Late that night, well after Morel had gone to sleep, and they shared several hours lounging outside with the bunnies and cats, a sound ruptured the serenity of the night, and the scape of Luke’s bliss— a Morel filled dream.

  In his fantasy, all was well: the farm was safe, His family had forgotten him, and they sat in serene comfort having scaled an adjacent mountain to gaze down upon their fecund lands.

  A claxon screamed from his data-slate, the screen’s light bludgeoning him awake. He groped through the covers, half-ready to hurl the cursed thing out the window.

  After what felt like an eternity, Luke seized the device, squinted, and read, then reread, the incoming call number.

  It was an unknown number, and no one other than Morel and the few people here at Grey Rock had his new data-slate contact. Assuming it was likely to be Crowley or some coalition contact he had neglected to add to his contacts, Luke decided to answer.

  “Hello?” Luke grumbled, rolling onto his back, looking up at the high vaulted ceiling.

  “Luke! Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick. No one’s heard from you in weeks,” Jackie’s cherubic voice echoed through the room.

  To Luke, however, her smooth voice was a chorus of demons rising up from hell to drag his heart and soul back down with them. His heart shot into orbit, and thousands upon thousands of questions surged to the forefront of his mind.

  How did she get his contact? Did she know where he was? Why the hell was she calling him? Luke had left, vanished overnight, and blocked everyone in his old life.

  That he wanted nothing to do with them was so apparent that even his old mother and father should understand. That was a fact despite them being more stubborn than Button was about food when it came to knowing what was best for the family.

  “Hello? Luke, are you still there?” Jackie questioned, just before Luke, without thinking, cut the call and dropped the data-slate to the ground, it dully thudded against the wooden floor.

  As if he were retreating from a fire, Luke shot out of bed and rushed out of the room. Before he had breached the threshold, his data-slate was already receiving messages, and yet another call, sounding like the gibbering mouths of eldritch gods screaming that he cannot escape his destiny. No—reality.

  The first of hundreds of reminders of his past he was destined to receive that night, and over the course of the upcoming months.

  He pawed through the darkness and descended the stairs while the remnants of supper knocked on the back of his teeth. Luke barely made it out the back door and leaned against the railing before retching.

  His head throbbed with each expulsion; memories of the sight of Jackie and his family in his room flashed in his mind and only exacerbated his disgust further. That only led to more vomiting, it went from wretched predigested food to brackish semi-grey bile after what bits of sustenance Luke had left.

  He panted, leaning against the rail, struggling to breathe. Each agonizing wheeze pushed him further down as the world shifted to fuzzy greys, and tears welled in his eyes.

  “Man, you look like shit,” said a gentle, pixie-like voice from nearby.

  Luke tried to shift his gaze to see who it was, but the moment he did, the world spun, and he vomited again.

  “Fuck, you don’t have to tell me,” he managed to gasp afterward, cleaning his mouth with his sleeve.

  “Well, you seem like the reminder was fitting,” Keyil said, stepping beside Luke and pressing a citrus soda into his side. “Here.”

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  After another bout of vomiting, Luke looked over and saw Keyil face to face for the first time. She was dressed in light clothes that covered just what she needed, while leaving plenty of room for her bat-like wing-arms the freedom to take flight.

  Keyil's hair was a rough unkept batch of bramble brown, nestling her large twitching ears. But her eyes were entrancing blue, as soft as moonlight.

  Despite how lithe she was, her short fangs shimmered in the moonlight, giving her an almost predatory quality.

  She was a far cry from Morel. Keyil looked like the type who would rather stay in bed all day, bundled up with a good book or podcast. Judging by her pale skin, she seemed more like the type to dwell deep in martian mines, not on a farm.

  “Thanks,” Luke said, taking the can from Keyil and cracking it open.

  He sipped from the aluminum apparatus, allowing the clear liquid to calm his vengeful gut. The smooth citric tones pressed his bile down. Luke almost threw up again, but Keyil gently patted his back and calmed him, reminding him to slow down.

  “Thanks… Keyil, right?”

  “Yeah,” she replied, sitting down on the steps beside Luke.

  “When did you get here? I thought you were a few days out?” Luke asked.

  “Got here a few hours ago,” Keyil replied.

  Luke nodded, then sat down beside her, looking up toward Luna. The moon’s bright full body cast bright illumination down upon them. As he nursed the soda, a thought occurred to Luke, if she was here and had this ready she must have witnessed him freaking out and running out of the house. “Wait, what the hell did you just see?”

  “No real idea. I was just getting a snack, and saw you rush outside to puke,” Keyil replied, holding a bag of chips in her wing-hands and shaking it challengingly at Luke. “So what’s on the mind?”

  "Nothing," Luke replied, attempting to shut Keyil out like he had been failing with Morel.

  "Oh bullsit!" Keyil laughed. "A man doesn't rush off into the night and vomit because nothing's going on."

  “I’m drunk,” Luke argued.

  Without any care for personal space, human consideration, or Luke's feelings on the matter, Keyil leaned over and sniffed Luke. He tried to lean away, but she pressed forward like a hog seeking a truffle.

  “Nope, you’re not,” Keyil replied, leaning back, opening the bag and tossing a chip in the air to catch in her waiting mouth.

  Keyil only smiled at his groan, as if annoyance was proof of life. They sat silently, only the loathsome cry of a fox in the thicket keeping them company. She continued to munch on chip after chip, leaving Luke to stew in his own emotions. The bag was nearly empty by the time he gave up and understood this semi-nocturnal woman was not going anywhere.

  “You ever have someone betray you in a way you can’t forgive?” Luke asked, not truly to Keyil, but more as a general question to the world.

  “Dimi did forget to add extra sauce on a few pizza’s here and there, and I will never let him live that down,” Keyil replied, jovially, kicking her heels against the steps.

  “Not what I mean,” Luke half chuckled.

  Keyil swatted Luke’s side, and rolled her eyes. “No I haven’t. So what happened? Did your partner in crime stab you in the back and run off with the loot?”

  “You could phrase what happened like that,” Luke replied flatly, as if he could verbally execute the thought, like a commissar would a roguish soldier with a gun.

  It took Keyil a second, but after shuffling through her four languages of words, synonyms, antonyms, and all other forms of diction. Her eyes went wide when she pieced together what Luke was implying.

  “Family do it to you?” Keyil asked, gently probing the subject.

  Luke slowly nodded, not being fully ready to vocalize what had happened, his consciousness still unable to dredge up vivid memories from his subconscious. He could roughly visualize his father, Jackie and uncle in his bed. But the image was hazy, and unclear, like he was looking through a fog bank.

  Even admitting that was arduous, but having done so did make Luke feel slightly lighter. It was as if for the first time in months he had taken a real breath.

  “Well, shit. It will be alright bud. Time heals all wounds and what not. You feel me?” Keyil said, unsure of how to reassure someone who had gone through a loss like that.

  Such propinquity was something just so well out of her wheel house. Keyil’s only experience with tragedy like that was reassuring Morel while grieving the loss of her parents.

  “Yeah,” Luke agreed, having already felt the salve of time mend that particular wound. He just knew eventually he would have to grow beyond his pain, and allow people into his heart again.

  “Besides it ain’t like they can find you,” Keyil assured, ignorant of the true power his family wielded.

  If the Stephens or Jackie really wished to find him, they could. They could grease palms and know where he was within days. If they were feeling particularly spiteful they could threaten to remove his old professor’s tenure to get the address of Golden Fields and even Morel’s name.

  Hell, they wouldn't even need to try that hard.

  One phone call and a few exchanged chits, and they could hire every private investigator in the Sol system to look for him. If they truly wished to find him, they would. It was a horrifying prospect, one that would come to grim reality before the first harvest.