Chilling moonlight and the soft shush of the shore welcomed me home. I stared for a long time at the house that Mr. and Mrs. Winters had lived in as a young couple. Those years were the past.

I hesitated to take another step. What if Agent Saint was right, and I should not go home? I disregarded her warnings. I understood the enemy better than she did, even with her file accumulated by half a century of FBI investigations. They had many enemies and would not pursue me. Their modus operandi was to ambush and to kill, not to follow and to terrorize.

My crow squawked from my shoulder. I walked up to the front door and knocked softly. I wanted in and yet I knocked quietly. I heard heavy tiptoes from within and recognized that they belonged to Mrs. Winters's boyfriend. He turned on the porch light and stared at me for what seemed like a long time. I realized he didn't recognize me and waited. Then he unlocked and opened the door for me.

"Sorry, man. I didn't realize it was you. You look terrible." He grimaced.

"It's okay. I forgot your name." I told him. He smiled as he introduced himself as Josh Feltman.

"And you're Gaylord." He grinned. "The ladies are asleep. Persephone is teething and it was a long day."

Josh hugged me and held me, even though I was dirty and bruised and smelled. His embrace made me feel secure and welcome and I started crying with relief. When I had calmed down he shut the front door behind me and locked it back up. I said quietly: "Thank you. I guess I needed that."

"I guess you did." Josh whispered. His voice was strong and soothing at the same time. "Let's get you cleaned up."

Josh took me upstairs to the main bedroom and turned on the light. It was empty. I guessed that Mrs. Winters was asleep somewhere else in the house. He was roughly twice my size and none of his clothes would have fit me. While I showered and shaved he got into the attic by moving so slowly he made almost no noise. He brought down a clear liner full of clothes that had belonged to Detective Winters. He selected some gray sweat pants and a blue tee shirt with light blue striations across it for me to wear. He placed them beneath an extra towel by reaching into the bathroom modestly.

When I came out he made a silent applause at my transformation. Then he frowned. "You look much older."

"Stress." I propped up the word with my bottom lip and he nodded with grim acceptance.

"Is it true?" He then asked. I looked again at him and his face was like that of a boy who had just heard they had killed Super Man somehow. I nodded. His lip quivered and his eyes watered. "How?"

"He was on a stakeout and his weapon failed him." Was all I could say to Josh. "They killed him."

"I can't believe Jack L is gone." Josh spoke with reverence.

"Can you believe this guy?" Detective Winters wondered with annoyance.

I ignored my resident thoughts of the late Detective Winters and went and gave Josh the hug I owed him. He started crying when I let go and I had to gather some facial tissues for him. "The funeral is on Saturday." He sniffed and laid down on the bed, curling up.

I said nothing and put a blanket over him. Watching a huge and powerfully built man reduced to tears was unpleasant to see. I turned the lights off, hearing him sob quietly in the dark. I went across the hall and found my daughter sleeping soundly, clutching a round pink teething toy. Her mother lay on a bed that was added since my last visit. I kissed them both several times before I left them. I wandered downstairs to find Cory asleep on the arm of the couch and the back door open. I went outside where Mrs. Winters stood looking out over the water.

I didn't want to call her 'Mrs. Winters' out loud because I wasn't sure that she wanted to hear that name. "Threnody?"

"Welcome home, Lord." Mrs. Winters spoke without emotion or looking at me. I walked up beside her at the railing. She slowly turned away from me and sat instead at the top of the stairs that led to the sand below.

"Can't believe she is teething already." I tried to chuckle about it and my forced laugh caught on a lump in my throat and I coughed and felt fresh hot tears scald my breeze chilled cheeks.

"Do you want to talk about Persephone or about Jack?" Mrs. Winters asked with a sort of kindness in her voice that I knew was in her. It was a tenacious and charitable sort of kindness. Like her late husband, she was a very sincere person. She showed it with her words and voice and her face. At the moment she did not wish to share her pain with me. Nor would she ever.

"Maybe I want to hear about Jack. I am sorry." I spoke slowly and honestly. I was sorry to admit it.

"Like what?" She asked quietly, leaning on the post and still facing away from me.

"Tell me about what happened between you." I gasped as I asked for that story. I had felt compelled to candor and then I wanted to take back my words. I was tired and something about her voice had made me inconsiderate. I cringed at the awkward pause before she spoke:

"We were so in love." Mrs. Winters spoke from a distance, like she was narrating someone else's life. "I wanted to spend my whole life with him. I believed he wanted the same, oh he did. He did want me." She sighed. Then she continued:

"He had graduated from the police academy at the top of his class. Five years later he was a detective. Soon after that he bought this house. I finished college. I have a bachelor's degree in physics." She mentioned this last part with a sad-amused smile in her voice. "Gravity, Lord."

"Gravity?" I asked.

"Yes." She stood slowly back up and gestured for me to follow her. She walked slowly down the stairs, her long cyan gown swishing gently against the stairs. I followed, halting every few steps at her deliberately slow pace. We reached the beach and she turned to face me with her pale eyes. I was startled by her beauty in the moonlight.

"She looks like she did when we met. She hasn't aged a day." Detective Winters sounded like he was in awe. "Kiss her for me."

"I can't." I claimed with a whisper.

"As a detective he proved to be at his very best. He could solve any crime and with great accuracy as courtroom convictions mounted. Then he became an important homicide detective." She glanced away and closed her eyes. "He was too good at it. It became his life; solving death."

"He always knew everything." I agreed. She nodded.

"Except me. He couldn't touch me. Couldn't kiss me. Couldn't look at me. Wouldn't come home." Her voice almost broke at the memory of the change. "It was gradual, the way he became more distant. Eventually he was just gone."

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"You never divorced him?" I asked rhetorically. She shook her head.

"How could I do that? All I wanted was his return." She trembled slightly and leaned towards me. I caught her in my arms and held her as she shivered. She was listening to my heartbeat for a long time. Then she stepped back, escaping me.

"And Josh?" I asked. This made her smile.

"One day I realized my husband was dead and that I was a widow. By living alone I was punishing Jack, somehow. He never complained about Josh the way he did about my miserable loneliness. He would become angry that he had left me and refuse my calls. When he found out about Josh and met him, he chilled out. I don't know how to explain it, Lord. Josh is what your friend wanted. It made him happy somehow: to know I wasn't alone anymore."

"She is telling the truth. I slept better knowing she wasn't crying herself to sleep without me." Detective Winters confessed.

"You are right about that. He told me as much." I spoke with honest reassurance. She gave me a strange, quizzical look, like she knew I was telling the truth, yet somehow it was not possible. She asked:

"Did he now?" With a voice that wanted to believe and simply could not.

I nodded my sincerity. She excused herself and walked past me. Her slowness was gone as she fled up the stairs into the house. I realized she needed to mourn him and wanted to do it alone. It broke my heart to hear her story, even more than the remains of Detective Winters had taught me about the death of a hero.

I looked at the top of the stairs and saw Cory perched there as a black shadow in the night, looming high above me. For a bare instant I was startled by his appearance. Then he sailed down and stopped his flight by clasping my hair.

"Mrs. Winters is very sad." He told me.

"I know. We all are. The funeral is on Saturday." I recalled.

"Each day is today. What a strange thing, to give names to days that have not yet happened." Cory changed the subject. I started walking slowly down the beach as the moon vanished.

"You only name days that have happened?" I asked.

"How else would one know what to call it?" Cory sounded bewildered by the concept. "Unless Man knows what the day will bring."

"Saturday will bring a funeral." I smiled weakly in partial amusement.

"Not every Saturday." Cory guessed correctly. I remembered hearing that funerals most often land on Mondays, although I have no idea where I heard that fun fact. I repeated it, never the less:

"More funerals end up on Mondays." I stated the pseudo fact pedantically.

"My Lord says things all the time that are questionable in their legitimacy. Whenever he does, he makes that exact sound afterwards." Cory pointed out.

"What sound?" I wondered. I was unaware there was anything in my voice that gave me away.

"A sound like my Lord doubts what he is saying. It comes as an echo in his voice. Like my Lord is repeating his own words in his head just in case he is corrected later." Cory explained.

"I am surprised you notice such a subtle difference." I replied.

"There, you see? You have done it again. Does that mean you doubt your own reaction? You are not sure you are surprised at his powers of observation?" Detective Winters jumped in.

"My Lord, you know what I am saying is true." Cory held his mouth open and leaned his face down in front of mine in mock expectation.

"You never cease to amaze me." I told my crow.

We stopped to witness the most awful thing I had yet seen. How chance determined our meeting I cannot know. I could only wish I had gone home that night instead of wandering alone in the darkness with my thoughts.

As we walked the moon rose from the water and a sluggish creature began crawling up onto the beach. I stared at the bulk of it with a eerie feeling of dread. Its large dark eyes glimmered with pain and it made a hellish mewing noise into the night. I stopped at stared at it. Never had I seen such an animal and I had no idea what it could be.

Dull horror made me watch the creature pull itself further up the beach. The whole beast was like a bloated seal with the face of a walrus and its flesh bore scars like it had felt the lash of a cruel whip. It bellowed horribly one last time and then collapsed, suffocating under its own weight. Blood dripped from its mouth as it gurgled in death. Its body did not stop moving, instead it bulged and contorted.

"What is it?" I gagged as the smell of it blasted my nostrils. Like blood and something rotten at low tide, the smell was overpowering and nauseating.

"Something that should not exist." Cory sounded uncomfortable.

The bloated remains began to bulge and split. I gagged and stared wide eyed. Its steaming guts spilled out onto the sand like a red carpet for the thing rising from its remains. Its rear legs were short and stubby, with tiny claws it grasped the sides, its sticky tail slowly peeling free of its rump. Then it backed out from its dead mother and its bristly back reflected the moonlight. It raised itself clumsily onto its muscled shoulders and long front legs. These ended in the hooves of a cow and it began to drag its head free of the corpse. Its long neck continued to exit with effort. Finally its head was free and it plodded around in circles, slipping on the afterbirth and dragging its head through the sand.

"My gawd, what is that thing?" I heard myself ask in defiance of the sight. I blinked, expecting it to vanish, so unnatural and weird was the creature. As though it heard me it turned and with effort it began to lift itself up. It faced me and stood at its full height, up to my shoulders as it unfolded its born coil. Then, as though it had no strength in its neck, it strained to lift its head, only for it to fall back to the beach.

"This abomination is a mooncalf, my Lord." Cory realized as he stared with equal disbelief to my own. "It should not be. It is not part of the natural world or any other."

"Unnatural." I held the word like a shield, protecting my mind from further understanding.

Then it managed to erect its head and it towered over me. Its face was infantile and it had great big eyes and a sad and dopey looking mouth. This it opened and brayed a nightmare call to the night. It tried to walk forward and then stopped and leaned over. It began to vomit gushes of pink amniotic fluid onto the sand. I trembled in horror as I realized I could not accept what I saw.

Then it stepped through the stuff and began walking towards us, braying some more. I began backing away, I did not want it to come any closer. We circled around it and backed away until my back was to the rocks and grass covered dunes. It wanted my help, I realized absurdly.

"I can't help you!" I bellowed back at it. When I had gotten around it I fled some distance from it towards home.

With an idiot's smile it followed me with its clumsy and deformed gait. It lopped along and then fell face first to the sand. A queer pity bled from my heart. I stopped and watched with a mixture of revulsion and compassion. It began wheezing and seemed to be failing. I took a step towards it as it raised its head from its efforts to get back on its feet.

"Don't struggle. You are not designed to live very long. You should not be." Cory advised it.

It looked from me to where my crow stood on the sand talking to it. It mewed pitifully to Cory and then began making choking noises. Its eyes fluttered and it gagged and twisted. I could see it felt pain and I knew from instinct that I was watching it die.

Cory hopped a little closer and I was surprised to hear him making comforting words for it. He was shushing it and soothing it and telling it to let go and join its mother in death. The creature sighed miserably and then lay its head back down. I had walked slowly towards it as it died.

Cory flitted to my shoulder and told me: "It is dead."

We left it there for the tide to claim. I reflected that such a beast was a symptom of nature and chaos. Was this only the beginning of the chaos to come? Cory had said that chaos was 'bad' and perhaps that was an understatement. I thanked death for a merciful end to that horrible thing.

When we got back I went through the back door and sat in the living room with my head in my hands. I barely slept at all, the nightmare I had while awake was enough to make sleep a fearsome wall. It was morning before I knew it. Cory had fallen asleep, undisturbed after death had resolved things on the beach. It only made me more upset, that death got the final say in all things.

When I saw Isidore carrying Persephone I was able to forget my night. Isidore handed me our four month old daughter and I cradled her in my arms and she smiled up at me. Josh came downstairs and greeted everyone with ardent wholesomeness. Then he waltzed into the kitchen and began preparing breakfast.

"I am glad you are here, Lord." Isidore said quietly as she leaned on my damaged shoulder. I tried not to wince and said back:

"I am too."

"You look different." She noticed mildly. I nodded and repeated for her that stress had somehow aged me decades since the last time she had seen me. She scoffed at this and said:

"Or exposure to evil magic." She nudged me for the truth. I nodded.

"I still see the man I love. You will always be young in my eyes." She whispered delicately into my ear. Cory laughed at what I said out loud to her, after she had whispered to me. I felt sudden inspiration and voiced the sentiment as:

"Love will always happen."