
“Hey, Bells! Check this out!”
Chance dropped and swung precariously back and forth by his knees from the metal bars. His shirt flopped in his face, and Bella just snorted.
“Wow, Chance. You are amazing.” Her voice was dry and monotone.

“Hey, Bells! Check this out!”
Chance dropped and swung precariously back and forth by his knees from the metal bars. His shirt flopped in his face, and Bella just snorted.
“Wow, Chance. You are amazing.” Her voice was dry and monotone.

“Tell me why you’re here.”
Stephanie’s fingers traced the arm of the chair slowly as she thought about how to answer that. Why was she here? She sure as hell didn’t want to be. Everyone seemed to think there was something wrong with her. She liked herself just fine.
“Stephanie?”
“Yeah… I’m here. Trying to think.”
“Take your time.”

I shuffle through the square, unnoticed, unneeded, irrelevant. I’ve bumped elbows tonight with the elite of the town: the council of elders who run this place – the ones who’ve been here from the beginning, and who think they know everything that happens here. They don’t. They don’t know me… even when I run into them headlong.

I watch them as I watch everything here in town.
They skip, scamper, and shout at one another — little “boos” in training. They’re nothing like their parents, who were nothing like their parents, who were nothing like their parents, who were… Well, you get the idea.
There’s nothing real behind their masks. At best, I could find a few half-breeds I’m sure, but most of them don’t even have the tiniest drop of bloodless in them. Too many “immigrants” to town in recent generations.
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I was just visiting Gloaming Gap for the summer and only beginning to get my bearings. I’d done that thing that people do when they want to meet people — at least the way I’d been raised, churches were safer than bars. And there I sat, my first Sunday in town, looking around the nearly empty room and wondering what denomination I’d wandered into.