Chapter 1

There is a difference you know

between fearing for someone's life

and wanting to share it while alive

she said

Sometimes caring is not enough

then what is love

I asked

A cry in the night

A sudden stop of time

the whisper of your breath

We all know how waking up can become a real drag sometimes, so indeed it was for Joe, and if the truth really needed to be told it had been so for quite some time now. As he slowly forced his eyes open only the bare whitewashed walls would meet his eyes. Thirty-three years of age with nowhere to go, that's me, he tiredly thought as he rubbed his eyes.

That is if one didn't wanted to call that sad excuse for a room home of course he thought, but for now he knew that he had no other choice but to once more get up to hunt down some work. He well knew that he was down on his money as well as on his luck, and that no matter what work he would find, it at best only would move him an inch back from the edge.

It were just days before his rent was coming due again, the problem here being that what little he had all went to food. He shook his head at himself and ruefully muttered, "shit, I don't know why I bother anymore" as he prepared his oatmeal porridge.

He had never been that good with cooking, but he had to admit that he had became quite good in preparing porridge over the last few weeks. At least he had a place to call for getting work, although working there over the last three years quickly had coerced him into becoming something of a 'jack of all trades'.

Not that he had had any say in the matter anyway. Sometimes there was work for a few weeks but lately there had been none at all at the center. As he had pawned his cellphone last week, he now had no choice but to use a pay phone, "Shit, not a clean sock to be found" he swore as he frantically looked around trying to get ready for the day.

Normally he tried to remember to wash them in the washbowl but somehow he had forgotten this time. The weather was fair but cold when he came out, his once so expensive Jordan sneakers that once used to be his pride and joy were starting to get worn down, as well as the rest of his cloths.

Perhaps that's the reason, he thought, as he walked up to the pay phone, why there didn't seem to be any work for him lately? The Center prided it self on having well groomed workers with a good work ethic, at least that was the sermon served when they discussed his appearance last time.

But how could one buy clothes without money? He knew he was a good worker, handy both in and out of a house. Stealing wasn't really Joe's style but lately he had felt more than tempted at times. Luckily someone had tipped him of on oatmeal as a cheap and 'wholesome' diet and boy were they right.

Wholesome as in, one more spoon and I'm gonna ... he thought mirthlessly as he dialed the Center. "Hi Jenna, it's Joe. Could you connect me to Mr. Fairwall please? Thanks." As he waited he aimlessly looked around, it was a cold and windy October morning and the street was still empty.

He really needed to buy some warmer cloths he thought as he stood there shivering, seeing the windswept dark wall of clouds building up, drawing constantly closer to him... "Just my luck, ain't it." He muttered to himself. "Fuck it!"

He almost dropped the phone when he suddenly heard Mr. Fairwall ask "What did you say Joe" "Oh sorry sir, I was just talking to myself." answered Joe hastily. "I was calling to see if there was any..." " Now son, don't you lie to me!" He heard Fairwall's angry retort.

"I heard you clearly swearing at me, complaining over your luck. Now boy, if you don't want our work stop calling us." And with that Joe heard the phone on the other side hang up. He froze, standing there with the phone in his hand, staring at nothing defeated and with a feeling as if all of his energy just had run out. Slowly he too hung up the phone and turned to walk home.

Over him the clouds had become as a whirling vortex of dark colors, now and then illuminated by flickering lights, somewhat like flashes but without any sounds forthcoming. It was a most eerily sight but Joe never even noticed it as he blindly walked home with his head down, only seeing his own two feet, up to his one room apartment.

Coming too he found himself sitting staring without seeing into the wall. Sometimes he thought, sometimes ... He looked around, thirty-three years old and this is what I own he thought to himself. A worn backpack a tent and a sleeping bag, and books of course, lots and lots of those.

Cheap ones, paperbacks mostly, but he bought them for the content not for their appearance. Since his mothers death he had had no other choice but to work, and school was for those able to afford it he thought somewhat bitterly.

Even before that he had worked of course, but then they had been two at least. And there had been some sort of purpose to it. But what was the purpose now he asked himself as he looked around. To read a book more, to call back and apologize to a polished asshole calling himself a manager.

Just because the jerk couldn't be bothered with listening. Maybe I should just end it he thought. It wasn't the first time he had thought so since he lost his last good regular job five years ago. Then he had been a tech working for a dot.com company.

It had been fun and interesting with lots of travels to different countries. But they had been bought up, then consolidated and downsized. A lot of people had to go, he could have stayed he guessed, but when the rest of his department just got kicked out he choose to follow them.

It was more a matter of pride than necessity for him at the time, but hell, he had thought that with his experiences from there, it would be a breeze to find a new job. He had forgotten how his old work would react though.

Its new owners had counted on him thanking them for being allowed to stay, now they suddenly found themselves lose a lot of goodwill from their old customers as their old representative no longer worked with them.

They couldn't stop him from quitting but they could blacklist him. So wherever he searched for a new job there was this invincible wall awaiting him. The employers would call his old firm and then, after some time, uniformly they called him back to inform him that they were sorry but, no.

So all of a sudden he found himself compelled to search for other jobs and in other places, and somehow it all had ended here and now. He had a girlfriend then, but that was another life, and another town too he thought. She had left him fast as soaped lighting when she had realized just how 'bad news' he had became out there on the streets.

Somehow he had succeeded in misdirecting himself too, he thought, as he had been the staunchest of believer in her fidelity. Apparently he had been mistaken there too, after she had left him he had found out from others that she was all to well known for her loose ways, whenever he left town. Strange how people were all too happy to tell a fact after but never before it came to be, he mused to himself.

Sitting on his bed staring at the wall he now started to feel as if it all just added up to one single thing. There was nothing left here for him, he sadly concluded, as he raised himself from his bed and started to pack his backpack one last time. He left a whole lot of books as well as other things, but where he was going there would be no further use for them anyway he thought.

Though he had to take some favorite books with him, he just couldn't walk away from them. Sweeping away his hair, his eyes fell upon the footlocker that had been here when he moved in. Hadn't it been a parka in there? It was an old one, green and warm if he remembered right. He decided to look in it and yes, there it was.

What harm would it do he thought to himself, whoever that had left it there wasn't planning to come back anyhow. As he lifted it up it got stuck somehow. He pulled and as it come loose a small compartment opened up at the bottom of the footlocker. "Hey!" said Joe as he leaned over to take a better look, "now what the heck is this?" Inside the compartment were a crystal and a piece of something looking like paper.

The paper was of a yellow color and seemed both old and fragile, Joe took it up to put it on the bed and then opened it in a most gingerly manner. It was sturdier than what he first had expected though, and if it was paper it was no paper he ever had seen before.

It reminded him more of some sort of vellum or yellowish leather. The strange thing was that it also looked as something out of a newspaper clipping. Joe shook his head as if to cleanse it from a fog of ignorance. "This can't be true?" Joe said. "I gotta be dreaming here." As he studied it the vellum seemed to come more into focus somehow, slowly he started to discern letters as well as ... Was that a photo, made in leather?

Nothing seemed to make any sense today Joe thought as he sat there staring on the strange 'clipping'. He hadn't picked up the crystal yet but now he started to feel that it was time to take a look on that too. As he lifted it up his vision blurred slightly only to sharpen again almost instantly, so fast that he couldn't decide if he only had imagined it.

As he turned back to his bed he to his surprise found that the parchment now was perfectly readable as he looked at it. "We congratulate Evelyn Te'daoall to her new mundane posting as our observer of the terrene ordnance's and as our forerunner for peace eternal"

The photo was of a almost ethereal quality to Joe. The azure blue or was it green eyes seemed to be able to come across the photo to touch him even as he stood there watching her smile. She was so perfectly poised and at ease, at the same time as she seemed both shy and innocent.

He felt a sudden immense need of protecting her, "Awh, come-on!" He mumbled to himself. "This can't be true." But before he wrapped up the vellum he took one last wishful look at her and, giving in to a sudden impulse, gave the parchment a fleeting kiss.

"What the heck, can't make any harm can it." He smiled to himself as he stuffed both the vellum and the crystal away. He then made a throughout search inside the footlocker but to his disappointment there was no more hidden compartments to be found.

As he took a last look around his apartment before leaving he got this feeling as if he never had lived there at all. It was like the last year somehow never had existed. When he had started his packing up he had had a very definite and final goal in mind, but finding what he found in that footlocker put everything in a new light.

"A walkabout." He said to himself. "I will go for a walkabout." He felt a great relief at that thought. As he was leaving the building he put his keys inside the caretakers mailbox together with a letter explaining that everything he left now belonged to the apartment.

When he at last came out in the street he found it to be very dark, almost as if it had became dusk already. He looked up only to see a swirling black togetherness, like one benighted cloud, vastly stretching as far as the eye could see. He almost felt dizzy looking up at the flickering lightning high above him. "Strange?" he murmured. "No thunder?"

And strange it was indeed.

While time wait for none

Love might wait forever

To not care is to lose

To care is to lose

Faith hope and trust

Words in love

Evelyn Te'daoall sat in her office looking out. Where Evelyn was there was no darkness, her realm was a place of tranquility and ease. Yet she had this irritating feeling of discontent, she had had it on and off for more than a week now, and she couldn't for the world understand why.

She was quite satisfied with the Mundane's actions for now. They seemed for once to be ruled by sanity and the wars and armament sales had gone down as the governments sharpened and restricted their regulations. They were still very strange and bestial to Evelyn but she had high hopes for them.

A long time they had lived side by side, in different realms but coupled by the consequences of actions taken by both sides. None of those realms existed by their own, 'as above so below 'as the old saying went and yes, it went both ways she thought to herself.

Evelyn's realm was vastly different from the Mundane's. What was simple and mostly straightforward in the Mundane world became here a matter of choice. Dreams were not only portents, they could if you were unlucky and not anchored in your self become all to real.

On the other hand there was always people watching for just that so all in all there was no more danger from what the Mundane's called 'nightmares' than in their world. Also there was this thing about gender, In the Mundane's world, that became sealed with birth, well, mostly so at least.

In Evelyn's realm it more became a matter of taste and will, not all together of the Elflings own choice though, as their world often had a mind of its own. Yes in Elfland all were conscious, each with a life of their own.

So it was that Evelyn those first young years had been a male, and most happily so. As she came into what most likely resembles what the Mundane's would call puberty that had changed drastically though. And all for the better too, if you would listen to the numerous admirers of her newfound grace and beauty. Now, you might have heard that Elflings age differently from Mundane's.

It is most true I can assure you, but only as long as they are in or have a open boundary into their own realm. One of the worst punishments there could be was to be banished from their own realm, to live out the rest of their life as a Mundane, without the protection of any open boundary. But even so they would live almost twice the length of a ordinary human. There were also many other reasons why 'cross breeding' between Mundane's and Elflings seldom were seen, but mostly it was a matter of living so totally different lives.

It was while Evelyn pondered on such weighty matters as what color her tongue should be today that she heard the morning post materialize. It usually came with a little 'pooh' to it as it pushed away some air. As she opened it eager to see the sport results, ah well, she had always been into rabidjumping and badger burrowing you see. And yes, that was even before she became a 'she' in fact, reading she couldn't help but notice a photo of a young Mundane caught under a immense black vortex.

The caption said, "Mysterious Mundane Makes Air Wobble", when she continued to read she found that the Morningglory's intrepid reporter had been called out to observe a most mysterious phenomena all centered around that young man. And as the reporter wrote, 'it is not without danger for my very life I at last succeeded in taking those photographs for our enlightened followers reading pleasure.

Evelyn smiled appreciatively and gave a small applaud whereupon the reporter captioned in a small photo further down answered with a most self-aggrandizing bow. There was something about the photo of the Mundane that spoke to her, maybe it was the town? No that was not it, was it the man himself then? Had she meet him under one of her visits to Mundania? As she looked under the photo the text hurriedly became larger as more paragraphs were added to the article while she read it.

This is why the Mundane's never will catch up with us, she thought with no little pride. However great their technology we still will be the leading edge. As she read on she found to her surprise that that the new paragraphs all was about her. 'We have learnt that our esteemed follower and long time admirer Ms. Evelyn Te'daoall has promised to personally take a hand in the matter.'

I will? Thought Evelyn much consternated as she read on, why ever would I want that? 'As we on the Morningglory, as always at your service, now have been informed by our very own, as humble as immensely grandiose, Elf-home's burrow sage-assemblage.

Now Evelyn found herself at a loss of words. Why! Didn't she had enough to do she wondered to herself. Taking care of the observing and channeling of the Mundane's energetic and boyishly unreflective deeds into something resembling a proper framework. "No way I will take care of that ugly clumsy Mundanian ... Mundane!" She snorted uproariously. Sage-assemblage or no sage-assemblage.

One step forward two steps back

As Joe started to walk he could feel the static electricity building in the air. It was as if those twisting cloud-masses were torturing the air itself. Suddenly he heard a 'twaing' and when he looked aside he saw a parked Lexus. There were tiny blue flames dancing around its now open hood and from inside the engine compartment he could hear a wheezing sound.

Then the car-battery must have exploded, it was just luck and his fast reflexes that saved him from being drowned under the acid rain that the battery spewed forward. Now he saw more cars doing the same, their hoods screeching as they opened up, in front of him as well as behind him.

It more and more started to feel like living a nightmare to Joe, with him all lighted up as their only target. But he also got a stronger and stronger feeling that he desperately needed to get away, and fast too. He looked back to his apartment wondering if he might make it back, but then he remembered that he didn't have the keys anymore.

The buss, he thought, I can take the buss. They were the new kind driven by electricity like a streetcar. Now, where the fuck was the nearest bus stop he thought franticly, and how the hell would he get there without getting drowned in acid?

Evelyn dreams

So they believe that I, do they? That I? Me whom already is overburdened by all my responsibilities will have the time to take in a stray human too. They got another thing coming to them if they think so, thought Evelyn as she proudly snapped her ponytail, her pert nose poking a literally hole in the sky around it.

One could almost hear the air sizzling as it touched her overheated brow as she impatiently paced around her office. She looked down at her morning paper again. There were new paragraph's coming in a never ending frenzy now and the formerly so proud and self-reliant reporter seemed, if that now ever could be possible, almost nervous as he continued to report from the scene of action.

Even Evelyn had to admit that it didn't look too good for the young Mundane as she continued to read the story. Then she read 'We make a break here as a news flash from our esteemed Elf-home's burrow Sage-assemblage just have come in.

It says that our beloved and most enchantingly cheerful heroine Evelyn Te'daoall graciously have accepted the responsibility of getting our mystical Mundane house trained and vaccinated for the yearly expose by the Sage-assemblage, now with even greater awards'.

"Now what... " she screamed as her eyes started to glow with an most unearthly glow.

Ah, if you don't mind.

I think we will leave our heroine there for a moment.