--XLVI--

He let me sleep in his bed that night, but he wasn't there. If there was one night in Nightingale where I got anything even remotely close to a full night's sleep... It was that one.

MONDAY

8:57 AM

Northwest of Windcreek

To me, the apple tasted... well, kind of more like an almost-tasteless pear, sprinkled with a little salt. The sky was a light purple; the crystal snowflakes still came down all around us. The sounds of Sam's fist hitting bodies, and of Kaylee's bowstring propelling five Welwitschia arrows every thirty seconds and the sound of them making contact, was almost a harmony to me as I munched on the crispy and crunchy fruits; with both Jupiter Two the Samoyed and Happy the raccoon munching on them with me, from the shade of a broken drill rig and also some giant sugar maple trees.

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Sam constantly hollered profanities at the Talon, who probably didn't even understand her.

"Chris-" Connor's strangled voice, heavily accented as always, rang out from somewhere to my right. "A little help here?"

I felt some degree of urgency, but in that moment even the adrenaline was taking a momentary break, it seemed. That, or I couldn't see him. Probably both.

I took another tiny little bite of the tiny little apple.

"Can't see you, Cognito," I said. "Maybe if you un-Cognito."

I surveyed our surroundings.

Wrapped, tangled, cut by leaves, stems, roots, and bark, about half the horde of fifty winged people-birds were now nothing but a mass of filthy bodies constantly humiliating themselves. On the other hand, Sam was having the time of her life.

"C'MON!" She yelled at the horde in her eighty-percent V4, ten-percent U.S. Southern, ten-percent stimulant-junkie accent. "YO MAMA raise y'better than THIS, HEY?! YO SHIT WACK!" Her piercing and slightly raspy voice blasted at us as she proceeded to put a female Talon in a choke hold, and apparently proceeded to snap her neck.

"We don't need to kill them!" I yelled at her. "Sam! SAM!"

"Y'all," a strangled voice said. "A little help."