Wyatt D’Fuq, copyright and trademark, 2020, Twilight Horizons Enterprises

By: Jeremiah Gill

Pilot Episode

Contains adult themes and subject matter. Reader discretion is advised.

In a Midwestern Midapocalyptic Mixtopia, Wyatt D'Fuq travels in a state of present-tense, through existential adventures of profound proportions, exploring deep philosophical unknowns such as . . . WTF?

Chapter I

The Trek

. . .

Now he trekked across the gray wasteland, leaving boot tracks in the particles. Wind came along behind him and blustered them around in little tornados . . . wiping them off the face of time like that toy he used to have . . . what was it called?

"Itchy-scratch"

Nostalgia rummaged waaay down in the toy bin and came up with that artifact, his baby name for the little red plastic-framed metallic monitor that taught him about erasing his mistakes, about erasing the past . . .

"My Itchy-Scratch" a whisper between his ears, "I loved that thing- "

The thought reminded him of the chaffing at his neck, the little grains that had worked their way in under his scarves and bandanas.

Keep them out, they'd been told, on every media that could reach their brains. Be afraid of the microscopic, the invisible, the indefensible.

Reaching into his pocket, he listened to the rhythm of his own breath, restricted and filtered through the canisters of his mask. It almost didn't make him claustrophobic anymore. Just a little less natural than putting on a pair of boots. But now, after this hike, he was even ready to take his boots off. How much longer? Toes wriggled in socks with grit between. How long had he been out here?

Subconsciously noticing that his fingers were rhyming the same movement, wriggling in his pocket for the nexus compass, he fumbled with glove bulk.

How had he gotten the compass? Brain fog again . . . still. Whatever. Here it was. Here he was. Like the single point out somewhere in the middle of that metallic gray screen of the freshly-shaken

"Itchy-Scratch"

with no remembered past, no set future, ready to form a new path in unnatural yet oddly-satisfying straight lines and right angles

to carve out a 2D representation of a 4D experience, a blasphemy almost, to pick one thin line out of a myriad of possibilities

Sometimes he wanted to break the whole thing apart, to smash it against something hard and free all the particles, to spread the metallic dust in a billowing cloud of potential

but that would defeat the whole purpose, would it not? to cloud all form? to make all paths one?

His hand seized the solid roundness of the compass and pulled it from the depths of his pocket, exposing it to the sunlight.

Adjusting the brim of his hat to cut glare, Wyatt held the orb in front of him, up toward the horizon. Wiping a layer of dust from one lense of his goggles with a gloved finger, he peered through layers of visual noise . . . the lenses, the dust, the foul air, the glass dome of the compass . . . and the brain fog . . .

The needle pointed at sunset this time. Never knew what to expect. He hadn't figured this thing out yet. Or if he had, he'd forgotten. All he knew was that when he didn't follow it, things happened. So, toward the sunset it is.

. . .

A scrambling shape was heading toward him. Fast. Directly out of the sun, skimming across the plain, kicking up whisps of gray.

He pocketed the compass and readied himself to draw the rifle, just before recognizing that familiar gait. The gangly approach of an agent of the Emu Express.

No sudden moves. They were known for their fierceness. One of those oxymorons in the world, something silly-looking that could kill you. Sillydeadly.

It slowed as it came closer, it's weird knees kicking at odd angles and its cyborg headgear scanning.

Wyatt showed his hands. No threat. He'd always wanted to ride one.

The thing had tracked his phone. It bothered him for some reason that they could do that, but he couldn't remember why. And it double-bothered him that they could do it when his phone was dead.

The emu slid to a halt in a cloud of dust, posturing slightly so that it's side satchel faced Wyatt.

In full infrared view of the giant bird, he folded back the trigger finger of his right glove, exposing the bare index digit to the tainted wind. The emu eyed him, analog and digital, as he touched his fingerprint to the panel on the satchel flap. There was a beep and a click, red to green, and he opened the bag.

Mostly junkmail. Sort through it later. For now, get this bird on its way.

Let the flap fall closed and it beep-clicked back to red. Locked. Wyatt knew there were many compartments in that satchel, and wondered what treasures were hid within for other citizens. Love letters? Rejection letters? Past due bill notices? The occasional good news?

He tucked the bundle of mail into his coat pocket and focused on the bird. It puffed up its chest and pointed the front satchel in Wyatt's direction. He kept his eye on the emu, without aggression, and held his hand under the little cylinder that was securely fastened around the base of the bird's formidable neck. It beeped and then dispensed a portion of feed into Wyatt's palm.

This was the critical moment. Hold it out, not subservient, but not disrespectful. These giant birds were chosen specifically for this job because of their resilience, speed, and general prickish attitude. They also seem to be resistent to many of the modern pathogens. They are survivors--

The emu snatched between thoughts and cleared his palm of kibble, then turned and darted off before the stray crumbs hit the ground. It headed toward the opposite horizon, into the dusk, onto its next mission.

. . .

Wyatt heard a grunt. A sound that, if you know, strikes "Oh, Shit!" through your heart. A real 'fight or flight' type of moment. It was a cocaine hog.

The trend began just before the 2020's, in Tuscany. As if feral hogs aren't bad enough, when a roaming hoard of them unearthed the stash of an Italian drug-running operation, they kickstarted an epigenetic whirlwind. It seemed that once they learned what it was like to be free, roaming the hillsides, jacked to their curly little tails on pure blow, somehow that concept was instilled in their porky brethren all over the globe. It was now more likely that hogs (and other animals, like bears for example) would find cocaine and binge on it. It had manifested into reality, just as the world was about to delve into the weird realms of the 2020's.

And now here was Wyatt D' Fuq, out in the grey dust at dusk, with that squealy grunt jumping him into action like one of those little rubber hammers under your kneecap.

He spun around without thinking, his bare finger found the trigger guard as he raised the rifle. In the glare of sunset, he saw the beast thundering toward him, wearing what looked like a bullet-proof vest.

"These fuckers are more advanced than I thought!" he thought, and he wondered if this might be the end. "If this thing is on cocaine and bulletproof, there's no way I can stab it to death before it guts me."

It squealed. He fired. It tumbled face first. He readied for round two.

It bounced back upright like a Cirque Du Soleil clown, trotted around in a backward circle, sneezed, and took a half step forward. Full eye contact.

Wyatt stood his ground, pointing the rifle directly at its white and grey-dusted snout. Then he noticed that the hog was not wearing a bulletproof vest. It was wearing an emotional support vest. And it looked like it was about to charge.

"DON'T DO IT!" He hollered. Then thought, "An emotional support cocaine hog;

. . . what is happening to the world?"

The animal turned and bolted.

Wyatt stood for a moment, still braced for impact as his shadow got longer in the Sun's end-of-day ritual.

Then his shoulders relaxed, and he realized he'd been holding his breath.

He pondered on how much things had changed, that this sequence of events had become part of the routine.

Which way to go now? If he'd been looking the way the compass had been pointing, the hog wouldn't have snuck up on him. He pulled it from his pocket and checked it again. Northwest. The way the animal had fled.

. . .

Wyatt followed the trail of pork prints and blood until the sun was fully set. Every time he'd checked the compass, it had agreed.

They led him to a dilapidated farmhouse with a live streetlight and a dead oak tree out front.

There was a swath tramped through the scraggly weeds that ended in an overgrown garden plot, where Wyatt found the cocaine hog, now deceased, lying next to a half-dozen potato plants that it had exhumed just before expiring.

"Groceries" , thought Wyatt, and then he lowered his pack to the ground.

. . .

In the halo of the street light, Wyatt had thrown a rope over a branch of the oak tree and hoisted the hog to a good working height. As he did this, he'd wondered how many times a rope had been thrown over that branch. This was the Ozarks, and that was an old farm house; this surely wasn't the first time. Either for a tire swing or . . . he shook away the grisly thought.

Now, as he was field-dressing the carcass, his phone sat on a flat stone with a cord wired into one of the freshly-dug potatoes, charging. As he’d plugged it into the tuber, Wyatt had pondered how this hack had started as an internet prank and then become a reality. Life imitating art. Self-fulfilling prophecies. The potential of human innovation. The merging symbiosis of analog and digital, organic and synthetic. The grounding of soil, the ethereal flow of information, and the electricity . . . that white-blue plasma that connects us all.

In a moment of self-awareness, Wyatt breathed through his mask and realized how utterly bizarre this scene would be to the family who must have occupied this space a decade or two prior.

Deftly working his heirloom knife, as he separated another chunk of meat from the whole, Wyatt thought about his place in the Universe. How the great Blade of Experience separates each of us chunks of meat from our collective body of consciousness. He wrapped it in a white plastic grocery bag and threw it onto the tarp with the others.

. . .

Wyatt stood over the mound of dirt that covered the remains of the cocaine hog. No judgement. Only gratitude and respect. The hog was just doing what they do.

"Safe travels . . ." he said. Then turned and walked toward his supplies, ready to scrub this blood and guts and dirt from under his fingernails.

As he was lathering up his hands, he noticed the emotional support vest lying next to the tree. He decided to give it a scrub as well.

After the final rinse, Wyatt held the vest up for an inspection. Peering through the bullet hole, he saw a fire in the distance.

. . .

Wyatt slipped his arms into the emotional support vest. It fit surprisingly well. Like perfectly. "How is that even possible?" Adjusting the straps, it occured to him that from now on, he could be his own emotional support animal. And that of others. "That sounds like a lot of responsibility. Maybe don't advertise it . . ." he slipped on his overcoat . . .

Chapter II

The Fire

. . .

As he settled into his duster, he felt the weight of the junkmail in his pocket, making it sag a little to the left. He'd forgotten about it, after all the coke hog excitement.

"Maybe my stimmy's in there" he thought, as he pulled the wad of envelopes out and began sifting through them. The government was still sending out stimulus checks, but the numbers were arbitrary, depending on how much inflation had happened since they mailed them out. Whether you had money in cash or check or on a food card, you really wanted to spend it as soon as you got it, to make sure you got your money's worth. If you were buying food, your money depreciated faster than your bananas.

Most of the mail looked like it would be used for firestarting and paper mache. But then Wyatt spotted the government envelope, with the patriotic stamp and the heavy, watermarked paper.

He glanced at his phone, still only charged 4%. The potato trick works pretty good, but the phone was an old one. It had seen better days . . . and worse days.

Wyatt knew that his own personal aura effects electronics in weird ways. If the phone wasn't charged enough, he could be sure it would glitch while he was trying to deposit the check, and delay it until the money was mostly worthless. Best to just wait until the phone was at least 10 percent, 15 would be even safer, and take whatever inflation happens in the meantime.

The post date was marked for . . . when is this? Over two weeks ago.

It was frustrating, knowing that those bastards had gone through the trouble of tracking his phone, sending an emu with a paper check, so he'd have to upload it on the phone into his account . . . when they could have just deposited it directly into his account. It's probably worth half of what it was when they sent it. And that's not even counting the transfer fees.

Wyatt put all the mail back in his pocket without opening it. The numbers didn't really matter at this point.

. . .

Wyatt D'Fuq strode through the night across the windy gray landscape of intermittent never-ending road construction, rubble piles and taped-off ditches. The occasional traffic cone exclamated the desolate panorama with bright orange vibrance, its message only slightly diffused by a film of dust.

Our traveler paused for a moment to consult the nexus compass . . . still solidly pointing toward the distant glow of a fire. He looked around. Still alone. He looked up. Still awestruck.

One of the details of these timespace coordinates that Wyatt appreciated deeply is the night sky. The Milky Way arched her arm across the dome like a lover rolling over for a nighttime embrace. A satellite cruised smoothly on its own unique trajectory.

Then the obligatory UFO sighting. A group of weird lights gathered, clustering, and performed a kind of extraterrestrial square dance. Then they communed into the form of a single solitary craft . . . now slowly and seamlessly separated, paused, and zipped off silently in different directions at impossible speeds. Could be hobbyists with drones, or maybe a secret government project . . . could be little green men from Zeta Reticuli . . . could be DMT elves from a parallel dimension. Everything is just as likely these days. The screen doors were opened between worlds, and now we've got lightning bugs in the kitchen.

One more glance over each shoulder to make sure he wasn't being followed, and the trek continued.

. . .

As Wyatt navigated toward the fire on the horizon, a few things slowly came into focus in his brain. It started with a faint rhythmic sound reaching out to him through the underlying noise of sandpaper wind. Drumming. Using the magnification feature of his goggles, he discerned an encampment. A tent city.

It was a tent village, really, with tarps and shanties, campers and shelters spread out around the vicinity of what appeared to be a wrecked thrift store. The little campsites kept a respectful distance as the brick and mortar leaned in a state of eroding dissassembly. It's roof was collapsed and one outer wall was pixelating into a pile of cinder blocks. Glass was shattered around the storefront, glittering in the flickering light.

Further inspection revealed a drum circle gathering around a dumpster fire. Three drummers, then five, then a dozen or more, on blankets and camp chairs, encircling a raging multicolored blaze. A hole had been dug and somehow an average, industrial-sized blue metal dumpster had been lowered into it, with only the top two or three feet of the bin emerging from the earth.

The humans gathered around it, one by one exiting their tents and teepees and shanties, hauling an assortment of improvised instruments and joining into the collective beat, focused on the flames.

Whatever burned inside that rectangular cauldron cast an iridescent spectrum of hues, stoking the drummers' intensity to a rolling boil.

. . .

The feeling of approaching a drum circle around a fire from the darkness . . . it's a feeling embedded around the beating human heart. A feeling built on tens of thousands of years of ancestral experience. Now, due to current events, since parts of this timeline had been slid backward a century or two, those foundational feelings are finding their voice, a choir of emotion echoing through the darkness in the tunnel of continuum.

When the groove of the circle is peaceful and inviting, even while growing in intensity, you know it's a message, reaching out in the dark in all directions. The original radio. A more-than-morse code, pulsing out the dot' dot' bappity-bap boogity-boom bap da-bap boom to let you know that you're welcome to warm yourself in the radiance of the fire and the music, the love and the community.

Wyatt stepped into the light of the dumpster fire. A friendly hand waved a greeting from the other side of the circle. A smiling female form in a camp chair, wrapped in a multicolored Indian blanket, obscured by the flickering shadows of the night and Wyatt's dusty goggle lenses. Some folks turned to see the newcomer, others kept their heads down, carrying the rhythm . . .

One of the campers on this side of the circle acknowledged Wyatt, nodding humbly and shuffling their chair sideward as a gesture, even though there was still plenty of room around the fire. In response, Wyatt nodded to the rhythm and eased his backpack off his shoulders. The relief he felt surprised him. He had forgotten how heavy the pack was, like a snail that no longer notices its own shell.

Setting it on the ground, he scissored out the frame poles, converting the pack into a camp chair, and sat down on it, for even more relief. He sensed a slight tinge of jealousy rippling through some of the campers as they coveted his packchair. Better offer them something soon. This would be a good place to cook up some of that pork.

Many of the people here were not wearing masks. They were even passing smoke around. It seemed like forever since he'd seen a group so relaxed.

With one hand, Wyatt undid a flap on his pack and pulled out a canteen. With the other, he unfastened his mask, letting it hang to one side. From behind his goggles, he eyed the crowd and unscrewed the cap of his canteen, leaned back and took a long pull. The jealousy was more than a tinge this time. It was a visible pang. These people did not have enough water.

He put the canteen away and pulled out one of the meat sacks. Opening it up, he held it in plain sight and gestured toward the fire, looking around to see if anyone would object. Only raised eyebrows over hungry, gleaming eyes.

The drumming took a turn as appetites acknowledged themselves.

. . .

Having long acclimated to the nomadic lifestyle, our traveler quickly had his portable cooking station up and operational. The campers had watched with awe as he methodically and charismatically unfolded his pack yet again, from a chair to a table with hanging shelves full of supplies. He washed his hands, rinsed his heirloom knife and his antibacterial cutting board, and set to work.

He began rinsing the potatoes, hyper aware of every drop of water that absorbed the dirt, then fell to be absorbed by the dirt . . . from whence the potatoes came, and to where we are all going. “I should be saving this runoff", he thought.

Then he found the last potato, stuffed in a side pocket, plugged into his phone, and remembered the stimulus check. The phone was now at 17 percent charge. He glanced around, noticing their hunger and their thirst.

"No way I'm depositing that check in front of them . . ." It would have to wait til after dinner.

He rinsed the last potato, along with a few small vegetables and a bundle of herbs he'd found in the farmhouse garden. Next he unfolded a rectangle of aluminum foil . . . and kept unfolding it. It glimmered in the technicolor firelight like a polygonal portal, expanding into the third dimension.

Working deftly to the evolving drum beat, Wyatt sliced and chopped and quartered and minced, brushed with oil, seasoned, and wrapped a dozen or so hefty bundles with foil.

The flames had settled to a more reasonable color. Over the top of the bin, where the plastic lid used to be, on the same hinge, was a mesh of fencing that purposed as a grill and a safety net if anyone were so careless as to fall in. On this he placed his bundles.

The music sighed and waved into a new chapter, synesthesing with the aromas of the coming feast.

Chapter III

Thanksgiving

. . .

A couple of guys approached from the shanties, carrying a table. One was tall and lean, with a shirt that was too short, but still baggy. It was a yellowed Hanes with purple stains, and Wyatt tried to decipher if the Rorschach were tie dye or a wine accident.

The other guy was short and wide, wearing a shirt that was long but too tight. A black Guns 'N' Roses rag that was wrinkled everywhere but across the smooth globe of his beer gut.

A constellation of holes in each of the garments whispered that the camp may have a mouse problem. Wyatt D'Fuq wondered why they didn't trade shirts, then they would both fit.

The table they brought was one of those long old sturdy studio ones like they used to have in shop class. It was funny to watch them try to find the center of gravity with their height differential. The short guy always ends up carrying most of the weight.

They set it down next to Wyatt's work station. "Here ya go, Chef!", the lean one said, doing a little ratta-tat-tat with his hands on the table top, synched with the drummers, as the wide one panted and wiped his brow.

"Oh, I'm not a chef," Wyatt responded, then realized it was the first time he'd spoken to any of them, or vice versa. "It's amazing sometimes how far you can get without language", he thought. "Just a cook," he said, finally, and smiled.

"Well, it smells terrific!", stated the short one, who Wyatt instantly named in his mind as 'Panty Porkbottom'. "Why do I do that?", his conscience asked as he tried not to laugh, noticing the similar profiles of Panty Short Pants and the main course.

Then an elderly woman with an intricately patterned babushka kerchief on her head brought a couple loaves of bread that'd clearly had mold picked out of them. And a tray of goat butter with a silver butter knife from another continent in another century, tarnished with memories and nostalgia, and a stack of homemade paper plates with little blades of onion grass pressed into the fibers. Her grandmother's mother's emerald ring hung loosely on a withered, arthritic digit.

She made eye contact. Her vision pierced her clouded cataracts and the tint of Wyatt's goggles, looking into his soul. The wrinkles at the corners of her face, the crow's feet around her eyes, told tales as if they were chicken's feet in a santaria trance. Her smile told him things were bad, but she was good. That they needed him. He thought about the emotional support vest hiding under his duster.

Babushka turned and hobbled toward her seat, with an aluminum frame as bent and crooked as herself, the woven nylon warp and weft faded and frayed, blowing in the wind like the strands of hair that dared to defy the bounds of her kerchief.

A violin spoke the chords in Wyatt's heart. He turned to see that his initial greeter, the woman in the Indian blanket, held the blood-red instrument to the crook of her neck, spilling his emotions from it with her tattered bow, til his feelings merged with those of the circle.

The thrumming drumming continued, carrying the weeping and gracious sounds into the distant night.

. . .

With tongs and a kitchen towel, Wyatt performed. This grouping of steam punk midapocalyptic hippies, these scattered motes, had gathered around the glow of a campfire like rogue asteroids and comets gathering around that mysterious pull of a star. Now they watched as this traveler from the void, quite possibly quite literally from another world, as he plated up nutrients with style.

Silhouetted by the flames reflecting in their sandblasted eyeballs, they saw a savior. He felt it. "Let's just agree to disagree on that one", he deflected.

The shop table held a true Thanksgiving. Wyatt pondered as he watched himself pulling the foil bundles from the makeshift dumpster grill, opening them and releasing the savory steam. His tongs clicked and worked. The volume of food seemed to multiply as he filled plate after plate. "Weird how that happens, but it always does . . ."

Greater than the sum of its parts. Granny used to say that was the love added in that made it do that, like sugar on yeast. "Granny said she loved us so much, there was always leftovers."

When he had finished, he picked up one of the plates, heaped with pork and potatoes, carrots and peppers, cilantro and rosemary, bread and butter, and wondered at the source of all things. Then he served it to Babushka, nodded and smiled.

Turning, he made a sweeping Shakespearian gesture, inviting the rest of the group to help themselves. Pulling a rug from his bundle, he got out of their way, spread it on the ground, and sat down. They were instantly on their feet, forming orderly, single file lines on both sides of the table.

. . .

Sitting with crossed legs, staring down at the Persian fibonacci paisleys of his rug, Wyatt turned things over in his mind. He thought about the events, one after another (that he could remember), that had led him to the here and now. "But when is now and where is here, with overlapping realities, in this Mandela Mandala Multiverse?"

A steaming, heaping plate entered his field of view and came to rest on his lap. He looked up to see the violinist clearly for the first time. She had the darkest hair and the whitest teeth he was sure he'd ever seen. "Her hair is so black I can see stars in it", he wondered. She stood over him, cozily hugging herself. Batiked and beaded skirts flowed from within her blanket poncho.

"Thank you," she said in a voice that seemed like it floated in from a pleasant future.

One of her hands, "Very well moisturized for this climate", emerged from the folds and gently laid a large, dried, psylocibin mushroom on the edge of Wyatt's plate. It looked like a piece of blue-tinged driftwood, ageless and ancient.

She waited for him to look back up at her, and gifted him with a knowing, genuine smile. Then she turned and swished away from him, that iconic hourglass swaying under her skirts, that timeless shape that has kept the story flowing throughout the ages.

His gaze lowerd back down to the warm plate sitting in his lap, then followed the steam up as it merged with the billowing Galactic show. The ultimate steam engine.

"No . . . thank YOU", he thought into the cosmos.

Chapter IV

Give it Away

. . .

Wyatt sat on his rug and ate his dinner by firelight. Still pondering the great multitude of events that had converged into this moment as he took into himself the atoms of pork, tubers, vegetables, herbs, oils and spices, water . . . and the bluish mushroom he'd crumbled into the meal . . . all these forms that had, themselves, taken in proteins, minerals, sunlight, fertilizers . . . the moisture that had flowed through all of it, that had floated on the wind and fallen to the earth, then evaporated in its resurrection back to on High, millions of times, as part of its journey, after gathering into comets and falling to the Earth as part of its bigger journey . . .

He felt the mushroom's musky warmth growing into his thoughts, like the slow deliberate advance of dusk on a cloudy evening. The fragrant earthiness sung to his palate in low tones as he chewed, connecting the flavors like a mycellium network in his brain. The paisleys of his rug began to slowly spiral and shimmy in the flickering firelight.

The drumming had ceased once all hands were busy stuffing faces. As a cook, he knew that he deserved a moment of quiet satisfaction, and maybe even a little bit of pride, noticing that everyone had gone silent, focused on the food.

“I'm so glad I learned to cook," he pondered, drifting through the different experiences he'd had, learning from masters, grannies, street vendors, strangers. The way these lessons had also converged into this meal. The way a good cook had become such a valuable and respected figure during the Great Collapsing, almost a Shaman.

““Essential Worker” , boy, that was a heavy term, aye? It let you know what 'they' really think of us. The higher-ups called us heroes while telling us that we're actually the old, one-armed Jew shoveling snow in Schindler's List. The one the Nazis laughed at and mockingly repeated, "Ezzential Verker" at, just before they shot him in the head."

Wyatt chewed another bite in the present. Cooking really was like magic, or perhaps more like alchemy, where magic and science and art converge, and he'd learned quite a few tricks and formulas and brush strokes along the way. Juggling and slight of hand, flame on, clicking the tongs and snapping the towel . . . convincing people that they're having a good time. The Shaman Dance. He often impressed himself, as he did now, absorbing the meal, observing gratefully as the pile disappeared from his plate.

It was incredibly good. People nodded their heads, making suprised faces and the occasional little "Mhm" noises as they ate. He never bothered to tell them that the hog had been amped up on coke. He didn't ask what was in the fire, they didn't ask what was in the food. They might stay up a bit later, that's all. One couldn't be too picky about pollutants these days. You still had to take precautions, but if you let it, it would be all-consuming.

With pthalates and microplastics, lead and mercury, genetic mutagens, carcinogens and pathogens, it could overwhelm you to think about it all. Sometimes you just gotta take the mask off and eat a cocaine hog that was cooked over a dumpster fire. Then wash it down with polluted rain water from a plastic jug. And hope for the best as we evolve to our environment.

He still didn't see anyone drinking any water and felt guilty about swigging from his canteen in front of them throughout the meal, but this pork was salty, and he needed a drink.

"How much agua do I actually have left, and how much can I share?" There was about a quarter of the canteen and one spare gallon jug in his pack. "Sometimes if you wanna keep it, you gotta give it away" He remembered the pastor's words from a strange tent revival he'd attended some months back. A sermon about giving and receiving. About the never-ending wellspring of Grace.

. . .

Wyatt set his empty plate down on the rug, stood and quietly stepped over to his workstation.

Pulling the gallon jug from his pack, he set it on the big table, upsetting a relatively large murder hornet that was helping itself to some leftovers.

Buzzing around his head with that frightening sound of flapping wingbeats, so clear in the silence, amplified by the size of the creature, it sounded like playing cards in the spokes of a kid's bicycle who was being chased by a monster.

It was as big as his thumb. Our cook did a little Muhammad Ali head movement, dodging the hornet's angry advances, til it settled again onto a piece of crispy, glistening pork. "Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee . . ."

He saw himself reflected in its compound eyes; the coarse hairs on its legs struck a chord with Wyatt's mammalian ancestry, and he felt connected. "Let's not do any stinging."

"That's all the water I have to share," Wyatt said in a voice for them all to hear, gesturing toward the jug as the fluid inside came to an equlibrium. "Help yourselves, but make sure everyone gets some," then a heavy pause. "I wish there was more."

No sooner were the words out of his mouth, he felt the first raindrop land lightly on the bridge of his nose, just below his goggles. Then another streaked down his left lens.

A soft, quiet lightning exposed a purple sky, like a flashbulb on an old Polaroid, recording this moment in their minds, only to fade with time.

There were audible gasps and whispers as the light patter of tiny raindrops increased. Little wet meteor craters formed in the gray dust at their feet. Here and there, then more. "I just wished for more water and now it's raining; man, if I ever wanted to start a cult, this is my chance. They're gonna think that was a miracle. Maybe it is."

The rain increased on a steady exponential curve. Fat droplets now, splashing all over the tables. People began to rise from their seats, starting to take action, picking up drums and maracas and blankets. The murder hornet abandoned his meal. Wyatt started wrapping up the leftovers in their foil packs.

KABOOOOOM!! The sky exploded in white hot light and the floodgates of Heaven opened. People scattered. They went running for their tents, some leaving their camp chairs behind, some tripping over them, some tipping them over in the gathering mud during a hasty retreat.

A husband-and-wife team tended to Babushka. The husband, a slender Spaniard with a faded floral print bandana around his neck, covered her in a rag-tag quilted blanket while his wife, a pretty but weathered redhead, gathered the bread, butter, and most of the remaining paper plates before the wind gusted and took the rest. The couple ushered the old woman toward the encampment, fading into low visibility through sheets of rain.

Wyatt quickly took out his tent bag, slid off the sleeve and pulled a cord. He tossed the tent and the fabric popped into the shape of an igloo before hitting the ground. Racing the weather, using the butt end of his hatchet to drive the fat stakes into the four cardinal directions before everything got completely soaked . . he was glad for the linseed-oil coating on the shelter and on his duster, swollen drops splattering ineffectively and rivulets running through the creases like whitewater through a Utah canyon.

Chapter V

The Thin Skin of Water

. . .

The stakes in place, Wyatt unzipped the door to the entry way. "Breezeway," he thought as the wind howled and slid chairs around. He threw his sopping wet rug inside "deal with that later", and turned to gather the rest of the food, surprised to see that the violinist with stars in her hair was already gathering it for him.

He directed her to the tent opening, shouting something incoherent that got lost in the wind. Then collected his knife, cutting board, and pack/chair/table, not bothering to fold it up all the way, and ran for the little shelter. The pack was also coated with linseed oil, which had probably protected the contents up til now, but this was already a rollicking tempest that would surely find its way through seams and flaps, licking and soaking all his belongings if he let it.

. . .

Now inside the tent's entry way “the tentry way, if you will”, zipped up quickly, careful not to catch a snag, "All the technology humans have invented, can we please get a zipper that doesn't snag when you're in a hurry? Hey, Military Industrial Complex, get on that one, would ya'?"

Wyatt turned and stood as tall as he could in the slouched little fabric corridor, his boots slopping in the water that was gathering on the floor, what was draining from his rug merging with what had come through the door. His guest was a faint blur through fogging wet goggles.

He raised the tinted vintage spectacles to their perch above the bill of his hat and paused for a moment in the dancing orange glow. That fire was a rager; it would take a while for the rain to beat it into submission. But the rain was off to a good start.

The fading fire light was diffused by the wall of water between there and here, and diffused even more by the oil slick wall of fabric.

He held out his hand to the form in the darkness, "Thanks for the help. I'm Wyatt", he said, a little too loud, he thought, in the enclosed space. He'd tried to compensate for the sound of the storm, and felt like he overdid it.

To his surprise, a glow stick crackled and phased illuminous as she wrapped it around his wrist, its green glow casting a friendly alien warmth onto their faces that agreed with his state of mind. It bounced off her eyes and into his.

She crackled another glow stick, this one violet, and handed it to Wyatt D'Fuq, holding her hand suspended after he took it from her. He wrapped it around her wrist, sliding the male end into the female end. "I see," he thought as her violet vibes danced with his green vibes, "this is one of those times, one of those rendevous that the Universe just sets up for you . . . this is happening"

After fastening the bracelet, completing the glowing circle, he took her hand in his, slowly and slightly up and down. Softness of skin in a fluorescent vibrating ambience with an underlying orange tint from outside, narrated by the steady rainfall, all curated in Wyatt's mind by the psylocibin, that little fun guy that always has something interesting to say. And what he said now was, "This is meant to be"

"Atlantis", her voice flowed between the sounds like a gentle brook through smooth stones, so much more tactful and pleasant than Wyatt's clumsy introduction, he thought. What he didn't know was that the deepness and directness of his voice had resonated in her solar plexus, sending a chill over her damp body, raising goose bumps, followed by a warm wave of recognition, a familiar feeling as old as instinct. Electrons passed through their palms and fingertips, and through the thin skin of water that covered them both. An exchange that premonitioned another, future exchange, like it had already happened.

"Would you like to come in?", "I hope she's not a vampire . . . how does that work if they're already in the foyer? Or the airlock? Or the breezeway?" In times 'past', this would be just a humorous, fleeting thought experiment. But with dimensions and timelines intertwining 'lately', witches, zombies, werewolves and vampires were just as likely as aliens, elves, coke hogs and Bigfoot.

Lightning flashed, embarrassing the glow sticks, and Wyatt saw that the stars in her hair were beaded, braided hair wraps.

"Sure," that voice again, flowing into him and through him from a remembered future, "I'd like that. I don't wanna go back out there." Eye contact, profound and heavy with anticipation. Wyatt realized he was sweating. Beads of persperation mixed with droplets of precipitation "It's come to this, here and now"

"Uh, ya! Ok." Remembering himself, he unzipped the portal into the main dome of the tent.

She stepped through, sliding each foot out of its thong sandal as she did so, leaving them in the corridor. The smoothness and politeness of the gesture impressed him; his head cocked a little to one side and one corner of his mouth curled up the slightest bit.

He set his pack inside the main tent, picked up the foil bundles and placed them next to it, out of the standing water. Then he turned around and sat down, with his legs arching over the inner doorway, his feet still in the corridor, feeling awkward and time-consuming, untying and loosening laces, sliding wet stockinged feet out of boots, which he left next to Atlantis' sandals. Rolling the socks off the ends of his toes, he threw them into the corridor with a splat, finally zipping up the inner door.

Again, the entire process made him feel clumsy after her slick entrance, not knowing that she was admiring his entire performance; the cooking, the preparedness of the shelter, his quick action and the way he rode the wave of events and effortlessly surfed her directly into his tent. And she liked his boots.

The chivalry continued. Opening the bedroll section of his pack, Wyatt produced a pad and blanket that took up most of the floor space, leaving about a foot-and-a-half wide section just inside the door for stuff that you didn't want on the blanket. They stood on this empty tarp tent floor.

She took a step onto the blanket-

"No, wait, hold on," he said, holding his hand up. She quickly withdrew her foot. Wyatt noticed her ankle bracelet and henna tattoos. He wanted to read those mysterious henna hieroglyphs, unlocking the secrets of this living Wonder of the World, this beautiful breathing monument of humanity.

"Sorry!" her eyes wide. Suddenly she didn't know what to do with her hands or feet. She felt rude for literally overstepping her bounds; he felt like a dufus for not giving her a heads up. He had to inflate the air mattress first.

Wyatt worked quickly. He reached past her to the corner of the tent, where he pulled a cord hanging next to a vertical plastic tube that ran down the inside edge. Simultaneously, a series of oilcloth gutters curled up around the outside rim of the dome, a circular opening slid aside at the top of the tube and, enclosed at the bottom of the tube, several tiny squareish plates bloomed outward into a paddlewheel. A torrent of rainwater began flowing through the gutters, through the hole into the tube, past the now spinning waterwheel, and into a clear plastic waterbag that rested on the floor in the corner. A pinpoint green LED told Wyatt that the waterwheel was doing its job, collecting power in a small electrical box next to the whirring wheel.

Now he reached into the depths of his pack and -"What next?" she thought, "this is fascinating!"- pulled out a palm-sized tubular contraption with raised letters on its plastic casing that bragged "Inflador 3000!"

He dove back in, elbows-deep, moving things around at the bottom, looking in the same places two, three times, silently reprimanding himself for not being more organized, then remembering the brain fog that makes him forget about itself. A bead of sweat committed from his brow, rode the arch and leapt from the tip of his nose into the yawning chasm of his untidy backpack. The thought occurred to him that it was the placement of a singular, fine, almost imperceptible hair that had kicked the bead of sweat into freefall at that precise moment in its downward trajectory, “We’re all just in freefall through the big Plink-O, but sometimes we nudge it in just the right spot . . . How long have I been digging?”

Again, self-conscious under her ‘glare’. But from her perspective, she wasn’t glaring. She was admiring. She thought the tinge of absent-minded Professor vibe was cute.

He pulled out a power cord triumphantly, gathered himself, and crouched down next to her, "S'cuse me, just gonna reach right past you here," plugged it into the electrical box and then the other end into the Inflador. She scooted over a bit to give him room, but stayed close enough to let him know she was not averse to his closeness.

Flipping up the edge of the blanket, Wyatt coupled the contraption into a receptacle in the pad, and another green LED showed itself on the Inflador. "A lot of plugging and coupling going on here," chuckled the fun guy. Now she realized it was an air mattress.

WWWWHHHZHZHZHZHZHZH . . . the thing started working loudly, reacting with the sounds of the storm, creating a white noise that filled the space. Wyatt turned his head and glanced at the henna tattoos, less than eight inches from his face. The scrolling dotted lines swam in the fluorescent glow.

He eased himself back, doing a little crab walk along the open section of floor, and sat down, facing her. "It's gonna take a few minutes, sorry," he projected over the noise. She sat down cross-legged across from him. Suddenly, with the dome arching over her, the structure seemed bigger than it was from the outside.

They sat, facing each-other in the light of the glow sticks as the storm raged, the tent flapped, the water flowed, the wheel whirred, and the Inflador did its WWWWHHHZHZHZHZHZHZH over it all. "That's really loud, sorry," Wyatt said, this time trying not to overcompensate with volume.

"What?" she said, raising her somehow strong yet delicate eyebrows.

Wyatt chuckled, pointed to his ear and mouthed the word, "LOUD".

She laughed and rolled her eyes at her own silly response.

Sitting in the moment. Conspiring in the moisture and the sounds and the feedback loops. Their respective spheres of influence overlapped in a Venn diagram, and they'd found the sweet spot between them. Futures hinged on the herenow.

The mattress inflated slowly. Then suddenly the contraption stopped its racket and its LED blinked red. The light on the power box was still green. Charging.

They both exhaled at the cessassion of mechanical sound. The humid air was now allowed to vibrate with the rain and wind.

He reached out and squished the mattress, as if checking its firmness, even though he knew full well that it was not yet full. "Say something, you fool!" "So, how long you been with this outfit?"

She looked down at her clothes, confused.

"No, I mean, with these folks?" he jerked his thumb up over his shoulder, pointing back toward the encampment.

"Oh," her cheeks flushed and her hands nervously straightened her skirt. "A month or two, maybe. Time has been so weird it's hard to say, really."

"That voice, my gosh, it's like ambrosia. Keep her talking," "Ya, it's been weird." "Nice maneuver, Captain Obvious, now maybe you can talk about the weather." "Some storm, huh?" "Jackass."

She looked up and around at the fluttering tent. "Ya, it's really somethin'. I can't remember the last time it rained around here."

"What is that accent?" "So where you from, originally?"

"Honestly, I don't even think I'm from this timeline," she laughed slightly louder than she'd expected and drew it back, a little embarrassed. "Sorry, that probably sounded crazy."

"Maybe, but I know what you mean." He considered how crazy things had been. And how he, also, felt lost in time. "So . . . where you're from," he ventured, "did Curious George have a tail?"

"YES! MY GOSH!" like she'd been waiting years for someone to ask her that. "Nobody here believes me! What about the Berenstain Bears?"

"E-I-N," he said with confidence. “100%. I remember looking at the cover of one of my books as a kid and wondering if they were Jewish like Einstein."

"OH! I'm so glad I'm not crazy," that laugh again. This time she didn't hold it back. Wyatt sat like the Buddha and took it full force to his face like a blast of flower petals.

"Don't jump to conclusions", he said, playfully. "But if you are, so am I." He suddenly had a sensation of pleasant vertigo, as if the entire tent were falling through a wormhole in zero gravity. Like the two of them were traveling between realms with this little igloo-shaped piece of cloth as their space ship, a shared reality for them alone. He imagined that the storm was really micrometeors and cosmic winds, and that everything else had ceased to exist in any material way.

"Ya,” she smiled. "That smile!" "I guess everybody's at least a little crazy nowadays. Sometimes I think-"

WWWWHHHZHZHZHZHZHZH . . . ! The light on the Inflador was green again. "What?! What does she think sometimes!" Wyatt cringed and gave her a long blink, acknowledging that it was very rude of his machine to interrupt her.

They sat. The storm, the water, the waterwheel and the air pump did their things. The two humans thought about what they might say once the light went red again. Wyatt wondered what might be at the end of this tunnel.

He reached out and checked the mattress again. Over halfway there, thank God. A little frown and a "sorta-kinda" head movement let her know what he thought of it. "She's probably thirsty, dude . . . Of course she is, surrounded by running water." Pulling out his canteen, he offered it to her. The idea crossed his mind of sharing whatever cooties she may have. He was willing to do much more than drink after her.

She took the canteen gratefully, touched her chin, making the sign for "thank you", and took a good long drink. A little driblet escaped and ran down over her jawline, to her neck, over her clavicle and into the secrets beneath her poncho. Her reaction was adorable, wiping her mouth with her palm, the glow stick's violet energy playing across her skin. She handed him back the canteen. He drank. "It's come to this. We are one."

Time went on loudly as they sat without speaking, breathing each-other's air, taking in each-other's aura. They exchanged little glances and smirks. The orange flicker from the fire still permeated the tent, filled in by the violet and green glow, punctuated by the occasional flash of lightning. He noticed she had a toe ring on the pinky of her other foot, and got the urge to pinch her piggies. As if psychic, she wiggled them.

The light went red again, and the machine stopped inflating.

They both started talking at the same time, then both stopped. "Go ahead," she said.

"No no. You first, please."

"What about that Sinbad movie?"

"Shazaam! Ya, that one bugs me. I know I saw that movie." The implications of this had plagued him.

"I know! Me, too!" she put her hands over her heart. "People tell me it never existed and that I'm thinking of the one with-"

"Shaq. Nope. That was Kazaam. I know what I saw. And it was Sinbad as a genie named Shazaam. It's so weird." "And how racist does someone have to be to imply that I can't tell Sinbad from Shaq? Don't say that out loud."

"Totally." She smiled at him.

He checked the mattress again. Pretty firm.

"I'm gonna call that good enough," he said, and picked himself up off the floor. She followed suit and they both sat on the bed at the same time. The gravity well between them warped the surface of the blanket like the proverbial bowling ball bending the mattress of spacetime, and they sunk toward each other. Their noses bumped for a brief moment and they both pulled back, giggling. That eye contact again. She leaned in the slightest bit. He leaned in further.

They both went for it, and their lips met. "One thing leads to another," said the fun guy in Wyatt's mind, and a new kind of storm broke loose. Its bluster and thunder rivaled what was happening outside.

Chapter VI

A Perfect Storm

. . .

Wet clothing peeled off like the Ouroboros shedding its skin. The Yin and Yang became one again.

Soft, fluorescent flesh, feverish, flashed in the brilliant white of Heaven, highlighted with goosebumps. Breath exchanged through sucking mouths. The urgency of a timelessness that found its moment to exist.

"This is the way it's always been . . . the inside and out. The tunnel of love, the vortex, the gravity well pulling us back together with ourselves"

A perfect storm of wild passion experiencing itself inside and out simultaneously

Tongues and teeth, navels kissing, legs and hips, sweat and cum, curves and napes and hair, studded with beaded stars

The cosmic soup

melting and glowing, laughing and crying to the pulsing, strobing polkaleidoscope of love and lightning

Eternal hours passed into the past, moments melding, each one to the before and after . . .

Thrashing and heaving slowed to tickles and giggles as the orange glow of a dumpster fire in the temporal distance thinned and dimmed in the spattering of rain. Each drop on the oiled cloth felt like a reminder from the Universe that it was still there, ("hey"),

a friendly touch on a second skin . . . "hey, there heythere, heythere, hey, thereheythere . . ." pitter patter splatter patter spatter

A sort of sleep conjoined the overlapping forms with the sounds of rain and flowing water and contented breath.

The flapping of the cloth fluttered Wyatt's addled subconscious back to the revival in the desert. But this time it was raining. The Preacher was raising his arms in the quintessential Christ pose, laughing with bared teeth as he gazed skyward with glazed eyeballs.

Wind blew stray raindrops up under the Preacher’s tent and onto his retinas. He did not blink as he proclaimed over the rising howl of the wind, "Sometimes if you wanna keep it, YOU GOTTA GIVE IT AWAY!"

A sudden gust pulled the revival tent stakes from the ground, the ropes whipping dangerously above the heads of the gasping congregation, and the canvas pavilion was airborne, heavenbound.

It was then that Wyatt's third eye saw the train in the distance. It's forward lamp shrugging through the gathering storm as it pushed its way across the plain. Wyatt heard the train's horn, loud and sustained.

His waking mind swam to the surface and began placing the sounds around him. The sheets of rain on the sheets of cloth, the funnel of water spiraling down the tube. The train.

The funnel. The train.

The map from Wyatt's pack overlaid itself behind his eyelids in topographical, psychedelic detail.

There's no train tracks in this sector . . . the funnel. The rain. The train.

TORNADO!

Throwing his blanket aside, Wyatt leapt to his feet and stood in the fluorescent glow. The orange of the dumpster fire was gone. The rain had stopped. A silent flash. Then rolling thunder. The train whistled louder, coming straight for them.

He shot a glance at the supple form on his air mattress. Atlantis. "Man, if this is the last thing I get to see, what a way to go out . . ." Atlantis. The quintessential symbol for the utmost peak of human achievement, destroyed by cataclysm. The dragon we've been chasing for millenia. "This might be as good as it ever gets."

The howling exponentiated. Atlantis stirred, opening her eyelids, the green and violet of the glow sticks falling between her lashes into the deep black wells within.

Wyatt's thoughts stumbled over each-other, scrambling for what to do. Where to go. There was nowhere. Nothing to be done. "The safest place for hundreds of yards would be inside that dumpster, but the coals are still hot enough to melt our bones! The farmhouse is too far away!"

The Compass! He reached for his overcoat and plunged his hand into the pocket like a lightning bolt drawn by the ground. He knew exactly where it was, and he was right on target. Pulling the compass into the weird lights and seeing it through pupils the size of trampolines, it had a bulging Escheresqueness to its shape, reflecting everything.

The needle was spun furiously as the trainado howled.

"Looks like we're gonna ride this one out!"

It was about three seconds from the time he'd jumped to his feet to when he shouted over the noise, "TORNADO'S COMIN', HOLD ON!", and jumped back down onto the air mattress, shielding Atlantis with his body. She embraced him. The walls of the tent breathed and strained. Then a sensation of weightlessness and vertigo that rhymed with what Wyatt had felt earlier, falling into the vortex, tent and all.

A cushion of air current lifted them off the ground, but the stakes held strong. And she held strong to him, and he to her. Her arms and legs wrapped around him. His arms crossed under her back, firm, calloused hands gripping her shoulders.

"gonna ride this one out, indeed"

They held and beheld each-other, their eyeballs reflecting themselves in them

Her smooth, henna-scrolled legs crossed at the base of his spine, the beads of her ankle bracelet stirring his Kundalini. She flexed her calves and pulled him into Her.

That Ultimate Vortex. The Eye of the Storm. The Galactic Center.

The Pull of Nature. The Gravity of Life Becoming Itself.

Wyatt crossed the Event Horizon and emptied fully. Atlantis received him like the Sea.

The tent touched down with a return of torrential rain, and the storm raged on, within and without.

Chapter VII

Flotsam

. . .

Wyatt awoke to the sunlight and her beautiful face inches from his.

She was blinking awake as well.

At some point in the night, the storm had stopped and they had slept.

Now a bustling and wailing outside pulled them from the edge of that other world, the border of that dream land where they'd danced with the mushroom.

The memory of the tornado brought back fear and lust and weightlessness. Had all that really happened? The glow sticks and the sex. The portal to infinity.

The fact that she was here with him now in his tent, under his old quilt on his air mattress, both naked and intertwined, told him that yes, though doubtless warped and abstracted by the entheogen, those fleeting glimpses were true. The faded glow sticks on their wrists spoke their quiet truth in the growing daylight.

He could still feel her on him, an echo of a feeling, the remembrance of her soft firm grip.

They both noticed his hardness pressing against her, and both of their first instincts were to go for it again.

But the wailing outside finally clicked in their wakefulness; someone was in trouble. The aftermath of the tornado.

Throwing the blanket aside, Wyatt put his feet on the floor of the tent and grabbed his pants, standing up.

Atlantis stood and plucked her skirt out of the corner. They took a brief moment and appreciated each other. Her tussled hair flowing over curves of brown skin. His muscles and scars.

She bent at the waist, and for a moment Wyatt thought she was about to step into her skirt, when suddenly her warm hand cupped his base and her mouth enveloped him. One smooth, loving stroke, all the way to the back and out again.

"Huuunh!" he said, involuntarily.

She looked up and smiled.

Then the inevitable unspoken agreement, "Ya, let's see what's going on"

. . .

They emerged, still straightening their respective garments. Wyatt was barefoot, in only his faded cargo pants, still wet from the storm. Atlantis was glowing in her flowing, embroidery-embellished skirt and blouse. She'd slipped into her sandals as Wyatt had unzipped the outer tent flap.

What greeted them was mud and a jumble of chaos. The camp chairs were gone, as were some of the tents. Roofs were missing from shanties. Personal belongings were scattered to the horizon, stuck in this new reality.

A few folks were meandering around, liberating random objects, sentimental items, tools, shoes.

People could be heard screaming and crying in the distance.

Atlantis saw Wyatt's toes sink into the squishy earth a moment too late, just before herself stepping into the muck and losing one sandal to the suction. They both realized that the psychedelics had not quite worn off, and shared a little giggle. She removed the other sandal, freed the first and tossed them both back through the flap. Wyatt zipped it up.

Some faces turned toward the couple. A pair of eyes met Wyatt's. They were the eyes of a hater. A young man that he'd noticed around the fire when he'd first arrived. One of those pairs of eyes that had flashed jealousy at the newcomer's handy folding pack chair, and canteen of water. And skill with the grill. Now they were flashing jealousy at Wyatt's communion with Atlantis. Hazel discs of hate, sunken in a face of treachery that would be attractive if it weren't for the envy seeping from his pores. The slightly squashed, round head had swiveled on a body that was just a little too short for it, and the whole figure had emoted shock and pain upon witnessing Atlantis coming out of that tent.

Wyatt remembered that during the drumming, at those key moments, hater dude had tried to introduce new beats to the rhythm, and the others had not followed along. They'd just kept on with the steady groove consensus until he came back to it.

Now in the present, Wyatt noticed Atlantis recognize one of those distant wailings as the voice of her friend, more agonized than the rest, and her eyes widened. "Amber . . ." A realization, "her son!" She ran toward the voice. Wyatt followed.

. . .

Approaching a teepee with it's skin removed, the two looked through the wooden diagonal uprights and saw what was the matter. Reminiscent of Michelangelo's 'Pieta', a young woman knelt, cradling her adolescent son in quivering arms. His limp, bleeding frame draped over her lap, the boy was pierced through the ribs with a stray aluminum tent pole. He was pale, but, Wyatt noticed with relief, still breathing. The mother was frantic.

Atlantis tore a piece of fabric from the bottom of her skirt and pressed it around the object emerging from his chest. "Put pressure on this!", she told Amber, giving her something she could do. The woman's sobs changed in pitch, a slight tone of hope coming through now.

Looking under the boy, Atlantis saw that the pole had gone all the way through. She wrapped the fabric around to the exit wound and pressed there as well. "And here!"

The mother complied, now using both hands to hold her son's blood inside his body.

"Who has a phone? Quick!" Everybody looked at Wyatt. He checked his pockets. Realizing, he pointed back toward his tent. "Quick!", she repeated. He ran.

. . .

Again fumbling with zippers, Wyatt quietly cursed the wasted potential of human ingenuity. Leaving dark footprints throughout the little structure, he found his phone in a pack side pocket. "We've got pocket supercomputers with space satellites and still can't get a good zipper?!"

On his way back out, he spotted the canteen.

. . .

Returning to the scene, Wyatt saw a middle-aged man in patchwork coveralls just outside the perimeter of the teepee, wiping mud off the face of a Starlink dish.

Handing off the canteen to Atlantis, who began administering water to the boy's bluish lips, Wyatt turned to the man in the coveralls. "What's the password?"

The man looked into Wyatt's eyes, stunned. Greyish blonde hair stuck out in random locks around a pattern of male baldness. "Rumpelstiltskin! Capital R!", he replied, as if he'd just remembered and was slightly embarrassed by having to share it.

Wyatt tapped the secret code word into his phone, paused, waiting for the connection.

A moment of silent reflection, broken by a guttural sob from deep within the weeping mother, as if it had echoed around in her empty womb before escaping through parched lips.

WiFi connected, and he dialed 911.

. . .

The ambulance drone arrived quickly. It's blades chopped the air above the scattered tent city, blowing around tarps and clothes and billowing clouds of grit, reopening fresh wounds inflicted by the spiraling winds of last night's tornado. Wyatt and a few others waved at the sensors, flagging it down.

The machine landed a few yards from the teepee and opened one of its clear side panels. Two of Boston Dynamics' EMT bots hustled out, carrying a stretcher with their fluid, creepily autonomous movements, quickly assessing the situation and communicating with each other through digital telepathy, relaying all information instantly back to the mother drone and the hospital. Wyatt noticed their efficiency, in contrast with the clumsy efforts of the two guys who'd carried the table the night before.

They set to work, scanned the boy, clipped the pole down to a more manageable length, and laid him on his side on the stretcher. Then they removed his shirt and tended to a quick bandage job, pulling tape and supplies from compartments inside their own robodies. When they deemed the patient ready to ride, they hoisted the stretcher in perfect unison and marched him toward the drone.

"I have to go with him!! I'm his mother!", shouted Amber, following behind them, with streaks across her desperate face where crying had eroded through a thin layer of grime. Her chest bounced as she ran, covered in blood. Wyatt chided himself for thinking about her tits at a time like this.

The EMT bots halted. The closest one turned its face of sensors and addressed her, "IDENTIFY."

She opened her dominant eye a little wider to let the bot's scanner read around the tears.

zzzzhhhh-boop, it accepted her claims. "IDENTITY CONFIRMED. COME WITH US."

They loaded the stretcher into the ambulance. Then, in a weirdly human gesture, the bot who'd been silent offered a bionic hand, helping the distraught mother into the compartment with her son. The panel closed and the machine's propellors activated, again stirring up particulates and storm flotsam. The drone lifted off, pulling itself loose from the wet ground. Blinking blue and red, it flew away in a somewhat Easterly direction.

Wyatt's gaze lowered to see Atlantis standing by his side, her once lovely batiked and embroidered skirt now blood-spattered and torn, the henna tattoos on her legs camouflaged by mud, her face concerned and sweating. A crowd had gathered.

"Good job," he said and took her hand. With an appreciative smile, her eyes softened.

A hater observed.

Chapter VIII

New Direction

. . .

As Morning Sun rose over the scattered remnants of their settlement, the main body of residents had gathered round the fire pit. A few still wandered the grounds, finding items here and there. A few others were propping up shanties into some kind of working order. When your house is made of scraps to begin with, it doesn't look much different before and after a tornado. It's just more spread out.

Working at the dumpster was a gladiator of a man. The Fireman. Big, hairless. Shirtless. Wearing black leather cuffs on his thick wrists, he stirred the coals with a custom tool of his own making. A long rebar with a rough wooden handle.

On the ground, off to one side of the pit was a whole tree that he'd drug from somewhere. Windfall. Periodically a branch or two were broken off and thrown in. Let it catch, then more. Even with the epic amount of rain, the coals were still hot. Whoever had sunk the dumpster into the ground had first thought to drill holes in the bottom of it for drainage.

Up top, the chainlink grill was sectioned, so one could open part of it and toss in a log, or stir up the coals without disrupting anything that might be cooking on the other sections.

Once flame tips started poking up over the rim of the bin, Panty Porkbottom placed a kettle of water to boil. He was making coffee. "Good work, Grog", he praised the Fireman. "You really keep us goin'." Grog nodded respect and kept stirring.

Wyatt gathered the leftover foil bundles and threw them on for a warm up, to kill off any bacteria that had gathered in them overnight. "Coffee and breakfast," he mused. "turning out to be a pretty good morning." He glanced at Atlantis, releasing a flutter of memories of moments in nonlinear order. She caught his eye and blushed.

From the group, a whiny voice spoke up, out of context, "So what are we going to do?".

Wyatt felt the tone of it burst the bubble of his reverie like an operatic High C through a crystal champagne glass.

He knew exactly what he was going to do. Immediately after breakfast, he was going to pack up his stuff and follow the arrow of the compass. And probably ask his new squeeze to come along. If there was about to be a town meeting, he wanted to uninvite himself.

At no point did he consider staying. These people wanted something from him that he felt neither capable nor compelled to provide. Leadership. He wasn't even leading himself. He was literally taking direction from an orb in his pocket that resembled a compass, but the needle only pointed North when that was the way he was supposed to go.

Wyatt couldn't recall where he'd gotten it. Didn't know why or how it did what it did. It seemed to simply point him in the right direction. Totally subjective, he understood. Up for interpretation. Quite possibly misinterpretation or utter superstition. The thing could be broken.

It had led him into the paths of Atlantis and a tornado. Concurrently.

There were those times that he didn't follow it. Sometimes heading off the opposite way out of spite or experimentation, and ended up falling through the ice, or sliding down a cliff, or rounding a corner to be spotted by a pack of wild dogs. Sometimes it seemed to tell him which way to look, like yesterday, with the attack of the cocaine hog. Which was probably reaching an acceptable temperature right about now.

The smell of the meat made him wonder if it had crept its way through a back door in his thoughts, bribing his free association to lead him there, like a cartoon character floating with their nose in the air, following the scent of an apple pie in a window. He stood up and approached the grill with tongs in hand. Clickety-Clack!

Seizing a fat foil pack, he tossed it to the opposite side of the grill top, where it bounced once and landed within reach of Grog. The two men nodded at each-other. The fire-tender stuck his rebar in the ground, where it stood vertically, vibrations rippling up and down.

The man's enormous hand reached out and picked up the bundle, straight off the flames. His other hand joined in, unfolding the foil and scooping steaming meat into the giant's mouth. Wyatt was impressed. He'd been cooking most of his life, and still didn't have kitchen callouses like that.

Using towel and tongs, Wyatt pulled the rest of the leftovers from the grill and opened them on his table, which he'd set up before cooking (the location of the heavy shop table is still unknown). Others had replaced the stack of babushka plates and a jug of rainwater, and there was a bottle of hot sauce that had seemed to come from nowhere.

Porkbottom returned with a large French press that held several heaping scoops of freshly ground coffee. Pointing at Wyatt's towel and raising his eyebrows, he asked permission of use. Wyatt consented with a nod and an upward turned palm. Panty poured from the kettle into the press and set it on the table to steep. Then he rang a wrought iron dinner bell that hung from the back of the dumpster, getting the attention of the folks afield. Turning his attention back to the coffee, he stirred it with a tarnished silver spoon "of the same set as the butter knife, it seems", then placed the plunger in the carafe, and pressed it. Stepping back, he motioned for Wyatt to take the first pour.

Wyatt made a plate for himself, poured a few ounces of hot coffee into his tin mug, and gestured for the others to do the same, then sat down on the trunk of the windfall tree. There was a shortage of furniture this morning. His pack/chair/table was in its table form, and his rug was hanging on a line near the dumpster to dry. With his socks.

The rest of those who'd been scavenging the wreckage answered the dinner bell, "breakfast bell", approaching from all directions like a herd of zombies, closing in to feed.

As the residents lined up for their breakfast, each taking a plate from the top of the stack, scooping food onto it, some squirting it with hot sauce, Wyatt noticed they were now debating the annoying girl's whiney question about what to do. He'd phased out of their conversation as soon as it began, but it was getting harder to ignore.

Opinions overlapped and battled each-other.

" . . . think we're just asking for it, staying out here in the middle of nowhere . . ."

". . . I've always thought it was a terrible campsite . . ."

" . . . we can rebuild . . . "

" . . . we should leave, find a new place . . ."

Wyatt, out of curiosity, discreetly pulled the compass from his cargo pocket, held it up, close to the vest. As he suspected, it pointed solidly toward the farmhouse.

"Why don't you guys move into that farmhouse?", he blurted, before considering the consequences. "Dang, now I'm in the conversation"

Everyone stopped talking and looked at him. "Shit."

"What farmhouse?" Hater was the first to respond. The morning sun caught his left eyeball at such an angle as to illuminate the hazel iris from behind, highlighting the contempt within. He was ready to attack whatever came next out of Wyatt's mouth.

Wyatt recognized the tone and the look. He addressed the crowd. "There's a house about two miles that way," pointing behind him with his thumb. "I came from there yesterday."

"There's no house that way," said the hater. "We've scouted all around here. We send scouts out for food and water all the time. There's nothing that way."

"You calling me a liar, Fuckface?" The retort was calm and unexpected. There was an audible gasp from several people, snickers from a few. Grog smirked.

Fuckface was clearly taken aback, obviously not prepared for a real confrontation.

Wyatt stabbed a cube of potato with his fork, held it up, making hard eye contact. Then, looking around, he held it higher for all to see. "Where do you think I got these potatoes? And fresh vegetables? It's a farmhouse. With a garden. And a working street light. And a dead tree where I hung this hog when I field-dressed and butchered it. It's about two miles behind me. Believe it or don't. I don't give a shit what you do." He ate the potato chunk and returned to his meal.

"What if it's like Curious George's tail?", suggested Porkbottom. "Like, maybe it's different for him. Maybe he crossed through a portal or a rift or something."

"Ya," said the hater, "and maybe it's a house full of lizard people with a cloaking device. Gimme a break."

"You the only one who hasn't had weird shit happen to 'em lately? What's your problem, Lester?" Porkbottom turned to an equally plump, lunch-lady-looking, rosey-cheeked sweetheart. Clearly his life-partner. "Let's find out. Dear, do you know where my binoculars are?"

She popped up from her folding chair quicker than appeared possible for her body style, and set down her plate. "I saw them this morning!" she said, emphatically, and waddled off in a hurry.

"So, that's the douche's name. Lester. Less. Damn, his parents gave him an automatic inferiority complex."

The chatter resumed.

" . . . if there's a house, we should go . . ."

" . . . did he say there was electricity? . . ."

" . . . do you think it survived the tornado? . . ."

Mrs. Porkbottom returned with her hubby's binocs. They were worn, with peeling paint on the crosshatched grips of machined metal, yet still sported rubber lens covers. Old, but well cared for. She handed them to him. The couple were proud of each-other. "Let's find out," he repeated, standing up and handing her his empty plate.

He looked at Wyatt, pointed his finger in the direction the traveler had identified, again, the questioning eyebrows. Wyatt nodded the affirmative. Porkbottom removed the lens covers and held the binoculars to his eyes.

"Mmmmm." He sounded disappointed. But intrigued.

" . . . what do you see? . . ."

" . . . is it there? . . ."

" . . . does it still have a roof? . . ."

Panty Porkbottom squinted into the tiny scopes. "I see some trees I don't remember . . . but, I can't . . . here, Babe, see what you think." He handed them back to his wife, who now had her plate stacked on top of his. She hadn't yet gotten a chance to finish her breakfast. Setting it down again on her chair, she stood and took a stance next to her husband. Peering through the double sets of lenses . . .

"I can't see it," she said after a moment, answering the tension in the crowd. Lester had a crooked satisfaction on his mug. Then she followed up, "It looks like water. It's one of those whatchacallits. A montage. No. Mirage."

The others scanned the horizon and saw what she meant. The sun had now risen to a formidable height, beginning to bake the landscape. Ripples of heat shimmied the panorama. The same phenomenon could be seen in the smoke shadows flowing from the dark image of the dumpster that was cast on the ground. Wiggling atoms corrupting photons on their journey, jazzing them up a bit from their straight-line trajectory.

"I think we should go for it," offered Mr. Porkbottom.

Lester objected, "We should send out a scouting party first, before we just pick up and move everything. I'll lead-"

" . . . something already picked up and moved everything . . ."

" . . . I don't wanna sit around here and wait for . . ."

" . . . I believe him. And I wanna see that garden . . ."

Les pouted, interrupted.

Porkbottom spoke up, "Let's vote on it. Who thinks we should strike camp and go check on this farmhouse our friend, what's your name? . . ."

"Wyatt."

" . . . our friend Wyatt suggested?"

Most of the group raised their hands, a few with added proclamations.

"And who thinks we should send out a, uh, scouting party, led by Les, here?"

A pause. Lester raised his hand. Looked around. Slowly lowered it.

"I guess that's that," said Porkbottom, handing the lens covers to his lady. "Let's transform and roll out."

The crowd mumbled and began to disperse toward their respective lots. Lester fumed silently.

Chapter IX

Exodus

. . .

A wagon train, with very few wagons. Not quite the Trail of Tears, nowhere near the Donner Party. The campers were now gypsies. For some, the pick-up-and-move mentality had become the norm. For others, an occasional exodus was still a shock.

Babushka guided 2 goats, pulling a chicken coop on a wheelie cart through drying mud. The damp gray silt slowly froze in the heat, setting into the geological shapes it had taken on, shaped by deluge. A dozen chickens followed along, scratching at seeds and worms that had risen to the top.

A couple of guys had both taken half the teepee poles on each tan shoulder, with a cooler and other belongings strapped to the top between them. They trudged across the wasteland like Israelites carrying the sacred Ark of the Covenant.

Others hiked with tents and bedrolls on their backs, some dragging sleds made of shantie shells, packed with stuff.

Grog, like a circus performer from a fever dream, drug the communal dumpster fire on a large piece of corrugated sheet metal, pulled by fat chains. How the man had lifted the bin from the pit while it was still hot was a mystery. Remnants of firewood sublimated into the air, leaving a smoke trail behind them.

The horizon ahead shimmied. Last night's torrent had subsided and soaked, relaxed into the earth for a few hours, and was now casually returning to the sky. The optical illusion of a lake receded away from them with every labored step.

Wyatt D'Fuq tried to peer through the wiggling wall of light with his goggles. Behind his mask and bandanas, the methodical ASMR of his breath blended with the wind, becoming an organic symphony of white noise. It's movement was conducive to meditation.

This veil before him revealed itself to be profound. It's interpretive dance told tales of adventure, teasing the idea that traversing it would be a sort of apokálypsis. His musings sang of irony, grateful for the lack of dust this morning, but amused that there was yet a different kind of obstruction on this side of the truth.

Did one ever really get to the other side? Or was he to remain Alice eternally falling down the rabbit hole to ever deeper layers of Wonderland, curiouser and curiouser? Did Dorothy's tornado ever really set down? Wyatt wondered if Kansas was even still a thing. That corporate entity may have dissolved in the great undoing, the body of it's fictional person lying in State, a stack of formally filed papers at eternal rest in a rusty file cabinet somewhere in a forgotten district. There might be zombies in those halls. My how things had changed . . .

"yet stayed the same", he thought as the farmhouse manifested into view like a twice-baked deja vu. Somehow it seemed the mirror image of itself. He swore the tree used to be on the other side. Checking the compass, Wyatt confirmed his trajectory. Straight for it.

. . .

One by one, the travelers noticed the rippling farmhouse floating above the illusion of water, and pointed it out to each-other. Wyatt quietly let them see it for themselves. Lester was quieter still.

A jubilee began to take shape. The caravan transformed from a miserable procession to a celebratory parade. A tambourine was shaken into action, livening tired steps into dance, joined by songs of praise and gratitude. The young men carrying the Cooler of the Covenant took on Atlantis' luggage, loaded on top with the rest, so she could play her fiddle. A girl spun, smiling, trailing a long purple ribbon behind her, coiling and waving in the wind. There was laughter.

. . .

The heat of the day challenged their collective mood, anticlimaxing a bit back toward somber by the time they'd reached the property. Grog dropped his chains a few yards outside the perimeter, letting the dumpster rest there for now. He looked like he could go several more miles, no problem. Babushka's chickens each found their own way into the yard, some fluttering over the peeling and sporadic sections of picket fence, some through the gaps. A few went under. They all started pecking and scratching. She unhooked the goats and took to inspecting the garden.

Panty Porkbottom huffed and panted, found a water hand pump under a sparse winding of ivy halfway between the main house and a sagging tool shed. "Pumpy Porkbottom? No."

Approaching the house, Wyatt noted it had fared better than expected considering what he'd experienced personally. A quick flash through his stream of conscousness, hovering over the ground, weightless, on a mattress of air, in full embrace with Atlantis-

From his right, the crackling voice of a teenaged boy proclaimed , "Look up on the roof! I think that's ours!" All eyes drifted up the battered shingles to the ridge. There, straddling the peak, leaning against a crumbling chimney was an aluminum-framed camp chair. The boy ran toward the house and took the wide stone steps two at a time, barely giving his mother time to yell "Be careful!" before he'd opened the thick wooden door.

"Dumbass kid. Hope there's no marauders squatting in there. Or worse."

A few moments later, the boy appeared in a second-story window, in one of the dormers. Sliding the pane up and open with some difficulty, he climbed out onto the roof.

"I said be CAREFUL!!", repeated his mother, a bit louder. The boy waved off her sentiment, nonchalant, wearing his goofy grin and lopsided haircut like items in a second-hand store, trying them on but they don't quite fit.

With slightly less speed than he'd taken the front steps, the boy gangled up the pitch, his worn soles sliding a bit on gritty shingles. On the ground, his nervous mother clutched at her gaudy costume jewelry. Gray streaks in her course black hair curled in the breeze.

The teen took the chair, spread its frame a bit wider and set it more stably upright, straddling the peak. Turning to face the clan, he sat, his weight settling the chair into place, wedging it down. "Please be careful, please be careful", the mother whispered.

Taking in the vista, the boy smiled. He pointed off toward the horizon to his left, "Hey! I can see- AAAOWW!!" - the weathered aluminum frame gave out under him, folding the wrong way, dumping him backward over the backside of the roof, out of view. His mother screamed. A few friends rushed around the side of the house, ready to be first-responders.

The boy's head and shoulders popped up over the ridge line, smiling. "I'm okay!"

"Get back in that house!!", the mother shook her finger at him. "RIGHT NOW! DON'T MAKE ME COME UP THERE!! Sweet, Lord if this boy doesn't kill me, I swear, I'm gonna . . ." She trailed off in a string of violent promises as she shuffled toward the house, having aged another year. Her son, with his shoulders slumped, climbed back through the window, leaving it open.

. . .

Wyatt followed Atlantis up the steps. He thought of Family. A solitary stone lion snarled proudly "prowldly, growly" on the right side handrail slab. Its mate was nowhere to be seen.

Feeling footfalls reverberate on the warped wooden wraparound porch, WD noticed the dichotomy of a dangling, torn screen door, leaning at an awkward angle away from the thick, sturdy parket storm door. This Crafstman home was worn but solid.

Atlantis stepped over the threshold; Wyatt stopped short and consulted his compass. The needle spun. There were already about a dozen of the group in the house, if there was gonna be trouble, it would have happened by now. "I'll be out here."

A knowing pause . . . she stepped inside. Wyatt took off his pack and set it next to an old Cracker-Barrel-style rocking chair. He turned and sat, took a breath, and looked around the broad, spacious porch. There were small tumbleweeds gathered in the corners, cacada skins stuck in cobwebs, an echo of a self caught in the echo of a trap.

Bulging in his pocket, the mail reminded him to open it. This would be the perfect time to take a moment and deposit his stimulus check. Pulling out the wadded bundle, he sorted through them for the thick envelope with the government watermark. Using his heirloom knife as a letter-opener, Wyatt unfolded the correspondence. " . . . see if it's still worth anythi- . . . shit. That's not a stimulus check; it's a subpoena. Set for 3 days from now.

They want me to testify as a witness. To a thought crime?"

He lifted his goggles and placed them over the bill of his hat, unhitched his mask clasp and let it hang to the side. Breathing deeply, Wyatt D' Fuq took in the scenery. This ragged homestead, a true fixer-upper, the overgrown border between itself and the wilderness beyond. Babushka and her livestock picked through the garden. Porkbottom filled water jugs at the creaking pump. Wyatt felt like a small boat, bobbing around at sea, one who's anchor had skimmed a reef, but pulled loose just before catching. Thrown back to the whims of Destiny.

Chapter X

YinnyYang

. . .

Wyatt pulled the compass out of his pocket, held it up. It pointed solidly off to his left. The direction the boy had been pointing just before he fell over the back of the roof. Interesting. He put it away.

The creaking of the water pump took on a strange anxiousness in the background of Wyatt's awareness. An intent. Like a cry for help. Pulling him from the absurdity of the NOTICE in his hands, forcing him to live in the moment- " . . . is that a puppy?"

Focusing on the sounds around him, distinguishing . . . that's the hand pump . . . that's definitely a puppy.

Getting up from his seat, Wyatt stuffed the wad of paperwork back into his pocket. He descended the stairs and rounded the corner of the house, following his ears.

And there, perched in a notch of the old dead oak tree, was the cutest puppy in the world.

A black and white fluff with alert ears and adorable eye contact. It whined louder when it noticed its new audience.

Wyatt approached the base of the tree. The puppy wagged its tail and turned around, gestured forward, then retreated a half inch. It wanted to jump to him. WD jumped and pulled himself up to the lowest branch, swung his feet and climbed, took a seat. He extended his arms and the puppy jumped down to him, crying and cuddling frantically. Holding the little dog up for inspection, he took note that she was a fine specimen. No fleas, no signs of disease, hungry but not malnurished. Scared but brave.

"Hey, little girl", he said soothingly. "You're a good dog, huh?" She whined and wriggled and licked his face. "Let's get you down from here."

He sqeezed her down snug into his emotional support vest, with only that cute little face poking out the top. She calmed immediately. Taking hold of the lowest branch, he swung and dropped to his feet, bracing the puppy for impact. They looked at each-other and smiled. She nibbled at his chin affectionately with sharp little puppy teeth. Her warmth felt good against his chest, their hearts close to each-other.

Wyatt felt the timelessness of the moment. An entanglement between these two species that goes back to before the beginning. This symbiotic connection. A buddy movie that spans the eons. The man and his dog.

He thought of barks echoing off of cave paintings, of sentinals with raised hackles growling into the deep night of the past, pacing around the ancient fire, guarding the one who could provide a cooked morsel with opposable thumbs.

"Did we just become best friends? Are we trauma bonding? I think we did . . . I think we are. . . . yes, we are, you little cutie." He scritched behind her ears. "You're hungry and thirsty, huh? Alright." Removing her from his vest, he set her gently on the ground. "Let's see your land legs." Her little tail wagged and she circled his feet. She was strong and well-balanced.

Wyatt slowly walked back around toward the front steps and she followed easily, briefly taking the lead, then turning, facing him with a little hop. She was healthy and excited. Her ears were up, facing forward, one flopping down slightly.

He took the bottom two stairs and turned. She was trying to climb the first, but it was just out of reach. She tried again, failed, and yipped. She let her tongue hang loose, waiting for him to help. "Alright, I gotcha." He gently picked her up and kissed her forehead, held her close and climbed the rest of the way up to the porch.

. . .

The door opened and Atlantis stepped out. Wyatt was sitting in front of the rocking chair, cross-legged. Close in front of him, the puppy was slopping noisily in Wyatt's tin cup, lapping water up out of it and all over. A foil pack sat opened next to it, with a few morsels of leftovers.

"Oh, my GOSH!", Atlantis squealed, placing her hands over her heart. "Where did YOU come from?!" She bent down and scratched the puppy's backside. It paid her no mind.

The little dog alternated from the water to the food excitedly, as if one of them would disappear if she didn't pay it enough attention.

"Believe it or not," said Wyatt, watching the dog, "she was in that tree on the side of the house. I'm guessing the 'nader set her down there last night. Miraculous, really. Not a scratch on her."

"Like a little Toto! That's crazy!"

"Do you know if any of your people lost a puppy?"

"Nobody in our group had any dogs. I guess she's yours, Babe." He looked up at her with a glint. The endearment felt totally natural. Then there was a hitch. They both felt it. She continued with less confidence. "Everybody's stakin' claims in there. I picked us out a nice corner in the basement, if you wanna share. Figured that was a good spot if another tornado comes through."

He paused, looked into her eyes, then out at the distance. The sound of the puppy slopping water added a little humor to the tension. He met her hopeful yet doubtful gaze. "I have to go."

"I know." She scratched the puppy behind the ears.

"No, I mean I actually have to. I got a subpoena from an emu."

She tried to smile.

"You can come with us if you want." He grabbed the scruff on the back of the puppy's neck, gave her a little aggressive love, a little shake. She nipped at his hand playfully, sliming it with slobberwater, then buried her face in what was left of the leftovers.

to be continued . . .