Yes, I know! False alarm! Sorry! This blasted chapter is giving me conniptions.
Many thanks to you Readers and Reviewers! Haley's Book just passed the thousand-hit mark. Thanks again for another blitz, Marti!
Dude, if my place of employment paid me by the keystroke... I'd be makin' a million dollars. But I haven't hit carpal-tunnel as of yet, so here's twenty-six. Enjoy!
If you need me I'll be inspecting the insides of my eyelids.

Rated T - The following chapter contains passages which may be disturbing to younger or sensitive readers. Reader discretion is advised.
Disclaimer: I own nothing.

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Waking... I still don't know. Don't care anymore. Doesn't matter really.

Maybe it does. Let me look. The last waking I wrote was thirty-seven. And I have slept once since those entries. So this is thirty-eight. But thirty-seven was too long, seemed like days...

It doesn't matter. I can let it go. I obsess over it too much. I can't obsess anymore; there are other things yet to write.

I had a dream. It was my first dream with Haley as he used to be, not broken and bleeding like in nightmares.

I was back on Naranja, and he and I were picking oranges. But when we put them in our baskets, they turned into mud-worms and disappeared. Captain Peralta--he was Uncle Sal--was waiting at the house. We had to gather food, but we couldn't hold on to it. We were tired.

We walked deeper into the orange grove, and it became a huge jungle. We dropped our baskets and just walked. The sky and the ground got darker, and then we were in a big valley, like the kind there must be far inland on the mainlands. Shanda's voice floated on the air; she sang her song.

There were no more trees, and a lot more people. Everyone was walking in lines, following each other on a very long path that stretched all the way to the horizon before it doubled back. It zig-zagged infinitely across the plain. The people walked slowly, looking at the ground. There were depressions in the ground on either side of the path; holes shaped like bodies, like people. Everywhere. You had to walk the path until you found the depression that fit you exactly, and then you lay down in it.

Some already had people in them. They looked like they were sleeping. Or maybe just resting. Some looked up at the sky... Sometimes I would see someone in the line slow down, stop, get off the path, and lie down in his own depression. But the rest of us had to keep going; the line pressed from behind.

Haley walked beside me. The farther we walked, the fainter Shanda's song became, until we could barely hear it at all. When we couldn't hear it anymore, we came upon Haley's place, and he had to stop and lie down, and I had to keep going.

He looked peaceful as I left him.

It was life. And it was death. You live and you live, and when your time comes, you die, and the world moves on. Sometimes you leave your friends behind. Sometimes they leave you behind. But the line has to keep going, the world has to keep moving. And if friends go to lay themselves down and one is left standing alone without his place, all he can do is keep moving forward. His own place may come after the next turn, or he may not find it for miles and miles. But eventually he does find it, and he can lie down and rest... and see the stars in the heavens. His place may be close among those he loves, or it may be far removed from anything familiar. But in the end, everyone's rest would be in the same sweet, dark valley. And in that knowledge, there was some comfort.

Even lost, I am still here, a part of this world. I am still an Arcadian. The same sky arcs over us all.

In my dream, I didn't know where my own place was, or when I would come upon it. The line was sparse around me. But I couldn't lie down yet--I realized I didn't have my journal with me. I wanted my journal, but I had left it back at the house, back on Naranja.

I wanted it bad. I needed my journal. There was no getting out of the line, no cutting backwards. But I couldn't go on without it, so I stopped. The man in front of me came back and put an arm around my shoulders. He said, "Come on," and tried to pull me forward. But I didn't want to. He pulled me harder. "Come on, Mr. Reyes." Then he shook me a little and my boots began to skid along the path. But I couldn't go, not yet. I didn't have my journal. I needed it. He yelled at me, "Rey!" And then I knew his voice. It was Greys.

Then I came to and Greys was shaking me. He said, "Come on Rey... wake up, stay with me now!" He sounded panicked. I'd never heard him sound panicked before. Ever.

I groaned and opened my eyes a crack. I was on my back, and he had me propped up with one of his arms underneath my shoulders. He was the one who had been calling my name.

My mind was still asleep. I said, "You stole me from the line."

Then when he saw me awake he stopped shaking me and cried, "Moons I thought you were dead!" Then he broke down over me and wept.

I let him. It was all I could do; I was too stunned to do anything else. I couldn't believe it. It was Greys, he was real, he was here, he is here. He is here, alive, Moons be praised... I wept too. I couldn't believe it, but it was true, it was real. He was here, he came back. I could only say, "Mr. Greys... Mr. Greys..." and he could only weep and hold me.

I think... I understand.

-

When he came, he was out of water; I gave him some of mine.

I hadn't eaten in... I don't know how many wakings.

Do I want to know? No, I do not care.

I gave him some of my water, and he gave me part of a dead fish. Some stony-looking, bottom-feeding thing with whiskers. He found it up the mountain. A good fish. More vertical-flat, less horizontal-flat. Not a mud-worm. A real fish. It filled my belly and gave strength to my heart.

There are fish again. Satisfying even in their oily rawness. Greys has found them. They are there, up the slope.

But poor Greys... he is... out of sorts. He's gone to sleep for now.

He told me everything that happened. He went and marked and marked and marked until he found something, a scrubby moss-plant thing, he said.

Greys did count the wakings between food. For him he said it was five.

Five. And my wait was longer? But I flinch at feeling pity for myself; his lot seems the worse.

He said he tried some of the moss, ripped it up and ate it. But it made him sick. So sick he couldn't move, he couldn't come back down. He said he didn't know how long he was there, just that it made him very nauseous, that it felt like a nightmare, like a terrible monster eating him up inside, and all he could do was lie there in the crook of a rock.

It is so strange. Until now he has seemed... as something greater. A greater man than I could ever be. But seeing him weep, seeing him bend with leftover pains... hearing him tell me these things, it doesn't seem real.

I know he is human, he is mortal, he is only a man, susceptible to pain, not immune to fear. But witnessing these things upon him feels so... hard.

He is still sleeping, there in his blanket.

It feels strange to be... for me to be looking after him.

He told me he could only wait it out as he lay there. That was when he drank the rest of his water. Then when the pains went away, he slept the rest of it off.

His fingers woke him up, he said. A whiskery fish was nibbling at them. He tried to grab it, but it got away. There was a small school of them around the rocks where he was. When Greys saw them he said he could think only of obtaining food. Until he thought of me. He didn't know how long he had been away. And then he could only think of getting food for me.

-

Even in the darkness, I could see his sincerity. Feel it almost.

And it feels... too great for me to bear.

How can he be, this man?

-

He saw that the school of whiskery fish seemed to be grazing on some of the plant-matter on the rocks. He had nothing to fish with. He only had the lantern, a bit of rope, some moonstone fragments, his jacket... not much. And he didn't dare use any of the shot he had left for his pistol.

I still don't understand the moss-luring method he devised and described to me, but he said that when a big one came in close enough he was able to finally sort of pin it against the rock using one of the sharper moonstone fragments. It was enough. But to actually kill it he could only beat it to death.

Maybe I should have lent him Dhalan's cutlass.

It doesn't matter now.

He drank its blood, and came down the mountain. But it was slower going--he still felt sick from the poison.

But when he came back... oh Moons I have never been so happy to see anyone in my life. Blast it, I must have been so cruel to him--I should have let him rest. I made him relate everything to me, for the pen, for the paper. For the stupid log.

He told me he didn't think I needed such a tome.

I told him I want to remember. And... to be remembered.

He told me he was glad at least that it wasn't me that got poisoned, that it was him that tried it first.

I told him he was a fool.

He gave a soft laugh and agreed, and went to sleep.

That is how he is now, curled on his side there, like a child sleeps.

I think I understand now... who the leaders look to.

Anyone they can.

-

It is a strange feeling, a welcome one. I feel as if... hope has returned to me. I am so blest to have my friend here with me. I am not alone in this my pocket of ground and cloud and noise. Here on the lowliest scrape of the world, nigh to the Land of the Dead, where there is nothing left to hold on to, we have each the other.

Going somewhere unfamiliar, even to death if that be your lot, is not so bad if you know you are not going alone.

I do not care what comes after this. For my friend is here with me. And that calms my heart. Calms me down like going to sleep, like the smell of Naranja when the trees are in blossom... There is a comfort here now, even... a happiness. And I will cherish it.

I will not die despairing.

And that gives me peace.

Know I love you, dear family. If I do not write more, finish for me.

Alexandro