To look at the interior of Bungalow 4G for the first time was to consider exactly how much time would be spent within it over the last years of his life, and then to begin wishing for that number to rapidly diminish.
He froze briefly as he stood within the doorway, staring at a past which had not only intruded into the present, but attempted to banish just about every hint of now from existence. Yes, he'd lived through all the decades which had found renewed, unwelcome expression in the decorations, furniture, and shag carpeting which hadn't so much been installed as desperately nailed down in the hopes that eventually, it just might stop moving. Those decades were gone, and just about everything they'd added to the various mistakes which kept making up American styles should have passed with them. But here they were, back again, pretending that they'd never left and he was the one sadly mistaken concerning the current date. All the age spots and little pains? Phantoms. And really, as soon as he stopped imagining he was eighty-four years old, the whole thing would just... go away. A man of twenty-eight (it was always twenty-eight when he dreamed of himself, sometimes even when he looked in a mirror, just before the light reached his eyes) would stop projecting himself forward into a future which certainly never would have ended here. A future which was very close to running out. And the longer he looked at the bungalow, the more he wished for the race to reach its end.
The corner of a box gently bumped his upper back. The person carrying it immediately assumed tones which suggested a twenty-car pileup . "Are you all right, sir? I didn't mean to -- we have an excellent staff, you must have seen that in the brochure, we can have someone down here within ten minutes at any hour if you feel the least bit --"
"-- I'm fine." It was still skin and muscle being bumped, even if the bones sometimes seemed to suggest they were moving towards something more like glass. "And about that brochure -- I saw homes. Big ones. Nice little estates."
"Um," the younger man said. "Um. Yes. Well... we have the adult living community, and that's probably the brochure your family showed you. But that's for people fifty-five and up."
He used the break between sentences to briefly consider the merits of an educational system which allowed people to graduate without understanding that eighty-four fell under 'and up.' And he thought about grinding his teeth, but most of them were still his.
"But," the mover continued, "that's really for couples. People who can -- keep an eye out for each -- well, couples. And at your age, sir... well, the bungalows are charming, don't you think?"
He took a step forward, but only because the mover (and everyone else) had given him no way back. The carpeting did its best to eat his shoes.
The first mover slipped past him, and a second one came in shortly behind. That one froze, because there was a horror to behold, and it wasn't even the attempt to create decades-past wall paneling which had sadly succeeded in every way. "Sir!" that one gasped. "You shouldn't be --" A quick nod to the boxes which the new resident was carrying. "That's for us to do! You just -- settle in. You can start unpacking as we bring things in." Which triggered a sharp breath as Concerned Citizen #2 started to think about the level of physical activity inherent in unpacking. "But we also have people who can help you with that. Everything just where you tell them to put it. Everything. Someone will be by later anyway, to make sure you get your copies of all the activities schedules. The maps. And you can ask for the help then."
Can you show me where the bathroom is? And would you mind putting a training pad on the tile, just in case I miss?
The thought was pure sarcasm, of course. There was no way a place like this was going to use anything as risky as tile.
"So is this how the last resident left it?" he asked. Someone to blame would have been nice.
"No, it's just Style Three," the burly first mover said as he set the boxes down, immediately followed by quickly snatching a few more out of the new resident's grip, just in case standing still while holding about fifteen pounds risked any chance of breaking fingers. "Everything from the last occupant was moved out two days ago. Actually, sir, you're very lucky. You've got 4G. I bet some of the current residents would have given anything to move in here!"
It made the upcoming expression of growing fury at having had something done for him on assumption of weakness (an anger which had been growing since the moment sticking him in here had become a real possibility, and then surging to rage when possible shifted to inevitable) momentarily pause. "What's so special about this place?" He already knew it wasn't the sofa.
"It's the lucky bungalow! The last resident made it to ninety-six!" the mover replied in a near-gush. "And he wasn't in the best shape when he got here, but he... well, he sort of pulled it together, and he made it to ninety-six."
From outside, the unseen third mover muttered "You're just happy because you had ninety-six in the dead pool."
The two interior movers froze, then looked at the new occupant, visibly decided that his lack of outer reaction meant his hearing was too far gone to have picked any of it up, and audibly reflected that delusion when the second mover picked up his volume on the next sentence. "But being in a bungalow just means less to worry about. You can get cleaning, meals can be brought in -- and of course, all our other facilities are available to you, sir. Living in a bungalow closes off none of what we offer. If you saw the brochure, then you saw the clubhouse. We have... well... do you like card games?" Without waiting for an answer, "We have a lot of card games. There's an arts and crafts studio, if you want to learn how. And a zen garden -- that's a special kind of garden."
He'd been to Japan, voluntarily, and Korea, without true choice. He knew about Zen. He might have known more than the one who had just wrought a minor miracle by wrecking the pronunciation of a three-letter word.
"Also, we have athletic facilities," the second mover half-shouted. "You could watch!"
Starting the final phase of his life with a screaming fit seemed somehow appropriate, but his current anger was more of a slow burn, and he was sure none of the three would have never understood what he was angry about at all. So he turned and went back for more boxes, wondering how far he'd be allowed to get with them.
It left him facing the third mover.
The tallest of the men looked at him over the edge of the tall box. All the way up, and then not very far down before the cardboard got in the way.
"So you've got Gone Guy's place," he said, and the words were the exact opposite of friendly. The new arrival appreciated that, for it came across as being honest.
"Guess so." Dead man equaled Gone Guy. "The lucky bungalow."
"You gonna vanish?"
He stared at the narrowed eyes. "When it's time," he said. "Why? Someone in line after me?"
"He vanished," the third mover said. "I got sick of looking for him. Don't you vanish."
The tallest man went past him, coming within inches of the hard shoulder bump which he probably delivered to everyone in his own generation who gave him any trouble, generally through existing. After that, it was boxes, and more boxes, and his not being allowed to carry boxes, until it was cardboard in stacks on the floor and strands of too-thick carpet trying to worm through the tape.
Two of the movers apologized a lot as they left. Sorry they had to go somewhere else, sorry there wasn't anyone here yet to help him, sorry about everything except the fact that he didn't want to be here and was stuck there until the day he died, which suddenly seemed to be something he could truly look forward to. The third just stared at him a lot, let the others do most of the work, glared in any moment when staring moved to long range, and put the few boxes he carried down too hard.
That one shot him a final hot glance of passed-along loathing as he went out the door first, and said "Don't vanish."
The second mover, not seeming to know what to do with that any more than the new resident did, hurried out after his coworker. The first winced a little, blushed just a bit more, and awkwardly said "Um... well... welcome to the Equestra Retirement Community, sir. Single Seniors Section. We'll have someone around shortly to help you get things in order. Clothing. Cabinets. Pills."
He took two pills a day. Looking at the mover was steadily driving it towards seven.
"Have fun!" the young idiot finished his script, and closed the door.
And there he was. Among boxes which held memories of the dead, resting on styles which should have been left dead, thinking about the lucky bungalow.
Ninety-six. That was twelve years off for him. Twelve years in this place.
If he was truly lucky, he wouldn't make it to morning.
He made it to morning, and wasn't happy about it. He was even less happy when he made it through his first week, which was enough time to start learning how the rest of the SSS residents got through their durances. By the time he began to approach the close of the first fortnight, he was having a hard time remembering what happiness was.
The Equestra Retirement Community was, for lack of a still more offensive word, segregated. He did recognize that in some ways, it was rather upscale. Those closer to fifty-five, the ones who could afford the little estates -- they had some nice homes indeed, and he was welcome to walk past them all he liked, although anything over once a day tended to summon a random staff member who would make inquiries about his heart rate. And they took some degree of advantage of the facilities, which included several kinds of swimming pools, a putting green, and a computer room for those few who hadn't put WiFi into their homes. They used the amenities about as much as a new country club member, which meant about two months of trying to do everything and then a long period of just showing up once in a while to be seen, only without the wondering about why they were still paying the dues.
The younger residents, as far as that word could be applied, enjoyed the gated community. But they enjoyed it with those in their own age category. They didn't talk to SSS residents much, and looked at them just a little more, for as short a time as they could get away with. Because there were those who said fifty-five was the new thirty, but eighty-four was eighty-four, even if he'd felt like it was closer to sixty just before he'd been forced toward those gates, and now felt the number rushing towards a virtual century. They could claim to be hale and hearty right before they laughed about using a term so old as 'hale and hearty,' quickly switching it for some youthful slang which they were probably using wrong. But if they looked across the room at the SSS residents, they would see into their inevitable future, the best-case scenario for it. They would see him. And fifty-five pretending to be thirty never wanted to acknowledge eighty-four at all.
He would have told them how much he hated that, but none of them ever got close enough to hear.
The staff... the staff knew what was best for him, which meant any opinion he had on the subject was regretfully uninformed. He'd tried to use the computer room, because his old system had burnt out the week before the forced move. The attendant on duty, what he was beginning to think of as the Safety Squad, had seen him enter and gone into what, had he been sixty years younger, would have been a very cute panic. She'd spent ten minutes trying to explain what a mouse was, followed by desperately asking if he'd been to the shuffleboard court yet.
He already knew the perils of trying to walk too far around the place (and his license had been pulled after the accident, so walking was just about all that was left), and if he tried to swim... he just wanted to swim two laps, two lousy laps without having a personal lifeguard wondering if he needed to pause the smartphone game long enough to call an ambulance. (In his opinion, a phone which couldn't both play and call at the same time wasn't that smart at all.)
They wanted to know if he needed his meals prepared. They wanted to know if he needed any shopping done, because carrying things back on the bus would be hard. Of course, there were a lot of buses, and one of them didn't worry about his carrying anything back because it went to Atlantic City (or what was left of it) just about every day, and the expectation was that he'd come back much lighter in the pockets. Another boasted that it traveled to the best antique shopping in the Colts Neck (a name which seemed to be begging for a possessive apostrophe) area, which struck him as shipping coals to Newcastle. And still more went to the malls, because mall-walking was encouraged. You could, in theory, walk around all you liked. Go into some of the more youthful stores and no one would know what to do with you, but you could make the college kids behind the counter uncomfortable through just walking by until either the bus came to take you back behind the gates, or the uniformed impotence that was mall security pulled out their harshest weapon, the rapid-fire five-round "Are you all right sir?"
Buses were now required to reach his doctors, but that was two and a half hours, with transfers included. So he was supposed to find new doctors. The staff had a lot of ideas there. They would talk to him about his health for much longer than they'd talk about anything else, usually under the presumption that he didn't understand any of it and wouldn't retain the explanations all the way to the next meeting. They talked at him. The fifty-fives talked over him. Those in his own age group didn't seem to be interested in talking at all.
He went by the other bungalows. Lights showed when people were home. Ambulance lights showed when they weren't.
Most of them watched television. Endlessly, for there was a Special Selection (when it came to the capital S, the community was littered) of channels which had been chosen just for them. You could watch classic movies. Classic shows. There was one channel which picked a different year for that same day and replayed those old newscasts: Watch What Happens, And Pretend It's Live! You could pretty much pick a decade and decide to live in it, at least until you flicked the remote past the now while ignoring the quality of the screen you were watching, a resolution the old tubes could never deliver, and carefully forgot that the remote you were holding didn't work via ultrasound. Some of them had to deliberately forget that. Others were long past needing to make even a casual effort.
He could hear channels being changed, when he went by the other bungalows. The Special Selection was in a cluster, 2 through 13, so the residents would be -- comfortable, as those were the channel numbers which had been around for the majority of their lives . And so many times, he could hear the remote sending them around and around the same limited area.
The community was gated. It wasn't necessary. The outside world would have stayed away without it. Too many of the people inside were already trapped within themselves. And the only way he was going to escape would put a new prisoner into the lucky bungalow.
He would look up when the ambulance lights flashed through his curtains, and wish it was coming for him.
Turner Classic Movies. TV Land. Decades. The cable-funneled sounds of mental stasis, a lifetime approaching shutdown.
On the thirteenth day of his durance, he passed by a bungalow, heard the resident screaming dissent at a ESPN sports reporter's opinion, and immediately knocked.
It took a while for the occupant to answer the door. You generally had to allow some time for the joints to settle down, along with a optional fetch of the walker.
"So," the old man said (he could think that if he wanted to, even for someone visibly a decade younger, for there was a part of him which was still twenty-eight, and that was the part which wanted it all to end), "You're the new Gone Guy." And that seemed to be his method of introduction.
The newest arrival blinked. "The new Gone Guy?"
"You've got his place," the seventy-something said. "But you ain't gone yet, so maybe that left with him. Why the knock?"
"You heard what he just said about the Cubs?"
"Yeah..."
"He was right."
A long pause.
Without malice, "Get in here so I can scream at you proper."
He did. They did.
After the argument died down, the seventy-something settled back in the chair which matched his own for the sheer degree of hideousness. "Nice to hear from someone who's still there." A finger slowly tapped his wrinkled forehead. "You come back when the Series starts, so you can be wrong some more. Assuming you ain't gone."
"Is that why they called him Gone Guy?" He twirled his index finger near his temple. "He was..." And didn't want to say it.
"Nah," the other man said. "They thought he was, though, because he never told them, anyone, what was going on. He was Gone Guy because he was gone, off the reservation. Two, maybe three times a year, he'd just vanish. Never went out the gate. Never got picked up by any of the edge cameras around the walls and fences. Just -- gone. And then three, no more than four days later, he'd be back." He paused, took another pill. "First few times it happened, place tore itself apart, because sometimes you do get --" more forehead tapping "-- and people just wander off. Go find somewhere no one's gonna worry about them until the smell starts to blow back. But he'd come back, and he was fine. Better than when he left: more color in his cheeks. I always figured he was shacking up with a sixty somewhere, because they've got trouble searching all the houses, especially over in Richerville. But from what I heard, he'd never admit it. Just shrugged whenever they asked him where he was going, how he was going, and said he just stepped out. Wasn't like he was a prisoner, so he could step out. All he'd ever say." He chuckled. "Some of the young bucks hated him, because they had to search every time and no matter how much they tried to get in his face, he just stepped out... Had to hear all of that from other people, or overhear. Gone Guy didn't talk to the rest of us much. Liked his privacy, liked his secrets." A grin, wide enough to display most of the dentures. "Liked to vanish. Wish I knew how he did it. Wish I'd done it. Whenever he went, it had to be better than here."
He took a slow breath, noted the effort. "Gone Guy."
"Yeah. Real gone now, though. I saw them carry him out. Bungalow's only lucky for so long."
He tried not to think about that. "Why didn't you come by? I could have used knowing you were here when they pushed me in."
"Didn't know if you were one of the shuffling dead," was the reply. "Didn't know if you were gonna last. Couple of the new ones just give up, first week. Give all the way up. Think you'll make it to the Series?"
A deeper breath. His ribs hurt. "Could be."
"Good. Scream at you first pitch, two days. Make it through two days. The TV don't scream back."
He was starting to feel... better. It was still prison, but there was a huge difference between solitary confinement and having a cellmate you could stand. He'd learned that in Korea.
Two days. Well, he was hardly in a position to make any guaranteed promises about such things, but he was pretty sure he could make it through two days. He could even cook a few game treats, things those in their seventies and eighties absolutely shouldn't be having, and all the more precious for that. Had he brought her old recipe book? Of course he had: it was just in one of the boxes he hadn't been quite able to unpack yet. So this was as good a time as any to start digging.
He went into the bungalow's living room to start the search, just in time to see the flashing lights.
The fourteenth day mostly made itself known as a steadier glow against those curtains. He watched it from his own version of the hideous chair. There were times when he fell asleep, and knew it only because he would open his eyes and the position of the most intense glow would have changed. Others when he had to go up and use the bathroom, too many times. No moment when he felt like eating.
They'd said... the seventy-something might come back. It was just an Incident. The sort of Incident where you could hear the capital rising up from the ground, as solid as a tombstone.
'Might.' As tossed-off almost-certainly-lies went, it wasn't a good one.
If this was really the lucky bungalow...
He took a breath. It wasn't the last one, which disproved it.
The sun was going down. He'd slept too much already. He'd probably be up for hours. In the chair, with the television off because he didn't care to hear from any year just now, just alone with his thoughts, trapped within bungalow and a body which wasn't twenty-eight any more and walls.
He could hear the decades changing through the walls. He wanted them to stop.
He heard the rattling.
And now the toilet's broken. He knew what metal against porcelain sounded like, especially when it was this close. Not quite a last straw, and that felt like a pity. Might as well see what I can do about it...
He forced himself out of the chair, towards the bathroom --
-- the rattling came again. Louder.
A broken-off part would have repeatedly snapped against the tank's interior a few times, maybe six or seven if the springs had been strong. But then it would have stopped.
He froze. More rattling filled the silence.
Slowly -- was this really as fast as he could move now? -- he made himself approach, turned on the light, put a hand on the safety rails for the first time as he inched towards the toilet. There was nothing odd about it from the outside. Just a toilet in a tile-free, slip-resistant bathroom. But the rattle kept on coming, it was definitely the tank and it had to be metal, there wasn't a rat or anything swimming around and trying to get out, it was metal...
He lifted the top of the tank off: he still had the strength for that. Water and springs and levers greeted him.
The rattle came from between his hands, and he nearly dropped the lid.
He just barely managed to put it down on the sink, inverted it...
...a plastic bag, taped to the interior. An appointment book with a permanently cord-attached pen, both perfectly dry, held within. A thick five-year planner, which took a lot of nerve. And more rattling sounded, as the book jumped within its protection.
Carefully, he peeled back the waterproof tape, picked up the bag. The rattling stopped, for the contents had no more reason to move. He stared at the book and its companion for a few seconds, then opened the bag and took them both out.
The book and pen were still. The -- other piece was quiet. Silent. He picked it up, and it felt warm in his hands, too warm for something which had been sitting in water for that long.
Slowly, he put the little piece of metal down again, then looked it over. Gold. Silver. They seemed to be streaked into each other. Not melted together, but coexisting in a way which suggested the impossibility of their having come from the same mine. The same stone. Well-shaped, with no sharp edges. It had possessed a surprising weight, and that suggested the gold was real.
After a moment, he opened the door. Most of the pages were blank, as the previous owner had insisted on crowding things into a fairly small area, instead of putting them on the pages which would have matched the dates. But otherwise, it had been used for the intended purpose. Appointments had been written down, and every last meeting time was deep into the night. All the meeting places were outdoors, on the grounds.
Two, three appointments per year.
He turned pages until he found the last. The one which couldn't be met.
The handwriting wasn't shaky. It was the too-straight, overly-controlled lettering of someone who had to concentrate for every letter. It had recorded what was now the current date, followed by:
10:30 p.m.
At the Pits.
And with a closing effort:
(Ha.)
The pit...
...he thought he knew what that was. What it had to be.
He picked up the little piece of metal. It was still warm to the touch.
And he wondered if he was still in that hideous chair. Dreaming, conjuring up things which had never been and never could be. If there were lights flashing outside, and they had come for him because that little twirl of the finger had been an act of prophecy.
The part of him that was eighty-four briefly thought about calling for help.
That which was twenty-eight picked up the book with one hand, clutched the warm metal tightly in the other, and waited.
He'd had some trouble timing it. He knew his walking pace, but he only knew it in the times when he truly thought about it: in all other moments, some part of his mind would insist that he should be moving at the younger man's pace, the stride which declared it owned the world and eighty-four would never dare to approach. So he'd left too early, and still nearly arrived too late.
There wasn't much going on that night, and he didn't want anyone to think he was something which was. So he did his best to stay away from the light, skirting the edge of lampposts, moving into shadow when cars came by. He supposed it would have been difficult for many at his age, but he'd been to Korea, and Gone Guy might have gone to Japan of something other than his own free will. There were some things you never completely lost: they just took more time to enact.
Staying on course was easy. The Community had little maps and diagrams everywhere, just in case a resident happened to forget how to get where they were going.
And in time -- just about past the time -- he got there.
The equipment hadn't been put away for the night. (Afterwards, he wasn't quite able to decide if that had been laziness, policy, benign neglect, or -- something else.) The metal was glistening under the light -- there was light here, but there was nothing he could do about that -- picking up moisture on its chilling surface as the temperature dropped. The sand hadn't been smoothed out in the little landing areas, but that might not have been necessary: there were very few granular divots. Just like nearly all of the supposed facilities, the place didn't see a lot of use.
Nearly ten-thirty. Under moon and stars -- it was a half-moon and clear enough for starlight, something else which had given him trouble in getting out here -- waiting for an appointment which its creator could no longer keep. And he didn't entirely know why.
Two, three times a year. Someone smuggling Gone Guy off the grounds from arranged meeting points, boosting him over the wall at a place the border cameras didn't cover? It seemed ridiculous. Family members and friends could have openly picked him up during the day -- okay, maybe he hadn't had those, especially as he got closer to ninety-six. But there seemed to be a connection. Two or three meeting times and places per year. The same number of vanishings.
Maybe I'm just seeing things in this.
Maybe I'm imagining them.
The rattling... had to have been imagined, by a man living in a sane world with an intact mind. But he'd heard it, the book had been there, and...
...he was here.
He was the only one here.
But this had to be it, didn't it? He looked at the sign again. There was the little outline of an equine head which the entire Community didn't come remotely close to saluting for their corporate flag, and beneath that, Equestra Horseshoe Pits. It made sense for the entry to be directing him here. But it was nearly ten-thirty -- he checked his watch: about fifty seconds off -- and he saw no one approaching. Heard nothing.
Felt an odd warmth in his hand.
He opened it. The little piece of metal rested solidly on his spotted palm, and he tried to raise it closer to his eyes, with some faint intent to watch it gleam as he shifted it back and forth in the light.
He never got it that high. As his arm moved forward, the metal jumped.
Not very far. An inch at most. But that was still nearly enough to lose it, and he quickly closed his hand, tightened his grip, tried to pull it close.
The metal responded by pulling right back.
His arm shot forward, nearly fast enough to truly hurt the shoulder which that third mover had so longed to impact. His body was nearly dragged along behind it, and he just kept his footing, barely managed to prevent himself from going face-first into the grass, assuming he didn't just wind up cracking his skull against --
-- the sign.
His arm was being pulled towards the sign.
There were so many things he could have questioned, with both that in him which was eighty-four and the part which remained twenty-eight nearly united in something stronger than denial. But ultimately, somewhere behind his eyes, a second-grader accepted everything and allowed himself to be guided as the seconds ticked away, pulled towards where the metal wanted to go, letting it direct his hand.
He opened his palm when the pulling stopped, with his hand against the sign. The metal rotated on his palm, turning itself to face outwards like the world's thickest compass needle. And under the light of half-moon and stars, he saw that the gap between two of the sign's letters was just a little larger than it should have been, perhaps larger than it had been a second ago.
Carefully, at the exact moment the appointment had been due, he placed the little metal I between the R and A, and it stayed there of its own accord.
The fresh sounds hit his ears at the same moment the light changed, and his head jerked up, he was trying to think of ways to explain himself to whoever was patrolling the grounds, bracing his neck for the crick that would come when staring that far up at someone on --
-- and he saw what had happened to the light.
At his end of the pit -- moonlight, starlight, some electrical illumination trying to drown them both out. The colors took on the odd half-tones which came under such a combination: natural shades, but ones which wouldn't have existed without humans. The hues of reaching out to claim the entirety of the clock. But at the far end... there were less hues. Simpler shades, as if the local palette had been abruptly cut in half. But those colors were sharper. Something about the cutdown of the world's chroma had resulted in increased resolution, a density of detail which had never reached his eyes before. He could see individual blades of grass, each little bead of gathering dew, right up to the edge of the light fog bank which hadn't been there a moment before. But he barely had time to notice that, because there was still the sound of approaching --
-- no, that was wrong. Any patrol would have had to drive up most of the way, walk the rest.
They wouldn't be riding.
And the horses came out of the fog, horns first.
One was white, and markedly taller than he was: a giant among mares. The other was just about his size (he hadn't lost all that much height, or at least usually chose to believe that), and -- dark blue. Blue all along her fur, for which he could make out every individual strand and in tracking that, he reached the shifting borders of the twinkling mane.
The wings on each, when that part of their bodies emerged from mist, came as something of an afterthought, and the images on the flanks barely registered at all.
They had not quite been looking forward, the two mares. There had been a partial turn of their heads, a glance towards each other started at the instant they strode forth, and it somehow seemed to him that each had been checking to make sure the other had made it. It meant that when they had come out, they had not been looking at him.
They hadn't seen him. And then they turned their heads again, and did.
The white mare backed up: a half-jump, putting that shifting tail within the fog again. The dark blue's head went down, horn lowered, staring at him.
He didn't move. In many ways, he couldn't.
The white mare nickered, and he heard worry in the sound. The blue snorted, and it was easy to pick up on the challenge. It made the taller pause, stare down at her companion, who turned her head enough to glare back while never quite taking her focus off him. And then the white mare glanced at him again, and he saw her purple eyes find the book.
She whinnied. The question mark was perfectly audible at the end.
"I'm sorry," he heard himself say, heard himself feel. "He died two weeks ago."
Those purple eyes went wide. The eyes of the smaller closed. And then both slowly sank into the grass, pressed their bodies tightly against each other, fur meshing. He saw the pose, saw the way in which they went to each other, and realized two things: that they had known each other for a long time -- and that time had been a very long one.
The bodies were young: the fur lustrous, with eyes bright. But he knew what someone who had been through too many deaths looked like, along with the number of years it took to get there.
He gave them their time, and looked away when the first tears squeezed out from between both sets of lids. And only when they stopped, began to stand again, with the white mare folding the wing which had been draped across the dark one's back, did he do the natural thing.
They both blinked at the sound, ears rotating towards the cry of pain.
"Sorry..." he muttered, rubbing his side where he'd just given himself the hardest pinch of his life. "Had to be done."
And for a moment, it seemed as if the dark blue mare was snickering.
I could be crazy.
I could be dying.
Or they could be here.
The last option made the least sense, which was probably why the second-grader was willing to go with it. "I found the book," he told them. "He -- hid it pretty well, so no one found it until --" and it was only the inner child who could get the last words out "-- it wanted to be found. When it was appointment time. So I thought that since he couldn't keep it, someone should. And... I'm sorry for what I had to tell you. But I'm glad someone was able to." He paused. "If that makes any sense."
The white mare nodded.
He briefly stared at that motion, for while he knew they understood him, the gesture had still seemed like such a human one.
"So I guess you've got things to do," he finally said. "And you probably want some time alone, to work things out properly. I'll just --"
The white mare raised her left forehoof, and it felt so much like a teacher cutting off a student in the middle of a wrong answer that his words stopped. She lowered her leg again, looked at the darker eyes on her right. Her companion's head tilted, and there was a smaller snort before looking at him again. Back to the taller, and the dark blue fur crinkled a little as the left corner of her mouth scrunched slightly.
The taller nodded again, then walked over to where the horseshoes were lying in the grass. Knees bent, neck dipped, and she came up with two clenched between her teeth. The smaller one went over to another section, picked up but one, and the white mare came up to him.
Her mouth partially opened, and the extra arch fell into his waiting hand.
He stared up at her.
"Seriously?"
She nodded.
He was eighty-four. He was twenty-eight. He was seven.
He shrugged.
"North pit or south?"
He'd offered to keep score. They seemed to be okay with it.
One of the dark blue's head-tossed throws acted oddly. She was about to miss the stake, sand pit, and perhaps most of the grounds entirely -- but then there seemed to be something like a sparkle of shadow around the horseshoe, and the metal had knuckleballed. Her effort changed direction. Twice. He'd looked at the results as they rested against the stake for a while, then turned back in time to see the white mare glaring in a very specific downward direction. The dark blue had maintained the kind of steady gaze which typically came in the barracks when the squad's magician had just gotten a card trick past almost everyone, and the white mare had finally snorted and gotten ready for her next try.
His own tosses weren't all they could have been. The one shoulder was more than a little sore, it had been years -- no, much more than years -- since he'd played last, and there were also certain... distractions. The light at the south end, and the way it seemed to change the world it illuminated, was a constant call for his attention. And then there were also the mares. Their presence. Their horns and wings. The way the dark blue kept trying to snort or stomp a hoof when he was just about to let a throw fly, and he finally turned around, told her that he knew exactly what she was up to, and followed that by telling her off. The widened eyes and slight pullback told him he'd gotten through, and the little nickers from the taller suggested the local audience was an appreciative one.
They played under moonlight, and at one point, it almost seemed as if there was a second silver orb in the sky. But then he blinked, and the light was back to its usual dual oddity.
They played until someone had won three rounds, which turned out to be the white mare. He'd taken a grand total of none, although he'd been close on one. And then the taller looked at the fog which still billowed at the far end, and nodded to her companion.
The dark blue one sighed. (It couldn't have been anything else.) She glanced at the scattered horseshoes --
-- he was staring again. The way they were floating into place, being stacked up for the next players. But mostly at the sparkle and shadow which surrounded them.
"You -- you little cheater!"
She had the grace to wince, if not the dignity, and he saw the dark fur on her cheeks beginning to lighten from an underlayer of rising red.
"Well, I'll be ready for that one next time," he declared, managing a more than passable snort of his own. "Trying to sneak that in behind my back --"
Which was when his own words reached his ears, and they made him stop.
The white mare looked at him, followed by the dark blue.
"...sorry," he finally said. "I shouldn't have --"
The pit had been touched by moonlight, starlight, human light, the strange light -- and now one more kind was added to that mix, as sunlight flowed about the white mare's horn, lanced forward and surrounded the appointment book he'd left leaning against the pit's back wall, then floated it to his nearly frozen hands. Warmth turned the cover, flipped the pages, and the horn tilted down to touch the paper. He looked at where the point rested.
The purple eyes came up, and their gaze rested on his own.
"I'm... I can't promise to be around," he told her. "I'm -- not in bad shape for my age, but I don't know."
Still looking at him. Waiting, with the patience of age.
"I'll try," he said. "To get there. If I'm still here, I'll come." She nodded to that. "But that's just a date. We need a time, and a place --"
She trotted away from him, moving out of the pit. And as she strode into the pure moonlight, her shifting mane seemed to slow, the hues began to shift -- but only for a moment, because that was how long it took to reach the map. Her horn went down again, poked a spot, and he wrote the location down. Then she came back to the pit, stopped in front of him, and stomped her right forehoof ten times, followed by stopping it in mid-descent halfway through the eleventh.
"Ten thirty at that pool," he said, and she nodded. "Got it."
The dark blue mare trotted up, looked at him, and both corners of her mouth went up. Her horn dipped, rested on his left shoulder for a moment, and the little twinges of fire which had been inflicted before their arrival were cooled. The white nodded again, and both turned, walked towards the fog.
They stopped.
The dark blue glanced back at him. Looked at the mist, and then to him again. Repeated the gesture. There were no words, and yet he heard her intent perfectly:
"Come and see."
Go off the reservation.
He took the deepest breath of his life.
"...I can't," he told her, and the taller's head turned. "I -- sort of met someone yesterday, and I promised him we'd watch the Series together. If he's back in time." If he comes back at all. "But I'll tell you what. Next time? I'll bring a suitcase."
They both nodded to that, and the mares trotted back into the fog.
He watched until the last wisp had dissipated, right up until he heard the little clink which came when a small piece of metal fell from the sign and struck a pebble in the grass.
It was a long time before he was able to sleep that night. Part of it was from the thoughts going through his head. The need to take a bus to a place he could buy waterproof tape. Find a backpack somewhere. Get some exercise, that was mandatory. He was going to put in some extra time at the heated pool if he had to sneak it in under Moon's light --
-- where had that capital come from?
It didn't matter. At least it wasn't a local one.
He thought, and planned, and eventually fell asleep in the hideous chair, only to be woken up shortly after sunrise by lights flashing against his curtains. He sighed, pushed himself upright, shuffled to the window to see who was being taken away.
And when he saw the mandatory disembarking wheelchair come off the ambulance baseball cap-first, he went out to greet the returned, now rethinking the food tray he'd originally intended. They both had to stay healthy.
There was a chance he'd be allowed to bring a friend.
