Sometime during the night, between bouts of blistering wind and hurried hands, the tousled lovers had made it into Katie’s bed. The morning was calm, bright in how the world can only be when you’re looking at the sky warped by hundreds of water droplets on a window. It was peaceful.

Damien and Katie hadn’t slept more than a few hours, reacquainting themselves in ways they hadn’t in Damien’s two weeks back home well into the morning. Their snores were light, their clothes strewn, and their bed a mess. Damien was the first to stir, sitting up to admire the way Katie’s skin fed the sunlight back into his eyes.

It wasn’t Damien’s first time with someone, but it was his first time with someone he truly cared about. He set about putting his clothes back on, so he could walk out to the kitchen to begin breakfast for the two without having to worry about any poor passersby outside glancing into Katie’s windows and experiencing whatever the opposite of Christmas in July is.

As he stepped out of the room, he shut the door behind him just as Katie's phone began to ring. Luckily, she slept through it. Damien turned the stove on, buttered the pan, and cracked an egg before her phone rang again.

“Hello?” Katie's voice was soft and sleepy. She waited a moment for the caller to respond. “Oh my God, that’s wonderful news! What time will you be back?”

Damien reached for a second egg, wishing he’d woken up ten minutes sooner so that he could have had them done by now, since she’s been woken up. Won’t be as much of a surprise anymore.

“Oh, wow,” Katie continued, “you’re sure? Today?”

She sounded troubled, the way today had come out as a question, but her voice perked back up.

“Oh my gosh I can’t wait! See you then, I love you!”

She hung up the phone, and a moment later, had her head out the bedroom door. Damien looked back at her.

“Good news and breakfast, someone is having a great morning,” he said, turning and cracking the third egg. “Can I get you a cup of juice?”

Damien didn’t look long enough to see that Katie’s face was blank, not a trace of a smile.

“Damien,” her voice was cool, “I’m sorry, but you need to leave. Now.”

###

Laura felt the soil on her feet first. Then, the sturdiness of her legs, the power of her calves and thighs. The wind tickled her midriff next, followed by an awareness of the weight of her breasts. She felt the leaves of the low branches around her caress her neck, and finally she could taste the clear air, smell the wet dirt, and hear the songs of the flying insects. She saw her brilliant bronze skin reflected in the still pool she rose from before the water was absorbed back into the soil, the nourishment of Mother nature’s blood bleeding back into the thirsty Earth.

She took a step forward. When her foot hit the dirt, it stuck to her, along with small pieces of discarded bark and other parts of nature offscoured from their stalks, branches, and leaves. She was the home for the thrown away pieces of the forest, the brittle bits too fragile to hold on during a windstorm, the lost green seeking home. She was Laura, she knew, the wildfolk’s guardian of the Mississippi Bluffs, and she had overslept.

She knew little else, however, aside from the ways to navigate the trees and brush. Her slumber had been long. The people of the land lost faith in her as their tribes were pushed away from here, away from her forest, from her earth. Their losses laid her to sleep, and now she felt an emptiness where their faith and admiration sustained her life and purpose. There were none alive who believed in her now.

She kept walking through the trees, surveying the forest, noting its damage, its decline. Discarded trash blown in from a storm, bits of plastic that she was unfamiliar with but knew to be poison.

“Why am I here?” she asked the trees old enough to remember her. “Who has brought me back?”

The white and black oaks were silent, having forgotten how to speak, or refusing to, but there came a chittering from the beetles beneath her, and a humming from the insects in the bark, but she couldn’t understand their words. Had the forest forgotten her? Did they not know their protector any more?

A fog filled Laura’s head, an unknowing of sorts, and when she reached for memories or information, she found nothing but a gray wispiness, and trying to maneuver through it only brought her a headache. Somewhere, she could remember brightness. Joy. Somewhere, she knew community and friendship. The gray was hiding those places.

Laura set off further into the forest, seeking to re-familiarize itself with its trails and grottoes, but there were new trails; not the trails that the squirrels follow, nor even the small grooves left by the snakes. Large trails, large enough for her to walk on, unobscured by any trees or bushes. Trails with stairs, trails with shapes painted onto the trees, and small signs hammered into packed dirt where the trails split. These were trails made by the humans, Laura realized, and there were small shelters built along them where they could rest. Do they not know of the wildfolk, she wondered, do they no longer fear their pranks?

Laura felt the silence, though. There were no wildfolk here, and when she tried to recall their image, the gray met her yet again. She wanted answers, wanted to return to Mother Nature, to find sleep, to find comfort, knowledge, anything. But she knew her purpose, even if all else escaped her. She emerged to protect these bluffs from those who would do them harm, to protect the life inside of these woods, to purge any insidiousness creeping among the trees like it did when her communities were excised from their homes.

She felt that insidiousness now, felt it with the cool air that tightened her flesh as she walked away from the trails and near a small bluff. There was a soft stream coming down on her from above, misting her skin, and it was then that she realized her nakedness in full, although she did not mind it. She liked to feel the legs of the butterfly on her flesh, the soft tickle of the grass as she walked over it. There was moss on the ground here, and it was soft and cold. She liked that, too. She moved past the falling water, under the overhanging moss and rock, and onto the cool, smooth stone. The tunnel, if one could call it that, appeared shallow, but Laura could feel its depth beyond the flat wall of rock covered in strange painted letters.

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The malice was heavy in this small cavern, and she felt its center moving towards her, and abrubtly vanish. A man stepped through the rock, startling Laura. She took a step back, cautious, but the stench of evil in the air had faded. She felt safe, like this man meant her no harm. He smiled at her, and she felt he also had a desire to protect life in this place, only she could not shake the feeling that he was wrong. As she met his eyes, the wall behind them shimmered and fell away, revealing a cavern with lanterns hanging on posts as it descended into the Earth beneath the bluffs.

“Hello,” the man said, running a hand down the front of his suit jacket, ensuring it was smooth. He then reached out with that hand, and the silver bracelets covering his wrists gave a pleasant ringing, like wind chimes. “I’m Sam.”

###

“Driver out!” Damien called as he pushed past the heavy back door of the restaurant. The steaming from the bag did nothing to help the humidity that still lingered three days after the “biggest storm in Peregrine’s history” and one of the biggest emotional storms of Damien’s life.

It had been a full week since Katie had unceremoniously booted Damien from her place. He had been staying at the Hawk’s Nest Inn, a locally owned motel in Peregrine. He had another week paid for after tonight, and was hoping to pay for another week at the end of that one with the money he’d be making from work. He had just gotten a job from an old high-school friend who manages a Pizza Hut in town, so it was an easy and familiar work environment. Tonight was his first shift.

He got in his car and checked the address on the ticket. One of the nicer neighborhoods in town, the kind that pretended it was part of the St. Louis suburbs, even though it’s across state lines and separated by more than a few poor neighborhoods. A pre-authorized tip of nine dollars was enough to make Damien forgive this guy for ordering a triple jalapeño pizza, but the way they reeked from the hot bag made him reconsider.

He was still reeling from his last night with Katie, playing their conversation over in his head until the road disappeared.

“You have a boyfriend? What the fuck, Katie.” Damien kept his voice calm, but his legs were shaking.

“We’ll talk more about it later,” she had said, “but for now you have to leave. Please. Don’t make this any harder for either of us.”

“You didn’t tell me this whole time. You know I wouldn’t have cared. You’re my best friend.”

“I know, Damien, really, I do. Look, I love you. I’ll call you, okay?” Katie had been placing Damien’s things in a tote bag as he watched from the kitchen while they had talked. “Come on, to the door.” She gestured to him.

He turned the stove off and went to put the eggs away.

“Damn it Damien, come on. I’ll clean up. I need you to leave right now.” She walked over to him, grabbing his hand and leading him to the door, just as she had in the cafe the day prior.

“I just don’t under-”

“Damien. I will call you,” Katie pushed the bag against his chest, slid his shoes out the door with her foot, and shut the door on him. Damien heard the lock click.

“I’ll call you!” she yelled again from inside.

He still felt just as betrayed. She called him three times a day since it happened. He hadn’t found it in him to answer any of them yet, but he hoped she was okay and that her boyfriend hadn’t found out. For whose sake he wished that, though, he wasn’t sure.

The rest of the delivery went smoothly. He put on Starring Role by Marina, sang as loud as he could without another person on the road calling Pizza Hut to complain, and made it back to the store.

“Driver in!” The back door to the restaurant was heavier than any normally used door had any right to be, so his call-in came with a preceding grunt.

“Welcome back! Delivery up, so great timing!” His manager, Garrett, said after mocking his grunt. “And it’s a big one. Congrats, Damien, you’re tonight’s big winner.” Garrett slapped the top of a bag of boxed pizzas, stuffed to the brim so that the velcro barely latched.

“Exciting,” Damien said dryly. “What’s the prize?”

“Eleven more of these bags, buddy. And a cash tip!”

Damien had to do a double take of the full delivery rack. “That’s all one order?”

“Sure as shit. I’ll help you carry ‘em.” Garrett grabbed a bag in each hand and started walking out the door. Damien grabbed two more and headed out after him.

“So, you may not know this,” Garrett said as he opened Damien’s car’s back doors, “well, of course you don’t know this, it’s your first day. But we take a special delivery every few weeks or so to a gentleman, Mr. Talon, who lives up in the bluffs. Like, way up.”

“He tips really well,” he continued as they made more trips, “but lives really far. He was in our delivery area once back when we had a location on the edge of town, and he’s old and rich, so corporate has us humor him. As far as we know, he lives alone, and used to only order a medium pepperoni and a 2-liter of Pepsi. For the past three months-ish, though, his orders keep getting bigger and bigger. Must be starting a retirement vacation home or something.”

All the pizzas were loaded into Damien’s car now, and Garrett handed him the ticket, winking. “But so do his tips. See ya in about an hour and a half, partner. I’ll dispatch you.”

Damien couldn’t hide his excitement as he drove across town and down the river road. Half an hour of finger-tapping and head bobbing along with the radio and the windows down as the sun finished setting helped to clear his mind, driving Katie out of it. Through the wind and music, he didn’t even hear his phone vibrating for her evening call attempt.

When he finally pulled up to the small road off the highway that lead up to Mr. Talon’s address, it was completely dark outside. There were no lights, so he flipped on his brights and drove his car slowly up the road. As he ascended the wooded hill, a feeling of dread set over him. He felt eyes in the woods, watching him, but convinced himself he was just shaken from the events of the week and needed to breathe. He glanced over at his phone to make sure he was even on the right road. He was.

When he looked back up, though, there was a man in a three-piece black suit walking towards him, directly towards him, surely blinded by his lights. Damien’s heart skipped one, two, maybe thirty beats before he turned his brights off. He rolled his window down.

“Can I help you?” he shouted at the man, putting his car in park. The man approached the window, and Damien noticed dozens of silver bracelets on each of his wrists reflecting his headlights.

“Hello! Sorry if I gave you a fright! I am Mr. Talon’s butler, and he sent me down here to help you find his home.”

The old man was sprightly and energetic, and as far as Damien could tell, harmless. Butler? He thought, find his home? Damien was confused. It should just be at the end of the driveway.

“Isn’t it just at the end of the driveway?”

“Well, yes, but the storm has made that driveway quite slippery and muddy,” the butler answered, “but there’s another way that’s just as easy. As you drive ahead, you’ll see a fork in the road.”

He pointed.

“The right side would normally lead to the driveway, and is likely where your GPS will take you, but you’ll see it’s gated off because of the danger of taking it. Take the left, and it will lead you up all the same. Mr. Talon is not accepting phone calls at this time, so he asked me to relay this message to you personally as I walk down to check the mail.”

“Oh, alright. Well, thank you!” Damien’s fear from moments ago had vanished. Something about this man was calming, and his voice was sweet.

“Of course! May I ask for your name?” The old man offered his hand, and Damien reached out to shake it, listening to the soft chiming of the bracelets.

“It’s Damien!” He shouted over the sound of his engine.

“Nice to meet you, Damien,” the Butler spoke softer than before, and offered Damien a polite smile. “I’m Sam.”