stood open, a guard resting inside next to a fire at the watch-house barely gave him a glance.  He had dressed in the village custom, which at least hadn't changed much in the interim it seemed.

Carolus knew he would need to find an inn soon, but the hill drew him in first.  The town itself lost its nostalgia in the cobbled streets and stone houses that now stood in defiance of the past, but the hill would always be the hill.  The wall around it was not the barricade of the past, but a building's fortification, though this gate too swung open in the chill wind.

Despite the warm feathered cloak, he shivered.  It was as it had been, but for the well.  Some Mason had made steps to spiral down into the depths, a fact that would have scared the elders back to life if they could know.  Stepping up to the edge, Carolus looked down deep into the darkness, trying to see the demons of the past that had frightened him in his youth. More wind, whipping around on this the highest part of the city, wrenching loose a feather from his cloak, then fleeing down the hole with its prize.  The white shape fell downward, sucked in by the earth, and in that darkness something darker moved away, taking with it a small bit of the sky-world.

A Finch on the Rooftop

It was the third week of winter that I met Finch.  It was free period, so as usual everyone but the bookworms or the outcasts were out in the courtyard.  Me and a few others were playing with a ball.  No real game, just tossing it around.  Jimmy, me, Francis, Leo, and Tools.  Tools was the only one with a nickname by that point; we still called Leo Ed back then.

So anyway, Jimmy all started riling me up, same way he always does, but back then we all had thinner skin, didn't know he just liked seeing us all squirm.  So I threw that ball real hard at him.  First time I'd actually wanted to bean a kid in the face with something.  I was only 8, an only child, and we'd had a pretty dull first year at the academy.

Trouble is, I missed.  and then, after all that windup, that little kiddy rage, I missed spectacularly.  Ball went way clear of him, hit a rock, bounced off a tree, hit the courtyard wall, the brick, not a window, we didn't break any of those until at least spring, and then managed to go rocketing off onto the roof.

That was five stories up, and that wasn't a light ball.  First time I actually showed promise at graduating as a mage instead of a husk.  Some kids didn't do that much in their whole ten years, but all the mages managed something like it in the first two, generally.  Nobody believes the fairy tale of the ninth year master mage.  Well, maybe some of the kids who turn into husks, but that's more out of desperation.  Anyway, I was about third in our year, so it wasn't the most talked about display, but it put me up there.  Not until a few kids actually put together what happened beyond that I had just lost our ball onto the roof.

I didn't mind being ganged up on by the other guys and told to go get the thing; I was still fuming.  So I walked up, had to take the long way up the stairs because the classroom floor was off limits that day.  And I ended up on the entire other side of the school when I got there.  Back then we hadn't familiarized ourselves with the academy enough to know all the shortcuts up, and I took the opening to the roof that was almost the farthest from where I needed to be.

I was up above the dormitory and the ball was supposed to be over back towards the upper-class practice rooms.  Must have been a mile to go around the whole thing.  And it wasn't like the roof was just flat or anything.  It dipped and peaked and had skylights and statues and who knows what else.  I never explored the whole place in my years there, mostly because it kept changing.  And that day it was just a tad snowy too.  Just warm enough to make it go slushy, but cloudy enough that it was still actually there and not dried up.  So I was taking it slow, at that point I was on all fours trying to get up a particularly slippery and steep part when I see Finch walking along, tossing the ball up and down and humming.

I didn't know it was Finch at that point, though, obviously.  I just saw some person wrapped up in cloaks with a mask on, mostly all of it was black, with my ball.  So like any eight year old I asked him to give it back.  Not the most politely though, I was still a bit mad despite the walk.  He just stopped cocked his head to the side and stared out at me, glass filled eye-slits giving away nothing of his face.  Next thing I said, because I still wasn't that smart, was what was he doing up here, this was free period.  He was the same height as me, so it was obvious he was someone from the lower grades.  He didn't respond to that one either though, just cocked his head in the other direction.  Anyway, at that point I got to what should have been my first question, namely, who are you and why are you dressed funny like that.

So he says back in his pretty high voice for a boy "My name is Tavius Lucile, but you may call me Finch."  And then he paused.  Took a second before I realized I was supposed to answer with my own.  I was and am prone to rudeness, though at that time it was mostly out of ignorance.  Anyway, he sits down, still tossing the ball up and down and motions me to sit as well.  "As to the second question, why are you dressed so normally?  This is a place for the top possibly gifted students in the whole kingdom, plus some of the outer islands, and you just casually wander around in that?"

There I am a kid confronted with such an enigma and all I could say was "but this is normal," like it made sense that way.  "Yes, that's what I said."  Then he tossed me the ball.  I only mostly tripped entirely when catching it, looking up in time to see him strolling off into the distance, waving without looking back.  "Next time don't try using magic to throw things when you're angry."  None of the rest of them believed me at dinner.

Can you Smell the Bacon?

Winter falling down like a cloud and the days keep slipping past.  Down way back in memory there was a summer when breathing didn't mean death and the flowers stood at knee height in the fields.  Now it's masks and sealed doors and giant forests of funky colored flora.  Not as much for fauna though.  Just the giant tortoise-bugs.  The name is a bit misleading though; they aren't slow.  Armored to the teeth, got a ferocious bite, and just keep on growing, yes, but not slow.  'S why people go out in groups with their masks and their spears and their fears just to survive.  The water is all running down in the valley, and a'int nobody a smart enough hand to build anything that stays built deep down in the valley.  It rains though, so only in droughts does it become absolutely necessary.  We here have ourselves a grand purifier and roof-space that funnels a whole load of the stuff into holding tanks before we can steam it good enough to drink.  No need to go far for the wood, though.  Stuff grows fast enough in the rain that most days it grows back what we done chopped the last.  Yep, 's a life of dis-ease.  Each day they go out, not too far at all, and some days a few people don't return.  Not often, least not after the first few years.  The ones who survived that were the cautious ones, and the lucky ones of those.  Caution only gets you so far.  Winter here don't mean snow, though.  Just more rain to wash down on the village.  More water to put in the tanks. More water to keep the gardens and pigs alive.  Never thought I'd see a pig in a gas-mask though.  All kinds of weird.  Like some sort of muzzle that makes 'em look like some Darth Vader spoof.  Beady little pig eyes watchin' you outa the plastic visor.  Glad the boys have those indoors pens for most of the time.  More normal that way.  Still, inch by inch that forest keeps growing closer, keeps creepin' up at my here village.  Shame that torching the thing didn't work, God bless their souls.

During Dessert

Summer sunlight filtered through the window, orange in the evening drawing a shifting rectangle on the opposite wall as the curtains contorted slowly in a warm breeze.  It was an empty bedroom.  The bed was made, the floor empty; off in the corner a chair and a desk with papers piled in neat stacks, the top most bearing a red B+ emblazoned like a crest near the top.  The closet door was closed, but the clothing and tennis rackets that resided within were organized, if not actually neat.  Out of the hallway the sound of plates and spoons and polite conversation drifted up from downstairs.  Even as a sweatshirted figure, hood up, hands in pockets, walked in pushing the doorway open more than the crack it was and then closing it with just enough care that slam would be the wrong word.  A glance at the white walls, empty like the rest of the room.  Spinning as he crossed the room he fell back on the bed, white sweatshirt crumpling into blue blankets as he stared at the white ceiling.  As the white light of the rectangle traveled up, finally onto the ceiling, down came eyelids.  The dreams did not begin immediately, they never did.  It took a while to slip into them, especially not knowing which way one was falling into sleep from, exactly.  Phillip always fell in, too.  Other kids talked about dreaming as fun, as interesting or confusing.  He was told that he just had nightmares.  It wasn't like that at all though.  This time he fell in a forest.  Treebranch, treebranch, treebranch, ground.  Normally that sort of thing would leave bruises, cracked ribs, or at least wind him.  Not that he'd tried it, but he wasn't about to.  This was his dream, or a dream.  Something.  He got away with it hurting like hell.  This time it wasn't around, whatever it was this time.  The green leaves scattered around and the brown bark stretching up to purple sky.  Silence.  He might as well wander, not that wandering really did much here.  You always got where you were going at the same rate, but wandering at least kept you active, stretched your muscles in here.  It was a peaceful place, but it really was too quiet.  Maybe nobody else was asleep or something, it was early.  A few things shoulda been straggling around anyway though.  Ahead of the wave of night, getting ready to claim first dibs.  Then he heard the crying.  He had finally arrived, it seemed.  Bushes parted in front of him, dissolving away into sand, dunes spreading out as far as the mind could dream.  One lone boy on the sands and three rakish wolves prowling around on their six chitinous legs.  Maybe he'd just learned about ants or something.  Chuckling at that though wasn't a good idea though, turned out.  Four faces, one tear-soaked and three others fang-filled snapped his way.  He was running at that point.  Too hot for a sweatshirt out in the desert, though, so the sweatshirt he'd been wearing billowed out and darkened into a large, black cape.  It wasn't tough to dodge them, not when things like this had to know what to think before they could act, and that had a bit of a delay.  By the time the kid had realized he'd been picked up and carried along, the wolves were many strides of his long legs behind.  The farther he went, though, it was just desert.  Just the nondescript sand, boring in it's monochromacity.  No tears, no sobbing, just silence.  Time to set the kid down and get out.  Can't get too clear of an image in people's heads, not since that time in middle school.  He would have even made it if not for the long-ass cloak he made.  Kid clutching a handful of it staring up at him, half in awe and half in bewilderment.  Phillip thought fast.  Figured he'd do things with a bit of a dramatic flourish this time.  Spinning around like a good hero would, he unhooked the cloak from around his shoulders.

"It's magic."  He grinned.

"Wait, what?"  He was already gone into the desert again.  He was good enough that he could have given the kid the slip without that, but abandonment could really mess with people.  That was from his psych class.  It was a few hours later, and a few miles of just desert before he woke up, shivering and wondering where his sweatshirt was and why the light was still on.  Phillip had strange dreams.

Merry Go Round

At times like these, it was only the stars that kept him from going insane from worry.  Structural integrity was a must for escape pods, so they were built to last, but the little window, one sided, that framed a black sea filled with bright dots was a sacrifice of utmost importance.  Studies showed that stress was three times higher without the thing, and it did the army no good if they got back soldiers who couldn't fight from fright and had to be fed.

Jason knew it more viscerally though.  While you were still in your fighter you had control.  Sure it was within a giant mess of chaos, blinking lights, explosions of bright lights, yelled com traffic, and the sound of your own heart beating like a hummingnird's wings, but it was something.  The drifting that he felt now was different.  Slowly the window would turn again towards the battle that still went on, little specks of light almost as small as the stars now.  He couldn't tell much from it anymore, just that the pace had slowed down.

So he floated there, waiting, thinking back on the battle.  His right rear thruster got shot out on the first pass over the hull.  That wasn't great, but he had backups, and he was one of the better pilots that they had.  The gimped propulsion system hurt, though, so he had to stay out of the heavy firefighting.  Sit back and take pot shots into the fray and hope he hit the right target.  It took longer than it should have for the enemy to close in and start sorting out the stragglers from the sidelines, chasing them down and around.  He should have gone for a docking bay, or just went back down planet-side to get out of it.  He was cocky, and Ron had two on his ass that he couldn't shake, so he had tried to be a hero.  Then three more popped up from below him, getting shots into the ship's drive and he was out.

The pods weren't manual, or at least most of them fired off before any normal man could get a hold of the manual override anyway.  When it worked, that is, which was about three quarters of the time.  It didn't help if the part that was supposed to boot you out got fried along with the rest of the ship's innards.  Anyway, out he went, watching the other half of his fighter float around out in the blackness, shiny metal fish darting around it, searching for their next prey.  The window was back out towards the stars now, little dots of blue, yellow, red, white.  So many of them.  A band of them showed the milky way across the sky.  A minute or so later the deep blue of the planet, half obscuring the solar system's star set the backdrop for the scattered flashes of light that were most likely the cleanup after the battle.

Some lucky fighter would scout the position of the escape pods and debris, then the cleaner ships would be up here to pull them out.  If they were friendly, that is.  If they weren't than they might just get swept away with the trash, or maybe even just left to float.  It had happened before, so the stories went.  Jason had long ago come to terms with the nature of the pod as a coffin.

No radio was aboard, just a recording device keyed to shut off if any army secrets were mentioned.  There wasn't enough room to get the pod away safely and put a jammer on that could stop much of anything, so prudent superior officers told their soldiers to just carry a book.  Depending on their views on the natural way of things, the choice was either obvious, or changed with the best seller's list.  He never took a book, though, just looked out at the stars.  More times than not he was one of the scouts reporting in after the battle.

As he turned once more, thinking back on what he should have done, could have done, will do next time, he caught a glimpse of a little silver fish coming in closer.  And then his pod kept turning.  No way to know.  For the next seven hundred turns, he just kept watching, waiting, looking out at the ever smaller blue sphere.

Who knew that space was peaceful enough to lull you to sleep?  He couldn't say how many more turns it took before he woke to the sound of metal on metal, his small pod bouncing on into the belly of some spacecraft or another.  The lock snapped shut, the systems webbed the pod to the floor, and when he popped his head out through the hatch, the warm sight of a dozen men with swords drawn and ready were perhaps the one thing that he wanted to see less than the slow turning of the stars against the black of space.

"Good Morning Soldier, we're here to offer you a deal," voiced a man from behind him.  Jason could practically hear the smug grin on his face.

A light shined in the darkness, and the darkness did not understand it.

It was dark.  Pretty much all of his world was.  Dark caverns, dark tunnels, dark dreams, all with a small sliver of light that was the staircase up.  Nobody went up though, at least not the sane folks.  They stood just outside that column of light, squinting their eyes at what was completely foreign to them.  I say eyes, but they really were more of indents in a face, super sensors that felt heat and touch and sound.  Nothing much resembling an eye by the standards of you or I or any of the ones who trapesed about on the ceiling, out in the sun which shone one small column down into the darkness.

Anyway, he was sitting there at the edge of the light, dimmed now to the point that it was bearable to stare at it.  He wondered much.  He wondered what it was, that offness that his senses could just barely perceive in the center of the chamber.  It had the same feel of heated iron, stoked long in a furnace, but it was not hot.  It had the same cascading bouncing nature of water, but it did not flow or fill the area in the same way.  It was akin to the flames and glowing magma of deep in the heart of the world, but it did not consume and was not tangible.  Yet it still burnt when skin passed into it.  His people at least.

The ones from up above could live in it, craved it, seemed so nervous to be down in the darkness where everything was calm and good.  He heard them whisper in fear at the footsteps out of their vision when they descended to trade their wares for gems and metal.  If their bodies were whole, their minds must surely be scorched dry.  They would trade away the valuable root-carvings and strange moss-kin that they had for bits of the ground.  Most of the things they would trade much for were even useless, brittle bits that did nothing but scatter the scorching light when they touched it.  A few of his people's traders had been hurt by the light that did that once or twice before they took precautions, wearing the cloaks they had traded for in the past to shield themselves.

Cloth was such a marvel, why would anyone accept for trade bits of silver of gold for it, he did not know.  The light must make them crazy, it must.  And yet, they survived, they lived elsewhere, outside of the earthmother's bosom, and from the records they thrived.  Nowhere else did such a pillar of light exist, though, so this lone area was a singular contact point to all of a civilization.  Perhaps small, for what would be left of the world if so much of it was the bosom of the earthmother?

And why did the light pulse, sometimes irregularly, sometimes disappearing altogether?  Why did water fall in down to his world from there, droplets like a stalactite might make?  Was there one up there in the light on the ceiling, was it the source of the light, hot and glowing and bright like a river of magma?  He would not know, for he could not venture into the light.  The light would burn him, scarring his skin.  Blacksmiths who worked too close to the rivers of flame came back burned and hard-skinned from their time, but it usually took years or at least months to reach the severity that light patch could cause at full brightness.

It was almost time for the column to become brighter.  He picked himself up from the floor where he sat and pondered and strode back into the tunnels before he would become roasted.  Maybe with enough cloth, he mused. . .

Colorful Language

The yellow robe stood, peering down the hole as far as it went into the blackness that was the earth.  Instead of imagining that it was real as most sane minds would calmly agree, the silliness of the hole brought out a tiny chuckle from beneath the yellow robe's cowl.  "You know this is insane, yes?"  With a small motion she kicked a pebble down into it, watching it disappear in moments, swallowed by darkness.

"Mmm, yeah, not at the top of the list though."  The red robe reclining next to the hole didn't even bother looking over as he answered.

"He's right, it's not as if this one has to do with ~time~ shenanigans again."  Blue was sitting a ways off, stretching in preparation.

Another chuckle from yellow, followed by a shiver despite the heat on the dry, flat mesa of not quite cream stone.  Red shrugged, careful not to overbalance into the hole.  Even if there were sandworms (this had in fact been a discovery of some import a year back in the desert) a rockworm was an entirely different entity.  "Who even wanders around out here and falls into one of these who wouldn't be dead on impact?" said Yellow as she turned her head to face blue.

"Well, the answer appears to be one Mr. Finneous Lampert.  I think he's some sort of insurance salesman, the door to door type.  You know how pesky they are."  Red groaned from over next to the hole.  Yellow kicked another pebble in.  "He also could have been eaten and not digested yet," blue pointed out.

"And I suppose that's why this is a tri-color operation then, the business with possible carnivorous beasties that aren't listed as existing?"  Red, from yellow's perspective, seemed like somebody who would complain about anything.  In fact, it was a general trait of people from the animal handling division she'd found.

"No, it's tri-color because they wanted to make it quint-color and I outright refuse to go out into the wilderness with more than two people outside my division and they didn't have anyone else to assign."  This time yellow spat into the hole.  She had a water bottle, so it wasn't that much of a risk of dehydration.  This was only the scouting mission before tomorrow anyway.

"What were the other two colors?"  Red was either paranoid or bored, she couldn't tell.

"Green and Black."  It wasn't like it was classified.

"I can get why a anti-personel specialist wasn't high on the list, and to some extent why an ecologist isn't super useful, but. . ."  Blue left the question hanging.

"Why not bring them just in case anyway?" finished Red.  "I mean, if it's authorized. . ."

"Because," yellow intoned slowly, "there is a reason that an internal affairs officer is leading this mission."  That part of the project ~was~ classified.  Blue would likely figure it out at some point during, but it would be unprofessional to reveal it before she had to pull out the badge and swear them to secrecy in front of the debriefer.  Intelligence was an annoying division to deal with.  The other two were silent.  If not for the fact that they would have had to move to disappear, she would have thought they left.  Nice to see that authority had some power, some gravitas as it were.  She really liked that word, because it usually meant that she was done dealing with pesky, vague situations that tended to hover around color interaction.

Red broke the silence.  "I just have to stop some worms, right?"  You could never be quite sure if reds were crazy or just had some strange priority mishap.  Yellow was not quite sure that facing down possibly magical creatures was actually worse than paperwork in their minds, but it wouldn't surprise her.

The interruption of silence continued as blue took this as a sign that he could start scribbling in his notebook.  Most likely conspiracy theories, as was usually the case.  Once it was love poetry, but that time she hadn't remembered to keep her hood up.  Blues didn't tend to get out much, this one being the exception.

She let him finish a page, and then when she heard the paper flipping spoke.  "Okay, enough rest, on to the next hole, just three more before we make camp somewhere off of this thing, I don't fancy sleeping up here."  Yellow turned, striding off in what she thought was the right direction, the other two following behind her a few paces back.  "And no, I am not here to hunt down one of the fabled renegade oranges.  Those are still a myth, just so you know."

A Witness and his Book

It was a very grey day.  Not so much raining as having a constant wetness that caused him to twitch, hood down around his neck.  The grass sparkled in the lantern light of the early morning, clouds dampening out any other pre-dawn illumination.  A witness got up early on days like these, waiting for the next group of zealous fools.  He had seated himself next to the cave mouth on a rock, grey as the rest of the stones in the area.  His lantern sat beside him, farther up so as to shine down on his tome, lying open with the inkwell balanced at the top in the center.  This was not his first witnessing, and it would doubtless not be his last.  Many witnesses had come before him, many were still here around the lands, and many would come after him.  The sharp clink of steel upon itself came from down the path in the thin fog.  Footsteps, muffled but sure of themselves, joined in.  No voices though.  When he had seen them in the inn they had all been jolly, happy, normal people, but they knew what they were getting into.  It was a veteran troupe.  All that meant was that they had come out alive from one of these holes.  As a matter of public record, that put them in the top half, but it was only one delve, only one week.  They had gone in a few towns over, found nothing near the surface, and popped back out.  Activity was not so scarce here though.  Not on grey days like this.  There had been noises from down in the earth two days ago.  So as they approached, he did not smile at them, he gave them a look between pity and respect, though how much he conveyed he might never know.

"Names and Titles, Sirs and Madam"  The woman was less heavily equipped than the rest of them, but she had a large bow, not that it would help all that much down there.

"Francis of Arleton"  A tall man, shining in his armor with a sword to match his height.  Things will see his shining steel a mile away in the lamplight.  He wrote down the man's name in the book under the date; third week after the planting festival, second day, party of four.

"Godfreid the Hammer"  This one was large, but carried himself lightly, a god sign.  His gear was another matter.  Rusty, patched up, well worn, none of which would serve him well in the depths.  His name in ink under the first.

"Clancy of the House of Tine"  If it was a great house it must have been in some far off land, and he did not look all that noble to begin with.  Probably a bastard of some small earldom in the south, but who was he to judge a young man, hardly past sixteen, who would go to confront death in its tomb? Ink on paper.

"Aelysa Keeneye, witness."  She had steel in her voice, so perhaps she had seen something in that pit a few towns over after all.  Still, it wasn't a big party.  Hers as well in the book, which he set aside to dry, standing up.

"These are the traveler stones for our town, bear them down into darkness, and with the light of Aunim return to us.  His grace upon you seekers of that which was lost."  As he spoke he fished in his robes pocket for the stones.  Small grey things with a sigil burned into them in the blacksmith's fire, numbered the same way on the back.  He had already written down the number he would give them next to their name, and made sure to give them over successfully.  The priest had soaked these ones in holy water just last week, if that would help much.

In they went then, and when they finally turned that ever familiar corner, the witness still stood there for a moment.  Dawn broke, though it was much the same as the time before with the clouds where they were.  He knew because of the countless times before that he had come to this spot.  Tomorrow he would come again, and the day after, and its day after too, if they were still in there.  Nothing happened for two weeks.

The day after that, four grey stones were piled at the entrance, the witness updated his book, then cast the stones off to the side of the entrance.  It was also a grey day.  Most were.