[Hereford Eye]

In Sandra’s mind, the running commentary goes: “Yellowstone! Beautiful, all thirty seconds that I’ve seen, anyway! Not here for the sightseeing though. Work to do and we need to understand how we are going to do it. Somebody has to lead this mess; don’t see Matt doing that. He’s too busy feeling sorry for himself as if old age is a mistake he made that can be corrected if he works at it hard enough.”
Aloud, she addresses Randolph, but her gaze sweeps across everyone as she talks: “Eyes, old buddy, it’s about time you brief us on how this thing is supposed to work so we can all get our objections out and dealt with and we can get on with getting on. None of us want to be here forever.”
Joe is startled but Sandra figures that’s normal Joe. Matt looks annoyed but that is beginning to seem normal Matt. Emily looks interested and that’s a change. Ghanima is doing her damnedest to look innocent and there is no such thing as an innocent looking fairie. Eyes just looks; that’s what eyes are for.
Randolph knows how this is going to work because, in his mind’s eye, he has seen it working. He’s alluded to that fact several times already. Sandra decides to test the limits of his foresight.
“How long is this going to take?” she asks and feels the tension increase as each of the players awaits Eye’s response.
“I don’t know,” Randolph answers. Sandra gasps in surprise. This is not a category of answer she anticipated. Joe is on it instantly: “What do you mean you don’t know? I thought you saw everything.”
“No one sees everything, Joe, not even me. What I see is us trying. That’s all I see.”
Emily asks why that is and Randolph shrugs his answer “everything has limits, even our powers.”
Matt asks what that means in words of one syllable or less. Randolph smiles. Sandra is ready to shove something down Matt’s throat. If he doesn’t soon act his age she is going to slap the man silly……well, she’s is going to fantasize real hard about slapping the man silly.
“Get over it, Matt,” she orders. Turning to Randolph she says, “so we don’t know if this will work or not.” And then she looks a question mark at Ghanima. The faerie answers that they all believe it can work, that it hasn’t been tried before because no knew it should be tried. But look what happened when they didn’t try.
“So, what do we do, Eyes? Hold hands, lay on top of each other, what?”
“You are the energy boost, Sandra. We need contact with you. You are also our weakest link. If you go; we all go. So, you are the queen of the hill. You call the shots.”
“But what the hell shots do I call? This is getting really old not being in on the plan.”
“The plan is that I see where the pressure is building and the places it can be redirected to. Matt opens the doors and Joe pushes stuff through in a hurry. Emily closes the door behind us.”
Emily objects that she has always had to physically touch things for her magic to affect them. Matt agrees that his has worked the same. Eyes looks at Ghanima as he explains that the faeries are the means to reach out and touch things. They will go where Eyes tells them to go, channel the human magic so that they can apply it at the right places. Each application will cost them. Open a door; use up a fairie. Move things, lose a fairie; close the door; lose another.
Sandra turns on Matt with vengeance: “You wanted to know what their part is, hero, now you know.” She cannot rein the tears that flow, the gentle gestures of reassurance no bolster against the misery. “God damn this place!” she sobs.
Eyes continues his explanation, just barely audible now. “It’s not just the faeries, folks. It’s us as well. We are very much at risk. If Sandra cannot maintain the energy boost as each of us does our part, she dies and we die. She dies because we drain her life force; we die because there is no more life force to drain. There are no guarantees in this endeavor. None.”
A moment of silence broken by Emily’s “but if we fail, then doom is certain?”
“That’s name of the tune.”

[Holbrook]

"How many fairies?" Matt asked slowly.

"As many as it takes..."Ghanima replies and sits on his shoulder, pulling at a lock of his thinning hair,

"So each time we put the ball in the pocket three of you are zapped." Joe does the math and sort of frowns.

"Too many." Emily sighs.

"Nice of you all to care." Ghanima answers. "But a lot more will die if it goes bang!"

"There is us too" Sandra says looking at Evan, the boy has again switched on the video and it watching it intently.

"Promise to get him clear if you go down" Ghanima says, "he doesn't weigh much."

"And what..." Emily began looking at her son.

"Done it before, brought up your kind."

"Changlings" Matt huffs and looks at Sandra. "Your call, you are our "energy boost" hell, that sounds like on of those fancy "sports" drinks they are pushing these days."

Sandra shruggs her shoulders and gets out the car. Matt follows her. He hovers around her, his hand goes out, nearly touches her she glares at him, then he strokes her arm with his hand. Sandra folds. Matt huffs and holds her saying "Tough as they come."

Ghanima begins to sing, her voice dropping an octave, Eyes, doing the backing vocals.

Ain't love, ain't love, ain't love a surprise.

Oh yeah.

Another dollar, another day.
Some old routine in my way.
My eyes are achin', my body tired.
I'm all strung up you know I feel so wired.
And then you walk into the room.
Time stops, everything drops, boom boom boom.
Vision of love, heavens above.
I feel your body like a velvet glove.
Because...

You're a sight for sore eyes.
As a mater of fact at the drop of a hat,
you're my love surprise.

So radical, so very chic.
But without you I feel so weak
when lover boy comes into sight.
I don't know why but it feels so right.
Need energy, a vitamin shock?
No way for me, you're what I got.
Don't need no drugs to make me high,
I just need to look you baby right in the eye.
Because...

[kater]

Its said somewhere knowledgeable that relationships based on intense events never work out, though that source had the youth to base it on sex instead, hardly going to be the most consistent of occurences in this partnership one would think. But thats the trouble you never get the chance to think clearly as far as emotion is concerned because if you stop to think there's always a but.
But we're going to die.
But we're too old.
But this is all too surreal.
The world in its constant ability to befuddle people of all ages, race, gender, and intelligence (its a proven fact that as the level of intelligence of a person increases the world's ability to befuddle that person also increases at an exponential rate) proves that there is no clear, untarnished area into which one can truly think. Thinking, it can therefore be concluded, is to be avoided. With a warm, sobbing body in your arms such a conclusion is a fundamental given.
The point where I began to care is like most things unclear. It is. This I know because this I feel. A dissection of the component parts which will never make the whole because the whole has and always will be more. Life's funny like that too.
It is, at the briefest hesitation of analysis, a void, a perfect sphere of nothing into which is placed need, desire, understanding and want. It is an accumulation not of the past, nor of the future, nor even of the now. It is a purely encapsulated second in which I am never me and you are never you. It is realisation.
Very poetic.
Trouble with poetry is that it doesn't dry a wet shoulder, as if a little discomfort matters. Our surroundings fade back from relief into stark contrast, which is a pity because it involves walking and my hip, at the affront of more poetry, is giving me jip.
I look down at her care worn face, the tears are gone though their path and ours remains, I fear we may all be cried out by the time this undertaking is over.

[Hereford Eye]

Emily wanders around the car feeling the chill in the morning air, worrying that Evan is dressed warm enough. Maternal concerns do not totally evict the practical concerns that being here raise. She knows she understood what Randolph explained but the practical application still eludes her. When her stroll brings her back to the group, Matt and Sandra cuddling, Joe and Randolph watching the cuddling, she opens things up again with her question: “Do you suppose we should practice first?”
Four heads snap to attention. “What do you mean, practice?” Joe asks.
“I mean we ought to try this out before we risk Sandra or ourselves.”
She will be eternally grateful to Randolph because he is the first to agree. She understands Sandra’s reluctance, can almost hear the thought that shakes Sandra’s soul: “practice killing faeries?” because it rumbles in her head as well. Randolph sees the issue clearly and is not afraid to voice it. “If we do not practice, the risks of killing ourselves go up exponentially. If we kill ourselves, this whole exercise has been wasted.”
Eye’ logic is faultless. All turn to Ghanima for reaction, agreement, permission.
The faerie shrugs. The smile she wears is not playful but rueful. The one she picks to answer is Joe, locking onto his consciousness. “Yes,” she agrees, “you need to practice before you take on Yellowstone.”
Joe answers Ghanima with disbelief registering in all the timbres of his whisper: “You’re not going to go first, are you?” “Why not me first?” Ghanima asks.
Emily wants to answer. She wants to protest that Ghanima brought this group together, that she is the support the group needs, that without her they could…no, they would cease functioning as a group. But Ghanima’s attention is still riveted to Joe.
Matt and Sandra move back into the group standing behind Joe, all four regarding Ghanima but, as Ghanima’s action demands, Joe must answer for the group. The first words from his mouth are defiant but as he continues talking his words drop down the scale from iron to copper to jello. “Okay!” he storms, “you go first. Who gives a **** who goes first?” but then a tremble flits across his frame. “You’re just a faerie.” he adds but the cracking in his statement proves it false. “Who needs you anyway?” but the softness of this query, the pain in Joe’s face make this an even bigger lie.
“Why, Joe, you seem to care.”
To that, Joe has no answer.
“I won’t go first, Joe. But, I will take my turn.”
“Then, let’s make all the turns count,” Emily says. “Let’s make sure we do this thing right the first time and the second time and every time we must do it.” She turns to Randolph to ask how they can practice noticing that Joe turns as she does, a tear traveling down his cheek, “Yeah, Mr. Eyes, how do we practice killing faeries?” but there is no malice in his question, only misery. Emily is forced to conclude there may be hope for this boy.

[kater]

Hope is at the most basic level a fundamental assertion of humanity. It is a combination of belief and desire which generates a universal anomaly, that in the most dire situation there is an up and that up, whilst relative to the events unfolding and not that of a behavioural norm registered on the assumption that such a thing as normal or average actually co-exist on a planet that gives us a post-Jordan Bulls, is the path being followed. In brief, or an approximation paradoxically used as brief, the gutter is a great place as long as your looking above cloud level and not breathing in. Hope. It is the driving force behind everyday life, between can and can not, between the second of today and the second of tomorrow, between the physical exasperation and the intangible ever after. Having never had future sight hope becomes an intrinsic substitute in the universal parody of charades. But while all our yesterdays may have lighted the way to dusty death we have no intention blowing out the candle, as poor a player as we are, still we play, more importantly perhaps we play with hope and not blood on our hands. For we sacrifice in the name of hope and in doing so there is the groundwork for those that come after, we no longer wish to be the forgetful dream, we wish to remember, whether it be through genetic legacy or huddled in the shadows enclave, dormant but waiting. In short, which may be a twice-broken promise, it is only in times of greatest need and least understanding does hope spring eternal, when reality blends the surreal into a dream like state where the world's vast consciousness absorbed solely with dreaming, wakes. In waking we are granted for but a brief time a glimpse at our true self, stripped of the inadequacies, false pride and rampant misconceptions which pander the id and drive a mockingly idealistic conception of the person known as I. Brutally are we reborn, forged in the truism of now that tomorrow our progeny will stand tall at its moment of most dreaded fear. And that moment will come, it is as inevitable as change, as certain as anything can be. There will be moments that stand outside of history, outside of time and in one of those moments we stand, because to stand is to bring hope and no-one knows what is possible if you stand with hope beside you.

[Holbrook]

Practice.. yes.. practice murder with willing victims. Sandra can't get that out of her head, will she be aware of each snuffed out life as it happens? Will the others or will it just be the knowledge of we are doing it now, here, push shove, that's three down how many more to go?

All of them feel this is like riding abike for the first time. When do you take your other foot off the floor and push off, when do you?

"So Randolph,Ghanima you say practice and on what? How many times, how many times three practice goes do we have to do, howe many can we stand to do, knowing three go each time. Limitless fairies I don't think so. Willing to die in the main event, well that is sort of pot luck from their view point. Go now or later if nothing is done. But to go down in a practice event, sounds a lot like the "A" bomb tests. We will just see if a man can walk through the area a few hours after, doesn't matter if he gets cancer twenty years from now or his children have their head on backwards." Sandra stops and looks at the other four, they are all looking at her, Ghanima is hovering over her.

"Well..."Sandra snaps, sniffing back the remains of the tears. "If I am powering up whatever we are, I want... I want..." Emily takes her hand and holds it. Joe places a hand on her shoulder. Matt takes her other hand and smiles. Eyes moves from his seat and places his hand on Sandra's other shoulder.

"Lock and load!" Ghanima cries and three of her fellows line up...

[Hereford Eye]

Everyone is standing touching Sandra and nothing seems to be happening except that everyone is standing touching Sandra. Of a sudden, Ghanima squeaks out an “oops!’ and flits to the top of Sandra’s head, settling into the curls laying there. “Okay,” we’re ready,” a sheepish grin replacing her normally impish grin.
The world disappears.
Six minds meet, no holds barred. Temptation rampant on a field of earnestness. A young man’s astonished realization that an old woman sometimes, the same young man embarrassed as others see that he, a young woman’s need, an old man’s bittersweet longing, a faerie’s envy, a scientist’s faith. All these things are open to all, no hiding, no cover ups, each human being and faerie exposed for all the wonderful, goofy, sad memories that make them who they are.
What should be repellant in one is matched by a similarity in another, what should be repulsive in another is balanced by the truly admirable in the same person. In fact, balance is what comes through more than any other concept. Every mind sees in every other mind all the good and bad experienced and sees that the good and bad are not the essence of the person but the way the person played it out. Every person finds every other person beautiful, with the good and bad, strengths and flaws, they are beautiful.
Every person has their own beauty reflected back at themselves, sees themselves as the others see them, understands this is who they truly are, is overwhelmed to discover they like themselves.
“Enough of this for now, children. We can always come back to this spot.” Ghanima’s jibe brings five minds together in purpose. Together, they follow Eyes’ vision, diving into the ground beneath their feet, through the dirt and rocks, down, what seems a light speed elevator going down, searching. Rock passes in all its glory, fused elements glistening and sparkling in the absence of light. Eyes’ talent sees where no other other mind can see.
Eyes’ finds what he is looking for, an air pocket, a now-empty gas bubble. Behind it’s wall sits a second bubble filled with water. His thought fills all their minds, now a single fused consciouness.
“We move the water from its resting place to this empty space. Matt opens the seam, Joe moves the water, Emily closes the seam.”
“My magic dries up water,” Matt thinks, “how do I dry up rock?”
“Your magic dissolves bonds, Matt. That’s all that dehydration is, dissolving the chemical bonds of hydrogen and oxygen.”
“I see,” and Matt’s mind moves to the rock wall.
Ghanima breaks in with a reminder that Matt is going to need help and a faerie, an old faerie if wrinkles and silver hair mean anything in faerie appearance, appears at the wall. The faerie extends a hand to Matt, grabbing his thought, applying it to the wall. Matt thinks his magic, a gap begins to appear.
A second faerie, a child by appearance, is instantly at the seam, reaching for Joe, applying his magical thoughts to the water which had begun to trickle but now move en masse from one side of the wall to the other. The old faerie blinks from existence leaving behind a lump in the group mind’s thought pattern, a lump that will be remembered for eternity.
A third faerie appears to grab Emily’s thought, apply it to the seam as faerie number two blinks out. The seam heals, the chemical bonds reunited by Emily’s magic. The third faerie blinks out.
When Ghanima dissolves the group mind, the five stunned humans are still touching Sandra, still feeling fused, still in contact even if not joined at the mind.

[Holbrook]

Each looks at the other, each sees themselves reflected. Each raises a hand and scratches a nose, each recoils and the coneection fades, but does not vanish completely.

"what do we do now." Emily says as he son pulls at her other hand. She breaks phyiscal contact with Sandra ans picks her son up ruffiling his hair.

"We camp here and wait..." Ghanima says and points to the huge pile of camping gear on top of the vehicle.

"God my.." Matt begins.

"Back" Joe finishes, "And there will be..

"Insects" Sandra adds, " And I am not..."

"Cooking? Emily giggles." I don't mind but.."

"You rather not do so" Eyes barks out as all five look at each other again as he adds. "The fairies can.."

"do it.." Ghanima snaps. "All bloody right, but you.."

"Put up the tents and "Matt laughs.

"And get the fire"Joe shakes his head.

"Going.." Sandra remarks

"But take care.." Emily adds.

"We are in a natural park." Eyes finished.

Is it always going to be like that?" Matt whispers to Sandra.

"No... just a lingering effect it will wear off in a while," Ghanima laughs. "Just don't think of doing anything that might embarass you later... "Gods I need a drink? Working with humans is thirsty work. Any nectar around here.." Ghanima's thought trickles round the gruop and she blushes.

"

[Hereford Eye]

Considering you spend your whole life all alone, just you between the ears, when that privacy disappears it ought to be a shock off the Richter scale. Ought to be but isn’t. The group dances around the fire Joe builds flitting into contact and out, not the mental version where everyone seems to be sharing the same mind, but the physical version where everyone seems to have gone touchy-feely. Cannot pass likes ships in the night, must stop and caress cheek, caress arm, hold hands for an instant. Slows things down, works against efficiency, makes everyone wonder at themselves.
The commonality of life, the sameness of new things, the effect on a person, all driven home with remarkable intensity in a single practice session. The joy and mirth that true knowledge brings is tempered by the cost of gaining the knowledge. The urge to celebrate never gets to bubble to the top of the pot, it is constrained by the death of three faeries. Horn Blower, Mite, and Frost Fire. Names to be recorded in memory now, in stone when the time is right.
An observer of this group seated about the fire, enjoying the steak and beans, drinking their favorite brew, a Guiness here, a Shiraz there, a Coors over there, would notice immediately the acceptance among the people and the faerie. Personalities do not change over an hour or two, but acceptance of personalities can change instantly and has. Each person knows they are accepted without qualification. It’s the “been there, done that” recognition each found in the others. No matter what foolishness, what sin, what mistake a person committed, wished to hide away so no one else would ever know, he or she discovered that each of the others have committed the same foolishness, sin, mistake, different only in the wrappings the other put on it.
The release of that knowledge, that you are not the only stupid person in the world, that others share your misery, that others share your humanity, is near indescribable. They do not try. They chew their food and bask in the excitement of being alive.
The beauty of their surroundings begins to sink in adding to the sense of aliveness. A stand of aspen near them becomes particularly meaningful. Eyes reminds the group that an aspen shares a single root base, all the trees shooting from the earth bonded at their heart. Like this group.
The air is crisp, clean, and cooling, suggesting blankets may be appropriate this night despite the warmth they all share.
Most poignant of all, Evan scampering about, chasing birds and squirrels. Running to the creek and wading through its early fall low point. Evan, the child, unaware of the events that brought him here, unaware of the bonding about him, alone, and joyful in his loneness. He feels safe knowing adults are about but he has no need to join them, content in his explorations of his world. The child knows he is alive and knows that’s all he needs to know.

[kater]

They say that the probability of someone watching you is proportional to the stupidity of your actions, in which case a great many eyes must have been focused on the campsite as it sat down for a little quiet time. It was the quintessential essence engendered by such programmes as the Waltons, a utopic oneness which F H Bradbury would argue could not exist and in which mistakes are regularly made because the assumption exists that mistakes can't be made, euphoria is the devil's best tool after all. So it was that little Evan managed to wander loudly away from the fire's enthralling warmth without so much as a by-your-leave or even a you-bloody-come-back-here-now-young-man. Anyone who has children will know the ease with which the little blighters, and even the uncommon-a-garden big blighters, can disappear faster than houdini standing over a hole. There have of course be many completely 'fool-proof' ways to keep an eye on one's progeny but the makers always underestimate the ingenuity of fools, young children and with frightening regularity, both. It is after all a child's perogative to achieve the impossible because they are young enough to know everything and naive enough to try everything, normally by putting it in their mouth first which has often given family pets a great many problems. Suffice to say greater than the devil's greatest trick and without an incindierary 'pooof' in sight the campsite was minus a half but totally unaware's.

It wasn't a mating call that woke the racoon from his precarious slumber but such was the volume of noise of the aforementioned call that he had to see what it was. Now from a view six inches above the ground and with four legs and a tail the sight of a huge bipedal creature with limbs growing out its head running around making the most hideous shrieking isn't one you stay to watch. And though our raccoon friend was experienced in the ways of humans having had contact of some sort with the picnic armies, who left good snacks, and the naked combo humans who had two backs, still he didn't like the look of this one. It leaked for a start. Deciding his warm dray was a far superior way to spend the last few hours of darkness he ambled back to his mate.
Matt watched the raccoon go with more than a little envy, he didn't want to be tramping round the woods now but the boy was out there and having only just regained full independence he still felt the lingering locality of Emily's mind, that and the fact he couldn't avoid the hysterical, in the crazy sense, road runner impression Emily was giving with her hands holding her head and tears streaming down her face.
Joe it was who put in the tackle, though you could argue in favour of it being a chop-block, but either way Emily was borne to the ground. Immediately the group pounced, alternating consoling remarks as if all still joined.
Matt, though not naked in his bath tub and more than adverse to running down the street in his birthday suit, still had the same sort of revelation. He placed one hand on Sandra's shoulder who was cradling Emily like a child and the other on Emily's forehead. More licorice than sherbert this time but still distinctive. Matt felt like singing the seven dwarfs 'i ho' marching song but refrained given the situation. Mustering his most powerful military voice, he barked "Saddle up and follow me, we have a kid to find."