Neaiara928, I didn't know it was so different (I don't get around much ) thank you for reading! Bodo, check your messages. You totally sensed what most writers would do. Here me out, I said most. Check your messages. Aljinon, I'm glad posting up here made you feel all warm and fuzzy inside grin. Hope this does too!

Chapter Seven – The Long Awaited Arrival of Rachel

Silas paced in front of the door, silent like he had always been. He should have started for chapel by now, but was waiting for Rachel. Bishop Aringarosa had ordered him a new dresser, a suit, five pairs of jeans and dress shirts, and some tennis shoes. Silas had thanked him gratefully, but he looked at the clothes with disgust. He left them in his dresser and planned to ruin them in his next mood swing. After five minutes for what seemed to be an eternity, Silas walked to the dresser and pulled out one of the shirts. It was a plain, white polyester shirt, and it felt light and cool beneath his hands. The wool started to chafe against his skin, and sometimes left rashes, but Silas had grown used to it. But now, with global warming and all, maybe he could wear his cloak in the winter and fall. Laying the cloak he had grown so used to on the floor, he buttoned on his new one. This shirt is to mean freshness, he thought to himself, revival, as if I were being reborn. Pulling out boxers, he pulled at the waist of it, surprised by the elastic waistband. Silas thought about finding a pair of briefs and putting them over his head like kids had done when he was younger, but now the idea seemed a little, creepy. A grown man like himself! He finished dressing and walked around in his new fashion. The shirt seemed to match his skin, but the jeans set it all off, accenting his gray eyes. He wasn't used to having something, really constricting as jeans or underwear, so when he sat down, he winced as he felt his first wedgie. He paced some more, to get used to the idea of having all this extra material. Would he really wear it everyday? He liked his cloak. Free, and billowy as it was, it still provided coolness in the summer and warmth in the winter. Plus it was low-maintenance.

Rachel didn't want to go to work today. Her stomach growled of something horrible, and she had a migraine. If this doesn't subside soon, I'm going to have to call in sick. She groaned and rolled over. It was that blasted time of month again, that all women had come to learn to hate. Breathe, focus on something else, she thought as she heard sirens blaring. She closed her eyes and tried to think of pleasant things. Kittens on fire, orphanages being burnt down. Target practice with the elderly, Silas whipping himself. She laughed aloud at this remark, and could just picture Silas flinging a Discipline over his shoulder and not crying out in agony until he had beaten himself senseless. She flung her sheets off her and stumbled to the shower. As she enjoyed the warm, soft water running over her, she looked down and groaned. She hated her mother or whoever in her gene pool for giving her such a heavy flow. When she was done, she stepped out the shower and toweled off. Her naturally rosy cheeks had gone pale, and her hair was unusually limp.

Last night when she got home, she had cried, not because of real feelings for Silas, she guessed, but because she was PMS. Her plan today was blame everything on PMS. She grabbed her favorite blue flower shirt and jeans and headed out for the day.

Silas was still pacing, and surprised he hadn't run a rut in the floor when the door swung open, and there Rachel was, distraught, in slight pain, and with a smile on her face. "It's not my style of choice, but I guess if you went shopping with me you'd be traumatized." Silas tried to smile, but had been so used to frowning that he forgot most of the muscles in his face. Rachel stepped around him before he could say anything and began cleaning. "Thank you for not destroying the room beyond all recognition this time." She laughed. "You are welcome. I was not angry when you left." Rachel found his Discipline on the far side of the room mangled and bloody. "Oh, is that from when Hurricane Silas struck and I missed it?" Silas ran over and grabbed it, shoving it quickly into the drawer. He could not lie; he had used it after she left. "It's okay Silas; you do what you need to do. You're just trying to live like the rest of us." Silas enjoyed hearing her say his name.

"We all do what we have to do, to live. Correct? Is that why you were a prostitute?"

Rachel looked up from her bucket. It seemed an obvious answer, but she could tell that he probably never corresponded with other people. Other than the Bishop, that is. "Yes Silas, it is. I needed money, and couldn't go to college."

"Why not live with your parents?"

"They don't love me. I'm not the startling beauty like their other Ken and Barbie children."

"Oh. My father didn't love me. I think my mom did."

"Mothers always love their children no matter what. I was an adopted child."

"You were?"

"Yes, and my adoptive brothers and sisters were strawberry blondes, naturally, with blue eyes. There is no love like the love a mother has for her child. Even if she doesn't like them, she still loves them, and if they were to die of something incredibly stupid, they would still cry in sadness."

Silas was silent. How did she know so much?

"And your children are like a part of you, femininely speaking. They start from within you, and after nine months, it's like they've become a part of you. Your blood, sweat, and tears are their flesh. All that people sacrifice for their children is amazing. Even going into debt beyond all reason so they can have a good education, it's amazing."

"It is. I do not really understand, but I do think it is amazing."

"Well, carry a puppy around with you for nine months, then give it away to someone else who can't afford a puppy. They're happy, but you've just lost a par of you. Keep the dog longer in fact, and then let it be run over by a truck. The emotions hit you as if that truck did your dog. With a human, it's even worse, because you have known and understood their lives for so long."

"You know this from experience?"

Rachel looked up and smiled. Her face was contorted in pain, and tears streaming down her face. "Yes, I had to give my child away to an adoption agency."