There's no trademark smile on his face as he walks through the fields of wheat and weeds, one hand jammed deep into his pocket. The sky is drab as ever, rain threatening with vivacity to pelt through his clothes and sting his shoulders with a pH of four. Alfred grimaces, fumbling with the coin in his jeans. He's really let this place go – the once rich meadows and neat rows of wheat stock now in utter disarray, patches of milkweed and dandelion and thorny pest plants jutting out towards the sky as if they have reason to live. How often has he visited his home in the last few decades? There is hardly the time for a luxury like denim overalls and a corduroy button up when you're busy tearing yourself to pieces.

Bullet marks make jagged holes in the earth below his ratty sneakers, and they blow apart the trees that surround the field like guard rails on a pot-holed highway just west of Civilized America. How perfect the setting as he stumbles through the mess of fiber, headed to God-Knows-Where, USA. A flipped car marks the beginning of what once was obviously a shining headpoint. The sea isn't far from here, but he sits back and leans against the riddled and corroded metal of his forgotten Volkswagen. These days his hunger for Audi has become only more insatiable. With his free hand he digs for his squashed package of Marlboros, and sticks one cigarette between his chapped lips, then reaches into his pocket for a lighter. He uses both hands to light his cancer, one still cradling a quarter dollar piece on the tender stretch from pinkie to ring.

As the blue eye contaminates his atmosphere with carcinogenic smoke, he examines the silverish coin not a centimeter from his handcrafted eyeglass lens. The embossed eagle has faded, hardly distinguishable from the matrix, and tarnish and lime have crept into any defined edges. The rustic undertone makes him grin for a moment in spite of the soft ripping he feels at the sight of the eagle so worn and degraded. He remembers how much he misses this simplicity, then quickly pats out a smolder he's started in the wheat.

Once he's inhaling naught but tuft, Alfred disposes of his burnt out stick in a napkin in the glove compartment of the dying scenery. A glance to the north reveals that rain is coming, sneaking toward him from the east. He gets moving to cover as much ground as possible before he is drenched in slightly acidic precipitation. A hum on the tips of his lips, he pounds the coin back into his pocket and keeps on walking, fondling the metal in his finger pads beneath the indigo denim.

Today, while the blossoms still cling to the vine,

I'll taste your strawberries-

I'll drink your sweet wine!

A million tomorrows may all pass away

'Ere I forget all the joy that was mine

Today.

Xxx

Ooh look it was a whole page! Plus this will be multi-chapter. And I PROMISE that my Mello/OC fanfic is coming! The revisions are tough since it's. So. Old. And so bad.