It wasn't the pound that survived, it was the dollar. Not what I expected, General.

Ichabod sinks into a low armchair at the Sheriff's cabin, a rustic enclosure removed just enough from modernity for it to feel like a haven. He stares at the change in his hand: copper pennies, shiny silver nickels, and paper money. On the top of the pile, General Washington's face stares placidly back at him.

What must you think, to represent one dollar on a page of paper money? Our inadequate currency, Continentals, were nearly worthless when last I laid eyes upon you. A fistful of them and a promise could purchase a pint of ale. That firebrand, your hot-headed Captain Hamilton railed against the monetary policy our fledgling Congress passed. When we learned the Continental Congress had devalued them forty to one, he rolled a pile of them together, lit them and smoked them like a Spaniard's cigar.

She assures me the value has stabilized. Two dollars and three dozen pennies buys a mug of coffee at the Starbucks Coffee House now residing where the livery was. Pennies with the short-haired profile of a President on them, according to the barmaid. Presidents on all the coins, I presume. A pale honor, I fear.

She… Lieutenant Mills. Miss Mills. She stopped dead in the street outside the police station, dug into her pocket and produced her bill fold, from which she drew five bills, each worth twenty dollars. "You should be getting paid," she mumbled, holding them out to me. "It's not much." I argued that one hundred dollars was far more than I deserved or needed. "Trust me, it's not gonna get you far. But it'll give you some independence."

She apologized with her eyes, I can only assume for my predicament here. Perhaps it was for what little she had to offer me. And she urged me, silently, to accept her offer.

My reasoning in rejecting her generosity sprang entirely from truth. She is a natural leader, as were you, General. As with your faithful troops, my welfare is of primary concern to her. I have want of nothing material. But this offering demonstrates once again that her sensitivity penetrates beyond the mundane. She could see – although I have taken great pains to hide it – that my dependence on her for every last item, down to each plastic-entombed tool, had begun to chafe. I felt more like a child with every purchase she made on my behalf.

This coffee is mild yet invigorating on such a frigid autumn afternoon. My first twenty-first century purchase. Starbucks is so ubiquitous a corporation that I could hardly avoid it. And I was eager to survey the inside of the erstwhile livery. As you can imagine, the building bears no hint of its former purpose.

I wonder, General, if perhaps… somehow… you peer through the time-clogged ether, every dollar a portal, and observe the country you carried through revolution to term. Do you watch every citizen, musing upon what this country has made of itself?

Or must I do this now, on your behalf?

General Washington, later President – how I wish I had lived to elect you! - presiding over the smallest denomination of dollars the country now offers. One hundred of you amount to "not much." The insult boils my blood. What you created – yes, what we all helped you to create, but without you we could never have accomplished it – was nothing short of a miracle. The notion that you are associated with such a negligible denomination is tantamount to blasphemy.

And yet, perhaps my perspective is too narrow. Surely your presence in every pocket means something. Surely your ubiquity as the fundamental denomination is more than symbolic. Perhaps this is not an insult. The dollar is as fundamental as a brick to a building, a broth to a soup, a mother to a child. You were the foundation of our revolution; perhaps it is only fitting that you remain the foundation of the country's currency.

The day I came under your command was one of the most fortunate of my life, General. I must admit, I have never been a leader myself. I've not seen this as a failing. The opposite, rather: my capacity to ally, to join with others in shared purpose and industry, remains one of my most cherished strengths. It is the same now, in my alliance with Lieutenant Mills. She is an effortless leader, welcoming of my every contribution. But unlike the military troops under your command, and the named and unnamed members of the army fighting against demons in our midst, Lieutenant Mills and I constitute the entirety of our side's personnel. Will we be enough?

There may be more. Captain Irving, derisive as he is at times, may yet prove to be an ally. The brotherhood of Masons – still active after these centuries, and thank the Great Architect for it – are working quietly for the right. And now we have the assistance of Miss Mills' sister Jenny, a freedom fighter if I've ever seen one.

And Katrina, somewhere. She found Miss Mills for me, to save me.

Would you have made the same choice? Or would you have braved the Beyond to bring the horseman to his end, then and there? The poison my brethren offered me may have been the best chance we will have in the fight. And yet, as Miss Mills so vehemently argued, there is always another way, and at her urging, I took it. I trust her implicitly, without reservation, as I trusted you. And I want to stay, to fight by her side. I want to finish the fight Cicero and Katrina drew me into moments and centuries ago.

Stunningly difficult, that goodbye to a person I had known only fleetingly. I can't entirely explain why. Perhaps it is a common experience, this bone-deep knowledge that you belong with someone. Perhaps it is not as desperately important as it feels. But when I breached propriety and called her Abbie, intimate as naked skin by candlelight, it was not a calculated decision. It was, very truly, my soul reaching for hers. "This is the first time you've called me Abbie," she said. She knew.

I wonder how Katrina felt when she heard me say it. For she must have heard me. I wonder what she made of that.

General Washington, how is it possible that you no longer exist as the hearty, stalwart man with a quill and a plan? It is cruel that I must settle for your poor representation on this flimsy scrap of paper.

And yet, I can keep this flimsy scrap with me, folded in my pocket. A talisman. Watch over me, General, as Katrina somehow does. Guide me. Guide us all.