Spring comes and goes. In the summer a letter comes from Annalise, she says Edge keeps asking for me and wants me to come visit. I want to see him. I have been thinking of him, more than ever before. He is my son after all. But I know he is safer away from me. He is safer if no one knew he was my son.

I get Gabriel to help me write her back.

I write that; it is still to dangerous for him to be around me. I don't write much, but I make him a book full of drawings of people I know, knew. Of my family, my mother, father, my sisters. I even draw Annalise's brothers.

The only one I can't qied draw is myself, so I don't.

-—{~$~}—-

Gabriel and I have a nice and quiet summer together we run, fish, bath and just lay around looking at the sky.

I wish he was the one I had a child with. And I remember the vision with the little girl on his hip.

I asked him.

"Did you ever want children."

He looks at me like I'm a nutter. Shocked that I asked him. He is still 19 and I'm 24, but the vision nags me.

He would be a good parent, better than I would ever be.

Gabriel is so kind and compassionate it is easy to imagine him with a child in his lap reading out loud in ridiculous voices.

It it all to real, and that makes me sad. That we could never have that. We are never gonna sleep in late in each others arms getten jumped on by small feet. We will never be bound by blood.

I look at him again and he smiles at me.

"Only with you." He says as he brushes his fingers through my hair. I just barely feel them. But they are there and that is all that matters.

Gabriel is all that matters. Because he is my world, the air I breathe. If I never met him. No, don't think that.

The trick is to stay in the present, get lost in the detail of him and enjoy the time we have together.

I close my eyes and concentrate on his fingers in my hair. I listen after his breath. I hear him. With my eyes still closed I sniff in deeply, his scent is faint. But I cling to it. Cling to him like a drowning man.

But even a drowning man grows tired. I fall asleep here in the grass. And when I wake again he is gone. Even if he is gone, I know he will be back. But waiting like this is more than I can take. So I shift and I run. Times goes by faster when I don't think to much, when I just let the animal take control for a bit.

-—{~$~}—-

Gabriel has been reading me a book this winter. I don't remember the name of the book or what it is about. We lie in the denn close enough to touch. But we don't. We have never been closer or more at peace together.

" You know, you don't have to be alone" he stops reading and looks at me funny like he has absolutely no idea what I'm talking about.

I pull out the fairborn, I am met with my reflection in of the Black edge.

I look back at him as I repeat myself.

"You don't have to be alone."

His face changes from confused to horrified to angry in a second.

"Nathan" the way he says it, says my name is more than a thousand words, more than any argument. So I put the knife away.

"Okay" but it pains me to not do it, it pains me so horribly not to be with him. But I can take the pain a little more, I make myself bare it. Because I couldn't bare the look of disappointment or disgust that would come over Gabriels face if I did it against his will.

I can bare the pain a little bit longer just for him.

What choice do I have? I'm half alive and half dead. I walk among both.

My new gift has become stronger. Which means that Gabriels stays longer and when he goes away he comes back quick.

I don't use it to call the other to me, I'm scared if I do I won't know who is dead and who is alive. My grip on reality has been slippery, but I do anything in my power to say sain.

I don't tell anyone about the dead that walks with me, no one. Not even Gabriel.

-—{~$~}—-

It's christmas day when I visit the cabin with a dead canadian goose under my arm. We had a rather pleasant sky dance earlier today. I smile when walking in the door. I see the cooking has already been started.

"Nesbitt I got your christmas goose, it's still warm."

"Good God, boy. How do you do that?"

"What?"

"At least when you are around us put on some clothes." I look down, I'm naked. Ups, I must have been to eager to show of my catch "I know loverboy doesn't mind."

"Piss off" I sneer at him. I catch the trousers Celia thoughts me. They have taken to have a pair of clothes here for me. I don't really need them. I never get cold anymore not even as a human.

I feel the fabric.

"You still ion your stupid trousers, here in the middle of nowhere?!"

"Old habits die hard." She just shrugged.

"How can you not be bothered by him walsing into our home like that, in his birthday suit?" The question is directed to Celia.

"Well I have been looking at his junk from before he got pupic hair."

"Did you look every time I pissed into the vegetable garden?"

"I always had half an eye on you. If I hadn't, you would have slipped my fingers. He was quite the teen" she turned to Nesbitt "So provoking, everything you did was in defiance. It made me want to smack you around just a bit more."

"So your saying if I had been a good docile boy I wouldn't have been smacked around like I was?!" I sound wonderstruck.

"No, you probably wouldn't, I had to keep you in line. The only thing you're stupid brain understood was violence and even then you pushed to find the edge so you could jump over it, just to fuck with me. Not that it worked. I was always one step ahead."

"I hated you for it." I laugh and trough myself into the comfortable couch. It doesn't take long for me to fall asleep. Listening to Celia read to Nesbitt as he worked in the small kitchen.

It is the first real Christmas I'm gonna had since Gran died.

I wonder what would have happened if my mother hadn't loved Marcus. I think of how the Bryn family could have been happy. I dream of a Jessica that isn't a total bitch. I dream of Debra, how her kids would look playing with Arrans little girl.

I wake to the smell of smoke, strawberries cigarettes and nightsmoke. I fumble from the couch. Through the blanket Nesbitt or Celia must have put over me. Nesbitt sits in the chair with a lit cigarette not smoking it.

"I sometimes light one in her memory."

"If your not gonna smoke it give it here." He gives me the cigarette and I close my eyes as I take a hit.

It dos remind me of Van. Of her kindness. She was a wonder, an anomaly of the people in my life. One of the only people that were honest, kind and expected nothing in return.

I smile as i remember her in one of her mens suite. I see her clear in my mind.

"I could really need a drag of that."

"I didn't know you have taken op smoking Celia" I laugh.

"Nathan, are you okay?" Nesbitt sounds worried. I open my eyes and behind him…

I freeze, she smiles. I am not scared, not like the first time I saw someone else than Gabriel.

"Nathan what is happening?!" I don't hear him, the only thing I see is her standing behind the chair leaning on it.

"I didn't kill you." I whisper. "How? I didn't kill you " I repeat.

"Tell me something I don't already know"

"Then how can I see you."

"I don't know." she looks annoyed and puzzled.

"Celia!" Nesbitt stands in the door screaming for her to come quick.

" I don't know Nathan. But I have an ideer. Can you pick that up and take another drag? I miss the taste and the smell." She gestures to cigarette that has fallen out of my hand. I Pick it up and do as she asks. She sits in the chair where Nesbitt had been sitting.

"How are you Nathan?" She crooks her head. "You look so much stronger than last I saw you."

"Your not here all the time?"

"No? What do you mean by that?" I think of my answer, but before I get to speak, her sharp mind has already drawn a conclusion.

"I'm not the first you have seen?"

"No."

"Who?"

"Gabriel"

"I should have thought so. You two were inseparable." Val smiles with sadness in her gaze.

"I'm sorry for your loss."

"When did he… leave you?"

"He never left."

"That is peculiar, you never seen others beside Gabriel before me?"

"Yes"

"Who are you talking to lad?!" Nesbitt is freaking out. Celia is by his side both standing in the doorway. Celia gives Nesbitt a gun and keep one herself. Gatorix stands behind them. looking at me with horror and fascination.

"Van is here." I keep my eyes on her to make sure she doesn't disappear.

"What are you on about lad?!" Nesbitt is losing it, I hear it in his voice.

"Van is here." I talk slowly to make sure he hears and understands the words.

"What!?" Nesbitt is looking around the room.

"Why are you here?" I ask Van.

"I'm not "

"Iˋm not that stupid. I know that. But why not stay on the other side?"

"There is no other side" she says with doub. "Is there?"

"There is." I know, there must be. Because otherwise I think I would have seen a lot more dead people before now.

I got the ability to call back the dead or atleast summon them in some way. I don't know how it works. And to be honest I don't really care to learn it. For what can it help? It would make me stuck in the past. That power would drive me mad. More than is already has.

"Are you okay Nathan" Gatorix says

"I'm fine. It's nothing that hasn't happened before."

"You see dead people?" Now all attention is on Gatorix.

"You didn't know? Nathan has been seeing Gabriel since he died."

"What?!"

"Thought you knew since you have been looking after him for over 3 months"