NOTE: This is a rewritten version of the 7th chapter. Not all new, but all improved. The ending has changed dramatically, so you really need to read it again.

7. The Miens

The war hound lopes through tall late-summer grass. The grass parts in front of it and closes behind it, and the prairie remains the same, unchanged, with no signs left of the hound's passage.

I fly high above the land, unseen, riding the rising currents. I watch the wind move across the landscape, and the grass waves, yielding, rising like a soft, yellow-green ocean. The wind is soundless, but the grass whispers and sighs as the wind moves through it. The song of grass hides the sound of the running dog, and all I see is its black back plowing through the sea of green.

Logan put the last fork-full of the blueberry pie into his mouth, chewed squeezing the filling against the roof of his mouth with his tongue, then swallowed and licked his lips. He pushed the plate slightly away and grabbed the half full cup of coffee by wrapping his fingers around the stoneware. He took a sip, grunted happily, leaned back against the booth's chestnut backrest and looked out through the diner's window.

There she was, Grace, standing on the other side of the street, talking with a well-built man in a black leather biker's jacket.

Her hair was longer than it had been six years ago. Not significantly so, but longer nevertheless. She wore pale olive-green cargo pants and an old navy blue jacket, the same one she had had when she had found him in the forest.

Six years and she hasn't changed, Logan thought as he watched them discuss something. More than six years and that bitch is still the same.

The man looked at his watch and said something to Grace. She looked at hers, agreed and put her hands in her jacket pockets. He nodded, said something in addition and leaned forward to hold her face with his hands and kissed her. She laughed and he left. She shouted something after him and he turned, waved his hand and went on. She waved back, put her hand back in the pocket and prepared to cross the road.

She's comin' here.

She kept her eye on the traffic, walked and then jogged the last few steps to make way to a dark green Ford. Her hands never left the pockets.

Logan turned away and drained his coffee. He laid the cup down.

I should be gone already.

In the corner of his eye he saw her open the door and walk to the counter. He heard her order an ice-tea and a beef sandwich.

He didn't smell them, but then again: he had told her about the scent.

Logan let his eyes wander across the room. It was quiet: well past the breakfast, an hour or so to go before the lunch. There was a middle-aged couple at the back of the diner eating an early lunch and talking about a mortgage; a young woman by the window reading a fat, large format hard-cover book, making occasional notes in the margins and eating her soup when she remembered; three postal workers in the middle of the room laughing loudly and drinking coffee; and Grace by the counter. He had been there for roughly half an hour and only the student with her book had arrived after him.

And now Grace.

Life had been relatively quiet for Logan after he had left Grace's. Nobody had come after him, no-one, and it had felt strange at first. He had been so used to being on his toes all the time, to the constant worrying about everything and everyone, and he had forgotten the incessant, ever-present fear. He had remembered the fear only after he had realized that he had been left alone and that had been the most fearsome thing of all. It had scared the shit out of him. It had felt as though all the forgotten fear had struck him all at once and he had panicked, completely. How can you forget that you are afraid?

He had been far up north, driving on a seldom used forest road on his way to the next nameless town, when the ocean of fear had claimed him. He had stopped the truck on the spot, had run out into the wilderness leaving the engine running and the door wide open. He had run for his life, or so he had believed, and had stopped only when his body had given up on him and he had fallen to the ground. He had crawled on as fast as he could for awhile, using the claws to help pull himself further, but then he had felt sick and had vomited, violently.

The utter exhaustion had won over the panic. Things had cleared up and he had returned to the car, skulking and legs trembling. The engine had run out of gas, but otherwise things had been as he had left them.

The anger had taken over after that. The fear had vanished and he had been filled with cold rage against all and everything, especially against them. And her, though sometimes he briefly missed her - and the sword.

Now she was there, sitting on a high stool, back partly turned towards him. She chatted idly with the waiter while he put the ice-cubes into a tall glass and poured ice-tea over them. He cut the sandwich in half when it arrived from the kitchen and provided the preferred choice of small, complimentary dessert to go along with it. She had chosen a ripe Golden Delicious- apple; Logan could catch its scent all the way across the room. She put the apple into her pocket, took the plate and the glass, turned around to find a place to sit at and saw him.

She smiled with surprise; he tried to hold on to a blank expression.

I was wrong, Logan thought as he watched her sit down at his table, she has changed.

Grace sat there, in front of him, smiling (contently, he thought). She had laid the ice-tea down on the table and her hand was still holding the sweating glass loosely. The waiter did his round around the diner asking if everybody was okay, and he filled up Logan's cup even though he didn't reply. Grace smiled at the waiter and lifted her brow apologetically.

"So," she said after the waiter was gone, "How are you? Are the dreams still keeping you company at night?"

Logan offered no answer. He drank a mouth-full from the cup discarding the bitter, poignant taste of black coffee on his palate. She seemed to be reading something into it, but didn't comment on it. She took a bite of her sandwich and chewed thoughtfully.

"Did you get away okay?" she asked after the third bite.

Logan put his hands under the table. A passing car caught his eye and he followed the white van until it turned left at the end of the block.

She still smelled of earth and horses.

"Yeah, sure," he said and turned back to face her. She smiled as she ate.

"How has it been since then? Any trouble from - them?"

Logan leaned forward until his upper arms touched the table's edge.

"No. None."

"Really? None at all?"

Logan frowned. He couldn't decide wether her surprise was genuine or not.

"You heard me just fine, darlin'."

She stared at him for a while.

"Aye, I guess I did." She finished the sandwich and wiped her mouth with a yellow napkin. The postal workers got up, payed and left. The couple at the back was getting ready to go.

"Is everything alright?" she asked quietly. Her concern smelled genuine, but he wasn't willing to trust his senses. Not this time.

"Who's he?"

She frowned questioningly.

"The biker across the street."

She smiled understanding. "He's Nick, Nick Fury."

"Who's he to you? A friend, a boyfriend, a husband?" Logan paused to lift an eyebrow mockingly. "A lover?"

Grace laughed softly, but turned then serious and looked out at the steadily growing traffic. The ephemeral scents of love, friendship and lust drifted across the table in succession.

"We go back a long way, Nick and I," she said. "A long way." She looked at her hands on the table and then at him. "We are friends, marrows and we used to be more - from time to time." Her stance mirrored the melancholy of her words.

Logan granted himself a smirking smile. "Oh, I see."

She emptied her glass and played with it.

"I never heard anything about it in the news," he noted. "How did you manage that, darlin'?"

"Did you really expect to hear about it?"

"Do you expect me to believe that you just left them lying around and took of?" He leaned over the table. "Come on, darlin', you can tell me. Where did you hide the bodies?" he whispered like a co-conspirator.

"I just took my stuff, loaded it on the horses and rode away. It's easy to disappear into the wilderness up there as you know."

"How brave of you to trust that they wouldn't make a fuss about it. Or stupid."

"I knew they wouldn't," she said, slightly aggravated.

"Oh you knew, darlin'? How come?"

"For fuck's sake, Logan. You knew that as well as I did or you wouldn't have agreed to leave before sorting out the mess." The couple with a mortgage gave her a disapproving look as they walked past on their way out.

"You for sure had one hell of a way to sort it out," he hissed at her. The woman of the couple turned to look at him at the door and he snarled at her. She fled out after her man.

Grace was squinting when he looked at her. Her scent had changed and he smelled danger.

"What do you mean, Logan?" she said carefully.

"I saw you and him," he nodded towards the street, " and the choppers and the doggies. I saw what you did, darlin'. I saw you."

Her pupils dilated and for the first time he smelled fear.

"So," he smiled baring his teeth, "the thing is, I can't figure out why you let me go."

Her eyes narrowed slightly.

"You are your own man, Logan. It was your choice to go."

He laughed briefly leaning back. "Yeah, right," he said when he was serious again, "sure it was." He pulled his right hand from under the the table and pointed his finger at her. "You've been playin' me all the way, but not any more." He laid his hand on the table.

Grace stared at his hand. The young woman slammed suddenly her book shut, collected her belongings hurriedly and stormed out. The sudden noise startled Logan and he winced.

"You know, Logan," Grace said quietly, "things aren't always what they seem to be."

Logan whipped his head around.

"No kiddin', darlin'." He scowled and moved his left hand on the table. He clenched his hands into fists, and the blades moved under the skin. He let the claws move forward, against the skin, and he watched as the points cut through. Light reflected from a window of a passing car, and sun danced on adamantium.

"I know what you did to me."

Grace met his gaze with puzzlement. The rage felt hot, enforcing, but it changed. Eventually he tipped his head forward and to the left to hide how he closed his eyes.

"I remember more now. The dreams are more clear and detailed," he said, with malice. His voice trembled. "I remember what you did to me. I remember. I never forgot."

"Logan, I swear it wasn't us."

His neck burned where her sword had cut him.

"Get up."

She remained sitting for few breaths, but then stood up. The smell of fear was gone.

Logan drove the truck into a vacant plot in the outskirts on the town. He seemed sullen; sad and
angry all at once, but more determined than I had ever seen him be. He parked the car along a pile of rusted oil drums and turned off the engine.

It was a fine day: blue skies with a touch of winter purple and a shadow of red in the maple leaves. His hands remained on the wheel as he sulked over what he had seen all those years ago. I turned away to watch how the tall withered grass yielded to the wind.

"Now what?" I asked eventually.

His jaw muscles rippled as he scowled.

"Now," he said as he turned towards me, "now you're gonna tell me everythin'."

I swallowed. "I can't. I'm sorry but I can't."

He laughed with darkness in his voice.

"I think you're missin' the point here, darlin'." He let go of the wheel and rested his right elbow on the seat's backrest. "I ain't askin', I'm just sayin' what will happen."

"And I'm saying I can't tell you, Logan, not everything."

"I'm sorry to hear that. I'd rather didn't."

"Logan, you can't touch me. You know what I can do if you touch me."

"I only need to touch you once."

I smiled: "I can't argue with that."

He looked me into the eye and smiled. "I knew you wouldn't."

I opened the door and got out, he didn't object. The wind smelled of cold and snow. I closed my eyes and let the air move through me.

Logan had got out too and was leaning against the truck's roof with arms crossed, chin on his forearm. There was a hint of contentment in his pose.

"But it's still a stalemate," I said.

He remained motionless for a moment. The wind picked up and ruffled his black mane gently. He pushed himself away from the truck and walked around it with a measured gait. He came to stand in front of me, crossed his arms again and leaned his back against the car.

"I suppose you're right," he said and squinted as he looked at me along his nose. "I really don't seem to have much leverage on you here."

"No, you don't."

Suddenly he smiled with uncharacteristic genuineness. I frowned before I could help myself.

"I tried so hard to scare you back then," he explained. "To really scare the living daylights out of you, but you were one fuckin' fearless bitch back then."

I laughed and he smiled again.

"All that hard work for nothin'. I never smelled fear on you." He sneered slightly." It really pissed me off, you know."

I nodded.

"So I thought I never would." He stood up, walked to me and stood still by my shoulder looking at the distance somewhere behind me. "But I did today," he almost growled, "and it felt so fuckin' good to smell you and to know that it was me who put that fear in you."

He circled around me.

"So maybe I do have some leverage on you." He leaned against the car again. "It just ain't what I thought it would be."

I shrugged my shoulders. "That really doesn't mean much here. I can't tell you everything. It's as simple as that."

"I know you didn't want me to see what you did with the corpses, Grace. I know you killed the RTO in the woods. I don't know how you managed that, but I smelled you on him."

The rough, coarse ray fish skin cut into my palm and I felt the weight of the sword in my hand - and on my soul.

"Aye, I did kill him," I said surprising us both with the dolorousness of my voice. I rubbed my palm against my thigh to scour the feeling away. The feeling persisted, and he looked at me tilting his head curiously. I smelled blood and I looked down at my hand to see how it shook. I clenched the hand into a fist hoping that the shaking would vanish, but it didn't. The air felt hot in my lungs, and the redness in the leaves and in the rust on the drums burned my eyes. I looked at him.

Grace reeked of fear. She rubbed her hand compulsively against her thigh, over and over again, hard. She looked at her palm, gasped and grasped the wrist with her left hand. Her fingers turned white as she squeezed the wrist as if to prevent something from spreading. She looked at him and he recognized the look in her eyes.

Her fear infiltrated him.

"Grace?"

She sunk on her knees and began to scrape her palm against the ground. He smelled blood as the grass turned red under her hand. She whispered something, but he didn't catch the words.

"Grace?"

She didn't seem to hear him. Logan took a step closer and she finally lifted her head. He wasn't sure if the ground shuddered or not.

"The Earth won't take it, Logan. It won't take it away." Her eyes were dark and he doubted if she could truly see him.

He took another step towards her.

"It won't take what away?"

"The sword. I should never have used it."

Sweet Mother of God. This ain't what I thought it would be.

This is fuckin' better.

He glanced quickly around to see if they were alone, but he had chosen the location well. The pile of oil-drums hid them from the casual traffic and the wire-fence was fortified by bushes and high-grown grass. He crouched down on his haunches.

"Grace? Listen to me, Grace." She turned her head towards him.

"You have to tell me about the sword, Grace."

She smiled with sad eyes. "I can't. I've never..." She closed her eyes and frowned, thinking. Her scent changed, and Logan wondered if he had missed his opportunity.

"If I tell you about the sword," she said tentatively, "would it help to convince you, that it wasn't us who put the adamantium in you?"

"Would it explain everythin'?"

She opened her eyes.

"No."

He kneaded his clasped hands. Grace pried a scarf out of her pocket and wiped most of the blood and dirt away; the scrapes had began to heal. She leaned her left hand against the ground and prepared to stand up. He seized her sword hand with his left one, unfolded her fingers and ran his hand across her palm. She objected: he felt the tension in her muscles, but chose to ignore it.

"Tell me about the sword, Grace."

She twisted her hand gently and he let her go. She wrapped the stained, gray scarf around her hand.

"I wish I could tell you everything," she said intently. "You deserve to know."

"I ain't askin' for your pity," he said angrily.

"Don't. I..."

She has changed. He studied her features and found new lines around her eyes. She was so fuckin' tough when we first met. Fearless.

Or tired of life. Like I was - am, he thought. A sarcastic grin flashed on his face.

Somethin' has changed.

"Do you still want me to kill you?" she asked suddenly catching him slightly off balance.

Do I?

"Yeah."

I do?

He felt he had to elaborate: "I still have some unfinished business to take care of, but eventually - yes, I do."

She merely nodded. A flock of starlings flew past the plot swirling, changing shape in unison like a monstrous organism, chirping. She bent her head all the way back and looked up to the sky.

"Remember the sword I used when I almost beheaded you?" she said and lifted her head to see him.

"Yeah, the one in the lacquer box. The one with a name. " He glanced at the truck. "Shiokaze, right?"

"Aye, Sea-breeze," she said with softness he remembered. "But there's another one. Another sword." She leaned forward and onto her hands. Her breathing turned shallow, and he smelled the stench of fear in his nose. She looked at him again, grinned nervously and sat up straight.

"This one is nameless. Or maybe it had a name once, a long time ago when it was made. I don't know." She looked around searching for something he didn't see. The grass whispered as the wind moved through it and she extended her arm to feel the grass against her hand.

"This nameless sword," he said when she seemed lost, "Is it the one you used kill the soldiers?"

She hitched her head around and pushed herself a few inches away from him as if she had forgotten his presence. Logan lifted his hand and almost grabbed her by the shoulder. He remembered her ability and held still, arm stretched with open palm.

"Grace, I'm not... " He pulled the arm back. "Just relax, Grace, and tell me about the sword." He tried to sound as gentle as he possibly could and it surprised him.

She closed her eyes and breathed systematically for a moment. Her voice was calm when she spoke.

"There was a Japanese swordsmith once. A real master with skills beyond mere mortal's they said." She frowned briefly. "Muramasa I think it was. Yes, " she opened her eyes again, "Muramasa.

"He made beautiful blades, keen and balanced. Worth their price most people thought." She massaged her neck with her hand. "And his best swords will cut through everything, absolutely everything. It's said that's because the swords enjoy destruction, that they love the act of cutting itself."

Logan smiled sardonically: "So real magical swords then."

"Aye, you could say that."

He laughed and stood up. "This is genuine bullshit, Grace."

"No, the sharpness of the blades is just a result of craftsmanship, of skill and knowledge. There's nothing magical about that." She bit her lower lip. "The magic lies elsewhere."

He dropped down into a crouch on all fours, knuckles jammed against the ground.

"Bullshit, Grace, bullshit!" he growled at her face. At first she leaned back to make room for him, but then her expression changed.

"Give me your hand, Logan."

"What?"

"Oh, I think you heard me." She held her hand out demandingly . "Give me your hand, Logan."

He hesitated. He didn't want to give in or to appear to be afraid of her and he certainly wasn't about to mistake stupidity for curiosity. Suddenly she seized his hand by the wrist. He felt her enter his body and found himself unable to resist when she commanded his hand to open and pressed it against her chest.

"Don't laugh at my magic, Logan," she said softly with lethal sweetness in her voice. She smiled coyly as she studied his face and neck with her eyes. Her fingers around his wrist felt warm.

"Look, I'll show you what I mean. I'll show you real magic, Logan. Real magic." She lifted her left hand and pressed her palm against his chest. He wanted to pull back, but couldn't.

At first he felt nothing. He smelled her in his nose, the earth and horses; the autumn grass and the leaves; rusted iron of the drums; the truck and its leaking engine-oil. Nothing special about it, only he couldn't free himself from her.

I ain't tryin' hard enough.

He blinked and he saw himself.

He didn't get it at first. He tried to turn back towards Grace, but nothing happened. All he saw was himself on his knees amongst grass, Grace's hand on his chest. He looked down and saw his own hand with fingers spread wide on her.

"Well hello there," she said with his mouth, but his face stayed motionless. "There's something I want you to see - Wolverine." She closed his eyes.

Her eyes. I'm in her head.

It wasn't seeing, not as such. It was an odd mixture of all the senses. He could taste the bones - and see. He smelled the blood and felt its warmth on his forearms. The metal around his bones was more a flavour, a smoothness felt with his tongue and in his throat than an actual image in his eyes. It made him gag, but he couldn't since she didn't.

The body his mind remembered and believed still to be occupying began to tremble, but the body his senses perceived didn't. The heart was beating with a steady rhythm. The muscles were soft, relaxed.

She began to pull out of him. She backed up slowly, as if flying in reverse through a canyon of 1000 yards but with only a few feet of width. The walls of the canyon pressed on him and the old feeling of being cornered crept through from his lost memories.

The motion of breathing was hard. The rhythm was strange, not his, but hers, and he began to run out of air.

Somewhere in the crimson light the adamantium sang to him. Its steel-sleek voice whispered words of comfort and and rescue and safety into his ears, and the smooth touch of metal on his tongue tasted of sea and sugar. It had rescued him once. He knew it despite the lack of memory of it, but he knew it. He was certain of it. He remembered the song of adamantium and turned towards it. She resisted, but he fought it, somehow. Or maybe it was the song and the voice that fought her. He began to move forward again finding his own course through the canyon of flesh and bone and steel.

Around him the world of flesh blinked and it became dark. The scent and taste of his body remained in his mouth, but all else was pitch-black and he began to drift. The sensation of drifting turned into falling, and he fell down through the darkness feeling the ground closing fast on him. He tried to breath harder, but the air was thin. There was no wind on his skin, no sound of air rushing past his ears as he fell downward through darkness thicker than oil. He struggled to stop the falling, tried to swim to the surface like a drowning swimmer would struggle against a current. The lack of oxygen burned in his lungs, and the falling continued. He would have screamed, but there was no air to form the sound.

He opened his eyes (My eyes, not hers, mine.) and threw his arms forward against the ground to brake off the fall. He was dizzy, groggy and the sensation of falling persisted. He fought to keep his eyes open and eventually the world around him returned to its relative normality. He spat out the blood from his mouth and a piece of his tongue to go along with it. He felt the wound with his finger, swallowed the remaining blood and the excess saliva that was building up in his throat and staggered up. The world swayed, then settled; his tongue hurt.

Another flock of starlings flew low past him. He crouched startled by the sudden noise of wings and almost fell. The chirping of the birds sounded mechanical in his ears and he grimaced with nauseous pain.

The flock passed and it was quiet again. Only the wind remained.

Grace had collapsed. Logan kneeled down beside her and flipped her around to her back. Her limbs followed the weight of her body with lifeless indifference, but there was a faint pulse inside her chest. He didn't have to concentrate to hear it, so it was okay enough.

He took her jacket off, sat down properly on the ground and searched the garment thoroughly. He checked the pockets and the lining, he ran his fingers along the seams twisting and bending the fabric until he was satisfied that it was only an old worn jacket with chafed cuffs and a missing button. He found a set of keys, the car keys, a wallet and a black notebook almost filled with writing and drawings but no pen.

There would be time to go through them later. He returned his attention to her.

He ran his hands over her quickly checking routinely all the obvious places. He expected to find nothing and was satisfied. The pen was in one of her trouser pockets.

Her hair was gathered into a ponytail, so he opened the clasp and ran his fingers through her hair. He unbuttoned her shirt, searched the seams, the collar, the cuffs and the hemline, did the same to her T-shirt and found nothing. He then pulled her shirts up past her breasts and pushed his finger under her bra. It was a sports bra with no wires under the cups so it was easy to decide there was nothing hidden in it. He pulled her over to her side and checked the backside. After that he let her fall back to her back.

He pulled her belt free from the trousers; there was nothing there. The belt itself was made of thick leather, probably cut from the centerline of the hide he thought. A bit long for her maybe, worn, but well cared for. The buckle was just a buckle.

He undid the button-fly on her trousers and pulled them down a bit to make room for his hands. He made sure there was nothing in the waistline or in the seams, and she had nothing taped to her inner thighs either. He found a small lump in her thigh, an inch or so below her groin, but it was somewhat soft and deformed: a tumor, maybe. He thought about it and then sniffed the skin hesitantly. It wasn't malign.

He considered cutting the soles of her boots open, but then decided that it would be paranoid in a wrong way. He did take the boots off though. Nothing.

He took the notebook and the wallet, stood up and walked to his truck. There he sat down on his haunches, back rested against the door of the car, elbows on his knees. (The long grass hid most of her from his view.) He stretched his arms a little and let them hang relaxed over his knees. He swung the notebook thoughtfully between his thumb and index finger and followed its arch with his eyes.

She's my only lead.

He went through the notebook page by page. She had written most of the notes in English, but every now and again he came across pages and passages written in two other languages unknown to him. He read what he could, but it didn't add up to much. The pages were filled with a variety of observations: of birds, animals, seasons, landscapes, weather; minute details and large-scale summaries illustrated with ink drawings and occasional touches of colour. There were drawings of people (He found a picture of himself, but he didn't linger on it.) and of built environs. At one point she had used several pages to draw different kinds of cars.

Some of the notes were lists of things to do, places to go, addresses of shops, accommodation and companies, but nothing came across as interesting or covertly meaningful. She had made the first entry roughly a year ago, the last one was only a few days old.

The two foreign languages meant nothing to him. The more common of the two was short-worded, rough and full of consonants; the rearer-one (there were only five or six entries written in it) was composed of long words and strings of vowels and it reminded him of Japanese written in roman alphabet.

What the hell did you expect?

A list of covert operations?

Names and code names of the agents involved?

A written confession, signed and stamped with a judge's approval?

He let his back slide down along the door, crossed his arms on his knees and sulked for awhile with his chin on is forearm. He thought he could make out the profile of her body through the grass. He put the wallet and the notebook into the clove compartment and went back to her. The grass reached all the way up to his knees and the thin, climbing weeds amongst it hugged his legs like tendrils as he waded through it. She lay as he had left her: partly undressed, on her back, left hand open on her belly.

I did kill her that time, he thought all of a sudden.

I kill things.

That's what I do.

That's what I'm best at.

He decided to check her breathing and counted her exhales against the back of his hand. Her breathing was deep and strong, punctuated by several seconds of stillness after every outward breath. He let his hand touch her cheek and grazed the back his hand across her jaw and the side of her throat. He found the pulsating vein besides her windpipe and held still listening to the heartbeats with his fingers and his ears. He wondered if she could feel him on her. He stood up again. The grass billowed around her like green waves of a green ocean. An image of red waves caressing dead bodies on a black beach came to his mind. He caught a conjured smell of sulfur in his nose, but the image receded before it reached a state of full recollection.

I have forgotten what it is to love. There was a tight bundle of pain under his right shoulder plate.

There's only death and pain in me. Death and pain and rage and hatred.

It's what I am.

Maybe it's all I am.

He kneeled down and pulled her shirts down proper. He covered her torso with the jacket and tucked its sides under her to keep her warm. The trousers were easier, but he left the belt off and stuffed it into his pocket instead. The boots, he decided, were not worth the trouble.

His hand got left resting on her thigh and he felt the growth through the garment. He didn't dare to look up to her face. He closed his eyes and filled his ears with the sound of the wind in the grass. The sound mutated into a rustling whisper in his mind; into a sound of countless round-grounded pebbles born of volcanic rock and years of wear rocked back and forth again and again by long, smooth waves. Waves stained red with blood of counted soldiers laying on their mouths in shallow water.

You don't always get what you wish for, but sometimes you get lucky.

He stood up, grabbed her by her wrists and dragged her over to the oil drums. There he leaned her up against the stained drums into a sitting position and crouched down at her feet. The flock of starlings landed on the grass, withered with a shock of anticipation before shooting back up into the sky. He lifted her head up and moved it backwards until it rested against an edge of an oil drum.

My turn.