Best Practice

NOTE: Fic begins with my own, er, laconic summary of what I intended to write, which I have left in as I didn't end up writing all of that.

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Alternate meeting with Alfyn, he went off on his own (or met 1 traveller early on? THERION, WHO WAS AGGRESSIVE TO HIM, SO HE NO TRUST) & met Miguel at a lower level, without meeting Vanessa, so he’s in a little more of  naive state, heals him, finds out about how actual profession more slowly, has been spending a few months getting more involved with him as he feigns a messy recovery to snare in Alfyn. Goal??? Probably to cap him after milking him since he continues to bring food, money, supplies, maybe Miguel is getting kind of a drug dependence

It’s been a few months and the relationship have gotten right messy when Ophelia comes to Saintsbridge for the Kindling, she has… let’s see… Therion, Primrose? Ophilia x prim background because why ever not. People have been dying in saintsbridge (a few at a time) which is Miguel’s doing though Alfyn is in some denial of this.

Probably would be short chapters, switching POV to keep this story moving and allow it to be the sort of character study of Alfyn it wants to be.

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Introductions

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Alfyn

Here was the path Alfyn Greengrass traveled that led him to the place he was now, the door he was unlocking with a newly forged copper key he had made for the new lock on the old, lichen-covered wooden door; from his hometown in Clearbrook her set out to the Clifflands, where he travelled for some months in various towns and spent some time in the city of Quarrycrest working with the sore bodies of ailing miners, who paid him well for his work and kept him some time. Eventually after a violent interaction with a thief set him on edge he set to the road again, visiting small poor towns, till a bad tussle again with highway bandits led him again to seek a larger city to recover himself after losing most of his money. So he made his way to the great cathedral at Saintsbridge, a place he had been taken to a few times in his childhood for holidays, to recover, sequester, regain his strength and his direction. And it was in Saintsbridge, as he pondered his way along the banks of the beautiful broad river whose banks gave Saintsbridge her peaceable and gentle life, that he met the most remarkable man, with whom he now lived, and had been living some six month’s time.

He was healing, and he was not healing well, and Alfyn’s time had slipped from him as he was drawn deep into his well-being. His name was Miguel, and he needed help, so Alfyn was setting a basket of apples and butter and bread rolls, charity from the good clerics of the temple with whom he had acquainted himself, before walking to the room he had furnished with cheaply-gotten chairs and a bed in order to check his condition so far the second time today.

--

Ophilia

Dearest Sister; kind Lianna. Ophilia had struggled to properly think of anyone else since leaving her home in Flamesgrace. Which was odd; she should be thinking of the Archbishop, who she prayed for every night. And she did think on him, but Lianna overtook her mind often. Perhaps because she had taken this quest in Lianna’s stead that she was concerned if she was good enough, truly, really, to take her place in the Kindling. She knew she sorely wanted to take her place. She didn’t know if she would do it sufficiently. She had not been trained like Lianna, taught like her, had done no rituals other than her self-guided prayers to prepare.

If she stood on the dazzling marbled altar at Saintsbridge to light the holy fire and nothing happened, what would she do? Taking the lanthorn, she had made herself the only option.

Her companions’ company uplifted her spirits; once again, she depended on Primrose’s confident nonchalance, Therion’s indifference to the gravity of her mission to calm her nerves, to pretend to herself that this wasn’t the ultimate test of her worthiness and she crossed the bridge into the River’s sparkling city.

--

Primrose

Before you judge her for why she was about across the whole continent from where she was supposed to be going (a home she hadn’t seen in a decade) to accomplish a simple task (murder), consider that it had been kind of a hard year for Prim. You wait your whole life coiled in the gutter, a wet unhappy snake, for the right ankle to brush by so you can strike it; you find out that your next goal is Frozen Nowhere where you have to find out how desolated the lives are of the people you left behind, you kill a man, he drags out some skeletons in front of you just to watch you wince, you meet a beautiful, wide-eyed cleric with snowflakes in her eyelashes who wants to know if she can help you.

You follow the cleric across the world in order to not go home and just because you have the smallest, most inconsequential gay crush on her, so what? It’s not a ‘biggie.’ She’s going to get to Noblecourt eventually, she’s going to face those requisite soul-crushing childhood fears eventually, give her a fucking homoment. For now, she feels good. Weird good. The good you feel when you haven’t felt good in years, and Ophilia’s nervous grey eyes crinkle up in a little warm smile, and she thanks you for being so kind to her, and you weren’t even sure you still did kindness. But Ophilia believes she does.

--

Therion

By that point, Therion was considering himself as held hostage. Held hostage by The Girls. By their strange, sweet whims. Made to Feel Bad every time he implied that he was kind of done with Ophilia’s eternal Being Nice and he was going to leave now. Slightly frightened to be outside of Primrose’s spellcasting range for too long, because he was maybe just a teeny tiny bit less capable of fending off the hoards of feathery bastards all day than he thought he would be. He was trapped. Stuck. The eternal third wheel of a weird lesbian date. Absolutely fucking forced to endure their wholesome slice of life daily activities on the road as he bided his time until he could do, like, something else. Captive to their sick insatiable desire to keep him healthy and entertained as they wound their way to Wellspring, where they’d stop after Ophilia did some Religion at Saintsbridge. Enduring the slings and arrows of sometimes getting help from the both of them when the roadfrogs got a good bite on him.

You might be able to tell that his tone is jokey, but the shit he’s dealing with is absolutely not a joke. He’s got two more glitter rocks to bring back Boulderfall to before he can get the piece of shit fool’s bangle off of his arm which is currently cramping his style a LOT, and if some kind broads assist him slightly at not dying on the way, well, that’s terrible. Because sitting next to their general niceness, like, hurts.

His Personal Woes, overwhelming as they were, didn’t stop him from noticing that there was something not quite right about Saintsbridge as they walked in, Ophilia taking the lead in, Rosie observing her like she was the dawning sun, as was her typical fashion. Beautiful, quietly wealthy, lovely place; clean streets, abundant food and drinkable water (!!), healthy population with lots of young children.

But the mood was bad. Something was on the wind here. And he was thinking the time was ripe to leave Philie to some Religion as he checked out a bar.

--

Miguel

Food, hot buttered rolls, sliced apples, dripping with juice. Clear, cold water, and drugs, drugs that numbed, bit away at his pain, soothed his raw throat, settled like rocks in his stomach. Soft and calloused hands, tough with work, soft with salves.

For a short while, while he was honestly delirious with pain, Miguel had thought it was a green man, a woods creature, a sweet-faced, golden-haired soul stealer, smiling, using its magic to put his body to sleep. But only briefly. The child comes out in you when you’re close to death. It’s happened a few times to him. He hates it, hates it. The coward he’s buried inside, crawling out from under the house when he’s in his worst place.

That was the first reason he hated Alfyn. Because he had seen the child inside, the terrified unwanted child who had been kept in the darkness for punishment who still thought father’s heavy boots will kick him to death. He had seen him. He had seen the scared child and the scared child, when he was really delirious with pain, a couple amateur fuckers got a good stab on him on the road with sheer luck, and he had thought he was a fairy man after his soul.

He had come up with a wealth of reasons to hate Alfyn since then but he brought food, water, drugs, a pair of hands. For now. For now. For now he was very useful, with his food, water, his drugs. Prince of thieves, his drugs, sweet, so sweet, like honey, dripping into his bones, the first time his punishment of a knee hadn’t hurt him in literal fucking years.

Hard to convince yourself to kill your only reprieve from the pain. God, the pain. This was the first time he had been without it in so, so long. So he had been finding ways to keep the healer around. Making up some symptoms. The fever seemed to just never quite go away, didn’t it? Must be another infection. Must be he’s gotten sick. Must be you’ve gotta stay a while, doc.

--

Bishop Bartolo

Yesterday marked the third one; the third mysterious death in so many months. This one was a child, and all night, his soul and rested in Bartolo’s heart, as if curled in a bloody bed. The family were secluded in misery, waiting the long vigil that would end in a funeral in three day’s time.

He could no longer believe it wasn’t murder.

--

Alfyn

Alfyn chopped up mint and feverfew with a whistle leaking from a little grin on his face. He felt good about this; he felt like he had finally gotten Miguel on the mend. It had been a rough battle with the infection in the stab wound; typical, but rough. Well, he thought it was typical, as he had told Miguel a hundred times as he fixed the stitches, redid the wrap; a puncture wound that got infected didn’t heal in a day. It didn’t heal in a month. It festered, it waited, it rebelled; getting rid of the initial bacteria was the start. The body would be fighting blood poisoning, chemical imbalances, debilitating fatigue as it regrew flesh. A real infection, like this one, was often deadly. The recovery had left Miguel weak, with a broken immune system, prone to illness, weakness, setbacks.

He wasn’t bothered in the least by spending so much time on him--three or four months, so far. He was happy, exhausted and proud, feeling like he had actually done something. Fixing a hundred muscle sores in so many miners was one thing, and it was a good thing, but getting to really spend the time helping someone, someone who really needed the help, that was something else.

 ...God, did Miguel need help.

He had ended up looking out the front window to the town; he and Miguel’s house was just a little out of the way, observing the residential center of Saintsbridge without being quite inside of it. It used to be the woodcutter’s house; he had learned that the old man had passed away unfortunately after many years of living on his own and providing the winter’s wood to just about every house in town. He had been a loner, no one to leave the place to, and no one really argued when Alfyn more or less turned it into his temporary clinic and house. It was a bit of a bug house--had been, before Alfyn had set into cleaning it for a good week--and even now, a little white moth fluttered just inside of the window, the tips of her wings worriedly tapping at the cloudy glass. Alfyn let her out, and heard the sounds of the city, the rumbling river, clattering wheels. Not so different from home.

He put a roll in his mouth as he picked up the platter of food and the poorly-balanced mug of tea, crooked in one forefinger, and walked into the main room of the little house. Head scrounged a bed and a low table for Miguel, a dresser, some chairs; bits of furniture unwanted by other residents, most of them now-useless grave goods. They’d had a hard time of it around here recently, from what he’d gathered. Better to give the old pieces back some life, anyway.

Miguel was in bed, as he typically was; sometimes he surprised Alfyn by being up, cleaning his weapons, his own wounds, peering through his medicines with a steely, intelligent, eye, even messing around in the kitchen; his strength came and went. He was awake more often these days, in any case. He was awake today as well, above the covers, half-dressed in shirtsleeves, his head turned away to the creaked-open window, through which came a warm breeze and the scent of river mud. There was a fringe of facial hair on his chin, his eyes gone clear and glassy in the light.

Alfyn felt a weird tightness somewhere deep inside him, like a hand clenching in his gut. Nervousness. Concern. Something… it wound tight when he got Miguel’s attention, when his eyes turned from the window to him, backlit with its luminousness.

He shook it off, for now. He didn’t, he didn’t have no reason to be nervous, but it wasn’t useful right now.

Miguel smiled a crooked smile when he saw him and Alfyn shook off the twisty feeling again. “I’m back,” he said helpfully, though of course Miguel had already heard that. “Lunch courtesy the good people of the Cathedral, as usual.”

“Where do they get all it?” asked Miguel, rhetorically, his slip-sliding accent coming half out his teeth as always. It was slowly becoming less slurred as Alfyn weaned him off of soporifics. Alfyn was learning how much had been the meds and how much was his strange, susurrus accent. (Half and half, honestly.)

Alfyn shrugged. “‘Round here, the church usually owns the orchards, but they don't hoard the fruits if people need them. They sort of grow their own food bank, is the best way to put it.”

“Well, how sweet of them.”

“It’s a church,” Alfyn said.

As he approached Miguel on the bed, he lifted his eyebrows and he-- God, he shook it down, settled himself halfway onto the warm sheets, one leg tucked under him, doing his best to balance his burden of food. “Now you got to do it all again,” he told Miguel, keeping an even tone.

Miguel briefly shut his eyes in unspoken annoyance. “I know,” Alfyn continued, reaching over to hand him the tea first thing. Miguel took it, without looking him in the face. “You told me this morning, and yesterday night, and yesterday afternoon, and about five times a day every day before that, but this is my one job, man.”

“You couldn’t find a single other person to heckle? No old ladies on the road?” Miguel teased good-naturedly.

“I heckled Mrs. ____ the day before last, I checked up with _____ again when I was out this morning, just last week I turned a kid around from a fever, I check in with the Gundersons every day,” Alfyn rattled off, mentioning all the other people in town whose health he had been keeping up with after treating them once. “And now it’s your turn. Fair’s fair.”

“Right, I can’t unleash you on Sally every day,” Miguel grumbled. “Alright, doc. Stomach’s no better, still complains on half of anything I put in it. Pain’s a mite better than last night. I’ll tell you that I still feel like a horse trampled me and I’ve got no right to, seeing as the last time I did anything more strenuous than twiddling my thumbs was a season ago.”

“This--”

“Kind of thing--” Miguel sighed.

“Need a long time to--don’t give me that!” Alfyn laughed, feeling weirdly buoyant, despite himself. The shared jokes, the laughter, the smiles; it lifted spirits easily if they were desperate to feel lifted. He wanted to feel good at Miguel’s side. (He wanted his stomach to stop twisting, he wanted that friendship so badly he could take it in both fists.) “Whether or not I’ve said it too many times, it’s true. An internal infection.”

“Please, please, PLEASE don’t,” Miguel begged, since he could probably recite every fact Alfyn knew about infections at this point. “So I can’t feel restless?”

“Knowing what’s going on doesn’t necessarily change how you feel about it,” Alfyn said with some sympathy. He had grown frustrated with the slow pace of the healing from time to time as well, even though they both knew well that Miguel just needed time. “Sorry, I should get you a book to read or something--”

“Can’t,” interrupted Miguel, matter of a fact.

“--at all?” asked Alfyn.

“Not at all, at all,” Miguel shrugged, one shoulder and then the other, jostling the old mattress just a little with the movement. “Can write my name, can read a street sign. I know letters. But I can’t stand a book.”

“Oh,” said Alfyn. “I didn't know that. How did I not know that?” he asked the ceiling, wondering if he had just forgotten that Miguel was semi-illiterate. Not a surprise, really, not for the class he had been raised in, but he felt like he hadn’t known that, somehow.

But facts about Miguel kept surprising him, and saddening him, typically. The sort of casual abuse he had been used to in his life, the life of unrelenting hardship imbued in him a soft of encyclopedia of misery that he would spit out an entry from time to time; he would tell Alfyn without feeling that the knee had been broken when he was a child and no one ever did any fixing on it, that he hadn’t known how to wrench the drawers out of the dresser seeing as he had never used one, that he wasn’t bothered in no wise by bugs in his food, that he couldn’t recall where he left the dead body of his daughter in the dark days; these things came out from him, suddenly, randomly, too crowded inside.

He had known people who came out of bad situations before, but never known one really well. People really looked out for each other in Clearbrook, it was a rare case that someone's too-drunken father made his home oppressive. Alfyn had never studied ‘the unfortunate’ before, from impersonal books, and was a little embarrassed that the whole thing morbidly caught his fascination; what were they like, the lives of people who had been trod on like dirt? How did it make their minds, did they really fare so badly in life as the books say? What steel trap of the mind clutched childhood abuse so tightly that the adult body had to spend its whole life clasped around it, still stuck, ripping up their thoughts, their words, decaying the integrity of their flesh?

He used to spent idle nights fantasizing about the perfect patient, the perfectly needy patient, whose life he could turn around. He knew that was embarrassing, that it was a teen’s hero fantasy. Give him a break, everyone had one. Everyone had to have a good dream at night.

Still, faced with Miguel, whose body was caught in that bear trap of vicious memories, constant stress, the wounds of childhood tearing him up, he remembered those dreams. They stirred in him, like old bile. The curiosity work up inside him, the morbid wonder about what it was like, living those extremes of human life. How Miguel’s human body endured violence like a cobble road. How his mind handled being a graveyard, torn open for fresh graves. It fascinated him. He held his breath in wonder when Miguel began speaking those fact again, those horrible memories of how mundanely, awfully terrible his life had been, his neutral, unaffected remembrances of things that could cause a grown man to break down. What made a person like this? Could it be treated? Could it be fixed? Could he take this slimy, moldy memories, purify them, transform them in his hands? (Could he hear more of it, be trusted with it? Could he be that person, that good doctor whom Miguel could trust with every awful thing?)

“When was I needing to read something while I was here? Course you didn’t know. You’re a book-reader, then?” asked Miguel with some interest.

“Sure, good enough,” replied Alfyn, trying to shake off that over-interest, that pick of skin-picking that wanted him to go deeper into Miguel’s unhappiness. “Well, what can I get you, then?”

“Thousand gold coins,” said Miguel instantly, a rote response.

“I’m serious;” sighed Alfyn, a smile twitching up his face anyway, “what’s a guy like you do for fun?”

Miguel paused halfway into taking a breath to make his automatic response; his eyes flickered to Alfyn now, finally looking him dead in the face. And Alfyn felt caught, no less than little Ms. Moth, fluttering just outside the glass of his pale eyes. The tip of his pink tongue wetting his lips. The spark that seemed to suddenly animate his face; mean, mischievous, lifting up the skin of his cheeks to crinkle just under his eyes. The bones of his fingers curling against their fatigue on top of the warm bedsheets.

--

Miguel

He wasn’t one for men, but he was one for blushing virgins. He loved him some inexperience and trepidation. Alfyn was enough of a blusher he was willing to overlook some maleness. That was the dumb reason why he did what he did. Because he hadn’t been thinking about getting raw with doc Alfyn, honestly, but he was a compulsive opportunist. He saw the opportunity.

See, he was pretty sure the doc DID get a little bothered about other men, because he had been giving him some eyes, just about the whole time. He didn’t even think it was like that, until those focused eyes, that soft, interested voice, those curious questions, started coming with a pretty pink blush, lighting up behind his freckles.

The little doll had told him that he wanted to understand him better, with the prettiest flush; he said he found it so hard to explain. Why he needed to understand him so bad. And when the thought occurred to him that he might be asking for sex, to curl up in the one bed he got them together, Miguel couldn’t quite shake the thought. Didn’t know why. Wasn’t important. What he could tell you is Alfyn responded to the advances fast, and responded well.

How Miguel knew he had been a virgin was that he didn’t have a single idea of what the hell he wanted to do, but he was good enough for lying back where he was put and moaning when it felt good. There was a certain kind of anxious stillness you enjoyed with a virgin, how their hands go still and loose, how their hearts hammer so loud you clan hear it when you slip a hand between their legs. He had actually taken a little bit of time to finish out; he wouldn’t meet his eyes, he cursed and Miguel had never heard the sweetheart curse before when he bit his neck. He was clueless and anxious and hilarious, and he was malleable as hell now that Miguel had had him once, and dropped it after like it had never happened. Alfyn just jumped for anything he asked for now. He liked the jumping so much he didn’t even really care what he made him jump about.

“Ain’t nothing I can do stuck in a house,” he finally said, leaning a little back into the bed breaking up the tension by taking the plate of food out of Alfyn’s hands, being casual. Alfyn was breathing shallow and fast; he didn’t know how to react yet to maybe being about to be kissed. Adorable.

“Well—” Alfyn said, and cleared his throat, and tried again. “Well, we’re going to have to get you out more often! I don’t see why you couldn’t manage at least a short walk, at this point. And it would be good for you, even if it would feel like it was messing up your knee by the time you’re done—”

If only he knew, the poor daft doll. “’Nother day,” he shrugged, “or when there’s less people out there anyway. I don’t need the whole town to watch me limp along.”

Alfyn took the point at face value, and there wasn’t no truth in it. Miguel was sick as hell of his bad knee not working right, especially since it hadn’t acted up so bad in years. The stabbing and convalescence had had effects on him, much as he was overplaying them for the benefits.

“Maybe in the evening,” he said, and there was a wisp of something in Alfyn’s voice as he looked out the window. “When it’s cool, and folk are inside for dinner.”

Did he want to humor him? It might be beneficial. “Maybe. It’ll be hell on the joints but—”

“I’ll get something sharp fixed up for it,” Alfyn promised, “ and as a bonus, you should sleep like the dead after the fact.”

There we go. Right answer. Miguel didn’t let the triumph show on his face. “You better, if you’re gonna run me ragged like that.”

“When am I not good for my word?” asked Alfyn with all the confidence of a man who typically kept his word. “I know it’ll hurt, but there’s no two ways around it. You gotta use the muscle to keep it strong.”

“No shit?” he asked, biting off the end of a slice of apple. Sharp. Tart. “No way around it? You can’t just use them for me?”

“Doesn’t work that way,” Alfyn let him know. Eh, it was a really weak innuendo, he shouldn’t have bet on Alfyn catching it. “It’s you whose gotta make yourself stronger. All I can do is help.”

He was being bashful; maybe he thought he was being alluring. Maybe he didn’t realize that he kind of was being alluring. His humility grated on Miguel, but the earnestness was as stupid charming as it ever was. “Oh, get lost,” he said, just to watch Alfyn deflate.

He didn’t deflate badly, disappointingly. They had a ‘rapport’ now, which was a way of saying Alfyn was starting to get used to him talking him down. He did lose a bit of that glimmer, he leaned away from him on the bed. Swinging out the leg from underneath him, he stood up, so he was looming over Miguel just a little. Miguel raised an eyebrow at him and ate the other half of the apple.

“Well, I’m going to be back in a bit,” he said, his eyes on Miguel’s face, still pressing, sorting for something. “Just holler if you need me.”

--

Next scene may be Therion finding out Too Much, considering Primrose in the Cathedral watching the kindling, with reflection that the bishop seems very strained.  

--

Primrose

Primrose had seated herself into the pew out of necessity; the cathedral was slowly filling with anxious people, people who had heard that the Flame-Bearer was here only a minute ago, and she no longer liking the attention she was getting by hanging out at the wall. 

It was strange, but beautiful, the practice of not telling anyone that the Kindling was to occur today, not announcing Ophilia’s arrival or her plans to light the sacred flame. The act was treated like it was entirely mundane, like Ophilia had come with a set of pokers to stir up the coals under the kitchen stoves. She would have to pray, to recite some ritual lines, there was a short but deliberate bit of ritual conversation with the priest, as the affirmed their duties to each other, but overall it was too quiet to be heard, hard to see, and in no way directed at the gathering crowd that was starting to push an anxious blush up Ophilia’s cheeks. It was as though she and the Bishop were lighting the candles and, for some reason, the whole town was dropping what they had held to rush in here before it was over.

Primrose herself couldn’t hear a thing, perched uncomfortably, like a nesting bird in spring rain, near the back of the cathedral. She doubted even those in the front row could hear much of anything. But she could see; Ophilia in a plain dress, having shucked off her dirty travel clothes, her full staff held like a needle in her left hand as the lanthorn was lifted high in her right. She had her back to the congregation and the sunlight of pastoral dawn filtered in from the high windows behind her to make her look like a glowing candle flame.

There was nothing really to hear, or see. Ophilia stood in a pregnant silence, each booted foot still on the old wooden floor. She did nothing that Primrose could perceive, and the little banking fire in front of her suddenly burst forth its wings and rose almost to the height of the cathedral, invigorated, overjoyed to be alive. 

And it wasn't quite like a fire lighting. It didn’t look like fire. It was white, just white. And Primrose didn’t feel it as heat. It seared all the air of the building with something like being clean, like they had been washed instead in the cold gush of a spring waterfall, or the powerful wind of the heights had burst open the high windows of the cathedral and left them all stripped bare inside. And Ophilia was tilting her head like she wasn’t sure she had done it, or done it right. 

What was left was her, in front of a much higher fire, turning with a flush on her cheeks to speak to the overjoyed Bishop with a look of modest confusion, brushing back her hair from her face. 

--

Therion

Therion had been watching the tavern emptying out with some amusement, and a bit of gratefulness for his much more straight-laced companion. She had helpfully emptied the room of anyone he didn’t want to talk to. 

The remaining bartender (his bareback and waitstaff had left) and a few laughing sinners were his remaining drinking buddies for the evening, and that was all the better for him. 

Because there was something wrong in the city of Saintsbridge. At this point, he was pretty curious to what. 

“Alright, polite company is gone,” he said to a grinning woodsman he had easily recognized as loose-lipped. “Now ya’ll have to tell me about the Marra girl who disappeared.”

The hush he expected to fall fell on the other half of the bar. The woodsman was insatiably irreverent, and he laughed rather than reacting with any kind of propriety. “Killed,” he grunted with a somewhat sociopathic charm. “I don’t call a donkey a horse. She was killed.”

“How d’you know?” asked Therion.

“I’ll tell you how and I’ll tell you why no one else wants to tell about it; because she told her folks she was going to be killed, and they told her to hush up, that’s how we know.”

“No,” said Therion, a little intrigued, actually. “She was being threatened?”

“Followed, and she had the intellect to say so. It was too bad for her everyone thought she was just as empty-headed as she was loose-limbed, that no one could believe her when the time came.”

He was making just about everyone at this bar uncomfortable; except Therion, obviously. Therion was getting happier and happier about all this. “And this was, when?” he asked, trying to remember what he had been told in a sort of reluctant town chorus a few minutes ago, tapping the rim of his drink with an excited fingertip (bad habit). “Few weeks ago?”

“Three weeks, and we found her body about two.”

“--You found her body?” asked Therion, genuinely surprised.

“Sure,” said the man, and there was finally the flicker of distress on his brow, a big of stifled humanity. “Looking a week dead out in the fields, were stacks of--what is it--waste had disguised her.”

“Manure for the fields?”

“That’s the big word,” said the man, snapping his fingers. “The devil that done it put her right in the pile.”

“Damn,” said Therion, as impressed by the ingenuity of the disposal as the raw disrespect of it. “You gotta tell me what happened there.”

So the old laborer, in turns gleeful, disturbed, and disappointed, recounted for him how Evangelyne Murra had predicted her death, seen the grim image of her stalker reflected behind her in the water she walked every morning and night to and from home. How she told her mother, nervous and certain, then her father fearful and less certain, and the neighbors, less certain still. How they waited, and told her to wait, and then she was gone.