"Eight years," Logan mused. He drew a long puff from his cigar.
Scott, leaning comfortably into the porch railing, looked down at the mutant seated on the whitewashed steps. "Eight years of what?" he asked, intrigued.
Ashy breath rose and blended with the pink hues of the sunset filling Scott's quartz lenses.
"Eight years," Logan said quietly, as though to no one but himself, "that this kid's been writin' stories about universes like ours."
Scott smiled, remembering. "Hobbies have to start somewhere, huh?"
Logan grunted and tapped off some ash on an empty terra cotta pot Ororo hadn't gotten around to moving.
"What brought on the nostalgia kick?" Scott asked, still propped lazily against the beam. Logan didn't bother to look up at him.
"E-mail."
Scott barely caught the word masked in another grunt.
"Those notifications still popping up?" Scott exclaimed. It was a wonder to him that, after all this time, the final notice on The Author's main page went unnoticed.
Logan nodded, just slightly. "Some trigger-happy newcomers been settin' off the subscription messages, like they're expectin' the kid to update. They don' even seem ter be checking his profile page first... if they did, they'd know he's been long gone from here. Nothin' gets updated here, not since those slimy agents took out every last Tolkien-based fic."
Despite the early summer warmth, Scott felt a quick shiver rush through him and wrapped his arms around himself.
"But he's still writing," Scott asked, "isn't he? There's that whole other website he made just for his stories."
The peeved growl left Logan's voice when he answered, "Oh yeah, there's a lot of new stuff up there. Folks jus' don't seem to realise there's a link from his profile here." He stubbed the cigar out in some dirt inside the terra cotta, finding he didn't care to finish the rest.
Scott added, "Maybe they do know. Maybe they've been checking in and following every story, all this time? It's not like we can tell when they leave no reviews."
"Yeah, ain't that the bitch of it. Good old anonymity of browsin'. Not like the numbers on the site visitor countin' thing have been reliable."
"I guess we've done all we can, then," Scott murmured. He took one last look out across the mansion grounds and the long shadows falling across it, making way for dusk.
"Yep." Logan agreed and stood. He clapped some dust off his hands and tromped with an air of ease past Scott and opened the kitchen's screen door.
Scott followed him inside, with only one brief glance behind.
/Eight years,/ he thought. /The land may change, but the sunset's the same./
