Are you religious?

[Emily] Near the vestibule, where the wooden stand holds an array of crimson and amber votive cups, stands a young woman, with her head and shoulders covered in the Old World tradition. She carries a solemn brilliance, an undeniable grace, that calls back to the places she has called home, to the sacred spaces she has known, named, and carried with her. Here, in this holy sanctuary, where the soft music is not of a resident organ, no, but of a quiet and piped in variety, played over clandestine speakers. Here, she seems every bit as foreign as she does when she opens her mouth, looses that accent that is neither here nor now.

Long, delicate fingers hold the matchstick, tip the flickering light in to catch the wick of one candle. Her lips move, silent sussurations offered up to His ears alone. The spark travels to a second sleeping votive, carried by her hand, burning ever closer to her fingertips. Its wick catches, the little flame jumps to life. Another small whisper. A third.

She shakes the match to douse the flame, blows the smoke away from her fingertips. All of these movements have the resonance of tradition, are imbued with soemthing deeper than the physical truths they display. She moves away from the display, finds her way to a hard-backed pew.

One hand resting on the back of the bench, Emily stands there for awhile, looking over the near-empty sanctuary and then up to the carved crucifix above the altar. There is no warmth, no affection in her features. The solemnity, the seriousness has followed her here. Her other hand reaches up to pull the cowl formed by her scarf down just a bit. Now her features are more visible in profile--dark eyes, small nose, soft chin, clear jaw and cheek bones -- but the crown of her head remains covered.

[Declan] [WP for Nightmares]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 5, 6, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Declan] There was a body on one of the pews. Some nameless drifter who'd crept in at some point during the quiet afternoon and fallen asleep curled up against the back of the bench. About an hour ago, someone had come through and noticed him lying there, but had ultimately decided to leave him be.

Let the poor boy rest.

Now he was beginning to stir his way back to wakefulness. His eyes opened, and with the kind of laboriously slow movement that could only come from muscle soreness, he sat up and looked around. Declan had woken up in churches before, though he wouldn't have been able to explain why if he'd been asked. Something about it bothered him, but then, practically speaking, there were (and had been) worse things to wake up to. There was a dull look in his eyes as he attempted to get his bearings, part residual drowsiness and part unfamiliarity.

He didn't notice Emily at first. Instead he felt inside his pockets to check what belongings he had on him. It was quite ritualistic, this act. Almost as much so as Emily's lighting of candles, though certainly less reverent. The ritual served two purposes: first, to check if he'd been robbed, and second, to see if anything unfamiliar had found its way into his possession. There wasn't much there to be found, today. Nothing of note, anyway. His fingers closed upon a stray piece of gum in his left jacket pocket, which he pulled out and looked at for a moment before slowly unfolding the wrapper and popping the sugar-free confection into his mouth.

It tasted of peppermint, which was welcome, since he hadn't brushed his teeth today.

[Emily] The poor boy, lost boy, unfortunate soul had been left to rest because this was a house of the Lord that lived up to its name: sanctuary. He was not the first to find refuge here, he would not be the last. The kindly man who preached to this flock had taken in another wayward soul not long ago, had given that boy shelter, purpose, direction. It was not too hard to see why Declan was afforded a nap, here. It's possible that he would be offered a hot meal, if he lingered long enough, or an overnight stay on the cot in the basement room.

She notices him stirring, raising himself up from the plane of the pew bench. In honesty, she had not seen him until now and it surprises her, somewhat, that she recognizes him. There is a flicker of reaction across her features, but it is difficult to place. Everything here is muted, hushed. She moves through the sanctuary to take up a seat in the pew before him. Emily turns, laying one pale arm across the pewback behind her, and offers him a small smile.

There are pale marks on her arms that hadn't been so readily apparent at the club. Just below the arms of her blouse. Olive and fading to a yellow khaki. There's a gentleness to her eyes, which a deep blue and not yet too seeking.

I know you they seem to say. Or was it, rather, I know of you?

Into the hush of the sanctuary, she offers only a low-voiced: "Hello."

[Declan] Deliver me, Lord Jesus Christ,
from all my iniquities and from every evil

Holy places housed many ghosts. Some real, some imagined.

Declan reached up to run a hand through his hair. It fell unevenly and stuck out at one side. At first, when Emily sat down, he looked at her blankly, as if he didn't know who she was. Then some gentle glimmer of recognition cleared the cobwebs from his eyes and he smiled, hesitantly. "Hey."

It was difficult to tell, based on initial impression, just how much of Emily the drifter remembered. He'd been feverish on their first encounter, and they'd only seen each other from a distance at the club. He'd disappeared shortly after Emily's fumble on the dance floor, taking Riley's neighbor with him. Declan had looked decidedly less vagrant that evening. Today... there was no mistaking his homeless state.

"Do you come here often?" It sounded like a pick-up line, but he didn't intend it that way. Instead he glanced around their surroundings before looking at Emily with a curious expression.

[Emily] They remembered each other imperfectly, that much was fair to say. And it would be even more applicable to assert that what little they'd seen of one another was an imperfect metric, nothing more than snapshots taken out of context. They are tethered together, in those memories, by an inimitable Brunette.

Riley is not here, now, to mediate this exchange. She does not bolster or brighten Emily's smiles, or soothe Declan's injustices. He is homeless, and she knows a bit about that. Not true homelessness, destitution, sleeping on summer-warm streets, no, but about the rootlessness of never having had a home to cling to. To return to. Not in earnest at least.

He asks if she comes here often, and the Orphan smiles a soft smile of regret. Her eyes, which had been holding his, glance away. Down. Until her lashes kiss her cheeks, and that smile is ever so bittersweet.

"Often enough," she says, keeping the mellifluous alto of her voice low, secretive. As if these thoughts are meant for one another alone. "More often than I'd like, of late." There is a heaviness, then, and she reaches up to pull the shawl down to around her shoulders. Let it fall away from the crown of his head.

"I haven't seen you here before," she comments, mirroring his curiosity gently. Tonight she doesn't push; perhaps it is because she is something of an unwilling, unready ambassador in these halls. It is not her place to judge, to press, to cajole. Here, it is Emily's struggle to find Home in something more than the bauble she wears around her neck, keeps under her shirt, keeps close to her heart.

[Declan] Declan would have been envious of that bauble. He'd have been envious of any kind of tether which could be used to feel a sense of belonging. Of security. Of... home. At least, he would, if he wasn't so desperately busy running as far and as fast as he could from precisely these things. One could want something and be terrified of it at the same time. It was an odd contradiction, and confusing, but it happened. Life was... complicated, that way.

In any case, he had no tethers of home. They'd been severed (every last one) a long time ago. Now all he had were ghost memories, whispering secrets in his subconscious.

He looked tired. He looked like he hadn't been sleeping well. He looked like the world had swallowed him whole and then spit him back out again. Gone was the burst of life he'd dreamed for himself two nights ago. Gone was the easy smile.

Declan watched Emily closely for a moment, but if he found himself wondering about her, he kept it to himself. When she commented that she hadn't seen him there before, he gave a light shrug and sat back in the pew, looking up at the ceiling. Fingertips ran through the five-day-old shadow of blond facial hair on his jaw, feeling it prickle against his touch. "I don't really know where here is, to be honest."

[Emily] ((More than you're saying? -- Awareness))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 6, 7, 8, 8 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Declan] [Man+Sub]
Dice Rolled:[ 3 d10 ] 1, 3, 4 (Botch x 1 at target 6)

[Emily] It was not so strange to want something, and to fear it as well. Emily had plenty of things she wanted, and yet ran from. Here, sitting here in this very building had once been an act of unmitigated Will. Declan could not tell from the gentleness in her features (which covered, just barely, a soul-deep weariness and an aching sadness) how she had struggled, how she continued to struggle with the mantle of her Faith.

The man on the cross loomed behind her head, overshadowed their small presence in the back of the sanctuary. Their hushed voices were backed by the soothing background music. Odd dreams he must have had, listening to that in his slumbering hours.

No pushing, not today. Emily does not press too hard, not too fast. She is a quiet presence, steeped in the understanding of all the resonance that silence can bring, listening to him as if he were a kindred soul, a messiah even -- someone who might shed a slightly differently canted light on this world they've found themselves awakened into.

He doesn't know where here is.

"This is St. James'," she says, watching his reaction to see if he had known that much. "In Lake View. You're a bit away from Riley's, or the Mile." The places they had seen each other before. Every word is laced with Otherness, threaded through with sounds of not here, not now. She has not Dreamed this up; it is native to her.

[Declan] This is St. James.

Declan looked down from the ceiling and nodded, accepting Emily's explanation. The name had no meaning, but her description set markers in place for which he might navigate by. Not that he needed the assistance. Declan was always lost, but he never forgot where he was in relation to things. That much he could feel, instinctively, when he needed to... reaching out and receiving impressions of space and distance.

If he wanted to, he could find his way home. The fact that he was still drifting around the country was evidence enough that he wasn't ready.

"Are you religious, then?" he asked softly.

[Emily] You can never go home again.

Sometimes a person didn't want to go home. The homesickness became a companion. The wish for it was enough to satiate, to satisfy. And home became ever more an idealism. Going home, a body was bound to be disappointed. Home was never what you left it, where you left it. You can never go home again.

Emily had been Home recently. It had gone about as well as could be expected after so many intervening years. She was still homesick, but the edge was less keening.

"Of a sort..." There is hesitence here, as if she is shy somehow, reticent to share with him or suddenly unable to articulate what it is she's doing in this building. "I was Faithful, once, but that was years ago. I'm trying to find my way home, but it is not always easy." Soft-spoken, but carefully. She places each word as if they matter, and if not to Declan then to herself. Being here, it is important. Wanting to be here. Wanting to want to be here -- but the girl, for all her Reverence, does not consider herself among the flock.

"I believe there is something that ties us all together," she says, and it is clear that there is some thin tether between them, tenuous, unsteady, in her mind. "I believe there is a reason why we awaken," here a pause, just long enough to draw breath and continue. "Why we get up every morning and step out into this world -- I wouldn't call it religious, necessarily, except that it's what I grew up in. That surety is Faith: I learned this very young. The reasons come from Him."

She doesn't speak with any fervor, she's not trying to convert or cajole them. These are just words, almost wistful in their simplicity.

"It's not so simple, though. I know that. I just think, sometimes, I still want it to be."

[Declan] [WP to focus - can we remember something specific today without freaking out?]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 3, 7, 8, 9 (Success x 3 at target 6)

[Declan] [And awareness+perception, just cause]
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 2, 4, 5, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Declan] There it was again. Only Declan had no memory of the night at the club, let alone the fact that he'd felt another mage's resonance for the first time. It was gone - all of it. Swallowed up by the great, hungry black void in his head. Maybe this time he'd remember, in the light of day, with the sobering reverence of God watching over their shoulders.

He'd opened up, maybe more than he meant to, and sensed things that sight, sound and smell alone couldn't have told him. The impression of Emily was augmented in his senses with the addition of these intangible but no less potent qualities. She spoke of faith with the absence of religion, and Declan had no doubt in his mind that she felt this to the core of her being. Reverence... was a part of who she was. It was something extraordinary. Like an invisible inner glow. Like magic.

And then, before he could think to stop himself...

"When I was little, I used to visit my grandmother a lot. She always said we didn't have enough faith. I remember... being more fascinated by the stained glass windows in her church than the sermons. I'd always space out and start daydreaming, and when she caught me she'd put her hand on my arm and dig her fingernails in so hard they left marks." He laughed a little, unconsciously moving to touch one of his arms, as if he could still feel it.

And for a moment, he could. He could even see it in his mind's eye, which suddenly filled with images of grand cathedrals and stained-glass windows, and his grandmother's stern, electric-blue eyes. But it faded. Sucked back as if someone had slammed a door in his face, and everything went dark again.

He was quiet for a long moment, suddenly distant.

Then he looked up. "What do you mean... awaken? Someone else said that to me, the other day."

[Emily] ((Awake, aren't you? -- Awareness))
Dice Rolled:[ 5 d10 ] 1, 4, 6, 9, 10 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Emily] She shifted in her pew, letting her arm hang over the side and invade his section of the sanctuary. It could have been awkward, but there was enough compassion to her, enough resident grace, that the fingertips that brushed against his knee -- if it is close enough to touch -- are merely comforting. They pull him away from the sharp dig of memory, back to the gentler confines of the muggy early summer evening.

He sees her in profile now, mostly, with the dark of her curls edging the pale of her face. It means that the intensity of those blue eyes, shod through as they are by grey, is not trained on him just now. Maybe that makes it easier for the other Orphan.

He asks her a direct and pointed question, which seems so at odds with the fluidity he's shown so far. One day he's a feverish vagrant, an the next a houseguest of a trust friend. A few nights ago he was a dervish, devilish and possible deceitful.

Now he asks her a question, which is just the beginning of an unending puzzle, and there is at once sympathy and concern in Emily's expression. She does not look around, to make sure this is safe haven for the discussion. That surety has already settled marrow-deep in her bones.

"Enlightenment," she says, without any technocratic trappings. "Revelation. The day or moment or remembered time when you realized all of this was just a piece of something more -- it sounds quiet pretty and metaphorical." The girl shrugs, just a bit.

"I'm not going to tell you you're different; you already know that. Just that there's some people who are different in similar ways, and in their struggle to define it, to confine that difference in mundane and servicable language, they call you Awakened and those who are not Awake they name Sleepers."

They, they, they. Always They. Emily still views herself as an Orphan, even here, in His house.

[Declan] [WP again - keep it together, you need to learn this stuff]
Dice Rolled:[ 4 d10 ] 2, 4, 8, 9 (Success x 2 at target 6)

[Declan] [Partial success. Spending a WP to hold back derangement]

[Declan] Emily's touch was gentle enough that it didn't send him lurching backwards in instinctive turmoil, but it was apparent from the moment the patterns of their two bodies made contact that Declan wasn't comfortable with being touched. His posture went rigid, and he could feel the pulse of his heart quicken in his veins. It beat out a wild, anxious rhythm against the inside of his eardrums.

At the club, people had touched him. Strangers. They'd touched him in much more intimate and obvious ways than Emily touched him now. And Declan had all but thrown himself at Nico. (And there had been... a great deal of touching thereafter.) Maybe Emily was beginning to figure out that Declan wasn't always the same person from day to day.

And anyway, the instinct not to be touched was quickly surpassed by the sudden and overwhelming dizziness that rose up in him when she began to explain what it meant to be Awake. On the one hand, there was intense fascination. And somewhere... somewhere beyond even the black void... a place that connected to his very soul (the single shard he had left), a keening note sounded.

Listen.

But a shroud was covering his eyes, and the world went out of focus. Declan suddenly shut his eyes and put a hand to his forehead, as if he were in some kind of pain. (But the pain wasn't the emptiness. No, that was safe and welcoming. The pain was his resistance to it.)

The day or moment or remembered time when you realized all of this was just a piece of something more...

(Look into the darkness. There is wisdom there.)

He couldn't remember. And the more he tried, the more his heart raced, and the more his stomach threatened to dislodge its meager contents. This was not something that he was meant to recall. And maybe that was alright. Maybe it was better that he start over. But he'd never be able to do that if he didn't start to... learn. Finally, Declan clenched his jaw, sucked in an audibly tight breath... and forced himself to stay present.

When he looked up, he blinked a couple of times, dazed.

"So I'm awake then. How do you know? What can you see?"

[Emily] He was not comfortable with her touching him. Emily made no fuss about it, just shifted and retracted her arm back across that heavy wood divide. Now, instead of seeing the line of her arm, the pale of her skin, he sees nothing below her shoulder, where the pewback obscures her frame from view. She is separate, hands to herself, sequestered. He was safe from any unwanted advances.

"I know from the way you feel," she says, but it's unsteady. Seeking. The girl's brow furrows and she closes her eyes, rehearses the words in her head so that they might not sound so strange on her tongue. "It's like a shudder, at the base of your spine. Or a word on the tip of your tongue. I'm not sure what to call it -- the flavour, or emotion, or tactile sensation that accompanies people like you. Like us."

There, she'd gone and lumped them in together. Emily swallowed a bit, uneasy to have accepted the grouping so easily.

"You're like quicksilver. Changeable. Mutable. I can't put my finger on it; like you don't want to be contained, or known..." these words are spoken with her eyes half-lidden and her senses extended into what is not readily perceived by the masses. Like she is reading the ether or running her fingertips over the long-lost pattern in a woven cloth.

"Others are suffocatingly intese, hungry, primal, electric, driven to the point of restlessness, or even shiningly brilliant -- each one's different. Very, very different."

She drew a deeper breath, tipped her head back and a bit and exhaled. Like, in a previous lifetime, she might have known how to blow smoke rings or itched for the feeling of a clove between her fingers.

"I know it sounds crazy. It still sounds crazy to me, and I've had months to work at reconciling it." There's a wry smile, now, and at last she turns to look at him. TO see how he's holding up under the oddity of this all. It wasn't easy, and Declan was having a hard time of it than even she had.

[Declan] "Oh," he said suddenly, as if a flash of inspiration or invention had suddenly burst free in his mind. "I understand. I understand exactly what you mean. I got that... from you. Just now. Like... faith. No, reverence. And a little of something else. Like... stubborn and forceful."

He didn't have quite the gift for words that Emily did, but there was understanding in what he said. He'd perceived what she was the same way that she had done to him. It was just that he hadn't had the words for it until now.

"So then... can you feel things? I mean... other things? Can you..." he hesitated a moment, perhaps uncertain if he ought to reveal what he was about to say. "Do you see ghosts?"

And then, almost as soon as he said it, he tried to mitigate the question. "I'm sorry... that probably sounded crazy. I'm trying not to be. It's just... no one's ever tried to talk to me about this before."


[Emily] Like ... stubborn, he says, and Emily chuckles a little. It's a low and resonant sound, and not at all displeased. She can be gentle, from all that unrelenting energy around her. She can be calm and unmoving as well; it just hasn't come easily of late.

"No, I don't see ghosts," she answers, simply, as if there is nothing odd about his query at all. As if she it were just a skill she didn't possess, like playing an instrument or sewing or swordplay. "But I can find the patterns in things -- in people, their breath and the heartbeats; or in spaces, how they interconnect; or in the physics of how things move, the forces that act upon them; even sometimes in they way things unfold, or where weaknesses may lie."

These things, too, she says plainly. And if he took her metaphorically, it would seem that she was just particularly perception, rather attuned to the world around her. Emily had often wondered, herself, if that's all that Awakening meant: seeing what had always been there before with new eyes, and an opened mind.

"Others, though, more gifted than I am can change things. Heal wounds, soothe minds." These things she says more softly, reverently, but with some inward trepidation. There was always a cost.

She offered him a smile, but didn't reach out to him again. "Once they realize that you're Awake, many people will try to talk to you. They think it's helpful; it can be really confusing. It gets overwhelming. It helps to have someone you can trust to turn to, if you're lucky enough to find someone like that."

[Declan] The drifter was quiet as he listened, and for a time there, a spark of clarity blossomed in his olive-colored eyes. This was a rare enough state for him to be counted as notable. Declan usually gave the impression of being... lost. Lost in his head. Lost in the great, lonely world. Only on the good days could he pull a little of himself back from the mists.

Emily spoke, and Declan's eyes widened tentatively. On his knee, a hand tensed, digging fingertips into the worn denim, and his breath hitched just a little in excitement. This was the reaction of an outcast who'd finally met someone like himself. Someone he could share his secrets with. Someone who could prove to him that of all the very real insanities in his life... the existence of something more wasn't one of them. That wasn't something he'd made up. She felt it too.

Most of the gifts that Emily spoke of were unknown to Declan, as his spirit sight was to Emily, but there was one that rang familiar, and when she said it, an almost disbelieving smile hesitantly twitched at the corner of his mouth. "Space... I understand. I can feel it too."

She said that there was more. Much more. Seemingly impossible feats that could be achieved. How was that possible?

(The only rules of reality are the ones that we believe in.)

"Is this really... real? There's more of us?"

[Emily] The drifter smiled at some inward epiphany, perhaps the realization that he was not truly as alone as he had surmised. It was a familiar thought, to the Orphan beside him, separated by a hard pew's back and a myriad of interpersonal differences. But in this, this sudden awareness, this Awakening and Epiphany, they were the same. It gave them a point of congruence in an otherwise shifting and uncertain interaction.

"It's really real," she affirmed, her smile broadening now with that shared wonder and awe. It lifted some of the weariness from her eyes, gentled her features, made an already young face that much lighter and softer. "And there are many of us, here, in Chicago. Of differing levels and gifts. People who are just beginning, like me, and others who have studied for over a decade."

It is odd, to her, to be on this side of the exchange. Gratifying, too, as if all the learning and growing and changing she has done over that past months was not for naught.

"Now that you know to look for them, and how to feel them coming, they may seem like they are everywhere. For awhile, I found it a bit odd. Now it's comforting to have so many people to talk to, or to be around who understand how different our world view is." This isn't entirely honest; Emily finds it irritating and unsettling at times, too. But this is a time to be supportive and uplifting; to pass on hope, not anxieties. Declan was just now realizing he was part of something greater and Emily, for all her youth, knew not to tarnish that with petty grievences.

[Declan] Tradition mages had the benefit of being able to have the universe explained to them from a clearly defined point of view. It was easier, in a way. Shifting one's views from one established paradigm to another was like learning to ride a bike with training wheels. There was safety and stability there. The human mind had an easier time understanding things if it was given a set of clearly defined parameters.

The orphans... didn't have that stability. Mages like Emily and Declan were left to feel out the dark and unformed borders of the world for themselves. Until now, Declan had never really attempted to define his reality, because he'd never been able to shake the nagging suspicion that his mind had completely shattered. So little of the world made any kind of sense anymore. Suddenly presented with proof of an alternate interpretation - that magic really did exist - an entire universe of possibility had opened up before him.

But how would someone as fluxing and changeable as Declan ultimately define reality?

The music that we make will heal all our mistakes and lead us,
The music that we hear is always standing near to feed us.

Emily was holding back. Giving only the uplifting portion of the truth. But from the Apprentice's point of view, it didn't matter. His fears and joys would be his own, just as Emily's were. Each of them woke to this new world in their own way, and each of them would grow and change in relation to it. If he suspected her of hiding anything from him, he didn't give any indication of it. Instead he leaned back in the pew and let out the breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.

"It's real. I think I always knew that it was. I just... wouldn't believe it. The world really is a beautiful place."

[Emily] She let that moment hang, let it stand between them, suspended, wonderous. She let him breathe in the changing perspective and put forth awe. It was glorious, the flicker of faith in something greater; she wondered if this was what the others had seen in her, still saw in her. The girl closed her eyes for a moment and let it all ride, let the warmth and solidarity of this moment chase away the nagging fears and resident evils in her life. She, breathed in wonder and out something greater.

"Just... be careful," she said, at last. It wasn't colored too deeply by her own experiences, she wouldn't put that on him just now. "Not every Wonder is beautiful or good. Keep your head, ne?"

Far be it for the small Orphan to be giving this advice, but she'd feel remiss if she left him with the impression that it was all wonder and no terror. Some of the most horrifying things in her life had happened over the past several months; some of the most beautiful as well. It was a balance, and the whole scale had been bumped up be a geometric factor or two.

"And if you ever need to talk, you can find me. I can't teach you much of anything," she says, quick to make sure he isn't mistaking her place in this new world as more than it is, "But I may be able to help you find others who can, or listen if you've got things you need to say."

It's an olive branch, extended across their socio-economic divide. Perhaps its an indication that she doesn't seem him as all that dissimilar. They have both drifted, wandered, couch surfed -- maybe they were more kindred than either would suspect.

"The pastor here is kind-hearted. If you ever need shelter, he will probably take you in for a night or two. Keep it in mind?" she asked, gently goading him to take better care of himself than he had recently. Another irony.

[Declan] There was more truth to her warning than either of them could have suspected, and Declan of all people ought to have agreed with her. Even now, with the horrors of the past safely sequestered away, he had an instinctual understanding that there were dark things to be found here. When Emily implied as much, Declan's smile fell, and he became quiet again.

The conversation shifted, and Declan nodded as Emily offered up her advice. All of it was sound, but whether or not the drifter would actually listen... well, who really knew. Perhaps he'd simply drift on out of the city in the same manner he'd arrived, and none of them would ever see him again. After some pondering, during which Declan's eyes trained themselves on the floor, he got slowly to his feet.

"I can manage." He always did. Somehow. Though the manner in which Declan survived could scarcely be called living. There was a pause, and then another hesitant but honest smile. "Thank you." (For making me believe that I'm not alone.)

And then he drifted away, out into the streets, to disappear once more in the dark corners of the city.