Lugh stalked off into the night.  His mind was a-whirl with thoughts, with memories that he’d shaded with pleasantness only days ago, the pleasure of Von, hopes that she might at least remember him well.  But all such thoughts were ashes.  “They killed her.” Oatie had said and he had seen in her eyes that she even feared the same from him. 

Lugh didn’t even know for sure who “They” might be, but he felt guilt for it.  Guilt for his carelessness if nothing else.  Guilt for not knowing what had become of Von and for what had come of his good intention toward her.  I didn’t think you might be in danger, I only knew that I was.

Lugh heard movement behind him.  He had no desire to talk of it, only to think and be alone with this revelation.  He had long experience with running away, he realized, and so it was no hard thing for him to slip away from Oatie. 

I needed to remember, to sort out my life.  His hand went to the bones on the thong around his neck.  I only wanted good for you, but I did nothing to make it so.  Oh bones of Von, were you ever my friend or only a curse for what I’d done?

The night among the trees was dark, but the sky was full of stars.  Lugh looked to the heavens for answers, but the stars had none.  He walked silently in the night seeking a place to think and await the dawn.  What had he done with the life that Von had given him, it seemed, at the cost of her’s?  Not much to tell.

There had been things to do.  Weyland’s kingdom under the Western Mountains had been endlessly fascinating.  Well, as endlessly fascinating as things got for a god with a short attention span.  I’d quite forgotten that when I fled the Norfolk by the Saffron River, I didn’t stop my running until I reached the Western Mountains and hid myself there.  Weyland had no more love for Lyr than did I, though Lyr wasn’t trying to kill the lord under the mountain.

I’d planned to return to Von, wanted to, expected it, planned that return, but always I put it off until there was no more reason, until Von would have looked more like my mother than a girl like Oatie.  And then, after leaving the mountain halls of Loki, after living among the tribes above the desert south, there was then no chance that she would even be alive at all. 

It wasn’t Lyr that tried to kill me then, no, a daliance in the Gallic south had nearly done for me.  The Cult of the Virgin turned those refugees of the Tuath wars into murderous monsters.  I blame the endless red day and I did not mind leaving all that behind. 

Why am I always blown from one place to another?  Weyland has his mines.  Lyr has claimed the East.  Most of my brothers and sisters live in the misty Islands of the Inner Sea.  Even Bridgit seems to have gone to ground somewhere.  I don’t hear about her moving around like I hear about my old travels.  Strange to hear the tales of your own wandering.

They, whoever They might have been, probably shieldmen of his brother, Lyr, but that was only a guess, They had killed her.  Small comfort, he was not there to defend her, he never went back even to learn that she’d died.  If not for him Von would have lived.  What to do with that realization?

Should he not simply run?  Lugh thought, turning the idea over in his mind much more than he would normally, it was a night for thinking.  Who knew if Lyr would kill him now?  And yet he ran, or at least it seemed for one reason or another, often the same one, he ran and kept running though a trail that Lyr might have followed was now hundreds of years old.  The running began with Lyr, but the habit of it was just that, a habit that had become him, not an action taken for any real reason.

Lugh drifted through a young forest that rose above their camp-site, feeling his way with his feet, arms out to tough the young trees, and eyes that grew ever more accustomed to the starry night. 

This of the Norfolk is good work, he thought, making of a barren land a garden.  Sadness washed over him, If only I had shared this with Von, seen this with her, would she even have come with me?  I wonder.

Lugh came to a prominence, a rocky projection where the land fell away all around him.  He looked up at the blaze of starlight.  Look there is the Stranger, down on the horizon the great dark moon hung.  He gazed at that great hole in the starry host.  Suddenly, Traveller set a glow on the horizon before leaping into the sky, shining in colors of blue and gold and red, as it tumbled into the starry night.  How many times have I seen you, and this time the most surprising of all?  Lugh laughed, where are you going old friend?  Why shouldn’t I come with you?  Oh, that’s right, I can’t fly.

                                          *     *     *

Smoke struggled against the weight upon him as he had the weight of the heavy sea.  But this was not the sea, it held him against hard rock unlike the wash of the sea that he had been unable to press against, then too, he was warm.  He ached all over from the beating against the rocks, but even pain meant nothing now that he was warm.  No need to fight, Smoke slept.

Where?  That question came to him from his fevered dreams or memories.  He had been thrown against the rocks enough times for him to have given up on land as salvation and come to terms with his death.  That he remembered.

He  had a vague memory of a calling for salvation from God, but that didn’t fit with his remembered resignation.  He remembered white hands, no, before that he remembered calling on God and then being hauled from the sea by one foot.  He remembered seeing the angry sea above him, falling toward him, but that was his perspective.  Then he was lifted by the sea. . .   

. . . and then white hands.

There was no light where he lay.  His bed was hard.  His battered body ached beneath some covering, heavy, warm.  There was music, or at least a voice in the dark that chanted words he could not quite catch.  Here and there in the chant, words came clear on the wind, praises to God, thanksgivings, strange as the sea falling from the sky, he thought, he was hearing the Psalms of the Hebrews in the trader’s tongue.

The cadence changed, the words became indestinguishable to Smoke in the night with wind and the distant roar of the sea and then only that.  Whorls and patterning burst on his retina, but there was nothing real to see in the night, nothing but the night to hear.

Then, as suddenly as silence, there was a presence.  Smoke heard a whisper of feet on stone, a sigh.  “Hello?” His voice sounded like the croak of a scavenger bird, meaningless except that he knew what he had meant to say.

“Oh, you are awake.”  There was shuffling, a trickling of water, and he could feel the radiant warmth of the figure near him.  ”You must be parched.”

“Yes. . .” he attempted an answer, but it was just crow talk again.

He felt fingers lightly brush his face, a thin arm lifted his head, and then cool sweet water filled his mouth and he swallowed.  A few more sips and he was laid back. 

The warmth moved away and he waited for more conversation that never came.  “How odd,” he thought or said but weariness carried him back to slumber.

We are not the ambassadors of the All Mind anymore, but we could be.  We need not converse with men, nor darkling, nor dragon, nor any creature among the heavens, still, we do.  Strange that we grow more curious and range more widely — or perhaps we seek from other minds the knowledge and communion of the community of the All Mind.

Perhaps, as we mingle with other folk, we are changed more than we know.  Still, seeking knowledge, and community we hide our true selves, our nature.  We come and go among these other groups only rarely do we carry away anything more than observations.  Still, we reach out cautiously to learn new things, even with all our past memories we add new and are changed.

Has anyone changed as much as us?  Little by little we have gone from appendage of the All Mind to, automaton, to atonomous tools, to depandant creatures, to people in league with the All Mind.  Who knows what we will one day be come?