A/N: oh boy, here we go… this chapter has been sitting around in my notebook for months. The rest of the story was written around it. I was sort of hoping that I'd regain enough of my sanity to prevent me from posting this…

Chapter 6: crickets & Christmas cookies

Lefty rode for several hours that night before finally deciding to stop and get some sleep.

The nearly-full moon shone bright and blue in the clear, cool air. The stars twinkled as crickets chirped quietly in the summer grass. And, not too far from the road, the tall, graceful body of a dhampir lay on a particularly plush patch of moss, seemingly at peace with the beautiful night.

But all of a sudden the dhampir sighed loudly, opening his long-lashed eyes.

"Deeeeee?" Lefty called out softly, his voice almost comically plaintive. "You awake?"

"I am now," D muttered, his wrinkled face forming in the dhampir's palm. "What is it?"

"Can't sleep," Lefty said.

"Of course you can," D said patiently. "Just close your eyes."

"I've tried that," Lefty whined. "I just can't get my brain to turn off! It's so much easier when all you have to do is sink back into another dimension."

"Yes, it is," D agreed.

"Willing yourself into unconsciousness from this state is damned near impossible!" Lefty complained. "Your stupid body is tired but it just won't go to sleep! I want to sleep, I really do, but I just can't figure out how!"

"I don't know what to tell you," D said after a minute. "Sometimes… I think about being buried in warm sand, on a beach…"

"By pirates?" Lefty asked excitedly.

Crickets.

"…No," D replied flatly. Lefty sighed again.

"Warm sand, eh? Guess that could be kinda comforting. Until the sun bakes you like a potato, that is."

"That doesn't happen," D explained.

"Oh yeah?" Lefty sounded ready for an argument. "Why not? You under a beach umbrella? Or some palm trees, maybe?"

"…do you want to hear this or not?"

"Sorry. Go on."

"I think about the sound of the ocean. Sometimes there's a seagull or two. Do you remember those sounds?"

"Yeah, I remember those sounds."

"Well… that's what I think about when I have trouble sleeping," D concluded. "Maybe it will work for you."

"Guess I'll give it a try," Lefty muttered reluctantly. The face in his palm disappeared, the consciousness there instantly retreating into sleep in the tranquility of another dimension. "Lucky little bastard," Lefty grumbled, jealous that D was now enjoying the gift that Lefty had always taken for granted. He closed his eyes again and set his mind adrift in the suggested direction.

Crickets. The Ocean… it's been a long time since I've seen an ocean. Crickets. Longer still since I've been in an ocean… all that salt, all that life, teeming in the water—the water sang with tiny exotic creatures, calling to each other in a thousand voices, a thousand songs, lifeforms unknown and unseen and innumerable thriving and living and singing in that beautiful, treacherous, exuberant water… it sounded kind of like… crickets. Crickets. No! Oceans! Not in the water, but on the shore. There! Waves rushing, rolling, crashing, rushing. Vroosh, swoosh. Ah, much less exciting than all the noises in the water. Vroosh, swoosh… Peaceful little waves brushing the sand, back and forth, marking the minutes, the tides, the days, the turn of the planet and the turn of the centuries… constant… never ceasing… waves… and seagulls, yes of course- lovely white seagulls calling 'kee-rai! kee-rai!' and 'chir chir chir-up' just like crickets. Chir chir up. Chir-chir chir up. Crickets again.

"Damn crickets!" Lefty shouted, totally ruining the moonlit scene. Once again he was wide awake. "Deeee!" he whined.

"Ugh, what?" D asked groggily.

"The beach thing didn't work," Lefty grumbled.

"Too bad," D said, sounding slightly annoyed. "Leave me alone, I'm trying to sleep."

"Come on!" Lefty said. "You've owned this body for a trillion years and you expect me to believe you don't know how to put it to sleep? Bullshit! You're keeping me awake on purpose, aren't you? Tell me how to fall asleep!"

"I am not keeping you awake on purpose," D said, carefully keeping his voice calm, even though his teeth were clenched. "I simply do not know how to explain to you how to fall asleep. Sometimes, I can't sleep either, even though I've been going to sleep and waking up and going to sleep again in that body for 'a trillion years', as you put it."

"There's got to be a way to induce it physically. I know! I'll hit myself over the head!"

"Please don't," D said, aghast.

"Hmm… maybe I'll just hold my breath until I pass out."

"Also not a good idea," D informed him. "You'll just wake up again."

Lefty scowled at the unsympathetic, unhelpful face in his palm. "You know, if I was you right now, I'd put me to sleep the way I put humans to sleep."

"Trust me, if I knew how to do that, I'd have done it already," D replied wearily, and found himself being raised towards Lefty's face.

"Give it a try," Lefty said, pressing his palm lightly to his forehead. "Just… send some of those numbing, disruptive vibes straight through my brain and send me under. They're the lazy-looking white ones next to the sofa."

"I have no idea what you're talking about," D told him tensely. Lefty picked him up and studied his grumpy expression.

"I guess I can't explain how to do that any better than you can explain how to fall asleep, huh? I just keep wishing I could lean back into another dimension, but it's just not there!"

"I know you're frustrated, but you'll never get to sleep unless you calm down," D reasoned. "And I just remembered something from a long time ago, something that might help you. Remember that close call with that cult of child-sacrificing vampires?"

"Great, you had to bring that up. Now I'll have nightmares, if I ever do get to sleep. Those freaks nearly drove you out of your mind!"

"Just listen. Remember what carried me out of it?"

"uh, your horse?"

"More specifically, my horse's heartbeat," D clarified. "Nothing's more soothing than that sound. Maybe it'll be enough to put you to sleep."

Spike was standing in sleep mode nearby. The horse's heart was cybernetically enhanced, of course, and its beating was much quieter than that of a fully organic heart, but Lefty had no problem hearing it. It was a steady, comforting sound, much better than the noise of the crickets...

Lefty focused on that sound, and sure enough, his exhausted consciousness slipped into sleep.

D woke up to discover the harsh light of midmorning slanting across his face. Annoyed, he tried to bring up his arm to block the light, but found that he couldn't, and annoyance gave way to disappointment as he realized that the previous day had not, in fact, been just a bizarre dream. He was still trapped in the parasite's place. Fidgeting, he managed to turn himself so that he was face-down on the ground, but he could still feel the sunlight beating down on him. It was late. They should get going. "Hey," D called out. "Wake up."

Lefty was none-too-happy to be roused from his sleep. He refused to listen to D's recommendation that he make and consume some coffee, and ended up putting the saddle on the horse backwards as a result. D was about to make a sarcastic comment, when Lefty realized his mistake, gave D a wearied, almost injured sort of glare, and wordlessly pulled the saddle off to turn it around.

Soon they were on the road. D was quiet for a long while. He hadn't actually said anything about the saddle, but he'd wanted to. And… sarcasm? That wasn't like him. It wasn't fair: Lefty had figured out all sorts of things --like walking, riding a horse, quelling the bloodlust, and even falling asleep-- with plenty of complaining but relatively little difficulty. But the only thing D had figured out was how to be obnoxious. Most of the parasite's useful abilities were still a mystery to him. What if Lefty managed to get killed? D had no idea if he'd be able to bring his body back to life, as the parasite had done on numerous occasions. They were still a long way from the Capitol.

As D worried and wondered and pondered over how he could learn to be useful, he realized that he hadn't even figured out what the strange smell was that had been bothering him yesterday. Sure enough, it was still all around him, faint and light and distant, but definitely there… or was he imagining it?

At last D broke down and asked.

"…do you smell that?"

Lefty took a couple of deep breaths. "Sheesh! I can't smell hardly anything at all!" he complained loudly. "So much for the extra-sharp senses of dhampirs. Even some animals have a keener sense of smell than you do."

"I've never smelled anything like this," D said. "I can't figure out where it's coming from and it won't go away."

"Well, let me see. Most of the flavors of the air are missing right now, meaning I just can't detect them with your pitiable dhampir senses. Is it anything like, say, a nice white zinfandel?"

D frowned at the archaic word. "A white… wine? The air tastes like that to you?"

"Only certain currents, in certain temperatures and seasons. With this sunshine and cool breeze, it might be white zin today."

D considered that for a minute. "…no," he decided quietly. "That's not it. It's… a more earthy smell. But it's not the soil, I recognize that separately."

"Aha!" Lefty said brightly. "The leather! You aren't used to smelling leather so closely. Bet you never realized that your tack's all made out of Elk hide, did you?"

"It's not the leather. This is something different."

"Different in a good way?" Lefty asked.

"It's very faint, but… yes, I think so."

"Ooh," Lefty grinned. "Well, why don't you try and describe it?"

D thought about it carefully before answering. "It's a warm kind of smell," he said at last. "Stuck between summer and autumn. It smells like… a wood where all the leaves have turned but not yet fallen, and like a sun-baked stone on a heathery hillside."

"A granite stone, actually," Lefty added.

"Yes," D realized, mildly surprised. "So you know what it is?"

"Heh, you bet. But go on, tell me the rest of it."

D considered carefully for another moment. It was strange, and it was so faint it was almost more like the memory of a smell… but it was there, somewhere.

"…it smells like cinnamon," D decided.

Lefty laughed so hard he had to wipe tears from his eyes. "What?" D asked flatly. "What's so funny?"

"D, I swear I was never going to tell you about that in a million years!"

"Tell me about what? Did you steal some cinnamon at some point and spill it all over some other dimension?"

"Maybe. But that's not what's causing the smell you're talking about. I can't believe you haven't figured it out yet! All that stuff about autumn and summer and all? D, that's you. That's what you smell like."

"No I don't," D said, automatically frowning. "I haven't even seen a speck of cinnamon in centuries."

"But the scent's unmistakable!" Lefty insisted. "Cinnamon! Like- like- Christmas cookies!" He burst into laughter again, while D only sighed. "Seriously though—I would love to know exactly where that comes from. It's been driving me crazy for ever! I'll bet you anything that your mom's ancestors traded cinnamon out of asia –you know, in the first middle ages. It only takes a few generations for something like that to wind up in the blood, like salt in a sailor's veins, or dirt in a farmer's."

"I guess it's possible," D admitted grudgingly. "I don't know anything about my mother's ancestors."

"Well—from your scant memories, and the, ahem, very few differences between your appearance and your father's… I'd say your mom might've been Eurasian." Lefty paused to see if D would offer any comment on that.

"…" D said noncommittally.

"Right. So let's go with the cinnamon-trader theory!" Lefty proposed. "Adds some spice to the mystery, gahhahahaaa!"

D decided it was an opportune time to sink back into another dimension.