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“For awhile, anything you needed could be had by just taking it. Homes were abandoned, shops looted. If you were brave enough to enter through the broken glass of a storefront, all the nonperishable items were there to seize. However, camping gear, blankets and warm clothing were the first to go.”
History of a Changed World, Angus T. Moss
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TED’S VISION NARROWED down to a muscular, tanned hand holding a gun, and the horrific memory flooded back: Sigma’s howl of betrayal as the men came for him, the gunshot, so loud it made his ears ring. Blood on the wall.
There came an aching hole in his mind when Sigma died. Ted had burrowed down deep inside himself looking for the familiar presence that had been with him since his awakening, but never finding it. A piece of himself had been brutally torn away. He fled into the inner darkness, keening his loss. Until the warm light found him and nudged him awake, a gentle glow that bathed him in love and cradled him in safety. He floated in the light until the outside world forced him back.
A light that was there again today reminding him of possibilities and responsibilities. Ted opened his eyes to a gray damp day. He sat on wet leaves in a briar patch, Nixie’s hand warm on his arm.
“Ted?”
He looked at her, realizing that she’d been saying his name for some time. “I’m okay.”
Nixie’s eyes reflected his lie, but she didn’t call him on it. They understood each other and left room for the baggage. “He says come.”
Ted looked over to the shelter. Wisp stood beside the van waiting. His hands, hanging loose at his sides, were empty. The children clustered around Ted and Nixie, silent and uneasy. “Um, yes, of course.” He stood a little shakily on the uneven ground. Nixie took his arm, and they helped each other out of the underbrush to the deep grass behind the shelter. The children came pelting out of the woods all around them.
Ted stopped next to Wisp, as Nixie shepherded the kids into the van. “Thank you,” he whispered, squeezing his brother’s arm.
“Are you okay now?”
“I wandered a little. The guns...”
“I do not kill without need,” Wisp said.
Ted tightened his fingers on Wisp’s arm feeling the solid weight of muscle, the warmth of his skin beneath the damp shirt. “I have no doubts about you. Only dark memories.”
Wisp patted Ted’s hand, calluses and rough skin. Ted felt like an old man seeing his own regrets and losses in a hale and hearty son. Wisp was a warrior, something Ted would never achieve.
Wisp cocked his head. “We are who we were made to be.”
The words were meant to be reassuring, but instead added to Ted’s melancholy. “But some of us cannot be as we were planned,” he murmured.
Wisp led him to the passenger seat, then hurried around to the driver’s seat. “All accounted for?”
Ted looked over his shoulder to Nixie, nestled in the back with all the children. “Everybody in?”
“Hands and feet in!” came the chorus.
Ted had to smile despite the tears that threatened. He turned away, so the children wouldn’t see. This was the end of his usefulness. Without the children to care for, he had no further purpose on earth.