What's up y'all? I've only got a 60-day trial of MS word on my new LAPPYTOPPER so I gotta write fast.

Anyway, sorry for the long absence, sorry for getting your hopes up, sorry for missing your baseball game…yeah. I'll be updating now.

"Talking."

Thinking…

Vinny's interruptions.

( ") The Blind and the Angels (" )

"From this second story window

I can hear the church bells calling out my name

This table is set for one

Even angels would be homesick

In this forsaken town."

-Unopened Letter to the World, The Ataris

"Time ta get up, up, up! C'mon y'all, it's a brand new day jus' like all o' the others so get the hell up and enjoy it! I'm not gonna shut up 'till I see all my favorite people up and at 'em! Come ta Vic's Tavern fer free coffee, beer, and shit like that!"

"Thanks for the free advertising, Vinny."

"Thanks fer the free beer, Vicky."

"Don't call me that."

Raven woke up from a thin sleep and instantly regretted it. Apparently, she had fallen asleep in her metal folding chair.

"Jesus…" Raven barely whispered. Standing up, she put her hands on her hips and cracked her back, grimacing after hearing more than five pops. Standing up so fast, combined with arching her back, gave her a lightheaded feeling, and she waited a few seconds for it to pass.

After cracking her neck, which popped almost as many times as her back, Raven turned her gaze to the occupied bed on the far wall of her room. The twins were in a priceless position. Raven's pillow lay in the center of her bed, and the twin both had their heads buried deep into the white pillowcase. Their feet faced opposite ends of the bed; Tucker laid upside-down at the head and Chris had his feet against the baseboard.

Raven smiled and surveyed the rest of her room. Papers were scattered all over the floor, covered in sketches of talons, wings, and beaks. Books recovered from the library were strewn across the ground, their spines bending. A few open tomes displayed diagrams of birds in flight followed with a lengthy explanation at the bottom of the page. However, most were full of pictures, and it was these that the twins had visited the most.

It was very, very difficult explaining birds to someone who had never seen one. The most Raven could do to explain flight to the two eager boys was to teach them how to make paper airplanes. Of course, they insisted that she demonstrate flight personally. She knew she couldn't do that, and didn't hesitate to tell them so.

The teen stalked silently out of the room into the bathroom down the hall to start her morning routine. Once her hair was combed through and she was decked with a fresh pair of pants and a shirt, Raven strolled back into her room and began to pick the books and papers up off of the cement floor. One of the volumes tumbled from her arms and fell onto the concrete with a resonating CRACK, and the teen cringed at the loud noise. Damn hardback… Tucker stirred and sat up.

The small boy lazily rubbed his eyes. "G'mornin' Miss Raven." Tucker stretched and looked around. "Sorry we took your bed."

"That's alright, I didn't mind." Raven's back ached from bending over to reach the books, and it reminded her of her "rude awakening" just a few moments ago.

Tucker, his green eyes clouded with sleep, shook his twin awake. After a great deal of yawning and stretching, both blondes were seated on the edge of the bed with their feet dangling over the side. Chris greeted his host much the same way as his brother and ran his fingers through his unruly hair.

"Well boys, we spent an entire day talking about birds, and I still don't think you understand at all."

"Yeah, well, I don't understand what feathers are at all. Your drawings looked like road kill."

Chris showed all of his teeth in a childish grin, but Tucker paled.

"Oh man, we've been gone all day and night? Marc's gonna kill us!" Tucker leapt from the bed and Chris's expression turned sober.

"Crap!"

Raven smiled. "Don't worry guys, I asked Vic to tell Marcus where you were right before I came upstairs."

"Y'all are gonna hafta get your brains back in gear, cuz this mornin's story's gonna be just like all the rest! Get yourselves some coffee an' listen good!"

Tucker fidgeted shortly before speaking. "Thank you for giving us your time, Miss Raven." She smiled at his lack of eye contact.

"Yeah, yeah! Birds sound so cool, I just wish I could see one fly! Could they really actually fly?" Raven gave an exaggerated groan and Chris laughed.

"But seriously, why can't you fly for us? Just a little? We won't tell anyone, please? I've never seen anything in the air but our paper airplanes!" Chris started off asking but his tone slowly turned demanding. "I know you can, Marc told me!"

The girl slowly turned to him and glared. "It's not that simple, Chris. Don't talk about things you don't understand."

Then, in a voice so quiet and close to his chest that Chris had to lean in to hear him, Tucker whispered. "I just wanna hear them sing…"

An uncomfortable silence followed, but was soon shattered by the "resident storyteller."

"I ain't kiddin' y'all! Get some coffee real quick! Vic's stuff tastes like crap but it does the trick!"

"Same to you, ya god-damned moocher!"

"And speakin' o' which, where the hell's my beer!"

Chris laughed and Tucker smiled. "Vinny's funny. Tucker says that when he gets a little older, he's gonna ask Vinny to teach him all about public speaking and stuff, and then he's gonna be the new storyteller guy!"

"Chris!" Tucker blushed and his brother laughed even harder.

"Chris, give him a break. I think it's a great idea Tucker." She ruffled his tawny hair and he presented a meek smile.

"Really?"

"Well, yeah." She took a seat beside him on the edge of the bed and wrapped an arm around his small shoulders. "You're not a very loud, outgoing-speaker type person, but you're willing to work on it. That's a really grown-up thing to do, Tucker. I'm proud of you!"

Chris scooted over to the girl's other side. "Miss Raven, am I grown up too?"

Hmmm, how should I answer this? "Ummm…" Raven stalled and put her remaining arm lovingly around Chris.

Chris furrowed his brow in a look of annoyance. "C'mon, am I?"

"Well…" Her mind rushed to find something to say. "I think you're-"

"Hey guys, wanna try some of my coffee? It'll help you get over your all-nighter!" Vic shouldered through the door with a tray of steaming mugs.

The corners of Raven's mouth turned up to transform her sigh of relief into a smile of gratitude. Vic's coffee had saved her from saying something she might regret. Raven's opinion was important to the twins, and she didn't want to lie to them, but Chris wasn't grown-up. But he's five! He's not supposed to be grown-up!

Thankfully, Chris abandoned his questioning to grab a mug from Vic. Raven began wondering how Chris knew about roadkill, since the streets were full of building wreckage and no one drove anymore. Marcus probably pointed it out to them on his way to the factory one day.

Marcus Herron was not only the twins' big brother and guardian, but was also Raven's best friend. Marc had been Raven's best friend since third grade, and was one of the few people she could count on during her high school years when her father's chronic anger erupted into violence. She knew her father's warning signs, and often sought refuge at Marc's house until things quieted down. Their entire family made it through the Dark Fire, except their dad, but his mother died while she was in labor with the twins. Since then, Marcus had done his best to raise and take care of his little brothers, but he often avoided questions that they had about their mom.

Raven, on the other hand, took pleasure in the thought that her father had dropped dead and her weak mother had gone with him. Her mother was never beaten, because she was obedient and did everything her husband told her to do. She would just watch while he took out his belt or flashed his fists. Thinking about her mother made her sick sometimes.

Raven's grades in high school had been pathetically low, but only because she missed so many days. She was always out because she had 'fallen down the stairs' or 'twisted her ankle,' and her idiot teachers never got suspicious. Luckily, Marcus had most of the same classes, and would call to fill her in on what she missed.

Now, Marcus was the single most important person in the city. Marcus took special classes in high school, because he had always wanted to open his own home repair company. 'Things break all the time,' he would say, 'so I'll get paid all the time!' As it turned out, Marcus was now in charge of electricity, plumbing, and general repairs for the entire city. After the Dark Fire, too many people had died to run the main factory just north of the main part of the city, but Marcus had turned it into a one-man operation. He walked out there every day to check up on things, and afterwards would get his daily Sunkist from Vic. Sometimes he would bring the twins with him, and as a result they knew a lot about maintenance themselves.

People respected Marcus. They didn't respect her.

"Blech! This stuff's awful! Vic, how can you serve this?" Chris thrust his mug back at Vic, who placed it back on the tray.

"Yeah, Rae doesn't like it either." Vic handed her a mug of herbal tea, and she sipped it quietly.

"Oh yeah? Well I like it! I really like it! It's reallyreallyreally goooood!" Tucker gave his empty mug back to Vic and started drinking Chris's coffee.

Tucker started to giggle. "It makes me feel like I could fly! Oh it's sooo goooood!" Tucker's fast speech and loud voice made it obvious that he was hacked up on caffeine.

"Okay, y'all can shut up now, cuz I'm startin'! Like I said, this's gonna be just like all the rest, so listen an' listen good!"

Tucker stuck his head out of the window and shouted down at Vinny. "Hey Vinny, are you gonna talk about birds again? Huh, are yah? Cuz I learned all about 'em!"

Vinny raised an eyebrow. "Well, that's either Chris, or Tucker's had his coffee. Anyway, I said to shut up, so y'all two just stay quiet an' listen!"

Vic brought the empty mugs back downstairs, and the twins climbed back onto the bed to listen as Vinny began. Tucker, however, kept bouncing up and down on the mattress.

"Alright y'all. After a fores' fire, all the trees is gone and the world, the heavens, and the hearts shine the dullest they ever shined. At first, all the things with eyes they cry. Later, the eyes search for somethin' else. Give it time, my friends with the gift of sight, the trees'll come back lookin' fer ya! The trees see you ain't there an' they got nobody ta talk to! The trees got memories they need refreshin' an' stories they gotta spew! Ya jus' gotta wait a 'lil while ta hear 'em."

"But see, withou' the trees the sightful grow wings an' fly away, past the dull black to the bright gold an' pearl, and they ain't a comin' back. I'm sorry folks but if there ain't nothin' to see the seers pack up an' leave."

"But that's when the blind come a nockin'. They been underground, the moles an' the worms, an' they never see no trees down in the dirt. Now, the trees just startin' ta grow back, an' ain't all that pretty yet, but whaddas a blind man care? What the sightless can do is listen, an' they hear the beautiful stories an' voices o' the trees an' beauty gets a new lease on life! The world's topsy-turvey and we're lovin' it! They's our trees now, an' we don't care how god-damned ugly they are, we like 'em!"

"Well that was the most screwed up thing I've ever heard! Moles and trees, what does that have to do with anything?" Chris thought out loud.

"I kinda got some of it, I think…" Tucker stood up and headed towards the door.

"You would, mister 'All-Grown-up'." Chris grumbled and followed him.

Raven enjoyed the silence for a few moments.

Well, I guess I have a job to do. Raven never did like going downstairs. It wasn't peoples' comments that bothered her as much as their looks. She sauntered downstairs and into the crowded bar. Her stool was vacant, as always, and Vic was standing patiently behind the bar with his notepad in one hand and a pen in the other.

He was almost pathetic sometimes, but she kind of liked explaining things to him. If Marc was her best friend then Vic was her brother, and she didn't even know him before the Dark Fire. It's strange how disasters can bring some people together.

"There's that girl again."

"Why can't she just leave? She doesn't deserve to be around normal people."

"What does Vic see in her?"

"Look at her hair, it's, like, purple!"

"If she wasn't Vic's friends I'd…"

Raven could sense the negative emotions in the room before she heard their comments. It was sad, that these people depended on her so much but hated her with such a passion. It was prejudice in its most common form: Hating what you fear, fearing what you don't understand. And she could help that her hair was such a dark shade of violet. Just like she couldn't help the fact that she was shorter than most, or that her eyes naturally matched her short locks.

Raven's stool was like her refuge. People didn't bother her when she was with Vic.

"Well Rae, I'm confused beyond belief. I demand that you help me just like you do every morning."

"Sure…" She sat down with her elbows up on the bar and focused on the legs of her stool.

Vic took one look at her and knew what was wrong. "Don't let them bother you Rae, they're all asses. It's easier to hate someone than accept them, that's why they treat you like crap."

"I know. It doesn't bother me much anymore. So what didn't you get?"

"Alright," Vic glanced at his notepad, "I got that the forest fire was the Dark Fire, but what were the trees?"

Raven thought for a second. "Just the world I guess. The forest burning down must be like what happened to the world after the Dark Fire."

"That makes sense. Now make sense of the rest, cuz that's all I got."

"Okay, I guess that the seers would be people with mettrons, and the blind people would be people without mettrons, so flying away means dying. I don't get the gold and pearl thing though…"

"Heaven is supposed to have streets of gold and gates of pearl, or maybe it was the other way around, I don't remember. Haven't you ever read the bible?"

"We weren't much of a church family…"

Raven never told Vic about her family. She liked to think of the Dark Fire as a chance to start over. As far as Vic was concerned, she never had a family.

"So, why do the trees talk?" Vic was eager to get to the bottom of Vinny's story.

"Well, it basically means that the people living now live on earth, even though it isn't very pretty anymore. We appreciate what we have."

Vic seemed thoughtful for a moment, and then grew frustrated. "Well that's lame! We've been doing that for five frickin' years!"

"Actually, I think it's-"

Before Raven could finish, a man burst through the doors of the tavern. He looked to be a young adult, with dirty blond hair and blue eyes. His baggy, torn jeans, faded Led Zeppelin T-shirt, and five-o'clock shadow gave him the appearance of a stoner. As soon as he saw Raven he headed towards her.

"Marcus, what's wrong?" Raven got up out of her stool. It was too early for Marc to be back from the factory, and he looked frantic about something. Marcus was a tall, skinny guy, and towered over Raven as he approached her.

"Rae, there's a pack of foxxers over at Trey's. They're eating all the meat and he sent me to get you."

Trey was the city butcher. Any time someone managed to kill an animal, they would give it to Trey and he'd turn it into food. There wasn't much to do these days, so many people spent their days hunting. Most people brought in fighter deer, which had a lot of meat and were very numerous. Their horns also had many uses. It reminded Raven of how Native Americans used every part of the buffalo.

Striders were huge gray lizards. They could grow to the size of a tiger, and were very fast and intelligent. If striders weren't herbivores, everyone in the city would probably have been eaten already. Not only were these hard to shoot, but they only lived in the mountains. Their meat was tough but kept for a long time, and one strider had as much meat as five fighter deer. Only six striders were killed in the last five years. Raven had brought in four of them.

But Foxxers were a different story. Foxxers were about the size of a large cat, and were not only quick and agile, but armed with tiny serrated fangs and razor sharp claws. They traveled in packs, because all they ate was fighter deer and one couldn't bring them down alone. Foxxers were the only animals that wandered into the city, and often ransacked Trey's butcher shop when times were tough. One person didn't stand a chance against a pack of foxxers. People have been killed, and the scenes were gruesome.

"Alright, just let me get my gun and I'll head on over there." Raven hurried upstairs to her room and opened the top drawer of her nightstand.

But instead of pulling out a pistol or a rifle like the other hunters in the city, Raven pulled out an odd looking, futuristic weapon. She tested the guns aim and a red dot appeared on the wall. She smiled and tucked it into the back of her pants.

"Bountiers get the best weapons."

( ") TBC (" )

Okay. I'm not too sure about the quality of this chapter. It felt weird to write it, and I'm not sure if it made sense.

But seriously, I won't know unless you review!

Guys, 40 people get an email when I update. It's sad that only 4 reviewed last chapter. It's just sad.

So, until next time…

Jax: Hey wait! Me and Zeph didn't get any lines all chapter!

Read, review, repeat!

Jax: DAMMIT!