//------------------------------//
// Chapter the Tenth 
// Story: Redemption 
// by PourMeADrink 
//------------------------------//

April 27th, 2032

“No, that’s not what we agreed on.”  Ryan’s voice fills his study, echoing from the partially open door and out into the rest of the house.  “No, no Jerry, that’s not what was said.  You said you could do it this way six months ago.  Are you telling me that now you can’t?”  By the time the sound of his voice has traveled across the living room, bounded up the stairs and traveled down the hall it has faded in volume, the vowels and consonants expending their definition as they reflect from the walls, ceiling and carpet, melding together into unintelligible waves of jumbled sound by the time they reach the door to Celestia’s room.

        From her position on her bed across the room the conversation is only a series of indecipherable low and mid-level tonals, rising and falling in pitch and punctuated by an occasional break.  Despite being unable to make out the words of the conversation downstairs, Celestia can still clearly pick up the tone of his half of it; tightly held frustration, edging its way towards anger.  It causes a rather unpleasant twisting feeling in her stomach which she studiously tries to ignore.  

Even when it isn't directed at her, as it rarely is anymore, she still can’t help but feel a little apprehensive whenever her father’s voice carries anger.  Glancing at the door for a moment, her ears laying back a little, she shakes her head and turns back to her book, trying to focus on the historical impact of English expansion during the High Middle Ages.  She’d been on something of a history kick lately.  

        The windows rattle softly in their wooden frames, reacting to the sporadic gusts of wind and the occasional spatter of rain that whips and blows outside the house.  Late spring in the lower mountains usually brings with it an almost schizophrenic type of weather; genuinely warm and beautiful one day, fiercely stormy the next.  It’s one of the signs that summer is almost ready to begin, and as she absently listens to the noise of it battering against the house, it still engenders a small spark of the same excitement she felt as a filly, eager to get out of the house after a long winter and play in the sun once more.

The sound of her dad’s conversation continues drifting up from below, the occasional word standing out more clearly, like a rock poking from the surface of a stream, causing her ear to involuntarily flick towards the doorway.  Each time it partially breaks her concentration, taking her mind away from the musty smelling book borrowed from the town library and sending it out on its own meandering, worried course.  The voice from below becomes louder for a moment, more of those half-words becoming audible before tapering off again, and she sighs, restarting the page she’s on.  He must be talking to the contractor again, which would account for the shouting.  Talking to the contractor always puts him in a bad mood.  

Of course it didn't seem to take much to get him there now-a-days.  He seemed like he was always…not quite in a bad mood, but ready to be.  Like he was always a half-step away from being mad.  He became frustrated easily anymore, and it seemed like it took longer for him to calm down.  

Glancing at the door, she exhales slowly before turning her attention back to the book floating gently in front of her.  Picking up where she left off and reading to the end of the current page, her ears still swiveling occasionally towards the door now and again, her eyes reach the last sentence, and she stares at it for a moment, trying in vain to put it into context before she finally flicks her eyes back to the top of the page with an annoyed huff, realizing she wasn’t paying attention to any of the sentences that preceded it.

A distant boom of thunder sounds, the rumbling bass crackling through the air as it sweeps down the hillside, causing a corresponding rattle in the window pane.  That window had been getting looser lately, the putty sealing it in place getting dry and brittle, something brought to her attention by the particularly stormy winter they’ve just been through.  Eye’s roaming back up the start of the page a second time, she reminds herself, again, to talk to Dad about resealing it or whatever it is he’d have to do to fix the thing.  That thought brings its own feeling of apprehension and she sighs to herself, marking her page and dropping the book on her nightstand with a quiet thump.

With a sigh she moves off the bed, giving each leg a stretch as she stands upright.  The wind howls for a moment and she looks again at the noisome window, feeling a little guilty.  Dad has had a lot on his plate lately, and she feels bad finding something else to add to it.  Walking to the doorway she stops, nosing it partly open with a worried feeling and trying to listen to the ongoing conversation downstairs.  She’s still not able to pick out more than one word in three, but she tries nonetheless.

After a minute or so she nudges the door with her shoulder, poking her head out into the hallway and gazing down its length towards the head of the stairs.  The words drifting up become a little clearer, the voice saying them rising in volume again, and she can just make out what seems to be the end of the conversation.  “…Then you’d damn well better figure it out Jerry, or I’ll find someone who will!”  This is followed by the loud crack of plastic slamming into plastic as the phone returns violently to its cradle, and then silence.  Her brow drawing down, Celestia waits for a moment, ears tracking as she listens to footsteps striding angrily across the floor down below, the sounds of their progress cut off by the soft click and thud of the front door opening and closing.  

Glancing across the hallway, she sees her sister’s muzzle and dark blue mane peeking from her own bedroom, the pensive expression on Luna’s face a mirror of her own.  Pushing the rest of the way into the hall she crosses the distance in a few steps, meeting her sister’s eyes.  

Nudging her door all the way open, Luna steps out to meet her, throwing another worried look towards the stairs.  “The contractor again?”

Nodding slowly, Celestia shifts her wings a little against her back.  “Yeah, I think so.”  She frowns at Luna.  “That’s the third time this week.”

Luna gives her head a small shake, shifting her mane.  “He’s probably just tired.  I found him sitting out on the front porch last night when I got up for a drink.  Again.”

“What time was that?”

Luna thinks for a moment, her brow furrowing.  “Probably around three or four.  He went to bed late again, too.”

        Celestia frowns absently at her younger sister, her mind working.  “How many times is that now?  Just this month?”  

        “That he’s been up late?  I don’t know.  A lot, I think.”  Luna takes in her older sister’s expression, a frown of her own beginning to crease her muzzle.  “You’re getting worried, aren’t you?”        

        Celestia gives her sibling a flat look, and Luna clears her throat in mild embarrassment.  “I mean more worried.”

        Nodding, Tia glances towards the end of the hallway.  “You’ve seen how he is Luna, how he’s been.  He’s running himself ragged.”

        Sighing, Luna follows her sister’s gaze, swallowing uncomfortably.  “I…yeah.  I know.  He just seems so…tired all the time.  And tense, like he can’t relax.”

        Glancing over, Celestia meets Luna’s eyes, sharing a look of concern with her sister.  Their father had been acting differently ever since the surprise announcement that they were going to have a second house built on that new plot of land he’d bought.  He’d been excited at first, and so had they, but slowly things had begun to change.  It’d started with him working late in his study, often times on the phone, which had initially seemed pretty harmless.  After all, it made sense that planning and building a new house would take a lot of effort, even if most of it was done from home.  But that had progressed to later nights, and then later still.

He’d begun sleeping less, and once they’d noticed that, they had noticed that he wasn’t eating quite as much anymore, and his phone calls seemed to get louder and angrier.  He’d started to become a withdrawn, and as time went on he seemed like he was always tense, becoming easily agitated at things, though rarely at them.

He still had smiles for them, still acted like the father they had always known, but his smiles were tired now, and strained, with a tightness around the eyes and a slightly haggard cast to his face that had never been there before.  In the beginning they had contented themselves hoping it might work itself out, but the more time passed the harder he seemed to drive himself.  

It didn’t make a lot of sense, though, at least not to them.  Sure, they were going to end up with a new house or whatever, not that either one of them could see any real need for a new place when this one was perfectly fine, but the way he seemed to work himself, the hours he spent on it…they were both more than willing to admit that they didn’t know much about real estate and all of that, but it didn’t seem like it should be this stressful to get a house built.  It almost seemed like he was in a rush to get everything done, like he was competing against some invisible clock, and neither of them could understand why.

Taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly through her nostrils, Celestia gives her head a slightly irritated shake, amaranthian tinged wisps of her mane falling unnoticed across her forehead.  “He’s running himself ragged, Luna.  He never takes a day off anymore.”

“I know, sis.”  Luna answers, adjusting her wings a bit.  “But, well, what can we do?  Every time we try to talk to him about it he just brushes it off or changes the subject.  You’ve seen how much he eats at dinner now.  He’s starting to lose weight.”  Luna stares down the hallway, worry tightening her features.  Thunder booms hollowly again from outside, closer this time, and the lights flicker for just a moment.  

Glancing at the ceiling fixture distractedly, Celestia shrugs in a helpless way, her voice taking on a frustrated edge.  “I don’t know, sister.  But it’s not good for him.  Even if he won’t talk to us about it, there’s got to be something we can do to get him to…I don’t know…”

“…Just take a day off and unwind?”

“Something like that.”  Celestia nods her head.

They stand in silence for a time, each lost in solicitous thought as the storm continues to voice its displeasure outside.  The lights flicker again and Luna sighs in exasperation.  “I’ll be glad when the weather finally finishes changing.  I’m past ready for it to be summer.”

Celestia makes a noncommittal reply, eyes absently picking over the hallway as her mind works at the problem, glancing to the errant light fixture one more time, touching on the mellow gleam of wood from the part of the banister she can see, moving over the carpet and across the door at the end of the hall that leads to their father’s room.  Her ears flick back and forth as she unconsciously listens for the sounds of him coming back inside, the tension and worry in her breast underlain by a growing current offrustration as she mulls the situation over in her head.  

Her father, God love him, could be stubborn as a mule when it suited him, and often for less reason than that.  It was frustrating the way he kept problems to himself.  His reasoning, she had eventually realized, was to keep them from worrying.  That could be endearing, and often it was, but the older she got, the more frustrating it became.  Sometimes it felt like he still viewed them both as children, and there were things he simply wouldn’t talk to them about because it might upset them, or make them anxious.  

He’d always been that way, like he felt he had to shield them from all of the bad or unpleasant stuff, to shoulder it so that they didn’t have to.  She’d accepted that when she was young, after all he was Dad and Dad always knows best.  But she wasn’t a little filly anymore, watching cartoons and drinking juice boxes on Saturday morning or rough housing outside with her sister.  She might not be as old as her father, but twenty-two, in her honest opinion, was too old to be coddled all the time.

He was frustrating because he didn’t seem to realize how he was behaving was affecting them.  He was the only person in their lives after all, he was all that they had in this world, and as she had grown she had eventually come to the somewhat startling comprehension that they were all that he had, too.  He would always be their father and nothing could ever truly change that relationship, but at some point he had to acknowledge that they were adults, and just as capable as members of this family as he was.  

Family was about being there for each other, and he had always been there for them.  But he needed to realize that they were there for him as well, needed to realize that they could be.  He needed to understand that they could help him, could offer support and comfort as he had always done.  At the very least if he wouldn’t tell them what had been eating at him for the last six months, then he could at least let them help in some other way.

Her ears swivel automatically, breaking her train of thought and picking up the sound of the door swinging first open and then closed downstairs, and suddenly a thought strikes her.  It had been a long winter, longer than usual, and they were all starting to get a little stressed, if for different reasons.  Maybe what they all needed was a few days off.  Looking over she catches her sister’s eye, stopping Luna as she starts to turn back to her bedroom.

“What?”

Celestia hesitates, stepping closer to her sister, her voice coming out in a conspiratorial whisper.  “Sister, I have an idea.  I don’t know if it’ll do any good but…”

Luna looks at her curiously, her head tilting slightly to one side.  “If you have an idea Tia spit it out.  Anything’s better than nothing.”

Glancing uncertainly down the hall towards the staircase, she meets Luna’s eyes.  “You’ll have to help me convince him.”



***************



Touching down with a practiced ease, Celestia looks around the small, irregularly shaped clearing for a moment, idly shifting her canvas saddle bags a little.  Turning at the sound of flapping wings, she watches her younger sister land a few feet away, her dark hooves kicking up tiny puffs of dust that hang nearly motionless in the still, sun drenched air.   Returning to her study, she absently begins to undo the straps and plastic buckles holding her bags in place with a brief glow from her horn.  “It hasn’t changed much.”

        “Of course it hasn’t.  We’re the only people who ever come here.”  Luna returns, frowning at the fire pit where some of the stones have been kicked out of position by a passing animal.  Trotting over she begins replacing them with a burst from her own horn, looking out absently through the surrounding trees, mostly pines and cottonwoods, with the occasional twisted juniper here and there standing out against the rocks.  Her ears swivel independently, homing in on the distant whine and rumble of an approaching engine, and she cuts her eyes towards the old and overgrown logging road that enters the clearing from the south.  “Dad made good time.”

        “Mmm-hmm.”  Celestia replies, placing her tan and white saddlebags on the ground and beginning to rummage.  

        Resetting a large, kidney shaped stone and giving the fire pit one last critical look, Luna follows suit, removing her grey and black bags and setting them off to one side.  Flipping open one of the side pouches, she keeps an eye out for the approaching truck.  The camp site wasn’t more than ten or twelve miles from the house, but that old logging road hadn’t been maintained for decades.  Usually it had at least one partial blockage, either windblown branches or a washout caused during one storm or another.  If she could already hear the truck coming then it must not have been too bad this time.

        Though this particular patch of mountains wasn’t part of their property, the only way to access it was the old road, and that did start on their land, just a little ways from the pond.  That made it private and safe, secure from random passersby and other folk looking for a nice spot to pitch a tent.  It was sort of like a flat bottomed bowl, surrounded by the trees that carpeted the gently rising slopes on three of its sides, probably twenty yards across at its widest.  Nestled in the saddle between the lower parts of the two nearer peaks, a little creek ran nearby, fed by snow melt from higher in the mountains.  In the early spring and summer the sharp scent of the pinyons and junipers filled the air, carried on the same sun kissed currents that lofted the little white puffs from the cottonwoods in late summer and early autumn.  It wasn’t the only spot they could camp, but it was the first place they ever had, and was by far Luna’s favorite.  

Digging past brushes and clothes – spring was still new enough to necessitate at least a warm scarf when the sun went down – and other assorted odds and ends, she catches a flicker of light from the corner of her eye, off in the distance.  Deciding her book isn’t in this side of her bags, something she had to pack since Dad hadn’t replaced her broken Kindle yet -and how archaic was that in this day and age- she looks up, following the glint of light reflected from the trucks windshield as it winds its careful way through the trees and towards the campsite.  

        She watches as he finally enters the clearing, performing a neat little three-point turn before parking with the nose pointed back down the road.  The engine shuts down a second later, the quiet metallic ticking as it cools a counterpoint to the lilting birdsong drifting through the air.

Her father climbs out of the cab and makes his way to the camper shell on the back.  She studies him as he begins to pull out the assorted components of their tent, her eyes drawn down a little in worry.  Glancing over, she see’s Celestia giving his plaid covered back the same sort of apprehensive study.  Tia glances back at her, meeting her eyes, and the two share a pensive look.  

        It had taken no little effort on both of their parts to convince him to come out here on the first weekend of good weather that showed up.  They’d had to argue, cajole and almost plead to even get him to agree to two days, something he’d finally acquiesced to with all the grace of a bear with a sore tooth.  Watching him begin to unload their supplies, his shoulders stiff and his body language terse, she can tell it’s going to take a while for him to actually let himself relax, and she wonders worriedly if this trip will do him any good at all.  Glancing again at her sister, she sees the same thoughts on Celestia’s face, and sighs quietly. 

        Closing the flaps on her saddle bags, she trots over, trying to shake off her lingering anxiety and adopting a cheerful tone.  “What can I do to help?”

        He looks back at her for a moment, giving her a tight smile.  “You and your sister can start setting up the tent, if you want.  I’ll be over to help in a second, I just want to make sure I remembered to pack spare tanks for the lantern and grill.”  

        Giving him a small grin she begins levitating the large canvas roll carefully out of the bed of the truck, motioning for her sister to come help.  The two of them stack the canvas, tubes and tie-down stuff near the fire pit, searching for a good, level spot to set up.  It takes them a few moments, and after clearing some branches and a couple of rocks, Luna begins unrolling the tent while Celestia starts fitting the frame together.  

        After a few minutes, and a fair amount of muttering from within the camper shell, Ryan walks over, casting a critical eye on their chosen spot.  Nodding his head in approval, he walks to the other end of the canvas and helps press it out flat.  “This is a good spot.  We’ll have shade almost until noon.”  Straightening out the corners, he and Luna help Celestia with the hollow metal tubes that make up the frame.

        When the girls were younger they had shared a smaller nylon tent with fiberglass poles.  As they had grown, Luna and Celestia had started sharing their own tent, while their dad slept in the original.  But that was what seemed to be long ago, and eventually the girls had outgrown the smaller shelter, which was why they were erecting the large, off-white wall tent they used now-a-days.  Purchased from an online estate sale a number of years ago, it fit all three of them comfortably, and was sectioned off into two halves, offering the suggestion of privacy even it didn’t really provide it.

        It also had the advantage of fitting the bedding the girls had started using when they’d outgrown their old cots, which fit neatly in the rear section, the two air mattresses snug in the back corners and covered with sleeping bags and pillows.   Ryan’s dependable and battered little cot fit in the front section, along with a table where they could eat or play cards and board games, and the ice chest devoted to beverages and snacks.

        They had all had ample practice putting the thing together, and after an impressively short amount of time the girls began moving their things into the back as Ryan hammered the tie-down ropes into ground outside.  

The battery powered compressors that came with the mattresses were already set up and hard at work, their rapid, high pitched buzzing filling the tent.  Dropping her saddlebags at the end of the little path between the two beds, Luna looks over at her sister, stretching one of her wings out a bit catch her attention.  When Celestia finally looks over, Luna leans close, trying awkwardly to be heard over the racket without letting her voice carry outside.  “Tia, do you think this is really going to work?  I mean we just got here, and he already seems like he wants to go home.”

Celestia gives her sister a measured look, one that’s equal parts reassurance and conviction.  “Just give it time, Luna.  You know how much he likes camping.” 

“But what if…”

“Have some patience, sister.”  Celestia responds, trying to sound older and more certain than she feels.  “Once everything is set up and we can relax, he’ll come around.”

Giving her older sister a pensive nod, Luna turns back to her unpacking.  Outside the soft metallic clink of the hammer resounds suddenly with a harder note, the result of the stake its driving meeting unexpectedly with a buried rock.  The faint sound cursing is just audible over the whine of the compressors, and she shakes her head with a sigh.  They’ve got a lot of work to do.



Ryan wakes slowly in the night, some already half forgotten dream of yelling into the phone while the house collapses fading from his mind.  It’s late, in reality probably closer to morning than night, but he’s completely awake now in the way he’s grudgingly become accustomed to.  Listening for a few moments to the steady, out of sync sounds of the girls breathing from their section of tent behind him, he sits up, trying to avoid all of the creaky spots of his cot.  

The air is cool, but not unpleasantly so, with enough of a chill to necessitate long sleeves but not enough to require much else, and as he swings his legs carefully over the side of his bed and slowly gains his feet he takes a deep breath.  The mingled scents of the spring time mountains bring with them gentle, nostalgic memories, and he closes his eyes, drawing in the comforting smells of new growth and dampened loam, losing himself in the past for a moment.  

Memories of childhood camping trips, memories of trips with Callie, and more recent memories of bringing the girls up here, by far the clearest and most numerous.  Memories of a time when things seemed simpler, back when all he had to worry about was keeping them from prying eyes, before flying and magic and all the other things that always seemed to tighten his gut and sour his stomach when he thought about them.  Back before intransigent contractors and bureaucratic red tape and reams of paperwork.  Simpler times, better times.

  Sighing a little wistfully, he shakes his head to clear it and carefully dons a pair of pants in the darkness, draping his button up shirt over his t-shirt clad body.  Slipping his shoes on sans socks, he checks to make sure that his smokes are still in the pocket of his red and white plaid.  He looks towards the ice chest a few feet away, studying its patterned white plastic top in the faint light for a few moments before shrugging and lifting the lid.  Digging through ice that’s slowly turning to slush, he fishes out the familiar long necked shape of a beer bottle, wiping some of the moisture off on his shirt before untying the tent flaps and stepping out.

He stops just outside the entrance, letting his eyes adjust to the dim light.  It’s clear now, as it often is at this altitude, and the stars shine down from overhead like a shuckster’s display of gaudy jewelry.  Studying the field of twinkling light with a wry expression, he makes his way towards the smoldering fire pit, picking his path carefully in the dark.

Seating himself with a quiet grunt, he twists the top from his beer, absently listening to the brief hiss of escaping gas.  The fire has died down, only the bed of sullenly glowing coals giving any real light, painting the surrounding walls of its rock enclosure in shifting patterns of mellow orange-red light and stark black shadow.  He takes a long pull and watches the coals, his eyes following their mercurial glow as it flows back and forth, back and forth.  

How had he let them talk him into coming out here for the weekend?  There’s still so, so much to do, so many things he has to wrestle into place.  

Taking another long pull from his beer, he looks again to the coals, commiserating with them.  The heat flows back and forth, bursting out where it can in a brief tongue of flame, retreating back from the darker, cooler parts only to surge forth again.  That’s how he’s felt for the last six months.  Bursting forth where he can, pulling back temporarily from where he can’t, trying with all of his might to get everything where it needs to be.

Part of it is that damned, stupid contractor.  He’d known that hiring out would cause problems, and in that regard he sadly hadn’t been disappointed.  Jerry Buckhouser was slow, combative, and mule headed to a fault.  But he’d had to hire out, he didn’t know how to do what needed to be done, and as much as he’d like to think otherwise, this wasn’t the sort of thing you could teach yourself with a few online guides and a couple of books.  And at this point, after roughly six months of work already sunk into the thing, he was stuck with Jerry. Who, it pained Ryan to admit, did seem to know his stuff most of the time, when he wasn’t being a stubborn jackass of a man.  

Besides, he didn’t have the money to start all over again with a different contractor.

The girls had insisted however, rather strongly, and eventually all of his arguments and disseminations had failed him.   He knew he was worrying them, knew he was a little deficient around the house, but they’d become pretty self sufficient the older they’d gotten, and besides they always seemed to worry about him for some reason or other.  His diet or his smoking or even the things he worked on around the home place.  The problem was that they didn’t understand, just like Jerry didn’t understand.  Hell, he didn’t quite understand it himself.  It was like he had an enormous weight pressing down on him, some unfathomable pressure compelling him to act.  Like a soft voice in the recesses of his mind, chanting constantly; a storm is coming a storm is coming a storm is coming.  

The light from the coals waxes and wanes, the heat a low constant bathing his legs and splashing against his chest.  He contemplates adding a log to get things going again, but decides against it after a few moments.  Right now the low, shifting light suits him.  It’s a light meant for brooding, which fits his mood like a pair of well worn, comfortable shoes.  Sipping from his beer, he leans back into the tattered green camp chair that really should have been replaced at some point.  The wash of orange cast by the fire dimly illuminates a small, irregular circle around the stone pit, casting his face in shadow and turning his eyes into dark hollows.

In his mind’s eye he sees all of the things that have to be done, like giant blocks that must be shifted laboriously into position.  He sees equipment costs and fees, ordering costs for materials, and the inevitable time lost waiting for specialty items.  He sees wages and overtime costs and environmental impact surveys and D.H.S. surveys and O.S.H.A. inspections.  He sees the creative budgeting and expense juggling and the complicated dance required to balance the books while keeping the lights on and the fridge stocked.  It seems, to Ryan, that for every clear step forward he needs to take there are at least three steps sideways to take first, and usually on backwards as well.  And, if he’s to be honest with himself, it’s not all Jerry’s fault.  Hell it took almost a month for that damned U.S.G.S review alone.  Jerry just happens to be the handiest target to fire his frustration at.

Finishing his beer in a long swallow, he tosses it absently into the fire pit, barely even noticing the little plume of ash and embers thrown up by its impact.  Fishing around in his shirt pocket, he pulls out a smoke and lights it with a sigh.  He glances over his shoulder at the tent, his eyes automatically settling for a moment on the rear half where the girls sleep.

They were worried.  

They thought they were getting a new house, and that was true, mostly.  After the main project was finished Ryan fully intended to build a nice one story ranch-style home that sprawled just a little.  Once the main project was done and the finances began to normalize again, maybe he’d even have a pool put in, and a little landscaping.  It could be sort of like a vacation home for them.  He’d explained it to them and shown them photos online and accepted their somewhat giddy input about design choices and color schemes.  It’d be nice.

That’s all they thought was being built, and they didn’t understand why he worked as hard as he did to finish a glorified vacation home.  Turning back to the fire and taking a deep drag, he breaths out quietly, smoke trailing out of his nostrils in twin streamers of muted gray.  They didn’t need to know about the cavern, or the work being done there.  It’d only worry them needlessly.

Of all the things being a father meant to Ryan, the one thing it meant more than anything else was being a shield.  A shelter, shouldering the burdens and the scary things in the world and protecting his little girls from all of it.  He worried about the bills and the upkeep and the groceries and all of the problems with the outside world so that they didn’t have to.  He couldn’t help it, it was instinctual, it was what he’d always done.  It was part of the job.  And for as long as he’d been a father, it’d felt right, correct in that wordless, formless way that meant, deep down, you knew you were doing the proper thing.  

Ryan gazes at the fire, cigarette held loosely between two fingers and smoldering away unnoticed.  Keeping this thing from them was right, it was correct.  They wouldn’t understand if he told them the whole story, they didn’t really have the experience to understand it, which was sort of the whole point.  It was his place to understand, to shelter and guide and protect, just as it’d always been ever since he taken a drive out to the canyon that afternoon so long ago.  It’s always been the right thing to do.

So…why didn’t it feel quite right this time?  

The glowing end of his cigarette burns down, bringing with it an uncomfortable heat, and he pitches it away, cursing silently and blowing on his singed fingers.  A sudden feeling of self doubt begins to worm its way into his middle as he tries to look at his hand in the soft, shifting light of the coals.  Was it really right to keep them in the dark, to keep them shut out of what was happening?  

Were they getting old enough that maybe they would understand some of it, if he explained it to them?

The thought drops over him suddenly, catching him off guard.  He sits in the waxing and waning light, examining this surprising train of thought tentatively.  A slight breeze begins to pick up further chilling the air, and he leans slowly back into the tattered fabric of his chair, arms crossed and wishing absently for a hat.  Could he be wrong about how he’s handling this?  After all they were old enough that, were they normal kids, they’d already be out of the house and attending college.  

        He sits for long minutes, rubbing his arms in the chill breeze, mind slowly turning as he tries to mind around the idea.  He tries to picture them at a university somewhere, trotting across a sun dappled quad with their book bags, attending lectures and staying up late studying for midterms.  He tries to see them eating at the commissary and coming home for the holidays with bags of laundry and complaints about professors, and resisting half-heartedly as he slips them an extra fifty bucks when they head back for the new semester, but the only images that form are memories of them playing dress up with his clothes and chasing each other in the front yard, coming in scuffed or dirty or hurt, looking for Dad to take care of them and asking what dinner was going to be.  

He considers for a moment longer, and then decides to firmly squash that thread of doubt.  Of course it’s right.  It’s his job to protect them after all, as it’s always been.  Protect them from discovery, protect them from the outside world, protect them from harm.  They’re his little girls, and he’s their father.  The thoughts settle into place like the weight of a warm blanket, and he nods once to himself decisively.

He’s their father.

He shifts, propping his feet up on the stones of the fire pit and tucks his hands into his armpits, watching the coals as he waits for dawn to finally come.



“So you got up this morning and he already had a fire going?  Did he say anything?”

Mid-morning sunlight streams down through the widely spaced pines and junipers, creating meandering pathways of brightly illuminated ground between irregular patches of darkly dappled shadow.  Pine needles litter the loose soil in a scattered brown carpet, forming into small drifts around the leeward side of the tree trunks.  There is no breeze to speak of, and the air has been steadily warming as the sun trudges higher and higher in its ever westward journey across the sky.  

“Not much, really.”  Replies Celestia, stepping carefully over a fallen branch.  “Just that he had trouble sleeping and was going to take a nap.”

“Was that all?”

“Other than where to find the cereal and milk, that was it.” She answers in a desultory manner.

Their hoof falls crunch quietly over the needles, leaves and other winter detritus that still cover the hillsides.  Their father had skipped breakfast and crawled resolutely back into his sleeping bag shortly after they’d awoken, and so they had decided to go for a walk, thinking to give him some quiet, and deciding to check on the little creek about a quarter mile from the campsite.  They’d played in it often during childhood trips up here, and still liked to frequent it now that they were fledgling adults.  It was fed from spring melt higher up and wasn’t likely to be more than a dried, cracked runnel in the ground at this time of year, but it was still one of their favorite spots.

“So…” Luna trails off, eyeing a stunted pine off to their right.  Was that an old birds nest or a new one?  “This is going to take some time.”

“…Yeah.” Celestia replies quietly, carefully picking her way up the steadily growing incline.

They continue their hike in quiet contemplation, finally rounding the big, roughly oval piece of crumbling granite that pokes out of the hillside like the end of a thumb, the landmark which means they’ve arrived.  Behind it is a shallow depression, probably twelve or so yards across.  The dry creek bed runs across it diagonally, the dried, flakey, brown mud meandering through the sparse, winter yellow grass like a scar.  A lone cotton wood grows near the middle, fitting like a neat puzzle piece into the space created by a gentle, ‘U’ shaped bend carved by the small streamlet.

They stop at the edge of the depression, looking for anything that may have changed since the last time they’d been here.  A few quiet 
moments pass, punctuated only by the odd call of a bird in the distance, and Luna looks at her older sister.  “You’re concerned about this trip, aren’t’ you?”

Celestia begins walking casually towards the tree, her gaze idly searching its still winter-bare branches for any signs of new growth.  “You’re not?”

Luna sighs quietly, shuffling her wings and following behind her sister.  “It’s only been a day, Tia.  You knew this was going to take a while, if it was going to work at all.”

They stop in the shade of the cotton wood, eyes automatically scanning the trunk until they spot the worn but still legible carving in the bark. They had discovered this place with their father one summer camping trip when they were still fillies.  After seeing how much they enjoyed playing in the creek he had declared the area ‘theirs’, and they had watched with youthful fascination as he had used his pocket knife to carve their names into the tree.  Celestia Marie Williams, Luna Maybelle Williams , Ryan S. Williams.  There had been a date beneath that at one point, but the bark had re-grown into a humped and twisted shape over the years where it was carved, rendering it unreadable.  

Turning, Celestia looks to Luna, meeting her eyes for a moment before looking away again a little sheepishly.  “I just thought…”  She falters, her gaze roaming along the twisted, meandering course of the creek.  “…It’s just, you know, he loves camping…”

“You thought he’d wake up and everything would be back to the way it was?”  Luna speaks carefully, trying her best to keep her incredulity out of her voice.  “It’s not like flipping a switch, Tia.”  

Celestia begins studying her hooves with great interest, embarrassment beginning to heat her cheeks.  “I know, I just…I don’t know, Luna.”  She looks up, meeting her darker sibling’s eyes again.  “I just hoped, is all.”

Luna approaches, wrapping a wing around Celestia briefly.  “It only happens like that on T.V., sister.  There is no silver bullet in real life.”  She steps back, giving her older sister an encouraging smile.  “Just have some faith.”

“We only  have a few days before we have to head back.”  Replies Celestia, earnestness in her face and in her voice.  “And then it’s right back to…”

“I know, Tia.”

Celestia snorts, turning away in frustration, and Luna stops her with the touch of an outstretched wing.  “I know what you mean, sis, but it’s only been one day,” Her sister opens her mouth to speak, but Luna preempts her with a look.  “Look, we just have to give it time, and hope for the best.  There’s not much else we can do.”  She takes in the uncertain expression on Celestia’s face, and smiles encouragingly.  “Let’s at least give him a chance, you know?  I mean it’s Dad, he’s a pretty adaptable guy, he’s just…stubborn.”

Her older sister looks off into the distance, her body language uncertain, worry tightening her features.  Usually it’s Celestia who’s reassuring her, not the other way around.  She must have been holding a lot of this in over the past few months, and Luna takes a few seconds to appreciate how upset her sister must really be for their roles to be reversed like this.  Stepping forward, she embraces her, hugging her tightly.  Celestia tenses up a bit, and then relaxes into the embrace, returning it with a quiet intensity.

“It’s just that we’ve never seen him like this, sister.”  Celestia says quietly into Luna’s coat, “It makes me a little scared.  I just…don’t want anything to happen to him, you know?  I mean, what if…” she trails off quietly.

“What if what?”

Celestia pulls back, her somber gaze meeting her sisters.  “What if it’s something else?  Like something serious?  What if he’s sick, or…or…”

Luna looks to her sister with a confused expression, before comprehension dawns, causing her to inhale sharply.  Ice seems to fill her midsection as shocked surprise widens her eyes.  She studies her sister’s face, a quiet sort of horror creeping over her.  “Or what?  Like he’s dying or something? ” She asks in astonished consternation, her voice coming a little strained.  

Celestia shakes her head, closing her eyes tightly, her face uncertain.  “I don’t know, Luna.”  She looks back at her younger sibling, her eyes tired and scared.  “That’s just it.  We don’t know what’s wrong.”  She drapes her neck around Luna, her wings fluttering nervously.

Luna returns the hug, her mind troubled.  The idea that something larger could be the problem, that something more than just the house and the contractor could be at issue had never occurred to her.  Her immediate mind denies the possibility immediately and harshly.  He’s Dad, and Dad is eternal.  He was a constant, like gravity or math, it was impossible for him to be absent from the equation.  Deeper down, however, the thought began to ferment slowly.  It was impossible but…it made a sort of sense in a way.  It explained why he was working himself so hard, why it seemed like he was on some unreasonably tight schedule.

  “No,” her voice comes husky, a shiver running up her back and down her amethyst wings. “No, he would have told us if it was something like that.”

“Would he?”

“He would.”  She says, her tone stronger, more sure.  She rejects that possibility, negates it completely.  “Whatever this whole thing has been about, that isn’t it.”  She will not accept that it could be a possibility.  

“I just wish he would open up to us a little.”

Breaking the embrace, she smiles woodenly at Celestia in what she hopes is an encouraging fashion.   “I know, Tia.  I don’t like it anymore than you do.”  Stepping away, she releases a shuddery breath, trying to regain her composure.  “Let’s just see how things go.  If it doesn’t look like he’s going to come out of it on his own, we can always talk to him when we get back home.”

Celestia gives her sister a measured look, searching her face before nodding firmly.  “Alright.” She draws a deep breath, releasing it with in a gust and giving Luna an appreciative smile. “Alright, we’ll give it time.”  Looking across the clearing, she takes a few steps forward.  “Do you remember where that old cabin is?”

“That old homestead between the rocks?”  Luna answers, teal eyes scanning the hillside that grows increasingly steep as it climbs away from them towards the mountain.  “It’s higher up, I think.”

Stretching her wings, Celestia looks back at her younger sister.  “You want to go see if it’s still there?”



The rain fell steadily, dampening the air and pounding against the tent, filling the off-white canvas space with a hollow, rapid staccato of white noise.  The temperature had dropped noticeably as the downpour continued, and Ryan had finally decided to light the small gas powered heater, which sat in one corner radiating a low warmth and the hissing sound of burning propane.

The weather had come out of nowhere, in the manner of spring weather in the higher mountains.  What had started as light cloud cover this morning had progressed with alarming quickness from a random smattering to a light drizzle to heavy, cold drops cascading down on them like the endless regiments of an invading army.  

It had lasted all morning, slackened a little as noon approached, and was once again beating against the tent like they owed Mother Nature a rather large sum of money.  Ryan reclines with a pillow propped behind his back on his cot, which has been pushed hard against the side of the tent to make room at the folding table for the girls.  He brushes a hand against the coarse fabric, idly wiping away some condensation and silently cursing the rain, this trip, and the world in general.

Weather like this, while uncommon nearer the valley floor, was not unheard of in the northern reaches of the state.  Big storms blowing across the border from California could undergo some startling changes once they hit the unending ranges of mountains, coursing along amongst strong updrafts, sucking downdrafts, pressure pockets and temperature inversions.  At times it made for some rather strange phenomena, such as sudden rain storms out of clear skies, odd moments of fog, or snow in July.

The reason it was less common the lower you got, he reflects sullenly, is because the weather patterns had an opportunity to expend a great deal of their energy against the mountains higher up, leaving the remnants to do what they could to the lower elevations and valley floors, where most of the residence of the state lived.  Higher elevations absorbed the worst of it, higher elevations such as their camp site.   Suppressing an irritated sigh, he reaches for his coffee which has already gone tepid.  

He was trying to keep his frustration and impatience from showing, trying not to be, as his late wife would sometimes describe it, a bear of unfavorable disposition.  He’d known what that initial wave of fast moving, scattered clouds probably meant, after all he’d spent a lifetime in this part of the state, he could recognize the signs.  He’d forgone packing up the camp on the hope that the weather would blow itself out in one large burst, as it sometimes did.  He’d thought, optimistically, that by noon the clouds would have dropped their freight of moisture, broken apart again, and they could wrap everything up and get home by late afternoon.  It hadn’t gone that way, and there was no way to pack everything up now without the rain ruining half of it.

“Adjoin.  Fourteen points.”

He glances over at the table, idly watching as Luna jots down her score, leaving Celestia to study the board and her tiles with careful consideration.  The game, like the two or three other games they had available to them, were leftovers from some previous trip.  Board games that had been packed into the camping box at one point and then had never really found their way back out again.  They’d been included initially with long, comfortable evenings in mind and times when the weather turned, and it hadn’t taken Celestia long to dig their old and battered Scrabble board out and set it up.  They’d asked him to play as well, but he’d declined.  Ryan didn’t have the patience for board games right now.  He feels anxious, restless, like someone with a place to be and no real way to get there, which is actually pretty accurate.  He has things to do, and a place in which to do them, and instead he’s on his cot in this tent.  Resignedly he lifts his magazine back up, scanning the current article without really seeing it.

“Come on, Tia.”

“Hmm…Coumarin.  Twelve points, plus the double word score.”

Luna groans, grimacing as she double checks the little numbers marked on the corners of the tiles.  “Is that even a word?”  She asks, looking over hopefully at her father.

“I don’t know, use the dictionary dear.”  He responds disinterestedly, flipping to the next page in his magazine.

She shares a quiet look with her sister before writing down Celestia’s points.  She doesn’t check in the dictionary, sitting thickly underneath the score sheet.  They both know what it means.  She inhales deeply, breathing out quietly through her nose.  They’d been trying, in one way or another, to get their dad to take an interest all day, to participate or do anything other than sit there and sulk.  

The air in the tent had become thick, tense and uncomfortable.  It had been that way ever since the rain had begun to really come down.  Glancing at the board, she tentatively lifts several ivory colored tiles out of her holder with a gentle, azure glow, laying them down on the board.  “Mason.”  She glances at the tiles.  “Seven points, plus the double letter.”  Writing down her new score, she pauses as Ryan gets to his feet, watching quietly with her sister as he moves to the front of the tent and steps outside beneath the little overhang of material that shelters the entry.  A few seconds later the flick-flick-flick of a lighter drifts back through the parted flaps.

She shares a frustrated look with Celestia and sighs.  This trip had been a waste.  Their father hadn’t relaxed, hadn’t honestly enjoyed himself, hadn’t even really slept.  He seemed more tense then when they’d left two days ago.  The only time he seemed to cheer up a little was this morning, when they’d had breakfast and started gathering everything up.  The rain had put a rather abrupt end to that, though, and he’d spent the rest of the morning and this afternoon either re-reading the same magazine on his cot or going outside to take study the sky.

Every plan, every ploy, every activity they’d tried over this long and uncomfortable trip had failed.  He simply didn’t want to be here, and although he thought he was hiding that fact, it was plain enough to them.  They’d known him their whole lives, after all.  They’d pulled out a board game because, honestly, they couldn’t think of anything else to try.  They’d picked Scrabble because it was one of his favorites.

Luna studies her remaining tiles dejectedly for a moment, glancing up at her older sister.  “Tia?” 

Celestia stands up, looking over her shoulder at the tent flaps, shakes her head once and then walks through the divider into the rear section of the tent.  Luna watches her go.  Glancing from the board to the front entry, she sighs and rises as well, turning and following her sister.

She finds Celestia standing at the foot of her air mattress, staring blankly down into her partially repacked saddle bags, her breathing a little labored.  She nudges her side, and her older sibling turns an angry gaze to her.  While Luna had tried to stay optimistic throughout the trip, and had settled on a sort of resigned hopefulness, her sister had become increasingly frustrated by their lack of progress.  Luna could sympathize, it was frustrating, but she didn’t see how anger could help things now.

“Sister, it’ll be alright.  We’ll think of something else when we get back…”

Celestia rounds on her, cutting her off.  “It’s not alright, Luna.  He doesn’t even want to be here with us.  He never did in the first place.”  She takes a deep breath, trying to keep her voice down.  “All he wants to do is go home and work himself to death over that stupid house.”  She snorts, her wings fluttering slightly.

Luna takes a step back, answering in a calm, careful voice.  “Well, if it keeps raining, maybe we’ll end up staying an extra day.  Maybe we could…”

“What good would it do?”  Celestia retorts, her voice starting out sharp and ending quiet.  “What good did any of this do?  It’s worse now than when we were home.”  She trails off, turning away.  Her horn coming alight with a pale, yellow glow, she begins gathering up the scattered books and clothes and various odds and ends laying about her bed, stuffing them haphazardly into one side of her saddle bags.  “I wish we hadn’t come out here.”  Her voice is faint, almost a whisper, her expression no longer one of anger but of weary resignation, touched with a worry that borders on fear.

A rustle from the front of the tent perks Luna’s ears up, and she leans close to her sister, speaking quietly.  “Just...it’ll be O.K. Tia.  Alright?”  She glances over her shoulder towards the divider, before continuing in the same low, careful tone as before.  “Dad’ll come around eventually.  He can’t keep it up forever.”  

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”  Celestia replies, so quietly that Luna almost isn’t sure she heard her correctly.

Luna watches her sister with concern for a moment, this sudden change in demeanor alarming her.  Then, with a pang, she turns and heads back through the divider.  Her father is standing by the entry way, wiping his feet off on the little mat they kept there.  His face is set in that tight, still sort of expression he usually wears when he’s trying not to show how upset he is.  

“How’s it look Dad?”  She asks with a forced cheerfulness.

“Bad.”  He replies sourly, pulling his shirt sleeve up and studying his watch.  He grunts.  “If it keeps up like this we’ll have to stay tonight.”

“Yeah, wouldn’t that be a shame.”  Celestia mumbles, stepping through the divider and edging past her sister.  

“What was that, sweetheart?”  Ryan asks, glancing distractedly at her.

“Nothing Dad.”  Celestia answers quietly, settling herself at the table and gazing down at the Scrabble board.

He looks at her for a moment, and then seats himself back on his cot.  Luna takes her place at the other end of the board, sitting down with a little jitter and shooting her sister with a look that is equal parts imploring and encouragement.  Celestia doesn’t meet her eyes.

Glancing at his watch again, Ryan leans back.  “I guess we should probably figure out what we’re going to do for dinner.”  He sits up, leaning towards the muddy ice chest they had hustled in this morning.  “I think there’s still some leftover chili from the other night.”

Luna looks to her older sister and then answers her father.  “Yeah, chili sounds good.”

“Tia Marie?”

“Yeah.”  Celestia mumbles, never lifting her gaze.

“Alright then, I’ll see about heating it up.”

Luna looks from her sister to her father and back again, watching both.  He’s rummaging through the ice chest, his back to them but still stiff with repressed frustration.  Tia continues to stare forlornly down at the folding table, her eyes unfocused.  The air seems thick and humid, packed with the smells of damp canvas, rain soaked loam, and the old lingering smells of wet fur and wet clothing.  The heater continues to hiss quietly from the far corner by the door.

Fishing out a couple of Tupperware containers, Ryan closes the ice chest and opens the lid to the large foot locker next to it, where they kept their general use camping supplies.  Shifting a few things about with a jingle of loose utensils, he half turns.  “Tia, did you put the bowls back after breakfast this morning?”

“Yeah.”  She replies quietly and without emotion.  “They’re under the skillet.”

The quiet clatter of Ryan’s searching continues.  Luna looks at her sister, taking in the defeated expression, the tinge of hopelessness in her eyes, and she feels a tightness wending its way through her chest.  She’s been the one reassuring Celestia during this trip, for a change she’s been the one supporting her sister.  This sudden shift from aggravated disappointment to quiet defeat is unsettling and upsetting.  She watches her father as he sets a stack of bowls on his cot and begins looking for the silverware bag.  He doesn’t even notice.  The tightness grows tighter, constricting around her chest, and deep within a pressure begins to build.

“Do we have to leave tomorrow?”

“Yeah.”  He answers absently, closing the lid to the camp box and beginning to fiddle with the little portable Coleman grill.  “We need to get back.”

Celestia begins picking up the Scrabble tiles with a nearly inaudible sigh.  Luna watches her for a moment, that tightness still wrapping her, a fluttery feeling in her stomach.  “Why?”

“I have work I have to get done.”  He places the grill on the metal lid of the foot locker, fingers twisting the brass connections together, 
even this simple action stiff, almost jerky.  Celestia packs the game board back in the box, her eyes not really looking at anything.  The fluttery sensation grows worse, completely at odds with the squeezing, binding feeling.  

In her mind’s eye, Luna sees masterfully crafted shapes of wood, like the pieces to a three dimensional puzzle.  Fit together they formed the simple, beautiful shape of her family.  Now, however, it seemed like those pieces were wobbling, the way in which they were closely meshed together failing.  Little gaps were beginning to show between the almost invisible seams where they lined up.  She watches her sister place the lid back on the game box, her eyes far away, her expression touched with a despondency she’s trying unsuccessfully to hide.  She watches her father work at lighting the grill, his posture rigid, his body language practically yelling his desire to go back home.

She watches them, and a new feeling begins winding its patient way through her body, slipping slowly up her spine in meandering lines of ice, across her neck and down her shoulders like a horrid caress.  Fear begins to fill her, blowing like a hollow wind, and in her imagination she sees that wind playing along the shape of her family, teasing at the little gaps, widening them until the shape falls apart and the pieces blow away into darkness.

That feeling of pressure continues to build as she looks at her father’s shirt covered back.  “Why?”

Finally lighting the burner with a faint click, he reaches for a small pan.  “Because I have things to do honey.”

“You can do them later.  If we stay another…”

“No, Luna.”  He cuts her off, his voice a firm and a little hard edged.  

“Why?” She asks again, a small part of her realizing she’s starting to sound like a petulant child but not really caring.

“I told you...”

“Why is it important?”  Her voice beginning to rise, she takes a hesitant step forward.

He turns, regarding her with a tight expression.  “It just is.  We’re going home first thing in the morning, and that’s my final word on it.”

She takes another short step forward, beginning to crowd the already cluttered front section of the tent.  She feels that queer sensation of both constricting tightness and burgeoning pressure, her stomach kicking and jumping like a small trapped animal, and in the back of her mind she hears the building howl of a cold wind.  

He begins to turn away from her.  “That’s not good enough.”  She says loudly, her breathing beginning to speed up.

He looks back to her, his face both surprised and frustrated.  She flinches a little, but continues on, her voice growing more strident.  “Why is that stupid house so important?  Why can’t we just stay for another couple of days?”

“Luna…”  He answers in a warning tone.  

She swallows.  “All you do anymore is work.  It’s not fair!”

“Luna Maybelle.”

“You don’t eat, you don’t sleep, all you do is work and argue on the phone!”

“Luna Maybelle Williams.”  His voice is striving for the flat, inflectionless quality he uses when he’s upset with them, but frustration is starting to color it nonetheless.  His face is a growing thunderhead, his features tight and his cheeks beginning to flush, causing the stubble on his face and the dark circles under his eyes to stand out in stark contrast.

She almost flinches again, but doesn’t, and that growing pressure finally wells up and bursts free, washing her in hot tides of anger and cold eddies of fear.  Not anger at being denied another day of camping, but anger at the cracks in their tight little family his hard driven, single minded stubborness has caused.  Not fear of making him angry, but fear of what might happen to him if it continued.  Fear of what might happen to all of them.

Taking a deep breath she takes a final step forward, close enough now that she has to crane her neck up a bit to meet his eyes, her emotions churning and boiling to the surface.  “What’s so important about it huh?  Why does it matter so much?”

“That is enough young lady!” 

“You’ll work yourself to death and leave us all alone and you don’t even care!  So what’s so damn important?”

“Because I’m trying to keep you safe you Goddamned stubborn child!”  He thunders, slamming his hand against the frame of his cot with a loud, metallic creaking sound.  He stares at her, breathing heavily, watching her do the same.  A thick silence fills the tent, made more noticeable by the permeating hiss of the rain falling against the white canvas walls and the small ssss sound of burning propane.

He takes a deep breath, holding it a moment before releasing it slowly.  He’d never yelled at either of them before.  Raised his voice, yes, but never out-and-out yelled.  

“What are you trying to keep us safe from?”  Comes a quiet, hesitant voice from the table and Ryan glances over at Celestia.  She gazes back at him, rose tinted eyes shining damply in the yellow light of the gas lantern that hangs from the peak of the roof, her face a misery of uncertainty and uneasiness and... something else.

He glances back to his younger daughter, taking in the similar emotions writ large on her features, save that these are mixed with anger.  He studies her in the preternatural quiet.  It’s fear, he realizes.  A ragged, barely-there fear, underlying their expressions like primer underneath a coat of paint starting to wear thin.

“Dad?”  Luna’s breathing is still hard, her sides heaving but starting to slow.  She glances quickly at her sister, returning teal orbs to look at him that are beginning to glint with wetness.  “What are you keeping from us?”

He studies them both for a few quiet moments, looking from one to the other and then back again.  It’s not fear of him, he suddenly intuits, but fear for him.  His mind flashes quickly back, different moments from this long weekend unwinding like a movie reel.  Details jump out at him, details he hadn’t seen, or had dismissed.  He feels his anger melting away, flowing out of him and being replaced with shame.  They’ve been afraid for him, and they have been for some time.

“…Daddy?”  Luna looks at him, her face no longer angry, but open and vulnerable and scared.  Her eyes gleam, moisture that has nothing to do with the rain leaving long, damp trails down the sides of her muzzle.

He glances at Celestia, her body language awkward as she sits at the folding table, her expression a mirror of her sisters.  He crouches, opening his arms, and Luna crashes into him, sinking to her haunches and laying her head over his shoulder.  A second later Celestia pushes against his other side, leaning against him and mirroring her sister.  Between the two of them they manage to push him back until he’s resting against the camp box, his arms tight around them.  He can feel Luna’s chest hitching a little, the emotion she’d been trying to hold back finally breaking free.  On the other side his shirt is growing damp at the shoulder and Celestia presses hard against him.

“Shh…shh…”  He sooths, alternating between stroking along their necks and just holding them.  “Shh…it’s O.K. now.  It’s alright.”

Luna, breath still hitching, pulls back just enough to look at him with tear streaked eyes.  “Are…are you dying?”

He feels Celestia tense against him, and he leans back a little, caught so off guard by the question that for a moment he can’t form an answer.  “What?  No.”  Luna scrutinizes him, searching his face with an intensity that’s a little alarming.  Finally, apparently satisfied, she lays against him again, her breathing settling.  He squeezes them tighter for a few seconds, and then moves back where he can see both of them.  “Where on Earth did you get an idea like that?”

It’s Celestia who answers him, ducking her head with a sniff and swiping at her eyes with a foreleg.  “Well, you’ve been working so hard...”

“On the new house.”  He interrupts quickly, rising stiffly and resettling himself on his cot.

“Yeah, on the house.”  She continues, “But it’s a house we don’t need, Dad.  We’re perfectly fine in the one we have now.”

“And you don’t sleep anymore.”  Luna adds, shifting her wings as the tension begins to leave her.  

“Well honey, I…”

“And you hardly eat.”  She overrides him.

“And you won’t tell us what’s going on.”  Celestia finishes, looking at him earnestly.

Ryan leans back, his shirt brushing lightly against the canvas wall, looking bewilderedly and warily from Celestia to Luna and back again.  Their eyes are still red rimmed, but their expressions are open, almost pleading, and the sight of it twists at his chest, and for the second time realization drops over him.  He’d handled this whole thing badly.  Hell, he’d handled it wrongly, very wrongly.  He’d known he was being a little deficient at home, known they were getting a little concerned, but he hadn’t had any idea that it had affected them this much, hadn’t even thought that they were getting this worked up.

This second realization is followed closely by a third, one his mind wants to reject but no longer can; they aren’t children anymore.  Looking from one to the other, taking in their expressions, their posture and body language, the fact is irrefutable.  They would always be his little girls, but they had grown from childhood, were growing into adulthood, and, with more than a touch of sadness, he understands that he can’t treat them like kids anymore.  

Sighing quietly, he nods towards the ice chest under the table.  “Luna sweetheart, grab me a beer, please.”  She turns slowly, her face a little puzzled, her horn lighting up and casting azure tinged shadows under the table.  “Grab three, actually.  Thank you honey.” 

“Three?”  Celestia asks, giving him a flat look.

Three green, long necked bottles float to him, and he grasps them, nodding again in thanks.  Holding them awkwardly between his knees, he twists the tops off one by one, before handing a bottle each to his daughters.  They take them hesitantly, they expressions a study in surprised startlement, and he chuckles.  They turn wide, questioning eyes to him.

“You’re adults now.”  He answers them, unable to hold back a small sigh.  “You’re old enough.”

“Umm…I’m not, actually.”  Replies Luna, looking at the damp bottle uncertainly.  “I’m not twenty-one yet.”

“Sweetheart, only squares wait until they're twenty-one to drink.”  He says with a laugh.  Celestia, who is old enough, shoots him a dirty look, and he laughs harder.  He takes a long, satisfying swallow, and watches in amusement as they slowly follow suit, their expressions screwing up as they try the unfamiliar beverage for the first time.

Aside from the single, small glass of wine he sometimes let them have on New Years Eve, neither of them had ever really tasted alcohol before.  He didn’t intend to let them get into the habit of drinking the way he had at their age, but if they were adults now, he might as well let them start enjoying some of the perks.  Besides, they were camping.

He clears his throat, catching their attention.  “Girls…”  He starts awkwardly, pausing for a few seconds as he works out how to begin.  “I’m sorry.  I’m sorry for the way I’ve been acting, and I’m sorry I didn’t see how it was making you feel, and I’m sorry…”  He trails off, looking down at the beer in his hand, watching the beads of condensation gleam in the lantern light as he gathers his thoughts.  “I’m just sorry, O.K.?”

They both nod slowly, their beer’s floating absurdly in soft yellow and blue light.  He takes a deep breath, and lets it out in a gust.  “I have been working on the new house, that’s true.  But it’s not the only thing we’re building…”



They sat long into the evening as the rain petered out, downshifting from a constant hammering to a soft patter to sporadic bursts.  Celestia and Luna listened, and Ryan told them everything.  The house, the land, the wine vault that was slowly being converted and refit.  He explained his reasoning, in so much as he was able to, and told them about what he’d been seeing in the world at large, what he feared he saw.

They were incredulous at first, disbelieving, and they asked many questions, though they tried not to interrupt too often.  They asked, and Ryan answered.  They listened, and Ryan talked, for once holding nothing back from them.  By the time they had finished and gone tiredly to bed the rain had stopped completely, the clouds breaking apart and moving off on distant and mysterious errands of their own.  The sky was scrubbed clear, and in the cold and moonless night the stars shone down fiercely, casting the mountains, and their little campsite in that soft, blue-white light that can only be found on clear, chilly nights. 

They had all gone to bed tired, but they had gone also feeling better, lighter, feeling more at ease.  For Ryan it was like having a burden lifted, and for the first time in months his sleep was deep and unbroken.

They stayed four extra days, all told, making only a quick trip home to clean up and grab extra food and supplies.  They were four good days, spent camping as they always had, and it was by mutual agreement on the fifth day that they decided to finally head back.  Camping was all well and good, but you can only clean so much with a rag and soapy water, and in the end the draw of a long, hot shower became too much.

Things began to change after that, not all at once and not in a hurry, as Celestia and Luna had hoped, but gradually, steadily, everyday things got back to normal.  They still weren’t sure about the whole thing, they had trouble even conceiving that such a thing could happen anymore, but they understood that it was important to their father, and so they made peace with it, even helping occasionally where they could.

Ryan, for his part, had come back from their extended trip with a completely different outlook on everything and, shortly after they had finally returned home, showed up at the construction site to offer his sincere apology to a very surprised and very startled Jerry Buckhouser.  This apology was helped along by an ice chest full of beer for the crew, and a bottle of moderately priced, single malt scotch for Jerry himself.  After that there were no more shouting matches over the phone, no more swearing or recriminations when he got a call about delays or additional costs.  Ryan began sleeping normally again and eating regularly.

By mid-summer he’d replaced the weight he’d lost and then some, much to the satisfaction of his girls.  It was a good summer for the Williams family, probably one of the best that they could remember, filled with more camping and hiking and outdoor excursions then they’d done in years.  They started holding family game nights on Saturdays, and movie nights on Sundays, and by late August none of them really remembered what things had been like before.  

They were good months, ones that would stick with them for the rest of their lives, and the memory of that year would be a comforting and much needed balm to the two sisters in times of hardship and sorrow yet to occur.  Amongst all the happy and warm memories they held of their childhood and their father, that summer would always stand out to them.



***************



It was an early spring morning, strong May sunshine already streaming through the windows, filling the living room and kitchen with warm, liquid light.  Spring had come again almost unexpectedly, bursting upon them out of a long, cold winter like a flower in full bloom.  New growth struggled for purchase on the trees and sage outside the house, as birds flitted almost confusedly between the winter bare branches and the startlingly deep green of nascent leaves.  The weather had changed all at once, and the world outside their home seemed like it was trying to catch-up.

From above the living room comes the muffled patter of a shower running, underlain by the muted rush and gurgle of the water pipes.  From the kitchen comes the quiet sound of something sizzling, mixed with the occasional clink of utensils and clatter of hooves on tile, the noises pushing before them the pleasing aroma of eggs, toast, and coffee.

In the hallway upstairs, just outside her room, Celestia stretches her neck and back, her eyes squeezed tightly closed as she luxuriates briefly in the sensation, her nostrils flaring of their own accord as they catch the scent of breakfast drifting up from below.  Blinking owlishly for a moment to clear the sleep from her eyes, she takes a deep breath, exhaling slowly as she ambles to the end of the hall and down the stairs.  It was Luna’s turn to make breakfast this morning, and she had used the occasion to sleep in for a bit.

 Reaching the bottom of the stairs and crossing the living room with an unhurried step, she pokes her head into the kitchen, watching as her younger sister bustles between the counter and the stove top, humming quietly to herself.  Celestia watches in amusement for a few seconds, before she spies the coffee maker steaming quietly by the microwave, mugs and creamers already arrayed neatly in front of it.

“Good…” She crosses the threshold with a yawn, angling towards the aromatic smell of the coffee pot.  “…morning Luna.”

“Morning sister.”  Responds Luna brightly, plying the long metal spatula with enthusiasm, if less skill than her older sister or father.  She stirs the skillet’s contents, singing softly under her breath as tarragon and parsley from the spice rack float nearby in a pale blue glow.  “Mmm mmm mmm, I will survive, hmm mmm…”

Stirring herself an ambrosial mug of morning pick-me-up, Celestia takes a slow sip, savoring the warmth and the taste as she glances at the mess covering the kitchen counters.  “Need any help?”

“Hmm mmm ohh so many nights mmm mmm…huh?”  Luna looks quickly at her sister, splitting her attention between Celestia and the pan of eggs steaming gently on the stove top.  “Oh, no, thanks Tia.”  She gives the pale yellow mass one more poke with the spatula before lifting the skillet from the stove and flicking off the knob for the burner.  “We’re just about ready.”  Dumping the pan’s contents onto a nearby plate, she carries it over to the table.  “Is Dad still in the shower?”

Tilting her head slightly to one side with the flick of an ear, Celestia can just make out the sound of running water, which cuts off abruptly a second later.  “I think he just got out.”

“Perfect timing then.”  Luna smiles to herself, arranging everything just so on the dining room table.

Taking turns at breakfast had become another one of the little things they had begun last year.  Reasoning that if they were adults now they should start taking a more active part around the home place, they had talked their father into divvying up his regular chores.  

Their father, though reluctant at first, had finally acquiesced, and now both Celestia and Luna were becoming pretty good at tackling the hum-drum and assorted chores and maintenance required to keep an isolated place running and in good repair.  He’d even began showing them the finer points of balancing their finances, and had started introducing them to the murky and mysterious world of online banking and day trading.  

All in all they were pleased with their new responsibilities, and shouldering part of the burden of keeping everything on and afloat had not only reduced the stress on their dad, but also made them feel both like productive members of the household and comfortably independent, while leaving them with a sense of being  more in control of their lives.

The creak of the stair treads perks up Luna’s ears, and she pours out a cup of black coffee, setting it at her father’s place and taking a seat across from her already sitting sister.  

Taking another long sip of her own coffee, Celestia glances across the table.  “Today’s a news day, right?”

Shoveling eggs onto her plate, Luna nods absently.  “Yeah, remember we skipped Friday.”

Celestia floats a couple of pieces toast across the table, nibbling at one before settling them in place.  “Oh yeah.”

Part of the agreement they’d reached with their father was that he was no longer allowed to follow the news obsessively like he used to.  He could check up on it three days out of the week, and had even thrown out the somewhat unsettling folder of articles and reports he’d been collecting.  In return, they had to watch the news shows with him in an attempt to broaden their understanding of the outside world.

Scooping up eggs, Celestia looks up as Ryan enters the kitchen.  “Morning Dad.”

“Morning Dad.”  Luna echoes her through a mouthful of food.

“Morning.”  He answers pleasantly, stopping to flick on the television on the counter, grabbing the remote before taking his seat.  “Looks good honey.” 

“Mmm-mmm.”  Luna answers, chewing with relish.  She might not be able to darken hash browns like her dad, or flip pancakes without tearing them like her sister, but eggs, she felt, she had pretty much mastered. 

Dishing up, Ryan glances over at the little twenty-four inch LCD, scanning the scrolling news ticker running across the bottom of the screen.  Another oil field closure in the Middle East, an attempted bombing at a synagogue in Jerusalem, a third round of budget talks on Capitol Hill.  Turning down the anchor droning on about the latest celebrity scandal, he salts his eggs, taking a bite.  “What’s the plan for today?”

Levitating another piece of toast across the table, Celestia glances at the kitchen window.  “I was thinking about flying down to the pond later, if it stays warm out.”

“I’m going to check if the new Tattered Throne is up on MovieSync.”  Luna answers, leaning back from the table and stifling a small burp behind her napkin.  “I thought we could watch it tonight.  Then I think I’ll work on the scrap book some more.”

Nodding, Ryan spears the last few bites left on his plate, chasing them with a swig of coffee.  “Sounds good sweetheart.”  He hadn’t gotten into the seemingly endless series of movies the same way his girls had, but they could be pretty entertaining.  Rising, he turns the volume up a bit on the T.V. before grabbing his plate. The three of them bustle around the kitchen, cleaning up the breakfast mess and putting everything to rights.  

On the counter the television drones on, providing background noise to the tune of rising gas prices, a union strike in Houston, and the extended forecast for most of the country.  As Luna loads the last plate into the dishwasher there comes a weirdly upbeat jingle from the T.V.

Looking over, they see the words ‘Breaking News’ roll across the screen in a flashy animation.  The picture is replaced by a long distance night shot of a small, non-descript blue building lit by street lights.  The words “Negotiations Break Down” scroll along the ticker at the bottom of the screen, and Ryan grabs the remote, turning the volume up.

“…broke down late last night between North and South Korea, as the North Korean envoy stormed out during talks about the recent high profile defection of DPRK General Paek Yong-gil last month…”

“Isn't the guy who just walked across the border?”  Asks Celestia, her coffee floating forgotten by her muzzle.

“Yeah.”  Ryan answers, not looking away from the television.  “During a border inspection.  He lit that building on fire and sprinted across in the confusion.”

“…tensions between the two Korea’s has been high, with Supreme Leader Kim Jong-hae threatening quote, ‘unimaginable consequences’ if the General Yong-gil not returned to the North immediately.  President Rhee Bo-seon held a press conference in Seoul this morning, stating that South Korean armed forces were currently on high alert.  Neither NATO or EAP offices for the region answered calls for comment.”

“Adding to the already mounting tensions in the region is the arrival of the US 7th fleet, which has been redeployed to assist the US Navies Pacific Command with the ongoing Chinese blockade of Taiwan, which began several months ago…”

As the anchor finishes her read and the screen fades out to a commercial for fabric softener, the three share a look.  Rustling her wings a bit, Luna closes the dishwasher.  “It sounds bad, but I’m sure it’s not a big deal, right Dad?”

“Yeah, I’m sure it’s alright honey.”  Ryan says, feeling the weight of their eyes on him.  Shaking himself a little, he glances at the T.V. and then back to them.  “It’ll be O.K.”  They both nod and make their way out of the kitchen as Ryan pours himself another cup of coffee.  It’ll probably end with blustering and saber rattling like these things usually do, after all there’s been plenty of flare ups and tension between NATO and EAP allied nations, and all of them had pretty much blown themselves out; no one really seemed willing to push things to the point of starting a war.

Ryan sips his coffee, watching as the coverage changes from world events to politics, and an involuntary shiver runs down his back, raising goose flesh along his arms.  This business in Korea and Taiwan would blow over.  It had to, just like all the other times.  Half listening to a story about a bear roaming a suburb somewhere near Cleveland, Ryan finishes cleaning up the kitchen.  Pouring himself a fresh cup of coffee he stands by the window, absently looking out at the side yard as the news drones on in the background, his mind turning at its own pace, fighting off a sudden feeling of unease.  It’s a strange feeling, like he’s standing in some impossibly massive shadow.  Trying to shake his feeling of disquiet, Ryan stands in the wash of strong May sunlight sipping his coffee and shivers again.