part 4 of steadfast's awesome gift
And Adam died, eventually. He died like a witch: in flames, with the universe listening.
He didn’t have eighty pounds of gunpowder concealed in his shorts, but the noise was such that he might as well have. It was the kind of noise you get when an unimaginably large number of horns[1] blow all at once.
Thunder rolled. And on the wings of the storm came-- well, wings. Wings without end.
The storm, which had been waiting all day for its chance to resume, didn’t bother itself unduly about its unasked-for passengers. A half of it massed on each side and they met in the middle, like a sea closing after being parted; or like the shutting of an eye.
[1] Along with a selection of trumpets, bugles, pipes, and, for some reason, a tuba. It was a miracle[2], really, that you could almost pick out a tune[3]. And that’s not even getting into the string accompaniment.
[2] Which perhaps explains why from the Hellish side, you couldn’t, although the Bachs were doing their collective best.
[3] The tune in question was ‘shave and a haircut: two pence.’ But no one ever said it was a very large miracle. The angels had other things on their mind.
And there was also this: somewhere, on the wrong side of the world, a dog began to howl.
Anathema sat on the front step of Jasmine Cottage. Her head was resting on Newt’s arm.
Together they watched the warm calm break.
“Is this--” shouted Newt, over the cacophony.
“Probably,” she shouted back, and made to kiss him. She would have succeeded, too, if she hadn’t at that moment noticed Mr. Young, running down the street.
“Have you seen my son!” he called to them.
The colour drained out of Anathema’s face.
“No,” Newt said, loud and clear.
Mr. Young gave him a suspicious look, but he didn’t maintain it, and it was soon crumbling into something closer to a whole separate kind of fear.
“My car wouldn’t start,” he said. “First time in thirty years it hasn’t started.”
“I’m sorry,” said Newt.
Mr. Young nodded, and hurried on.
It started to rain.
“We’re going to die,” said Anathema, wonderingly.
Newt said:
“We should go inside.”
“All right,” said Anathema.
They got up and went inside. The door closed, behind them.
It rained over a plain in Mongolia: first on a woman, walking, and then, without any kind of logical transition, on all the people who had, yesterday, been in the airport doing all the things that people do in airports, and who today were looking up.
Yoon Sun looked around her. She thought, perhaps now I am hallucinating.
It was good, though, to see her newly reappeared manager stammering at the place where the baggage claim had been. “My baggage,” he said, pointing.
“It’s gone,” she told him helpfully.
He looked at her like she was speaking a language he had known a long time ago.
She patted his shoulder. “Mine, too,” she said, and ambled off before he could respond, hands in the pockets of her nicely tailored suit. The crowd let her by.
It was a pity that she’d left home, she thought. But now her husband would be seeing the same bruised sky overhead; he would be feeling the same cold on his scalp. The idea of it, small and perfect, made her smile in the dark.
This time, the tree did close its branches over him, so that Jaime found himself sitting in a globe of green.
He could still hear the rain, though. And the other things that were falling.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” he told the tree.
A gust of wind ran through the heart-shaped leaves, like a sigh.
“It’s not that I’m not grateful,” said Jaime. “But what is, is.”
There was a stubborn pause. Then, stiffly, the limbs below his on the trunk fanned out, until he could see the canopy below, and hear voices, floating up.
He looked, a little sadly, at the arching roof of wood and vine.
Then he climbed down to meet the voices.
And as he neared the canopy, he began to see parts of the sky around the umbrella of the tree’s crown, boiling and yellow and sick. What was, was, he thought, but he still trembled against the bark.
The rain made circles on the surface of Cross River.
Not far off, a woman whose nametag had read Mbeke and was now a blur of bleeding ink had just given up on trying to start a fire. She was too old to learn new tricks, she decided. Certainly not new tricks involving combustion using only two sticks and a nonfunctioning cigarette lighter. Maybe if she’d had a source of flame to start out with, but that was one thing the department store hadn’t stocked.
“Here,” said someone, “let me help you with that.”
Mbeke stared at the someone, who looked like he’d been one of the ferrymen before all the ferries sank. He was holding matches out like peace offerings.
“You go ahead,” she said, getting out of his way.
He set to work.
There were other people, now, emerging from between the trees. Mbeke said, “Sit, sit,” and they sat, most of them, holding their bare arms over their heads against what water drizzled down through the tangle of the gum trees. They sat and watched fire spring to sputtering life.
The guard at the airbase had fallen into an uneasy sleep not long after being bashed over the head by the madwoman.
He woke to rain, and the dulcet bellows of Sergeant Thomas A. Deisenburger, who’d had what he could only assume was a long nap himself, and a very nice dream, and who was feeling rather embarrassed about it. The good sergeant couldn’t remember any details, but the taste of apple pie lingered frustratingly, and on the whole a little bellowing seemed only appropriate.
When the guard’s whites were the only part of his eyes still showing, Sgt. Deisenburger nodded with grim satisfaction and marched back to the gate with the warm feeling of an unpleasant surprise well delegated.
Unfortunately, he was met there by another unpleasant surprise, this one wrapped in a dirty mack and a strange haze of smugness[1]. Also a lady he thought he recognised, in the uncertain way you recognise people in dreams.
“Ye’re not goin’ t’ give us any trouble, are ye?” said the horrible little man in the mack. He jabbed Sgt. Thomas A. Deisenburger in the stomach with what had probably once been a finger. It bounced off the underlying abdominal musculature, but this did not really make Sgt. Thomas A. Deisenburger feel any better about the proceedings.
Technically, he was only forbidden from letting people into the base without correct authorisation.
“No,” said Sgt. Deisenburger. He went to press the button, but the gate was already raised, so he turned the gesture into a salute. “You have a nice night,” he said.
“Thank you, officer,” said the lady, beaming at him.
“Not bloody likely,” said her companion.
The lady herded him out and down to the road. She picked up an off-white scooter that had been lying, unnoticed, in the dust, and she got on that, and the little man got on behind her, and they scooted away.
Sgt. Deisenburger watched them go. Then he lowered the gate.
There was a crack of lightning. It illuminated the heavens, in great and impossible detail. Sgt. Deisenburger, very deliberately, pulled his helmet down over his eyes. He was prepared to do his job, for just as long as the night would let him.
[1] It should be said that this was justified smugness. A lot can happen, in a day spent outside the purview of a story.
A lot, and almost certainly not enough. But it would do. It would have to.
The rain washed away the charred remains, running in an inky slurry down the slope.
“I’ve thought of something else we had to lose,” said Crowley.
Aziraphale picked himself up off the chalk.
“What?” he said blearily. “What are you talking about?”
Crowley pointed up with the end of his tail.
Aziraphale looked.
“Oh. My God,” he said, with perfect accuracy, and sat down again, heavily. “But surely the-- I thought-- the correct moment--”
“I don’t think they care, anymore,” said Crowley. “About moments. About anything, really, but their chance.”
There was a space that should have been full of awful silence and was instead full of awful noise.
“Listen,” Crowley said, when he was beyond listening. “This is better, isn’t it?”
“Better?” said Aziraphale.
The Earth shook. He pressed a little closer to the cliff.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Crowley, “and-- it’s better that we do it to them, all at once.”
Aziraphale passed a hand over his face. “Sorry?”
“Better than them doing it to them, I mean. Than him doing it to them, a little bit at a time.”
He hesitated.
“Isn’t it?”
There is no reading the expressions of snakes, but his eyes were intent on Aziraphale’s face.
The demon looked like he had when the world was gleaming and new, Aziraphale thought. He wished he could bring himself to stop looking back.
They both turned, though, when Pepper began to laugh.
She laughed like a little girl, high and uncontrollable and clear. She laughed and laughed. Rain and blood dripped down her face, painting it a shade of pink more usually found on the Disney channel, and she laughed.
Soon even Wensleydale was smiling, thinly. Brian had changed the fastest, without the mortality of a former Horseperson to slow down the reaction taking place in his soul, and he no longer had much in the way of a mouth; but he shimmered with all the humor of grease.
And:
HA, HA, HA, said Death, who had been there the whole time.
He moved into their sight like the shadow that detaches itself from the dark doorway just after you come to the conclusion that yes, you are alone, and set about making silly faces in the mirror. He was only seven feet tall, but seven feet went a long way, in that children’s paradise. His robe curled around his anklebones like the edge of night. The effect was marred a little by a few crusts of snow still caught in some of the folds; but if anyone noticed, she kept it to herself.
For a moment he looked quite thoughtful, for a skull.
Then he raised his scythe.
NOW, he said. COME AND SEE.
The Them faded with him. The laughter went on, singing louder than the storm.
“Of course it is,” said Aziraphale.
Crowley looked at him.
“Better,” he said. He put his hands together in his lap, for warmth.
Crowley made no response to this. Golden lightning stitched across the sky.
“That’ll be the Metatron,” the angel said. “He’s almost as mad as Michael for javelins[1].”
In the thunder that followed, there was a detectable buzzing.
“Beelzebub,” said Crowley, unnecessarily.
A lull, as both sides took stock of the damage. Aziraphale said,
“We do still have jobs, it would appear.”
Crowley loosened his hold on Aziraphale’s wrist, one loop at a time going slack. “You really think they’ll take us?” he said.
Aziraphale smiled bitterly. “After this? I’d imagine all is forgiven, and then some.”
Crowley wished he had hands. He could have stared at them. Staring at Aziraphale’s hands was not quite the same, and besides, the angel had that niche filled.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. So we’ll be called up, soon, then, do you think?”
“Mm,” said Aziraphale.
A concentrated glob of rain hit him on the nose, and a thought appeared to strike him with the water. It was in all probability going to be a bit of a wait. So, carefully, he shook his wings out and put them over his head, to shield himself from the last drops of the world.
“You were saying?” he murmured.
Crowley blinked.
“We’ll go when we’re called,” he said. He was redoing his loops, already, to take advantage, as much as possible, of the feathery cover.
“When we’re called,” Aziraphale agreed, leaning back.
[1] In fact the Metatron preferred boomerangs. But Aziraphale had never been very good at certain kinds of terminology.
If you want to imagine the future…
…don’t.
But you could, if you wanted, imagine a desert.
The sand in the desert would be black, and the sky in the desert would be black, and the mountains at the end of the desert would be deepest midnight[1]. The stars would be white, with a tinge of blue.
And there would be a boy.
“Hullo?” Adam said. “Anybody there?”
YOU APPEAR TO HAVE BEATEN THE RUSH, said Death.
Adam swivelled around, sand crunching under his trainers. “Where is this?” he said.
THE DESERT, said Death, simply.
Panic rose in Adam’s eyes.
“I’m not s’posed to be here,” he said. “I ought to be in Tadfield. I was always s’posed to be in Tadfield.”
I MUST ADMIT, Death said, I DID NOT EXPECT TO SEE YOU HERE SO SOON.
“Yeah! That’s it, see? There’s been some mistake,” said Adam, more confidently. He moved his hand, and concentrated.
Nothing happened.
THIS IS NOT YOUR GROUND, said Death.
Adam stared at him.
“All the more reason f’r me to--”
TADFIELD IS NO MORE YOURS THAN THIS, Death interrupted. NOT ANY LONGER.
“But I,” said Adam. “That’s not.”
He stopped. He was remembering things, few of them pleasant.
“But,” he said again, softly, and then, "Tadfield," as if he might break the word if he spoke it carelessly.
Death watched him touch his chest, and then his cheek.
“Where do I go?” he said, in an entirely different kind of voice.
Death considered this for a while. Then he shrugged.
WHERE HUMANS GO, he said. He tapped a bony phalange to his temple. YOU HAVE TO WALK THE DESERT FIRST, MIND.
“Huh,” said Adam.
He stuck his hands in his pockets. He slouched in. “I guess there’s no way Dog could--”
YOU GUESS CORRECTLY, said Death.
Adam deflated further. Death regarded him with the polite and uncomprehending sympathy of a born cat person.
“I wasn’t a very good master, anyway,” the boy said sadly, kicking the sand. “There was so much to do.”
YES.
Adam looked around at the sprawl of the dunes: a sea of silken black rolling from horizon to horizon.
“I could make this ol’ desert bloom, I bet,” he said, and there was a glint in his eye that had nothing to do with the starlight. “If I really tried.”
WILL YOU? said Death. If you were looking for it, you might have heard a trace of nervousness, in the depths of his cold voice.
Adam considered this.
There had been so much, in his head. And now there was memory and pain and him, Adam, who he recognised.
“Nah,” he said at last. “It’s a good desert. I guess sometimes people need deserts.”
Death grinned.
SOMETIMES, he said, and he went.
“Where humans go,” Adam said aloud, though there was no longer anyone to hear.
He smiled. It hurt almost as much as it hurt to think, but he’d been expecting that, so he didn’t stop. And not so very many minutes later, still smiling, he set out over the sand.
[1] Black.
He didn’t have eighty pounds of gunpowder concealed in his shorts, but the noise was such that he might as well have. It was the kind of noise you get when an unimaginably large number of horns[1] blow all at once.
Thunder rolled. And on the wings of the storm came-- well, wings. Wings without end.
The storm, which had been waiting all day for its chance to resume, didn’t bother itself unduly about its unasked-for passengers. A half of it massed on each side and they met in the middle, like a sea closing after being parted; or like the shutting of an eye.
[1] Along with a selection of trumpets, bugles, pipes, and, for some reason, a tuba. It was a miracle[2], really, that you could almost pick out a tune[3]. And that’s not even getting into the string accompaniment.
[2] Which perhaps explains why from the Hellish side, you couldn’t, although the Bachs were doing their collective best.
[3] The tune in question was ‘shave and a haircut: two pence.’ But no one ever said it was a very large miracle. The angels had other things on their mind.
And there was also this: somewhere, on the wrong side of the world, a dog began to howl.
Anathema sat on the front step of Jasmine Cottage. Her head was resting on Newt’s arm.
Together they watched the warm calm break.
“Is this--” shouted Newt, over the cacophony.
“Probably,” she shouted back, and made to kiss him. She would have succeeded, too, if she hadn’t at that moment noticed Mr. Young, running down the street.
“Have you seen my son!” he called to them.
The colour drained out of Anathema’s face.
“No,” Newt said, loud and clear.
Mr. Young gave him a suspicious look, but he didn’t maintain it, and it was soon crumbling into something closer to a whole separate kind of fear.
“My car wouldn’t start,” he said. “First time in thirty years it hasn’t started.”
“I’m sorry,” said Newt.
Mr. Young nodded, and hurried on.
It started to rain.
“We’re going to die,” said Anathema, wonderingly.
Newt said:
“We should go inside.”
“All right,” said Anathema.
They got up and went inside. The door closed, behind them.
It rained over a plain in Mongolia: first on a woman, walking, and then, without any kind of logical transition, on all the people who had, yesterday, been in the airport doing all the things that people do in airports, and who today were looking up.
Yoon Sun looked around her. She thought, perhaps now I am hallucinating.
It was good, though, to see her newly reappeared manager stammering at the place where the baggage claim had been. “My baggage,” he said, pointing.
“It’s gone,” she told him helpfully.
He looked at her like she was speaking a language he had known a long time ago.
She patted his shoulder. “Mine, too,” she said, and ambled off before he could respond, hands in the pockets of her nicely tailored suit. The crowd let her by.
It was a pity that she’d left home, she thought. But now her husband would be seeing the same bruised sky overhead; he would be feeling the same cold on his scalp. The idea of it, small and perfect, made her smile in the dark.
This time, the tree did close its branches over him, so that Jaime found himself sitting in a globe of green.
He could still hear the rain, though. And the other things that were falling.
“I don’t think this is going to work,” he told the tree.
A gust of wind ran through the heart-shaped leaves, like a sigh.
“It’s not that I’m not grateful,” said Jaime. “But what is, is.”
There was a stubborn pause. Then, stiffly, the limbs below his on the trunk fanned out, until he could see the canopy below, and hear voices, floating up.
He looked, a little sadly, at the arching roof of wood and vine.
Then he climbed down to meet the voices.
And as he neared the canopy, he began to see parts of the sky around the umbrella of the tree’s crown, boiling and yellow and sick. What was, was, he thought, but he still trembled against the bark.
The rain made circles on the surface of Cross River.
Not far off, a woman whose nametag had read Mbeke and was now a blur of bleeding ink had just given up on trying to start a fire. She was too old to learn new tricks, she decided. Certainly not new tricks involving combustion using only two sticks and a nonfunctioning cigarette lighter. Maybe if she’d had a source of flame to start out with, but that was one thing the department store hadn’t stocked.
“Here,” said someone, “let me help you with that.”
Mbeke stared at the someone, who looked like he’d been one of the ferrymen before all the ferries sank. He was holding matches out like peace offerings.
“You go ahead,” she said, getting out of his way.
He set to work.
There were other people, now, emerging from between the trees. Mbeke said, “Sit, sit,” and they sat, most of them, holding their bare arms over their heads against what water drizzled down through the tangle of the gum trees. They sat and watched fire spring to sputtering life.
The guard at the airbase had fallen into an uneasy sleep not long after being bashed over the head by the madwoman.
He woke to rain, and the dulcet bellows of Sergeant Thomas A. Deisenburger, who’d had what he could only assume was a long nap himself, and a very nice dream, and who was feeling rather embarrassed about it. The good sergeant couldn’t remember any details, but the taste of apple pie lingered frustratingly, and on the whole a little bellowing seemed only appropriate.
When the guard’s whites were the only part of his eyes still showing, Sgt. Deisenburger nodded with grim satisfaction and marched back to the gate with the warm feeling of an unpleasant surprise well delegated.
Unfortunately, he was met there by another unpleasant surprise, this one wrapped in a dirty mack and a strange haze of smugness[1]. Also a lady he thought he recognised, in the uncertain way you recognise people in dreams.
“Ye’re not goin’ t’ give us any trouble, are ye?” said the horrible little man in the mack. He jabbed Sgt. Thomas A. Deisenburger in the stomach with what had probably once been a finger. It bounced off the underlying abdominal musculature, but this did not really make Sgt. Thomas A. Deisenburger feel any better about the proceedings.
Technically, he was only forbidden from letting people into the base without correct authorisation.
“No,” said Sgt. Deisenburger. He went to press the button, but the gate was already raised, so he turned the gesture into a salute. “You have a nice night,” he said.
“Thank you, officer,” said the lady, beaming at him.
“Not bloody likely,” said her companion.
The lady herded him out and down to the road. She picked up an off-white scooter that had been lying, unnoticed, in the dust, and she got on that, and the little man got on behind her, and they scooted away.
Sgt. Deisenburger watched them go. Then he lowered the gate.
There was a crack of lightning. It illuminated the heavens, in great and impossible detail. Sgt. Deisenburger, very deliberately, pulled his helmet down over his eyes. He was prepared to do his job, for just as long as the night would let him.
[1] It should be said that this was justified smugness. A lot can happen, in a day spent outside the purview of a story.
A lot, and almost certainly not enough. But it would do. It would have to.
The rain washed away the charred remains, running in an inky slurry down the slope.
“I’ve thought of something else we had to lose,” said Crowley.
Aziraphale picked himself up off the chalk.
“What?” he said blearily. “What are you talking about?”
Crowley pointed up with the end of his tail.
Aziraphale looked.
“Oh. My God,” he said, with perfect accuracy, and sat down again, heavily. “But surely the-- I thought-- the correct moment--”
“I don’t think they care, anymore,” said Crowley. “About moments. About anything, really, but their chance.”
There was a space that should have been full of awful silence and was instead full of awful noise.
“Listen,” Crowley said, when he was beyond listening. “This is better, isn’t it?”
“Better?” said Aziraphale.
The Earth shook. He pressed a little closer to the cliff.
“I’ve been thinking,” said Crowley, “and-- it’s better that we do it to them, all at once.”
Aziraphale passed a hand over his face. “Sorry?”
“Better than them doing it to them, I mean. Than him doing it to them, a little bit at a time.”
He hesitated.
“Isn’t it?”
There is no reading the expressions of snakes, but his eyes were intent on Aziraphale’s face.
The demon looked like he had when the world was gleaming and new, Aziraphale thought. He wished he could bring himself to stop looking back.
They both turned, though, when Pepper began to laugh.
She laughed like a little girl, high and uncontrollable and clear. She laughed and laughed. Rain and blood dripped down her face, painting it a shade of pink more usually found on the Disney channel, and she laughed.
Soon even Wensleydale was smiling, thinly. Brian had changed the fastest, without the mortality of a former Horseperson to slow down the reaction taking place in his soul, and he no longer had much in the way of a mouth; but he shimmered with all the humor of grease.
And:
HA, HA, HA, said Death, who had been there the whole time.
He moved into their sight like the shadow that detaches itself from the dark doorway just after you come to the conclusion that yes, you are alone, and set about making silly faces in the mirror. He was only seven feet tall, but seven feet went a long way, in that children’s paradise. His robe curled around his anklebones like the edge of night. The effect was marred a little by a few crusts of snow still caught in some of the folds; but if anyone noticed, she kept it to herself.
For a moment he looked quite thoughtful, for a skull.
Then he raised his scythe.
NOW, he said. COME AND SEE.
The Them faded with him. The laughter went on, singing louder than the storm.
“Of course it is,” said Aziraphale.
Crowley looked at him.
“Better,” he said. He put his hands together in his lap, for warmth.
Crowley made no response to this. Golden lightning stitched across the sky.
“That’ll be the Metatron,” the angel said. “He’s almost as mad as Michael for javelins[1].”
In the thunder that followed, there was a detectable buzzing.
“Beelzebub,” said Crowley, unnecessarily.
A lull, as both sides took stock of the damage. Aziraphale said,
“We do still have jobs, it would appear.”
Crowley loosened his hold on Aziraphale’s wrist, one loop at a time going slack. “You really think they’ll take us?” he said.
Aziraphale smiled bitterly. “After this? I’d imagine all is forgiven, and then some.”
Crowley wished he had hands. He could have stared at them. Staring at Aziraphale’s hands was not quite the same, and besides, the angel had that niche filled.
“Okay,” he said. “Okay. So we’ll be called up, soon, then, do you think?”
“Mm,” said Aziraphale.
A concentrated glob of rain hit him on the nose, and a thought appeared to strike him with the water. It was in all probability going to be a bit of a wait. So, carefully, he shook his wings out and put them over his head, to shield himself from the last drops of the world.
“You were saying?” he murmured.
Crowley blinked.
“We’ll go when we’re called,” he said. He was redoing his loops, already, to take advantage, as much as possible, of the feathery cover.
“When we’re called,” Aziraphale agreed, leaning back.
[1] In fact the Metatron preferred boomerangs. But Aziraphale had never been very good at certain kinds of terminology.
If you want to imagine the future…
…don’t.
But you could, if you wanted, imagine a desert.
The sand in the desert would be black, and the sky in the desert would be black, and the mountains at the end of the desert would be deepest midnight[1]. The stars would be white, with a tinge of blue.
And there would be a boy.
“Hullo?” Adam said. “Anybody there?”
YOU APPEAR TO HAVE BEATEN THE RUSH, said Death.
Adam swivelled around, sand crunching under his trainers. “Where is this?” he said.
THE DESERT, said Death, simply.
Panic rose in Adam’s eyes.
“I’m not s’posed to be here,” he said. “I ought to be in Tadfield. I was always s’posed to be in Tadfield.”
I MUST ADMIT, Death said, I DID NOT EXPECT TO SEE YOU HERE SO SOON.
“Yeah! That’s it, see? There’s been some mistake,” said Adam, more confidently. He moved his hand, and concentrated.
Nothing happened.
THIS IS NOT YOUR GROUND, said Death.
Adam stared at him.
“All the more reason f’r me to--”
TADFIELD IS NO MORE YOURS THAN THIS, Death interrupted. NOT ANY LONGER.
“But I,” said Adam. “That’s not.”
He stopped. He was remembering things, few of them pleasant.
“But,” he said again, softly, and then, "Tadfield," as if he might break the word if he spoke it carelessly.
Death watched him touch his chest, and then his cheek.
“Where do I go?” he said, in an entirely different kind of voice.
Death considered this for a while. Then he shrugged.
WHERE HUMANS GO, he said. He tapped a bony phalange to his temple. YOU HAVE TO WALK THE DESERT FIRST, MIND.
“Huh,” said Adam.
He stuck his hands in his pockets. He slouched in. “I guess there’s no way Dog could--”
YOU GUESS CORRECTLY, said Death.
Adam deflated further. Death regarded him with the polite and uncomprehending sympathy of a born cat person.
“I wasn’t a very good master, anyway,” the boy said sadly, kicking the sand. “There was so much to do.”
YES.
Adam looked around at the sprawl of the dunes: a sea of silken black rolling from horizon to horizon.
“I could make this ol’ desert bloom, I bet,” he said, and there was a glint in his eye that had nothing to do with the starlight. “If I really tried.”
WILL YOU? said Death. If you were looking for it, you might have heard a trace of nervousness, in the depths of his cold voice.
Adam considered this.
There had been so much, in his head. And now there was memory and pain and him, Adam, who he recognised.
“Nah,” he said at last. “It’s a good desert. I guess sometimes people need deserts.”
Death grinned.
SOMETIMES, he said, and he went.
“Where humans go,” Adam said aloud, though there was no longer anyone to hear.
He smiled. It hurt almost as much as it hurt to think, but he’d been expecting that, so he didn’t stop. And not so very many minutes later, still smiling, he set out over the sand.
[1] Black.