"What bugs me," the rancher says, "is with everything she's accused of, she's still claimin' to be an expert on love."

His words are the faded maroon of suspicion, but there's a subtle thread of green running through them. And with that, Chester allows himself a smile. This recruitment is going to be a success, even if he hasn't quite figured out how yet.

"Oh, it's no claim, sir," Chester says brightly, trying to ignore the itching of the still-stiff suit which was bought specially for this mission. "What her detractors won't tell you is the simple truth. The Holy Mother has attained multiple siddhis"—he often tests the waters with that term; given the stirrings of creamsicle-orange now surrounding the rancher, he'll dial back the foreign words to avoid further confusion—"on her path to enlightenment. Demonstrable magical powers which serve as proof of her transcendence and wisdom."

That topic always goes in one of three directions, and unfortunately Chester's current prospect takes the baser path. The rancher's enormous outline fades into the greedy desire of amber as he chuckles, opening his front door a little wider. "An' I suppose for a generous donation she'll teach me everything she knows?" he says, passing it off as a joke but with no lilac in it.

Most of the Holy Mother's other devotees would leap at that base interest—it's enough to get the prospect in their ashram door—but because Chester can tell the difference, he has always held himself to a higher standard. The Holy Mother already has enough troubles; the least he can do is bring her prospects primed with a sincere desire for enlightenment.

So he laughs and pivots. "Oh, naturally. But men like us, we know that there's more important things in life than magic tricks."

The rancher considers for a moment, hints of green returning to his outline amid a broader stirring of violet. (Esau hadn't been kidding about the intensity of his colors—it's trivial to read the subtleties.) Then he laughs back, touches the brim of his Stetson, and throws wide his door. "Pretty bold claim, son. But I happen to appreciate that. C'mon in and gimme the pitch."

Chester thanks him and walks into the front room of the spacious, ostentatiously decorated mansion. "Once you see the Holy Mother yourself, sir, you won't need one," he says earnestly. "I've seen it over and over again: She's one of those women whose intensity takes you by surprise and sets your life on another path entirely."

He punctuates that with a sweeping gesture to give him a chance to discreetly get his bearings. He's standing next to several display cases with historical artifacts, the closest of which is a rusted metal gate sign reading "Rancho Bronco", and there are a number of large animal heads mounted on the front wall before the decorations turn to more typical pictures. Some of the heads are game animals, but the one over the door is a bull with massive, wide horns. Chester notes the details in case of small talk.

Speaking of which, he had expected a response. Chester glances back at his prospect for confirmation and pauses, alarmed. The colors around the rancher have retreated behind obscuring gray as he crosses meaty flannel-covered arms over his giant brick of a chest.

Most prospects, even the skeptical ones, respond well to his sincerity once they've got any green to them—but there's something else going on here, and this is a catch he can't afford to lose. It's time to change tactics and play International Superspy Chet Land.

Chester stands up a little straighter and pictures himself adjusting the imaginary bow-tie on his perfectly tailored tuxedo. Like the titular spy in the novels, he is suave, and he can say anything the situation demands. The real Chester hates lying—there's just no substitute for having your earnestness rewarded by the blue shades of a genuine connection—but the Holy Mother's needs come first, and this is one of those prospects whose problems won't come to light without some finesse.

"Take me, for example." Time to improvise and fish for secrets. "I used to read incel forums," he lies, carefully monitoring the edge of the rancher's form for color shifts. No hint of a reaction, other than the man's lips tightening amid his thick beard, so Chester discards the angle and pivots. "My relationship with my mother was always a little bit fraught." That lie finds no traction either, and the rancher's gray is fading along with Chester's hopes. He'll need a hit fast or his window of opportunity will close. "And it's easy to be dubious when love hasn't worked out for you," he desperately guesses. Ah—and there's a tinge of (yellow-tinted) green flaring out again. Bingo.

Chester smoothly merges that angle into his patter as if it had been the case all along, and turns to pace as he talks. It means briefly taking his focus off the rancher, but now that he has a hint, he needs to do a deep dive of the room for further context.

"I had never had a special someone, and I never thought I would." His lips are on autopilot as his eyes flit between the pictures on the walls. An ornately framed portrait photo of the man himself (in the exact same Stetson he's wearing now), high front and center, hanging under the broad second-floor balcony and laying claim to the room and its contents. "I always struggled with doubts—was I important enough to be loved?" Group shots on the sides of the stairs, bland chunks of men in identical suits and dully colored ties, politicians and agricultural executives. "I had all the friends I needed, so why weren't relationships working out?" And—ah, there, down at eye level on the side walls, a boy and girl in identical cap and gown, possibly secondary school, possibly university. They've got the rancher's broad nose, thin lips and round face. "Why couldn't I find a partner who knew how important family was?"

Chester has been glancing back at the rancher between sentences, and that green has been building up to a healthy glow as guess after guess connects. The man shifts his stance, still saying nothing but once again listening intently.

Still, Chester hesitates. The central piece remains missing from the puzzle, and he needs more time. "But in my third year at, ah…" He looks at the school colors in the children's portraits, and makes an educated guess. "Crystal Prep." He's rewarded by an immediate flare of violet. "When I met the Holy Mother. It's a great school, by the way. Have you ever been?"

The rancher barks a laugh, striding in and clapping a meaty arm down around his shoulders. "Have I, boy?" he violet-says, and Chester smiles back up to ignite a connection. "I fund their entire dang ag track. That's my name on the greenhouse."

"It's so great to meet a fellow alumnus, sir!" Chester enthuses, hoping he's not forced to back that blatant lie up with specifics. His lifetime at the ashram has left him more well-read and well-traveled than most people assume, but he's way out on a limb already.

Chester has lucked out this time, though. "Don't you 'sir' me," the rancher says, his pleasant surprise settling to the deep blue of rapport as he grabs Chester's hand and squeezes to the point of pain. "You call me Anton."

"Of course, s—Anton." That was a huge get, but Chester's already scanning the walls again in search of his real prize. And he realizes what he's been missing—or, more accurately, what is missing. There's a son and a daughter, but there are no family photos.

On closer examination, there are discolored rectangular patches on the wall where pictures once hung. Some spots are still blank; some are partially concealed with individual portrait photos of the children. And with that realization, Chester barely even needs the feedback of Anton's colors any more. There's a literal hole in his life, love spoiled and curdled and ripped out, and its absence left to fester. (That explains the yellow. He'll have to account for that to stay on track.)

Now, to coax that yearning into a green bonfire.

"It's the easiest thing in the world to love," Chester says, keeping his eyes locked to his target and intently surveying the edges of Anton's form at the corner of his vision. "And the hardest thing in the world to keep it from going wrong. True love is pure, and right, and oh so easy to get taken advantage of." He leaves behind the fiction that this is about him—borrowing random scraps of the Holy Mother's teachings, or imagined shared grievances, whatever best ignites Anton's need. "Men like us, we find someone worth committing to, and we give ourselves entirely. And we should! That's the only way to find fulfillment. But the real trick, the secret nobody considers"—and he winds up an epiphany bomb, anticipating that moment of surprise in Anton's reception—"is that finding the perfect partner isn't about understanding your partner. It's about understanding you."

"What d'ya mean?" Anton violet-says, right on cue.

"We can't control other people," Chester says. "Other people are messy. They lie, they cheat"—whoops, there's that yellow flaring up, walk it back—"they're poor matches sometimes despite our best efforts. But if you know what you are putting into a relationship, you have a grade-A, ironclad guarantee of what you're attracting. The Holy Mother showed me how to find someone genuine, just by being a better me."

Oh, yes, there's that beautiful color. "An' it worked?" Anton green-says, his need vibrant like a freshly mown lawn. And Chester nearly misses that he's talking himself into a corner.

He laughs knowingly. "A little too well!" he says. "I realized my true calling was helping the world understand how much good the Holy Mother's higher love could do. That's why I'm here. But the week I was thinking about that decision"—he flings more lies in, big ones, logs in the bonfire—"my ex-girlfriend called me to apologize, and I got two proposals out of nowhere, one of which the Holy Mother's teachings helped me realize was a very bad idea, and one of which would have been perfect, if only I had still wanted it."

Anton's holding back tears now, he needs this so much. And as they walk through the mansion, out to the back porch, and around the broad expanse of Rancho Bronco, he breaks down and tells the whole story of the failed marriage. Chester listens politely, making sympathetic noises, letting that yellow play out and burn itself out. He'll be pure green when he reaches the Holy Mother, desperate for anything. And she'll fix him.

Won't she?

Chester suppresses that traitorous thought the instant it pops up. Of course she will. (If he didn't trust her implicitly, he wouldn't play superspy for her.) He's not blind; he's seen the troubles nobody talks about at the ashram. But all those lawsuits were failed people mired in their imperfections, not ready for her truths. He's seen the baseness of their emotions with his own eyes—the muddy yellow of their accusations of fraud, the red-shouts of the few who stormed in to confront her.

This whole trip, he reminds himself, is only about how much Anton is hurting. Everything Chester had to make up to get him to the Holy Mother's doorstep is ultimately meaningless against how important it is to repair those deep wounds. And sure, he had overheard the Holy Mother mentioning how much difference Anton's money could make to their bottom line, but she was just being pragmatic. Truth has many enemies, and enemies are expensive—

Chester's thoughts are interrupted by a very red expletive from Anton, and fear briefly surges as he assumes he blew his cover story in a moment of distraction. Then Anton follows it up with an equally red "It's her!" as he stops in his tracks and hustles back toward the barn they just passed.

An even greater panic seizes Chester's throat for a moment—but Anton is clearly focused on some other distraction which has nothing to do with the Holy Mother. With that established, he tries to set aside his own thoughts and return to the moment. "I'm sorry," Chester says, glancing around them as he jogs to keep up. Dirt road, pastures full of colorless cows, storage sheds, parked tractor, barn. Nothing seems amiss. "Who?"

Anton gestures toward the distant forest as he jogs. "Crazy damn girl keeps leading a wolfpack to my property line!" he red-says.

Chester looks again. Under the trees, there are indeed some patches of color. Not emotional color—flesh and fur. There's a small ice-blue-skinned human form crouched provocatively at the treeline, and some larger outlines in the brush behind her that look vaguely predatory. But he can barely make her out at this distance, which makes emotional state tough to gauge. (He'd guess something purplish mixed with red or brown. Or maybe he's just seeing things in the shadows.)

"I've scared them off five, six times already, but they're fixin' to go after the herd," Anton continues, his red turning darker and uglier. "At this point, not sure whether to put a bullet in her or the wolves first."

"I'm sorry," Chester says, "what?"

An entirely new panic manifests as he pictures himself a witness to a murder, but he's not certain what he can do aside from following Anton and maybe trying to calm him down. That panic explodes as Anton swings open the barn door and lunges for a rifle-sized case labeled "Winchester" just inside the doorway. But Anton's colors spike into shocked peach for a moment, against a backdrop of blazing red—and he slams the case shut again, empty-handed.

There's a trilling yip in the distance, sharp and attention-demanding, and Chester reflexively glances over. The girl has stood up and stepped forward out of the shadows, giving him a clearer glimpse. She's compact and wiry, all lean muscle, though with curves to her torso that put her at Chester's age, right at the cusp of adulthood. She's half-covered in rough-edged, patchwork clothing—animal skins?—and barefoot.

She is also holding up a brown-black object, long and thin, her arm pumping to make it dance—and Chester's still not quite certain whether he's seeing her edges shift to the puce of a victory taunt, or whether the obvious context is making him assume it.

Anton cuts loose with a string of expletives, of which "bitch" is the kindest, and starts fumbling at the holster at his hip. "Thief! I'll kill you!" he red-screams, and if that green was a bonfire earlier, now his colors seethe like a forest fire, unstoppable and life-threatening.

Chester turns to Anton, raising his hands placatingly. "Uh," he stammers through a panic quickly threatening to overwhelm him, "m-maybe you shouldn't do anything hasty, s-sir, we can, uh, call the police—"

Then, behind his back, the girl shouts her reply to the rancher, and Chester nearly leaps out of his skin:

Try.

The word is ridiculously clear and crisp despite the distance, as if she had snuck right up to his ear, and the puce color of it blazes inside his head, the explosion of a sensory grenade. But he spins around and she hasn't moved.

He's still reeling when Anton bellows incoherently. The rancher draws an oversized pistol, his other hand coming up to brace the bottom of the handle. There are several loud, sharp cracks, and the gun leaps in Anton's hands, and there are one or two distant puffs of fragmenting bark from tree trunks at the forest's edge, none close to her.

Chester bolts for the safety of the barn.

The next minute or two is a blur. He cowers in a corner. Even though Chester can't see any color in them, the nearby cows are clearly as agitated as he is, lowing and stamping and crowding into the far corners of their stalls. He remains in his hiding place as he hears Anton come inside, waiting for the swearing and sounds of firearm reloading to subside, and makes damn well certain that the rancher's red isn't nearly as incandescent before he risks standing up again.

And when Anton ushers him into a huge pickup truck and drives them over to the treeline, there's no trace of the mystery girl—except for a number of muddy wolf-paw prints and one set of barefoot footprints left mockingly on the bank of Canter Creek, leading deeper into the trees.

Author's Note

This is a fully written novel, 120K words in 25 chapters! Starting with Chapter 3, they will be posted Sundays and Wednesdays.

Chapter 2, "Awful At Smartphones", is posting Friday, Aug. 2! We'll meet the Holy Mother, and introduce some familiar characters who light the afterburners on Chester's adventure...