Blue found a message on her machine. A wayward teen had been found rummaging through garbage cans in a back alley. Which meant Blue would have an early morning appointment. Blue sighed to herself and painstakingly cleaned off the cover of the Bible. She managed to get halfway through Genesis before she got ready for bed.
Blue woke up at the break of dawn, she wasn't sure why. It seemed to her like instinct to watch the rising sun. Also, she was haunted by dreams of wolves, a male tan wolf in particular. Why wolves? What key to her past did they hold? In her dreams she also featured a yellow-eyed white wolf, a younger brown wolf with a bracelet, and a gray wolf with a peculiar X-shaped scar on his chest. Other than wolves, her dreams also revolved around an old man carrying a shotgun and the man also had a fondness for drink. Blue began her wake-up ritual, which consisted of showering, dressing, brushing her teeth, and washing her face. Blue had been able to get through the very first chapter of the Bible. She had memorized the story of creation. The fall of Adam and Eve into sin struck a chord for some unknown reason.
Blue drove to work occupied with all these jumbled thoughts. Blue's office was small and humble. The color was a light shade of creamy yellow, and wolves littered every space, besides a few roses dashed here and there. The teen sent in to her was small; he also wore a gray cap, shredded blue jeans, and a sweatshirt. He glanced around nervously.
"It's okay, come in and we can talk." Blue told the boy kindly. The boy removed his cap to reveal gingerly locks. He sat and Blue began to talk to him.
"Hi, I'm Blue." She smiled at him and he nervously returned the gesture.
"My name's Toboe." He replied. That name struck something dormant in Blue's memory.
"I'm just checking, he seems a lot warmer now," this boy, Toboe, smiled at Blue while an old man lie wounded at Blue's feet. Toboe shook Blue from her reverie. Blue checked the chart that had been complied on the young man.
"You were brought here because you were found scavenging for food in a garbage bin," Blue questioned him softly.
He hung his head ashamed at the act. "Yes, but that's only because my brother Tsume has had a hard time with work." Toboe glanced around at the wolves on Blue's office walls. He seemed to drink them in with fascination. Blue continued on, the name Tsume has also evoked mysterious emotions and images in her.
"You live with your brother?" Blue addressed the young boy. "Yes mam and my kitten Artemis. Our parents died, and Tsume works for the trains. He's been laid off lately because snow storms have been so bad." Toboe again glanced at Blue, his eyes scrunched in concentration. "Mam, it feels as if we've meet before."
She looked at Toboe and nodded. "I do get that same feeling, Toboe. I just can't place where." Blue sighed airily.
Toboe plunged on with some of his life. "Tsume has had a really hard time getting a paycheck, and I couldn't feed Artemis. So I went through our garbage. Our neighbor, Hige, thought I was a runaway and called in child services." Blue suddenly held her head wildly; it burned and ached things flooding back to her!
"BLUE! BLUE! BLUE!" "You're one heck of a woman Blue." Blue rubbed her temples that voice, that boyish face. She knew that name, this man, Hige. Toboe looked alarmed. "Ms. Blue, are you okay?" His concerned voice rang out in the small office.
Blue rubbed her eyes, trying desperately to remove the white stars that still danced inside them. "That name Hige, it sounds so familiar."
Toboe glanced at her, as if trying to recall a long-lost face from his childhood. "Maybe you should go see him, that might help." Toboe offered gently. Blue hesitated, what if she was imagining all this? She reluctantly agreed, and made another appointment with the boy. She requested that he try to convince his brother Tsume to see her as well. She walked the street near her house at eight, it had been a continuous day of appointments and most of the teens she had been assigned had cocky or attitudes full of malice. She spotted a flyer tacked haphazardly to a phone poll. A new Christian church was starting up, but they had to do it in secret because the federal government was vehemently against religion. Blue felt her curiosity aroused. She thought, Christian as in Jesus Christ? She whipped out a pen and pad and took down the address. The first meeting was that coming Sunday. She was scheduled to meet the mysterious Hige two weeks from now. Blue had little time to ponder why a supposedly unknown person could stir such vivid memories in her when a riot erupted.
"YOU THEIF! TRYING TO STEAL MY LIQUOR!" A burly man with a bulging midline and a bald head yelled at a retreating man in a trench coat. The man in the trench coat also had a brown beard, wore a cowboy's hat and brown gloves.
"Maybe I wouldn't have to steal your crummy liquor if the prices weren't through the roof!" The trench coat laden man spat back, heaving a long black bottle under his arm. Eventually the bald man gave up pursuit and yelled profanities at the trench coat laden man. The man with a trench coat leaned against a lamppost, his breathing labored. Blue observed all of this, and gasped when the man with the black bottle slumped to the ground. Blue rushed over to the man. He smelled heavily of stale tobacco and drink. Blue frowned. She was having a battle in her mind. One part of her mind screamed to help the man who was obviously sick, the other part snorted saying taking a stranger into her home was highly dangerous and foolish. The compassionate part of her mind won out in the end.
She draped the man's arm around her shoulder and lugged him into her apartment. There was one spare bedroom, which she laid him down upon. She removed his hat and his boots and socks. She also took the bottle from him and set it aside. She removed the trench coat and laid the man under the white covers. Blue quickly fetched a bowl of water and a rag. She put this upon the man's head. She had also brought a bucket, in case he became ill as well as both water and ice chips. Blue sat in a high backed chair, immersed in her Bible, determined to read as much as possible before her church meeting. The man stirred slightly, Blue got up to check on the status of the washrag. It was dry, so Blue went to get fresh water and re-apply the rag to the man's forehead. This man felt so familiar to Blue, and she just couldn't see why. Blue had progressed impressively in her reading of the Bible. She was just beginning read about the trouble of the Israelites when the man stirred and groaned.