Ch 2

He got used to Jim's silent, hooved, stifle jointed presence in his home.  They established a routine; Jim's day sleeping changed to sitting quietly and still for hours in the sun, which Shayler hoped was a sign that his health was returning.  Jim's cuts, scratches and deep scrapes were gone, but speaking or doing much of anything for more than a few seconds, sapped everything out of him.
Some days after work, Shayler joined him in the afternoon.  He was unsure what was going on in Jim's mind at those times, but he liked sitting next to him in silence.  It reminded him of the Quaker meetings he attended with his grandparents when he was young.  And he used that time to sit, close his eyes, enjoy the quiet and to listen.  Once or twice he felt that a heatless light was coming from Jim, but when he opened his eyes, of course, there was nothing, only the afternoon sun changing the day inevitably to evening.  As soon as the sun set, Jim would make his way quietly to Shayler's bed, and after 10:00 or so, Shayler joined him.  If Jim was sleeping on his right side, Shayler moved his right arm between his neck and the mattress, and his left arm around him until the palm of his hand was pressed into Jim's chest.  If Jim was sleeping on his left side, he eased his back into Jim's front and Jim put his arm over him until his hand found the center of Shayler's chest.  But few words were exchanged. They moved through the day without speaking, but not without communicating.  Shayler got used to thinking things at him, mostly questions like Do you need anything? or Are you cold? or More apple juice? and Jim would answer with simple hand gestures and facial expressions.
Almost two weeks of living with Jim, Shayler had a long, tough day.  Equipment computer problems, 45 bags of fertilizer with the wrong Ph balance, a defective tractor hydrogen cell and a persnickity agent at the hydrogen cell company, and pre-dawn drizzle that turned his fields into mud:  he was ready for this day to be over.  He kicked off his muddy boots in front of the verandah and climbed the steps up to his front door;  the smell of roast beef curled around him like a cat and when he stepped inside the house, it engulfed him with its aroma.  He went to the kitchen where Jim had yams and yellow squash cooking on the stove, and a roast browning in the oven.  Since Jim began living with him, Shayler kept his meals strictly vegetarian.  Whatever Jim ate, he ate too.  Now, the smell of the roast made him realize what a hungry non-vegetarian he was.
Jim had set two places at the kitchen table.
"That smells ungodly delicious," Shaylor thought to Jim.  "You must be feeling better."
"Thanks.  And I am," Jim said.
"You're going to eat with me, omnivore to omnivore?"
"Um, yeah.  Unless there's a house rule that says no fauns at the dinner table."
Shayler laughed.   Hearing another man's voice in his house again eased something tight deep down in his stomach.  "Patient exhibits a sense of humor, which we take to be a good sign."
"It is," Jim said.  His eyes were still weary looking but there was a new light in them.  They ate in a comfortable silence and their evening continued as usual.
Through the next five days, Jim seemed more relaxed and energized.  He spoke to Shayler a little more every day.  Then, by the time T3 was full again,  Shayler came in from the fields one afternoon and saw a stranger kneeling in his garden.  As he got closer, he realized it was Jim.  It had been so long since Jim had glamored, Shayler almost forgot what he looked like with simple human ears and legs.
"Came here to get some vegetables for supper and noticed all these cocoa grass sprouts.  They'll take over a garden fast, so I started pulling them out," Jim said.
"Wow, thank you," Shayler said.  "Just be sure not to exhaust yourself."
"I'm all right, but yeah," Jim said.  "I better stop before I overdo it.  The sun is sinking fast anyway."
Jim swayed as he stood up, and Shayler grabbed his arm to steady him.
"Still a little wobbly," Shayler said.
"Yeah, but I'm getting there."  Jim's hands were dirty but his glamored jeans were spotless even though he'd just been kneeling in the dirt.  "Let's take a walk.  Stuff I need to talk to you about," he said, with a serious, almost fearful face.
Shayler's heart pounded.  This was the thought he had been nimbly avoiding for the last month -- that Jim was well and he needed to move on.  That this was never meant to be a long term friendship; that the goal was to let Jim stay while he convalesced; that he was well now:  Shayler would have to say goodbye and he realized in a flash of insight that there was nothing in the world he wanted less than for Jim to leave.
"No, not that.  I'm not leaving.  Or at least I hope not, but before you decide, you have to have all the information."
"Okay, I'm listening," Shayler said.  They walked past the barn toward the bend in the Nezpique River which was area of shallows that he used as a makeshift pond.
"You've been, like, incomprehensibly kind, and you have no idea how much your care has helped me heal.  In that light, though, I sure as hell don't want to endanger you by hanging around."
"Why would I be in danger?  You're still worried about about those people who attacked you in Austin?  We're 300 miles away from there in the middle of nowhere, Louisiana."
"They'll find me  It's just a matter of time.  What's important to me is first, to make sure I don't put you in harm's way.  And second, to  be ready for them when they come back.  And third ...."   Jim's voice trailed off.
"Third, what?"
"That's the problem.  Third is impossible because of the probability -- which I'm pretty fucking sure is a reality -- that I can't fight them without you."
"Me?  Why?"

Jim took his hand and held it, interlacing their fingers.  “Remember how I told you I could turn off the reading thoughts whenever I want?  Gotta amend that a little bit.  I realize now it’s going to be hard for me not to hear your thoughts.”

“Explain.”

“Because ... well, it’s not 100% accurate to say I read your mind,” he said.  “It’s more like I can read your heart.  Not your actual organ of blood circulation, of course, but that seat of emotion and thought that’s the core of everybody’s identity.  That means if a thought springs from an emotion, I’m gonna pick up on it.  If you were thinking a purely cognitive thought, like ‘the square root of 179 is 13.37908816159’, I’d have trouble hearing that because it isn’t grounded in anything emotional.  Unless you have, like, a bizarre pervy love for mathematics.”

“Okay, so?”

“So I’m having trouble keeping your thoughts out of my head.”  He let go of Shayler’s hand and leaned forward in his chair.  "All living creatures, and even some that aren't technically alive, have distinct, unique patterns of amplitude, as unique as fingerprints and retinal capillaries,” Jim said.  “They’re the metaphorical backbone of our chi.  That’s why some people meet and become friends and others just fucking repel each other. So even though patterns are unique, they can parallel or match … no, not ‘match’, complement another person’s amplitude.  Sorta like dovetailing wooden beams to make a corner. One’s ebb is the other’s flow, one’s weak is the other’s strong, and so forth.”

“Yin and yang,” Shayler said.

“Zackly.  You, now; you have a pattern that complements mine to a, like, staggering degree.  How much, I won't know until I spend more time with you.  I’ve met only one other person in my life whose amplitude was this parallel to mine.   And what makes this even more amazing is that you’re not a mythic; you’re a simp-hue.”
"Mythic.  That's you," Shayler said.
"Yeah, it's an ironic title we use to talk about ourselves as different from pure humans."
"Ironic because you're obviously not mythic."
"Yep."

“And I'm a ... what, 'sim-byoo'?"
"Simp-hue.  It's our shorthand for 'simple human.'  We usually ...."
"Simple?  I'm not sure that's a compliment."
"Simple as in not mixed.  Simple humans are all primate.  Mythics are primate plus a little extra thrown in.  In me, it’s primate plus hircine.  In a satyr, it would primate and equine.  The point being, don’t say we're not human, because that's an insult of the shittiest degree.  I am human.  Only I’m human plus something else.  You’re simply human. No bonuses.  No extras.  Sorry.”

“So I’m a plain slice of bread and you’re a PB&J?”

“Don’t hate,” Jim said.  “Not my fault God made me special.”

Shayler laughed. “So excuse the thick headed simp-hue, but all that amplitude and complementing?  Sounds like what we call ‘soulmates’.”

“Yeah.  My ultimate point is, what this stuff about patterns and amplitude means is, I would have to make a concentrated effort not to hear your thoughts since your amplitude is transparent to mine.  And right now, with my body and mind working overtime to heal me, that’s just too much effort.”

“Transparent?” Shayler asked.  “You lost me.”

“Know why glass, crystal, and some plastics are transparent?” Jim asked.

“Science 101 in college; optics. It's something about photons vibrating at a similar frequency to the crystalline structure of the glass molecules, so most of the light just slides right through instead of bouncing off like it does with opaque things.  Am I close?”

“Yep,” Jim said.  “That’s a kind of simplified version of how your amplitude is transparent to mine.  Our amplitudes’ modulations are so complementary, that your feelings and thoughts shine through into my heart, into my brain.  Like I said, this is rare."
"So why can't I hear your thoughts?"
"Youi might be able to, given enough time with me.  Generally that kind of perception doesn't happen in simp-hues, but again, our chi patterns, yours and mine, line up almost peak to valley, and valley to peak. I'm not sure what all is possible, but it connects us in an almost inseparable way.  We're both strong men on our own, but together, we could be off the fucking charts.  It's one of those times where the whole is more than the sum of its parts."
"So, that connection between us will help you fight off those people who want to hurt you?"
"In a way," Jim said.  "That's something I want to make sure we're clear about.  If I stay here with you, our connection won't help me defend myself.  It'll help 'us' defend ourselves. Do you understand what I'm saying?"
"But together we have a good shot at keeping them from hurting us, right?"
"The best shot possible.  What we have between us ... it's crazy powerful."
Shayler forced himself not to gulp.  "So, you're talking friends, comrades, brothers-in-arms, or ... more?"
Jim smiled at him in a way that made Shayler glad he was sitting down.  "Oh hell, brother.  'More' is definitely in the offing.  But that's later.  Getting to know each other takes time and it's something you can't force into hurrying."
That night, with Jim's back up against his chest, and his furry haunches on Shayler's thighs, his mind was busy spinning fearful but exciting scenes of Jim and him together, not only in a friendship, but in a marriage too.  Jim finally turned around to face him.
He put a palm on Shayler's forehead and the other on his chest.
"What?" Shayler asked.
"I can't sleep with all that goddam racket in your head," Jim said.
"But what ..."
"Shhh.  Close your eyes and focus on where I'm touching you."
Shayler did, and before long his frolicking mind curled up like a puppy in a rug to sleep.  He yawned.  "How do you do that?" he asked.
"Shhh," Jim said.  He went back to 'spoon' position with his back against Shayler's chest.  Like many nights before, Shayler felt himself slipping into a see-saw feeling with Jim, as though sleep were a breeze gently blowing back and forth between them.

*

The next morning, Jim was different.  He was up before Shayler and he was clearly happy about something, eager to talk.  He smelled like fresh air.
"I went running!" Jim said.  "I felt so good, I went out and ran around the perimeter of your east quadrant field, and back.  I don't remember the last time I felt this good and whole.  It  was ... that was ...."
Shayler sat up on the edge of the bed.  Jim's tail was wagging so fast it was almost a blur, which made it hard for Shayler to concentrate on what he was saying.  Its adorability factor was astronomical.
"Forget my fucking tail," Jim said, laughing.  He pushed Shayler back down into the bed and jumped in next to him.  "Last night ... was amazing."
"Okay." Shayler said.  "What was amazing about it?"
Jim looked surprised.  His tail stopped and he cocked his head.  "Last night.   You know.  Aw, hell.  You don't remember."
"Apparently not.  I guess whatever it is, was so amazing that I slept right through it."
Jim's ears went flat and a playful smile creased his face.  "Check your underpants."
"For what?"  Shayler felt down the front of his boxers and found everything moist and sticky.  That familiar, almost chlorine smell wafted up.
He blushed.  "I ... I .... well this is embarrassing."
Jim laughed.  "Why embarrassing?  It's as natural as dew on the grass in the morning."
"Yes, maybe so," Shayler said.  "But still it's embarrassing for a 42 year old man to still be having wet dreams.  Is that what you found so amazing?"
"Yeah, brother," Jim said.  "You might not remember it, but I do.  And your chi roared down like ... like a fucking avalanche."  He took Shayler's hand and kissed his palm.  "I mean, there was light and healing everywhere.  And my debilitated chi soaked it up.  I'm well.  Completely well, thanks to you."
"Wait .. what?  My wet dream made chi?  You're healed because there is semen in my undershorts?"
"Yeah, but it's not about your come.  It was you."  Jim held Shayler's head with both hands and looked at his face as if he were searching for something in his eyes.  "Whoa.  You don't know that orgasms are expressions of chi."
Shayler raised both hands to the ceiling.  "No.  Not until now.  Semen, Orgasms, and Chi -- they must have forgotten to discuss that chapter in catechism."
"Well, it's true," Jim said.  "And the purest chi ... also the most intense orgasms ... only happen when sex is an expression of connection, union, of merging spirits, of .... of ..."
"Of love," Shayler said.
Jim nodded.  "And last night it was powerful.  I mean, soul-shatteringly powerful.  Volcanoes spewing liquid rock a kilometer up into the air powerful.  The tingling literally started in your feet, and grew until it engulfed us and every cell in our bodies merged for a few incredible seconds.  Twelve seconds, specifically."
"You mean the chi, right?  It's not like you uh ... actually felt my orgasm, right?"
"Oh hell yeah, I did.  I felt it right along with you.  I'm telling you, brother.  We are connected.  Chi was flowing between us like electricity arcing between two poles in a mad scientist's lab."  Jim's face was a combination of bliss and amazement.
Shayler suddenly understood what he was saying.  "So ... it wasn't Onyx I had sex with in my dream?"
Jim shook his head.  "It was me."
The guilt and shame of betrayal flooded Shayler.  Jim jerked back in surprise.
"No, no, no!" he said.  He pulled Shayler close to him and stroked Shayler's face gently.  He knelt on the bed and ran his fingers through Shayler's chest hair and smoothed his beard in a petting motion.  "Please, please, listen to me.  There is nothing to feel guilty about.  There is no betrayal here.  First of all, it was just a dream, and second ...."
Shayler knew what he was going to say.  "Second, Onyx is gone.  Yeah, I know it doesn't make sense, but emotions don't always obey your brain's commands to make sense."
Jim held Shayler's palm firmly against his chest and put his on Shayler's chest.  "I know.  You're right.  I just really don't want you to have to feel bad about this."
"I know you don't.  And in the light of what you said last night, that we were probably headed for a more-than-friends relationship, I shouldn't feel ashamed or guilty.  But 'should' and 'shouldn't' are pretty useless words, right?  I don't know about fauns and mythics, but for us simples, it sometimes takes time for our hearts to catch up with our minds."
Jim sighed.  "I'm sorry.  I shouldn't have said anything.  It was just so fucking amazing to be connected to you like that and I feel healed for the first time in ...   Just wanted you to know that I have one more thing to be grateful to you for."
"Don't be sorry.  That connection: it makes me happy to know we have that," Shayler said.  "I'm glad you could share in my orgasm, because it sounds pretty intense.  Too bad I don't remember if I enjoyed it as much as you."
"Believe me,"  Jim said.  "You did.  Anyway, my point is, the pale ones are strong.  Their attack on your Austin friends' property showed me  how strong they have gotten recently."
"Pale ones are the people who attacked you?"
"They have different names in different cultures, but that's what mythics call them."  Jim heard Shaylor's thought and answered it:  "Why they want to kill me is gonna sound weird, and I don't really understand it, but they want something from me.  My horns and hooves."
 Shayler was shocked.  "For what?  To eat?"
"Pretty much, yeah," Jim said.  "Black fauns like me are rare and tend to be more open to the ebb and flow of chi.  There is a biological, physiological reason for it.  Anyway, the fact that they got some pretty big pieces of my horns means that they are that a lot more powerful now, and I doubt I could defend myself alone.  Over the past couple of weeks, though, I suspected that together, you and I together could prevail against whatever they lobbed at us.  After last night, the way our chi moved together and matched up on so many points ... I'm sure of it."
Shayler puffed out his cheeks and made a chuffing sound with his breath.  "I don't know why I'm bothering to hide the fact that all this terrifies me.  You probably knew it as soon as I did.  But I'll be damned if I'll let anybody hurt you, pale or not."
"Ooooh!" Jim said and poked him in the side.  "Shayler said a naughty word.  He said 'damned' instead of darned or danged or whatever else uptight simp-hues say."
Shayler opened his mouth to speak then closed it.  He thought to Jim:  Uptight?  No use denying it.  Onyx always said the same thing,
Jim reached for his arm and pulled him up.  "Daylight's burning," he said.  "Ready to start the day, Sir Creamy Pants?"
"Yes," Shayler said.  "I'd better wash things off down there, before it all starts to smell funky.  Maybe wash away some of this guilt I'm feeling too."
"That's the downside of people like you, a blessing with a curse," Jim said.  "You feel the good things deeply, love, happiness, joy, peace.  But the bad shit is just as intense.  Guilt, grief, disappointment: those run just as deep.  Go wash up."
A half hour later, showered and dressed, Shayler went into the kitchen where Jim had toast and coffee waiting.  He had an old red bandana of Shayler's draped over his shoulder.  Shayler looked down for a second to stuff his sleep mussed hair into a cap and when he glanced up, Jim was in his simple human appearance with gray denim pants and a red shirt.
"You don't have to expend any energy glamoring for me," Shayler said.
"Naw," Jim said.  “Glamoring requires like, very little concentration, usually, unless your really hurt or very distracted.  It’s more or less second nature for most of us.  I’m doing it now for your comfort.  It'll be a lot less noisy without hearing my hooves clomping around all day."

“Wait, glamoring works on an auditory level too?  I thought it was a visual illusion.”

“Yeah… it works on all the senses, including the tactile,” Jim said.  He sat in a chair at the table.   “Touch my legs.”  Jim's gray pants were gone and he was suddenly in a pair of black boxer shorts.  Shayler squatted and ran his fingers down Jim’s bare calf.  It felt in every way human.  He could feel individual hairs and the bare skin around them.  It felt and looked completely real.

“And the clothes?”

“Glamor,” Jim said.  “Feel the hem.”

Shayler took the edge of the shorts and rubbed it between his thumb and forefinger.  Brushed cotton.   He blinked and the shorts were gone; he was rubbing a tuft of fur from Jim’s thigh.  It startled him and he sat back.

“Wow,” he said.  “That’s fantastic.”

“It works on an olfactory level, too.  I have a tri-sectional stomach, and one whole part is just a big fermentation vat.  Fauns can produce some pretty noxious farts, but I can make it so you never smell them.”

Shayler laughed.  “I have nothing to say to that except to thank you in advance.”
Jim stood up and the gray jeans reappeared on him.  He tied the bandana across his forehead.  "Don't worry... I won't slow you down."

Spot bounced up to them panting, her tail a blur, and the 3 of them went to the larger of Shayler's barns. 
Jim wasn't at all experienced with computers and how they interfaced with his plows, planter, combine, and tractors, but he was fast and quiet.  He seemed better at the mechanical aspect of the work, e.g., just by looking at the sensors' rail on his planter, he could see why one depositer was malfunctioning and dropping much too much Ph balancer on low-acid spots of his field.  When the sun got hot after 10:00, and Shayler took off his shirt, Jim's glamor shirt vanished too.
They were stacking the hay together when Jim stopped and his nose twitched like he was about to sneeze.  "Fossil fuel exhaust."  Shayler knew what that meant, but he couldn't make sense of how it pertained to their work at hand
"No, I smell it.  I smell fossil fuel exhaust."
"Ah.  The only old fashioned combustion engine around here belongs to Sissy and Akoni.  They're our closest neighbors one farm over, about 5 and a half kilometers away.  You can smell that far?"
"No," Jim said.  "What I smell is less than a  half a kilometer away and getting closer."
"Sissy must be going to one of her classic car show exhibitions."
"I love those old cars, but damn, they stink.  I'm gonna go get us some water," Jim said and loped off to the house.

 Spot had been chasing cochineal beetles along the edge of the property when suddenly she began barking.  Shayler recognized it immediately as her “somebody’s here and I don’t know him” bark and he whipped around, startled.  His foot caught a dense clod of topsoil and down he went.

A red Google Guanaco truck kicked up dust as it rattled its way down Shayler's property road..  It stopped a few meters away and out got Sissy.

“Whoa, Shay,” she said.  “You okay?  Sorry if I startled you.  Hello, Spotty-dog!  How are you?”

Now, of course, Spot was barking her “a friend is here who might play with me” bark.

“Yes, I’m fine,” Shayler said and got up with as much dignity as possible.

Sissy was a hugger, and a creature of habit.   Her hugs always went: embrace, squeeze, two pats, let go,  Shayler reminded himself.

“’Morning, Glory!” she said.

“Hia, Cynth,” Shayler answered.  It was a long running joke between them.

  She leaned into the truck bed and pulled out a tray of Mason bottles.  “Akoni says hey.”

“Ah.  Tell him I said ‘hey’ back. “You need any help with that?”

“Nah,” Sissy said.  She set them down on the hood of her Guanaco.

Then, sure enough, she raised his arms.  Shayler did the same.  Hug, squeeze, pat-pat, let go.

"To what do I owe the honor of seeing the Guanaco out of its garage?"

"Taking her to a show in Eunice-Crowley."

“I bet she'll be the belle of the ball.  Good to see you,” Shayler said.  “It’s been a few months, right?”

Sissy squeezed her eyebrows in thought.  “Last time was  … Thirdmonth.  That time you helped me install that booster for the ionizer in the dairy...  So ... four months?  Damn, we shouldn’t go that long between visits.  Which, before I forget, we want you to come over Seventhday, eighteen-hundredish, for supper.  The quinoa is in, so it’ll be fresh.  And, Akoni's been using that new pit he made a lot.  Barbecue and baked potatoes, I could eat every day.”

“And you still stay so fit,” he said.  “How’re Akoni and the boys?”

“Aw, ornery as ever.  You should see Akoni.  He gained a few pounds lately.”

“Yes?  I bet it’s fetching on him, “Shayler said.

“He’s such a tool.  Told me he wanted your opinion, being a connoisseur of bellies, when he grows out his winter beard, if he would look like a bearman,” she said.

Shayler laughed along with her.  “Happy to give my professional opinion.”

Sissy took 2 bottles out of the tray and squeezed the tops off.  She handed one to Shayler.  “Know how much you like my almond agave milk, so we wanted you to have a few.  Made it just last month.”  Shayler took a swallow.  Sissy took a swig.

“So … catch me up,” Shayler said.  “How’s life been?”

She held up one finger and too a few more gulps.  “Great in general, but look.   I was wondering if you’ve seen anything, anybody out of the ordinary around lately.”

If Shayler had been drinking almond milk, he would have choked on it.  He cleared his throat.  “No, nothing weird.”

“Huh,” said Sissy.  “Reason I ask is, we woke up this morning and found a heifer killed.  My last Friesian.”

“Aw, no.  What happened?  Think that bobcat came back?”

Sissy shook her head.  “Whatever killed her, it wasn’t a bobcat.  Neither dogs or wolves, unless they know how to use a scalpel.”

“Scalpel?  Sissy, are you sure?  A scalpel?  Damn, that’s creepy,” Shayler said.

“No, not sure, but whatever was used was sharp.”

“Was she cut up?”

“Skinned.”

Shayler’s mind flashed on the memory of the wide scrapes on Jim’s chest and belly that had taken off his hair and the first layer of skin.  “That’s … horrible.”

“It gets crazier,” Sissy said.  “You remember what my Frisian looked like?  How she was mostly white but with some kind of big black spots here and there?” Shayler nodded.  “When they skinned her, they took only the black parts.  Cut out the black perfectly, left the white.  Most ungodly macabre thing you ever saw.  And… you probably never noticed, but she had one brown hoof and the others were black.  Guess which 1 they left and which 3 they took?”

Why they want my horns and hooves.

“Who would….”

“The craziest part is how quiet the geese were.  The goose pen is back there too, you know, and I rely on them to let me know if anybody or anything is out there.  All night long … not a peep from any of them.  Thought they might’ve been drugged or something, to keep them quiet, you know?  But no.  They’re fine as bone china.”

“That’s impossible,” Shayler said.  “A field mouse twitches a whisker a kilometer away and their honking sounds like rush hour in Lafayette.”

“I know!  Look, I don’t want to scare you, brother.  Maybe it’s some kids from Mermentau City, a prank or dare or something.  Just keep an eye out, though.”

“Will do.  Thanks,” Shayler said.

Over Sissy’s shoulder, Shayler saw figure walking from the house, water bottles in both hands..   Jim, if you can hear me, something terrible happened at Sissy’s house, he thought.  In the distance Jim raised both arms and gave him thumbs up.

Sissy noticed the change in Shayler’s face and looked behind her.  “Ah,” she said.  “You have more company coming in.”

“Um … yeah.  That’s Jim,” Shayler said.  “He’s my friend Jim.”

Jim broke out into a trot. 

“Jim, this is ….” Shayler started.

“You must be Sissy,” Jim said, smiling.  “I’m Jim.  Great to finally meet you.  Shay’s told me more than once what great neiighbors you and Akoni are.”  Spot was prancing around him panting, begging for his attention.  He squatted and ruffled her fur with both hands.

“Great to meet you too,” she said.   She smiled, but Shayler knew Sissy, and it was forced.

“Aw, sister,” said Jim.  “Is this some of your agave almond milk Shay is always telling me about?”

“Yes, ‘tis,” Sissy said.

“Yum.  Can’t wait to taste it.”

“Yes, I just dropped by to ask Shay to keep an eyeball on the area.  Somebody or something killed one of my cows last night, and … well, it was gory.”

“What?  In the outlyings of Iota Township?  Stuff like that doesn’t usually happen way out here.”

“No, sir, it doesn’t,” Sissy said.  “So you from Iota, Jim?  You nearly sound like you have an east coast accent.”

“Good ear.  Yeah, I was raised in Georgetown, right next to the capital, but we moved around a lot.”

“Georgetown?  I have cousins out there.   Where’d you come up, which part?”

“Chesapeake Avenue area.  First Greely Street, then a brownstone on Mixon.”

“And what brings you to Iota Township?” Sissy asked.  It dawned on Shayler then that she was feeling Jim out skeptically.

“Shayler brings me here,” Jim said.  He was beaming his most charming smile at her, but it didn’t seem to be working.   “Just out here for a visit, a getaway from the job and racket in Orleans City.  Relax it all out in a quiet, bucolic setting.”

“What do you do?” Sissy asked a little too quickly.

“Used to teach history part time at OCU, but last year I got my cosmology certification so I style hair part time at a salon in Orleans.  I edit a trade magazine from home, too.”

“I get to Orleans fairly often.  Which shop do you work at?”

“A small one, JohnJohn, between I10 and highway 90 on Calliope.  Know the area?”

“Far west out by Gretna?”

Jim looked puzzled.  “No.  Uh-uh.  Kinda smack dab in the center of the city.”

“Oh, that’s right.  I read a few trade magazines too,” she fired at him.  “Which one do you edit?”

“FOWAM,” Jim said without hesitation.  “Fiberless Optic Wavelength Ampilifiers Monthly.  I edit the technical writing and do a column to help the industry keep up with changes and updates that, as you know, pour out of Google, like, hourly sometimes.”

“Huh.  Never read it,” she said cautiously.  “And … you’re staying  here with Shay?”

“Yep.  And my girl Spot.”

“Ah hah …” she said.  Then Shayler saw her face go from dark and suspicious to bright and happy.  “Ah hah!”  A grin beamed across her face.  “So … are you two dating?  If that’s not too nosy a question?”

Before Shayler could answer, Jim said.  “Not yet.  Friends,  but we were just discussing that this morning and we think there's a possibility for something a little bit deeper.  But we’re taking things slow, seeing where the proverbial road takes us, you know.”

From that point on, Jim was Sissy’s best friend.  “That is golden, brother!  You look like a smart guy.  I’ll tell you point blank that you won’t find a better man to get connected to than this one.”  Shayler felt his face go red.

“Yeah, from what I can tell, he’s a bit of all right,” Jim said, smiling.  He turned to the truck.  “Look at this beauty.  Guanaco … 08 or 09?”

“’Tis,” Sissy said proudly.  “Kinda banged up, but it still runs.  It’s Akoni’s pride and joy.”

Jim touched the truck with reverence.  “How do you keep fuel in it?  It’s not like petrol stations exactly dot the horizon.  Plus petrol must be … what?  17 or 18 dollars a gallon?”

“Would you believe 23.99 if you’re lucky enough to find a cheap distributor?   But Akoni has some connections at the EPA.  I won’t say they’re cheap, but he’s able to get petrol and parts when he wants, mostly.”

“Mind if I take a peek at its guts?”

“Not at all,” Sissy said.  She clicked her key and the hood opened up.  Her and Jim’s head disappeared behind it.

Jim said from under the hood.   “Fuck … me … running!   Are those real ceramic spark plug insulators? Look at the shine on those beauties!”

Shayler didn’t know much about ancient combustion technology, but he nodded and smiled at the appropriate times.   When they had admired every moving part on it, Sissy shut the hood.

“I just now asked Shay to come over for supper Seventhday evening, and you need to come with,” Sissy said.  She pointed her finger at Shayler.  “Do NOT tell him I said it, but Akoni was going to ambush you with his nephew Ray.  Nice guy, but a little on the fem side and skinny as a cell antenna.  I kept telling him, ‘Sweetheart, you remember what Onyx was like.  Shay isn’t into thin hairless guys.  He likes them hairy, with some meat on their bones.’   He says ‘But Ray likes big bearman guys’, and I say ‘But what about what Shay likes?’  Meh.  He’s old school.  He has this idea he can’t shake, that big men only want to be with little men and masc guys only want to be with fem guys.  Same with the women:  masc with fem, big with little. Kinda stuck in an Old Earth paradigm, as they say.”

They both smiled and nodded politely.

“You know, he means well,” Sissy said.  “He worries about you, Shay, ever since Onyx went.  He and the boys think a lot of you.   They care about you.”

“Just he and the boys?” Shayler asked.  “What about you?”

“Me?” Sissy harrumphed.  “I can’t abide the sight of you.”

Shayler rolled his eyes.

“So Jim.  You’ll come on Seventhday?” she asked.

“Wouldn’t miss it,” Jim said.  “It’ll be great to meet Akoni …”

Two boys, Matt and Mark, Shayler thought at him.

“… and Matt and … is it Mike?”

“Mark,” Sissy said.  “Sealed deal!  Y’all show up any time after 18:00 and we’ll barbecue some bison steak and bratwurst, maybe, with a nice quinoa casserole.  And I’ll tell Akoni not to call up Ray because you’re spoken for.”  She clasped her hands together and beamed as if their “dating” had been her idea.  “Y’all enjoy that almond milk, too.”

Hug.  Squeeze.  Pat-pat. Let go.  Jim got one too.   They watched Sissy climb into the old truck and chuff away.

Shayler put his arm across Jim's shoulders as they waved to her one last time.  Jim turned around and grabbed Jim's hand.

"They did it," he said.  "I'm telling you sure as shit, the pale ones killed that poor cow."

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

rewrites:

 “So … Is it safe to be out here?  It’s a fairly bright day.”

“99 per cent sure,” Jim said.  “As long as I keep my head above water, I should be able to sense them long before they show up.”

Shayler picked up the duffel bag and Jim got his knapsack.  They walked back to the house in silence.  So many different questions were ricocheting around in his head that he didn’t know how to start, and he was pretty sure Jim could hear every one of them.  He decided to hold off until they got inside and let Jim have some breakfast and unwind before bombarding him with questions.

“Thank you,” Jim said.  “Not hungry, but I wouldn’t turn down a cup of tea.”

“There’s spearmint in the herb garden.  You like spearmint tea?”

“Who doesn’t?”

Shayler picked a handful of leaves, wet them, and put them in his tea maker.  Jim sat at the table without his glamor and sighed.

“So is all that true about teaching history, cutting hair, editing trade periodicals in Orleans City?” Shayler asked.  “Or are you just fast thinking up fiction?”

Jim rubbed absently at the faded scar on his arm.  “Oh yeah.  It’s true,” he said.  “Except for the part where I said that I ‘work’.  ‘Worked’ is a better term.  Been gone more than a month now, so I’m pretty sure I’m no longer employed at either place.”

“Didn’t you let them know you were leaving?”

(rewrites below)

When he woke up, Shayler had been dreaming about Onyx.  There was a kind of big dinner party going on at the house where he grew up. Even though it was his old homestead, his parents weren’t there and he didn’t know anybody in the room, and he was having his usual social anxiety around all these strangers.  He hid in the sitting room.  But Onyx was there telling him not to mind other people, because none of them mattered.  Then he offered him an ornate silver tray with snacks on it.

“Goat cheese?” asked Onyx, smiling broadly.

When his eyes opened, his bedroom was full of light and there was a new, strange excitement in his heart.  As he woke more fully, he remembered the faun named Jim.  He looked down at his chest.  A tan, hairy arm was draped over it.  He looked over and Jim was there, asleep with his mouth open, drooling a little onto the pillow.  The scratches and bruising were markedly less pronounced than last night.   Jim rolled over, his back to him.  Except for a few small lines of scabbing, there were no scratches or cuts anymore between his shoulder blades, down to the small of his back.  The bruising was already turning pale and healing.  And then there was that, sweet, cottony, adorable, white-tipped tail.

“I told you.  My tail is not adorable,” Jim murmured hoarsely. 

“Is too,” he said.

Jim turned over onto his back and put his arm over his eyes to block out the light.  Even the gash on his forearm had healed overnight from jagged and open to closed with pale pink skin.”

"Sleep well?" Shayler asked.
“Yes,” said Jim.  “Thank you for the chi exchange.”

"Your welcome.  If you ..."

"Look.  You are a very nice man, but you need to understand something.  I have 2 broken ribs and a kidney that got punched pretty hard.  I'm going to need time, peace, and quiet to heal.  So if between now and then I come off as pissy, I'm sorry, ok?  I'm usually a pretty nice bloke.

"Um ... sure.  I understand," Shayler said

Jim scratched gently at one of his long ears.  "So can I get some of that kale now, then sit under a sunny window?"

Shayler filled a shiny black bowl with lettuce and kale

Jim scratched at one of his long ears.  “Who can sleep with all that fucking loud thinking going on?”

“I think too loud?”

“Yep.  To me you do.  You dream loud too.  No offense but your mother isn’t somebody I’d care to meet.” 

“I was dreaming about Mom?  I don’t remember.  She was … an unhappy person.   And you’ll never have to meet her.  She’s dead,” Shayler said.

Onyx, too.”

“Onyx?” asked Shayler.

“I know something about him, though not a lot.  I can tell you, though, that he’s here.  Kinda silly, brother.  It’s like you’re  missing somebody who’s right here with you.  Albeit without the kind of tangible body we’re used to.”

“Really?”

“Very really.  He’s here, in this house,” Jim said.  “You asked me last night, I think – things are a little bit blurry  -- about ghosts being real, and yep, there are beings like ghosts in the world.  But they’re not scary at all.  They’re not evil or malicious or whatnot.  You gotta remember, the only reason they would stay near you is because they love you, and they want to protect you from sadness and danger.”

Shayler couldn’t speak.

“That really was Onyx last night in the garden with you,” Jim said.  “It was his voice you heard, even though you assumed it was your own willed imagination.”

“He’s here.  Onyx is really here.” Shayler thought that if he repeated it, it would sink in as real.

“Yeah, but understand, he’s everywhere now that he is transcendent.  But his beingness is way stronger, more magnified on this property, than anywhere else.”

Shayler’s  emotions were arcing off in all different directions.  Just as the room got quiet, a low rumble in Jim’s stomachs started off quiet then grew to a loud growl.

“Harken, my love, my borborygmus out crows the sleepy cock,” said Jim, hold his hand over his belly.

“What the hell was that?” Shayler asked, smiling.

“My stomach rumbling.  Means I’m hungry.”

“I know what that is,” Shayler said.  “What was that line about outgrowing sleepy cocks?”

“’Out crowing’,” Jim said laughing.  “Out crowing, not outgrowing.  Just this crappy old spoofy aubade from back in the 5^th century BC, of Old Earth.”

“Wow.  Just how old are you?”

Jim laughed then immediately braced his rib cage with his arm.  “Son of a bitch, ow.  I’m ancient, Shayler -- forty five years old -- but not ancient enough to see the 5^th century.  Fauns and pure humans have about the same life span.”

“Well, what do I know about your life span?” Shayler said.  “Give me some mercy, here.  You’re my first faun.”

Jim held onto his ribs and bent over.  “Don’t make me laugh, please.  It hurts.”

“Okay, sorry,” Shayler said, laughing.  “Let’s go have breakfast before your borborygmus out crows both of our cocks.”

“I gotta piss first,” Jim said.

Shayler got eggs, oil, and put a skillet on a heating element on his stove.  When Jim came in, he was back in a pure human glamor, with his simple black pajama bottoms.

“Let me do something to help,” he said.

“Do you like guineakin eggs?”

“Love ‘em.”

“Okay, bust open two and scramble them.  Forks are over there,” Shayler said.  “It is presumptuous of me to think that the hircine part of you likes grains?”

“Fuck, no,” Jim said.  “I love barley meal with brown sugar.” He nodded his head toward the cupboard.

Shayler laughed. “Help yourself,” he said.  “Just follow your nose. My turn to urinate.”

“Urinate,” Jim echoed, mocking him.

Not two seconds after he let loose a strong yellow stream into his toilet, he heard his door alert go off three times:  short, short, long:  his father’s signature buzz. “Pop!” he whispered.  He had forgotten that his father was coming by today for pluots from his orchard.  He tried to hurry his bladder, which of course never works.  The faster he willed his stream to drain, the more languid it became.  Three more buzzes, short, short, long.

“You want me to get that?” Jim called from the kitchen.

“No, I’ll be right there!” Shayler called back.

His bladder became more sluggish as his anxiety rose.  Again: buzz, buzz, buzzzzzzzzzz.  Come on, come on, come on, he thought, and his stream slowed almost to a trickle.

“Your dad is leaving,” Jim called.  “I’m gonna let him in.”

“No, wait, I’m coming!”  He pinched off his urination, even though his contrary bladder wasn’t completely empty and pulled up his shorts.  When he walked into the living room, his father was saying “Call me Raj,” and shaking Jim’s hand.  He had glamored himself into brown linen pants and a tee shirt that said “Isao,” a brand of Taaman lager.

“Sorry, Pop,” he said.  “I was in the bathroom.”

“Shep!” Raj said smiling, and went to hug him hello but stopped short.  “Wait.  You did remember to wash your hands, didn’t you?”

Shayler realized he had not.  “Um ….”  he said.

“I’m joshing you, kiddo,” he said and grabbed him and squeezed him close.  His coat had the familiar smell of sulphur and pulp slurry from the paper mills around Jennings City.  “I was just saying hello to Jim.”  He leaned forward and whispered into Shayler’s ear, “New beau?  He’s pretty easy on the eyes.”

Jim started to laugh, and held his ribcage. “Ow, son of a….”

“You all right, Jim?” his father asked.

“Yes sir, I’m fine,” he said.  “But no, sir, we’re not beaux.  We met last night.”

“Last night?” Raj turned and faced Shayler.  “What the hell are you doing, son?  Please don’t tell me you’re picking up strangers you don’t know and bringing them home?  How on Taaman do you know he’s not a crazy serial killer?”  Raj looked at Jim.  “I’m sure you’re a fine bloke, but you know what I mean, right?”

“No Pop ….” Shayler said, but Jim cut him off.

“No offense taken, sir,” Jim said.  “Look, don’t be too quick to bust his balls.  Your son is a magnificently decent man.  Found me hurt in his woods and took me in.  Might have died last night if it weren’t for him.”

“So, instead of picking up strange men at a bar, you’re picking them up in the woods?” Raj asked.  “Don’t know if that reassures me much, Shep.  Again, no offense to Jim here.”

“Pop, he could barely walk.  His shoulder was dislocated, some people had beaten him unconscious.  He couldn’t hurt me even if he wanted to, and he needed help.  You know … Love you for being concerned.  I know it’s because you love me, but …”

Raj held up his hand.  “I know, I know.  I’m a worry-wart.  I forget sometimes that you’re 40 years old and not my little Shep anymore.”

“41,” Shayler said.  “42 in Eighth Month.”

Raj shook his head.  “Tempus fugit, lads.”

“Yeah,” Jim said.  “I read that on a sundial once.”

Raj laughed and looked Jim over.  “For being beaten unconscious, close to death, et cetera, you don’t look too bad off.  A few scratches and a bruise that’s almost gone.  This all happened last night?  And you stayed here with Shep?  Why not go to the medico?”

Jim smiled.  “I’m a fast healer.”

“Sure are,” said Raj.  “What are you, a mythic?”

Shayler’s stomach lurched.  Jim’s smile didn’t so much as waver.  “Yep, that’s it,” he said.

Raj laughed again and took off his coat.

“Pop, how do you know that word?” Shayler asked.

“What?  You think I’m so out of touch with the modern world, I wouldn’t know what a mythic is?”

“I’d never heard it until ….” Jim and he exchanged looks.  “ … until recently.”

Raj walked to the vinyl chair.

“Wait!” said Jim.  “Not there!  That chair has mud on it.”

Raj leaned over to look at the seat.  “Sure does.  Whoa!” He leaned forward and sniffed. “That’s not mud.  That smells like manure.”

“I’ll go get something to wipe it up.  I sat there last night, when I was still dirty,” Jim said.

“Wait, you don’t know where the towels are,” Shayler said.

“I’m intelligent enough to sniff out a wash cloth in your kitchen,” he said.  “Please, go ahead and visit with your dad.”

When Jim left the room, Raj said, “Nice guy.  All that true?  About his being beaten up and all?”

“The truest,” Shayler said.  “I was leery, but when I saw how hurt he was …”

“That’s pretty brave,” Raj said.  “Or foolhardy.  Not sure which.”

“Maybe a heady mixture of both, plus adrenaline,” Shayler said.  “It all happened so fast, I didn’t have time to be afraid.”

“Always were a pretty fearless kid,” Raj said.  “Maybe not fearless, but pretty confident about yourself.  Just … had it together or something.  Toward the end of her life, I know Mom was rough on you, tried to tear you down.  But your self confidence always seemed so unassailable.  She’d scream and belittle you and you turned around and did exactly what you needed to do anyway.  I kind of envied you that ability.  And I have always regretted I didn’t put a stop to it .”

“I don’t want to talk about her, Pop, not after all the drama of last night.”

Raj raised both hands: a gesture of surrender.  “Just saying,” he said.

Jim came in and wiped off the chair, then sat in it.

Raj sat next to Shayler.  “You’re pretty lucky,” he said to Jim.  “If I was beaten and left unconscious in the woods, he’d be the first person I’d message for help.”  Raj jabbed his thumb in Shayler’s direction.

He laughed.  “Pop, if you were unconscious, how could you message anybody?”

“You know what I mean,” Raj said.  “Look how red his face is getting.  Does it make me a bad dad that I like embarrassing him with how proud I am?”

“Those pluots are waiting,” Shayler said brightly.

Raj ignored him.  He turned to Jim.  “I was just telling Shep … uh, that’s what the family always called him,  about how together he always was, emotionally, even as a kid.  He had this kind of circumspection about him.”

“I have kids,” Jim said. “I know that doesn’t just happen.  It takes some good parenting.”

“I can’t take the credit.  He just always knew who he was and when he found what he wanted, he stayed with it.”

“What did he want?” asked Jim.

“When he was small?  I guess the usual kid stuff.  First he wanted to be a rocket.  Not a rocket pilot, now -- an actual rocket.  When he realized that wasn’t going to happen, he wanted to be a ballet dancer.  Then when he started school, it was a hover craft mechanic and a racer in the Olympics. Then, about puberty, he decided he was going to be a physicist.”

“Pop, those pluots….” Shayler said.

Raj was having too much fun to acknowledge him.  He laughed.  “See, he got this crush on that old 21^st century actor, the one who became president of Old Earth in the two-thousand twenties, what was his name, Shep?

Shayler sighed.  “Christopher Maloney.”

“Right, Chris Maloney. So he was going to become a physicist, prove Einstein wrong, build a time machine, and go back in time to marry him.  At thirteen years old!  Can you believe that?”

Spot heard Raj’s voice and was scratching at the back door.  Shayler, welcoming the excuse to get away from the conversation, left the room to let her in.  She bolted to Raj and licked his hand.

“Look at her,” Jim said.  “If her tail could wag any faster, she’d take off like a rocket.”

“Hey, Spotty!  How are you, girl?”  Raj scratched her ears and patted her back as she jumped up to his face to lick it.

“Sit, Spot,” Shayler said.  She sat next to Raj, while he absently scratched her head.

“Then,” Raj said.  “First year senior, Shep wanted to do a paper on Eugenie Hoover.”

“The botanist?” Jim asked.

“The same, who happens to be my direct ancestor.  A research paper for end of term.  All his life he heard the family stories of Eugenie, the head botanist in charge of terrafloration of all of Taaman, seven hundred years ago.  After that, he was fascinated, even obsessed with her, and said he wanted to be a farmer, grow food, feed all the people, and so forth.  He took a lot of ag and animal husbandry classes, then majored in botany at university, and here he is -- with a thriving farm, just a kilometer or two from where he grew up.  Running everything by himself, after ….”

Onyx’s unspoken name hung in the air a few seconds.

“You’re here for pluots, right, Pop?  I have a tray of them waiting for you,” Shayler said.  “Want me to load them into your car?”

“In a minute.  What’s the hurry?  Quit trying to get rid of me.  He doesn’t want his old pop telling embarrassing stories about him,” Raj said, giggling.

Jim commandeered the conversation after that.  He charmed Raj with his smile and kept him talking about his life, his background, the weather, Taaman politics.  An hour zipped by without Shayler’s noticing.  Then one of or all of Jim’s stomachs growled loudly.

“Damn,” Raj said.  “Somebody sounds hungry.”  He looked at his watch. “Whoa, wowser,” he said.  “I told them at the Senior Center that I’d be bringing them some of my son’s pluots fresh off the farm, and if I want to get there before noon dinner time, I better zoom.  Let’s get ‘em loaded up, Shep.”

“Nice to meet you, sir,” Jim said, shaking his hand.

“You too, and don’t call me ‘sir.’  Call me Raj, if you will,” he said.  He peered at Jim again, in the face and around his neck.  “And do yourself a favor.  See a medico about your injuries, all right?  Nobody heals that fast.”

“Except us mythics,” Jim said.

“You joke, but I knew one at the paper plant,” Raj said, putting on his coat.  “It’s true.  A real live mythic. Of course I was sworn to secrecy, and never told anybody, but I guess I can tell you now that he’s gone.   His name was Brecken, or was it Bracken?  Nicest guy you’d ever want to meet.  Give you his last kupernickel if you needed it.  Diligent and thorough worker.  I think he was a satyr, like, part goat, part human.”

“Faun,” Shayler croaked, then cleared his throat.  “That a faun, Pop.  A satyr is part man, part horse.”

“Faun!” Raj said.  “Right-o!  I remember now, I used to tease him when we were alone at work, calling him ‘Bambi,’ a pun on ‘f-a-w-n’ and ‘f-a-u-n’, right?”

“So,” said Jim.  “Can I help you load those pluots?”

“Got it,” Shayler said.  “You need to rest.  I’ll take you to the medico later this afternoon to get you checked out.”

Jim nodded.  “Take care, Raj.”

Raj waved as Shayler hustled him out the door.  He loaded up the pluots, kissed his father good bye, and waved until he turned off the property road onto the highway.

Back in the house, Jim had water heating on the stove and he was whisking the eggs with a fork.  Shayler stopped in the kitchen doorway.

“I know you want to ask me,” Jim said.  “And it’s all right.  Ask away.”

“You have kids?” Shayler asked.

“Yeah, literally.”

“That’s wonderful.  How many?”

Jim put the bowl of whisked eggs on the table.  “Two,” he said.  “Sorrel is my older, my daughter.  She’ll be 13 next Third Month.  Mark is my son, 11 in 12^th month.  And I missed them to an insane, depressing degree, so if you don’t mind, I’d rather not discuss them.”

“Sure.”  A moment of silence engulfed them.

Jim rolled his eyes.  “Ask, will you?” he said.

“Okay,” Shayler said.  “I guess I assumed you were gay, after last night.  Am I wrong?”

“Yes, you are,” Jim said.  “You remember when I told you that I have only met one other person whose amplitude completes mine like yours does, a soulmate?” Jim asked.  Shayler nodded.  “That person is the mother of my children. Her name is Nelda.”

“Where is she now?”

“I don’t know.  When I was drinking I became the worse goddam asswipe Taaman ever saw.  She very sensibly got out of my life when she saw I wasn’t going to stop.”

“Just curious.  Odd for a hetero man to be okay spooning with a gay man, a stranger, in his bed all night.  Mythics, though, are okay with that, I guess.”

“Fauns are in general,” Jim said.  “Male satyrs and nymphs are notorious homophobes.  In my language the term for a gay man is  anthroposs anthrahpou.  That translates to “man’s man” and the word for Lesbian means “woman’s woman.”  Hetero is “woman’s man” and “man’s woman.”  And nobody’s different, better, or worse than anybody else.  We’re not naturally monogamous, though many of us choose to stay in monogamous relationships, and male friends or female friends often have sex either for fun or as an expression of affection.  We’re not as afraid of our genitals as pure humans.  And like I told you, physical contact is integral to our physical and mental health.  We don’t mind touching other people, especially the people we care about.”

Jim poured dried barley meal into the boiling water covered the pot.

“Wow,” Shayler said.  “So do you have gay and Lesbian fauns?”

“Don’t wanna sound like I’m being evasive or anything, but I honestly don’t know how to answer that.  There are some bucks who only have sex with other bucks, never with does, and if you use that definition of ‘gay’ then, yes.”

“What other definition is there?”

Jim cocked his head to the side.  He took a skillet from off its hook and put it on the stove top.  “That loony pure human definition that says gay is different from hetero in any significant way.”  He gave Shayler an apologetic look.  “We kinda think that’s crazy.  You:  you never have fucked a female.  Know why?”

“Never have been sexually aroused by the female body, mainly,” he said.  “And consequently, I’d never marry a woman, and my culture says that sex is best in a monogamous, committed relationship.”

“And I agree.  It is best in a love relationship.  And that brings up the question, does that logically imply that sex outside of a monogamous relationship is bad?”

“No, definitely not.”

“And if you had a female friend who took your soft dick into her mouth and sucked, you’d never get a boner on?”

“Uh … don’t know.  Maybe.”

“Trust me.  With the right female, you would.  I’m not trying to say your cultural ethos is shoddy.  If it works for you all, then zoom with it.  I’m explaining the phaunos point of view, is all.”  Jim poured the egg mixture into the skillet and the kitchen filled with a warm breakfasty smell.

Shayler cleared his throat.  “Have you had sex with bucks or men before?”

Jim laughed loud then caught his abdomen with his arms.  “Ow!”

“That’s a funny question?”

“Kinda. Because, wow, bet I had sex with more men than you.  Way more, probably.  It’s easily in the triple digits.  Two hundred, maybe.  And that’s just pure humans, not counting the bucks.  But don’t look so shocked.  We age differently.  After about the 7^th year, fauns are biologically adolescents.  So I had a longer time to fuck than you.”  He winked.

“I have no judgments, brother,” Shayler said. 

“Answering your next unspoken question, no.  I won’t have sex with you.”

Shayler’s face began a slow burn as disappointed embarrassment welled up.

“Not yet, anyway,” Jim said. “So don’t feel so rejected.”

“Why not?  Not attracted to me that way.  I can understand that, because I …”

One loud laugh escaped Jim’s mouth without his intention, apparently, because he winced and grunted with pain.  “No, you funny pure human.  I am very attracted to you, physically and in all the other ways too.  I mean look at you…  What’s not to lust over?”

“Then…?”

Jim clicked off the stove and covered the barley.  He clasped his hands together as if in prayer and brought them up to his chin.  “Because your heart is so transparent to mine.  Which means that if we do fuck, neither one of us is going to want it to be a friends only, no ties that bind kind of situation.  It’ll be big.  It’ll be serious and intense.  It’ll be powerful.  For that to happen the way it should, we need time to get to know each other.”

“I have time,” is all Shayler could think to say.

Jim poked at the eggs.  “I think breakfast is ready.”

Shayler’s head was reeling with the idea of a relationship with Jim. Waking up every day with his arms around him, doing chores together, having meals together, kissing him during foreplay, building up the farm, reuniting with his children and raising them here …

“Shayler!” Jim said.

“Yeah?”

“I asked you to start the coffee if you don’t mind.”

“Sorry,” Shayler said.  “Daydreaming about what a relationship with you would be like.”

“Don’t get ahead of yourself, brother.  Speculating too far in advance can set up expectations that won’t get met.  Do yourself a favor focus on the now.  One day at a time, as the AA people say.  Try to curtail the fantasies about the blissful future.  That almost never does anything good.”

Shayler popped in one giant coffee-limeni (Taaman ginseng) bean into the brewer, and the machine kicked in.  “You’re probably right.  You’re definitely right.  Too much future and not enough now, never  gets your garden weeded.”  He went to the cooler.

“Nice botanical metaphor.”

“Drink milk?” Shayler asked.

“Hircine milk?  You kidding?  It is my favorite drink in the world.”

“If you mean goat milk, no. Sorry.”

“Musteline?”

“No.  Not even sure what that is.”

“Ferret milk.”

“Ugh.  No, it’s …”

“Cervine?  Deer milk?”

“Just …”

“Oh, oh!  Is it bubaline?”

“It’s plain old cow milk!” Shayler shouted.  He surprised himself and immediately lowered his voice.  “Just cow milk.”

A sweet smile spread over Jim’s face.  “Kidding.  I gotta tell you, it’s both flattering and scary how drawn to me you are.”

“And am I the only one in the kitchen who’s being drawn to anybody?” Shayler asked, and watched intently for his reaction.

Jim put his head down, as if he were studying the floor.  When he raised it, he wasn’t smiling and he looked oddly shy. “No, not the only one.  I’m … drawn to you, too.  That’s the scary part.”

“Then I expect that getting to know each other will be a lot of fun,” Shayler said.

*

After eating, Jim wanted to rest, so Shayler went out to the barnyard to hook up his disk plow to his old orange Case TIH tractor.  He drove it to his northern quadrant where he had harvested wheat last week, and set it to make laps starting along the perimeter and spiraling in, turning up the drying wheat straw.  He jumped up to the tractor seat to watch the sonar screen for any patches of soil that needed extra nitrogen.  He could see into the woods across the property road and on his 3^rd run around the field, he thought he caught movement from the corner of his eye.  He ignored it, thinking it was a bird, or maybe Spot playing among the trees.  Again, a little while later, he thought he saw through his peripheral vision, quick movement among the trees, too quick for a bird or Spot.  It kept happening the whole time he plowed.  He turned off the computer, and walked back out to the edge of the field to listen.   He heard nothing.  He took his biggest machete from his tool box and walked across the road into the woods.

“Hello?” he called.  “Who are you?  You need to know that this is private property, and you’re trespassing.  Sheriff Chiang is a friend of mine, so you’re messing around with the wrong bloke here.”

All he heard was wind in the trees.  He peered into the woods’ jumble of shapes and shadows.  He walked slowly, trying to be aware of everything.  At the sound of crunching dried leaves behind him, he whipped around and raised his machete.

Spot came crashing through an ilex bush.  She wagged her tail and panted at Shayler.  He relaxed; if anybody was in this part of the woods, skittish Spot would have raised a ruckus.

He called the sheriff’s office as soon as he got in the house.  His second in command, Joyce, answered.

“Deputy Chiang ain’t in right now, Shayler,” Joyce said via his phone screen.  She had a peeled piece of quatoroot in her hand and was dipping it into something that looked like khyvahnut butter.  “You wanna leave him a message?”

“Yes, please,” Shayler said.  “Tell him somebody’s hanging around in my woods out here off the Evangeline highway.  Some poor bloke was beaten up there last night and today I’m pretty sure I saw somebody running around back there.”

Jim ran into the room waving his hands and hissing.  “Quit!  Close up! No!” he whispered in agitation.  He was not glamored, but he hopped and slashed the air with his hands just out of the video phone’s camera’s view.  As he jumped and gestured, the sound of his hooves was thunderous.

“What is that racket?  It sounds like you got yourself a cow in there dancing the Old World schottische,” Joyce said.

“Oh, that’s just Spot,” he said.  “I got her a fairly big gelatin bone and she’s playing with it.  Down Spot.  Sit, girl!” he commanded, looking at Jim.

“Awwww, she’s such a sweet girl,” Joyce said. She took a huge bite and crunched into her microphone.  “Some of Sybill LeJeune’s bison got out and Sheriff C and a few of the guys went out there to help her round them back up.”  CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH   “Sorry, but I dunno when he’s gonna be back, hon.  You want him to send Kyler over there if he can’t make it?” CRUNCH CRUNCH CRUNCH

“Uh, I guess.  Sure.  Thanks, Joyce.  Tell Rocco and the kids I said hello.”

“Will do, hon.  You take care.  Bye now.”

Shayler clicked off his screen.

“You called the law?” Jim asked, distraught.

“Yes,” Shayler said.  He told Jim what he saw from the tractor.

“Oh hell.  Oh damn.  Oh fuck.  This is my fault.  I should have told you not to call the cops.  They can’t help.”

“Why not?”

“The people who fucked me up?   They’re not people.”

Shayler waited.  “Well?  If they’re not people, what are they?  Mystics?

“Not hardly,” Jim said.  “Look brother, we have to tell the cops that it was a mistake, that it was a deer or something.  They can’t get involved in this.”  He peered through the window toward the woods.

“Why not?”

“Because they could DIE,” Jim exploded.  “All the firearms and burn bullets and laser grenades and bolt rifles in Taaman will.  Not.  Help.  Them.”

“Sure. Okay. I’ll tell whoever comes out here that it was an emu.  They run wild all over this sector.  Dial back.  Calm yourself.”

“Okay,” said Jim.  He puffed out his cheeks and blew a chestful of air out.  “Calm, but alert, is where I need to get.”

“Are you worried?” Shayler asked.  “Do you think they’ll come back?”

“Honestly?  Don’t know,” Jim said, still peering out of the window.  “They don’t linger around one place too long, usually.”

“They?  You know these non-people, or whatever they are?”

“Know of them.  These things, you don’t wanna know personally.”  He looked at Shayler.  “Yeah, I know you’re scared.  I am too.  Worse, I hate it that you’re involved in any of it.”

“How am I involved?” Shayler asked.  “I don’t even ….”

“The minute you let me into your house, not to mention your mind and your heart, you were involved.  I’m so sorry.”

“So.  Okay.  Are we in imminent danger?”

“Ninety percent sure we are not.  I don’t think they get close to the house, if they’re minor foot soldiers, and ninety nine percent sure they can’t come in.”

“Foot soldiers?  So we’re in a war?”

“Yep.  An old, old one.”

“I have cheap, three dollar locks on the doors.  What’s to keep them from coming into the house?”

Jim came over and put his hand in the center of Shayler’s chest.  “Onyx,” he said.  “They’d have to be way high up in the hierarchy to be strong enough to make a dent in Onyx’s presence in this house.  Man, he must’ve been a strong pure human.”

Shayler sat in a chair.  “One of the strongest people I knew … know, if he’s still here.”  He looked up at Jim and though to him, but I’m scared.

“I know, brother.  But calm and alert is the soup du jour, right?  Something else: they get their strength from light, specifically the light quanta and their synchrotron radiation.  So the darker it is, the weaker they become.”

Jim came up behind him and massaged his shoulders and neck.

“So while they attacked you in the woods, there wasn’t a lot of direct light.  So why weren’t they weak?”

“They were weak, relatively speaking.  If they’d have caught me out in the sunlight, it would’ve been a whole hell of a lot worse.”  Jim kneaded his shoulders gently and in a slow rhythm. “So wouldn’t you like to stay in for the day, rest, eat, get to know each other?”

The more he massaged, the less Shayler worried.  After a minute or two, he felt no fear.  He was still aware of the danger, but the frantic-feeling fear was gone.  Calm and alert is the soup du jour.

“How in Taaman do you do that?”

Jim came around and wiggled his fingers in the air.  “Magic hands,” he said, grinning.  “Come here.”

Before Shayler knew it, they had been on the futon, lying side by side for an hour, talking.  Shayler knew, however, that he was doing most of the talking himself and Jim was pulling information out of him, the way he had done to Raj.

“So … Shep,” Jim said.  “What got you that cognomen?”

Shayler laughed and rolled his eyes.  “It’s embarrassing.”

“Good.  Tell!”

“All right, then.  When I was young, like two or three, we had a dog, a big, sweet Rottweiler, Shep.  I followed that dog everywhere, to hear Pop tell it, and he took care of me like a babysitter.  I was too young to remember any of it, but whenever they called for Shep, I’d come toddling out.  So I responded to the name ‘Shep’ a long time before I responded to the name ‘Shayler.’  To get my attention, they’d have to call me that because I had no idea who this ‘Shayler’ person was.”

Jim went up onto his right elbow and Shayler almost warned him to remember last night’s dislocation.

“Nope,” Jim said, moving his shoulder around.  “All healed just like I told you.  And speaking of dogs – ‘Spot’?  You seriously named your dog ‘Spot’? Why would you do that?”

“Um, because have you seen her?  That big yellow area on her otherwise gray and white body?  The area shaped kind of like Lake Sergey Brin?  That’s called a spot.”

“You know what I mean.”

Shayler interlaced his fingers behind his head, with both elbows point straight out.  “Yes, I know,” he said.  “It’s because, for some reason, I strongly dislike it when people name their pets after famous people, especially obscure ones.”

Jim laughed.  “Me too!  Holy fuck, I have this friend who has a cat he named Oprah.”

“Oprah?  Who’s that?”

“Zackly.  Nobody knows.  Well, I do because my degree from university is in Late 20^th Century Culture.  She was pretty decent, this rich person in the late 1980s who had a program on network where she apparently made fat people thin and made sad people cry.  Oh, and she also gave away money and ‘horseless carriages’ as they used to be called.”

“Insane!” Shayler said and laughed.  “Growing up, my cousin had a dog named Eah-Hoo.”

Jim laughed and held his rib cage.  “Goddam it,” he said and laughed some more.  “Eah-Hoo?”

“Yes,” Shayler said.  “I could tell he was disappointed nobody ever asked him, “Eah-Hoo?  Is he named for Dahgamay Eah-Hoo, the winner of the first Google Peace Prize, given in honor of his incisive political novel about talking Taamanite seabirds and governmental attempts to deny their existence?  Or after the long defunct search engine of Old Earth?’”

Jim couldn’t contain himself and laughed loudly then wince in pain, then laugh again and laughed again anyway.  “Imagine him, standing out in the yard at dusk calling his dog,” he said.  “‘Eah-Hoo!  Eah-Hoo!  Eah-Hoo, goddamit!!’ and the shrinks and medicos show up asking ‘Is someone cracking up?  We heard there was a loony goon here hollering ‘Yahoo! Yahoo!” to the moon.’”

After their peals of laughter settled down, Shayler asked, “Wait; there’s no such thing as talking seabirds, right?”

Jim held his sore torso with both arms and snorted with laughter.  “You make me laugh … in a good way, in the best way.  ‘Eah-Hoo’!”

“Spot is at least a better name than Eah-Hoo, you have to admit,” Shayler said.

Jim threw his shaggy leg over his and wiggled closer.  “Recognize the name Flannery O’Connor?”

“No.  Who is he?”

“She.  She was one of my favorite writers of Old Earth back in the 1950s and ‘60s.  She died young, like age 35 or so, from what they called ‘lupus’ back then.  Anyway, she once told a friend that her mother, who was very old regime, was the kind of person who would name her dog ‘Spot, without irony.’  Apparently her mama was kinda literarily innocent and oblivious to clichés.  Anyway, Flannery said that if she herself had a dog, she would name it ‘Spot’ with irony, but to the casual observer wouldn’t know the difference.  So the court asks you, Mr. Logonos, do you or do you not attach significant irony to your dog’s name, this alleged ‘Spot’?

“Your honor, I do not.  But I am answering ironically.  So … you decide.”

“Mr Logonos, you are out of order,” Jim laughed and cocked his head to look at Shayler.  “Talking about names, ‘Logonas’ is pretty exotic sounding.  Greek?”

“Yes, but only about 3 generations ago.  Most of my background is Canada and the United States.  They weren’t First Colonizers.  They came on the third wave, after the plutocrats set up death camps for liberals and non-Caucasoids.  Ethnically speaking, I’m a mutt with a Greek surname.”

“I like its sound.  Cool and different,” Jim said.

“You know what’s a cool, different name?  Yakamo Kay…. Kiff…”

“Stop mutilating my name, you poor pure human.  It’s Iacomos Kaphe.  Which of course is also Greek.”

“Now, that’s exotic,” Shayler said.

Jim harrumphed.  “Not so much.  In English it’s kinda pedestrian: ‘James Brown’. No relation.”

“No relation to who?”

“James Brown.”

Shayler shrugged

“The godfather of soul?  In the 1950s?”

 “Soul?  I don’t know who you mean,” he said.

“You Philistine!” said Jim.  “And here I thought you were an educated, well informed pure human.”

“Um, my degrees are in ag and botany, and they’re useful.  Not in twentieth century North
American culture, which, well … let’s face it…”

“Fuck you, o’ bro of mine,” he said.

“Ok,” Shayler said, a little too quickly.

Jim sat up and smiled.  “Soon,” he said.  “I feel it getting sooner all the time.”

“Thank you for distracting me from the … light eating non-people out there,” Shayler said.

“Thank you for that too.  And for distracting me from thinking about this,” Jim said and ran his hands gently over his truncated horns.

“They hurt, your horns?”

“Not physically.”

“Emotionally?  Mentally?”

Jim had a somber look.  He glamored into his pure human form, shirtless with the same simple black pajama bottoms.  “Emotionally and mentally it’s, like, the worst thing you could do to a faun.”

Shayler wanted to ask about Jim’s kids and their mother, but Jim probably sensed it and stood. “I could go for some kale,” he said.

They had lunch leisurely.  Jim Googled James Brown and ran a vid of “I Feel Good.”

“That guy had some phenomenal moves,” Shayler said.

“You mean like this?”  Jim stood in the middle of the room and copied James Brown’s dancing perfectly.

                        They set up the GGP (Google Game Platform) and worked up a sweat playing soccer and volleyball.  Jim won every time.  When they plopped back onto the futon, Shayler’s sweat ran down his face and drenched his shirt.  He panted to catch his breath and Jim barely breathing hard.  Shayler realized how fast the day had flown by.

“Clock,” he said, and the time, temperature, moons’ phases, and date appeared on the wall over the sectional.  “Four thirty-five,” he said.  “The sun sets in about an hour.  We’re almost home free.”

“I’m pretty sure they’re not coming back.  When they’re anywhere within smelling distance, I know it.  They reek of something that smells like sodium hypochlorite and spewed up bile.”

“Bleach and vomit?  I’m not envying your superior sense of smell anymore.”

Jim sniffed at the air.  Then put his nose into Shayler’s wet hair and inhaled.  “Oh, freaken lords of the cosmos.  Your sweat smells … smells….”  He sniffed again.

“Smells like what?” Shayler asked.

 “I know it’s odd to you but …. To me your sweat smells like bittersweet mizalberry leaves, or ….”  He inhaled again.  “Like … Old Earth cinnamon in a musty attic…”  He pulled up Shayler’s shirt and sniffed up and down his torso, belly button to the cleft between his pecs.

Shayler squirmed and laughed.  “Quit!  Quit, that tickles too much!”

Jim knelt over him, inhaling with his eyes closed.  “It’s an octillion times more intoxicating than anything I ever drank in my life.” he said.

“I’ve been sweating all day with you.  Just noticed it now?  I thought you noticed everything all the time.” Shayler said.

Jim gave him a cryptic smile.  “Not everything all the time.  I notice things when it’s time for them to be noticed, though.”

“Did Nelda’s sweat smell the same to you?” Shayler asked.

“Same?  No.  Just as galvanic, but in a different way.  Your smell is surprisingly unique.”

Shayler sat up.  “Why surprisingly unique?”

“Because phaunos usually think pure humans stink, like meat gone bad,” Jim said and thumped Shayler on the nose.  He laughed, jumped up and ran into a small room off Shayler’s bedroom.  Shayler ran after him, but he was stopped at the door, looking around the room.  Shayler saw the moment his eyes focused on the box of Onyx’s ashes.

Jim raised one hand up to the ceiling.  “Feel that?  The air is vibrating in here.”

“I’m sure you know what that urn is.”

“Yeah.  Why keep it in here?”

Shayler shrugged.  “Don’t know.  Toward the end, he had periods of delirium.  The day of, he told me to do something quote unquote valiant with him when he was gone.  Don’t know if that was delirious raving or not.  Guess I’m still deciding what he meant.”

Jim shuddered and shut his eyes for a few seconds.  When he opened them again, he said, “He knows you’ll figure it out.”

*

As soon as the upper rim of the sun set completely they went out.  Jim lifted his head and his ears went up and out like a pair of alpha wave detectors.  He turned in a 360° circle, sniffing.  “Don’t smell anything,” he said.  “Don’t hear anything.”

“So they’re not around?”

“They’re not.”

Spot came up with her rubber squeaky turtle and wanted to romp, so they played chase with her by the barn until it got too dark to see.  Shaylor’s motion detector light flicked on when she went under it to lap sloppily at her water bowl.

“What’s in those shallows behind your silo?”

“Um, nothing.  It was a pond for freshwater porgies and water pears, but I had to sell them all after Onyx died.  So I paid the Township to dig it out from here to the river bank and connect to the Nezpique. So to answer your question, nothing.  Now it’s just a quick diversion for Nezpique River.  Why?”

Jim smiled a happy, boyish grin.  “I wanna swim,” Jim said.  His glamor went away and he ran on happy hooves to the pond. 

“Great!  Um … going to change into a suit and bring towels,” Shayler shouted after him.

Jim scoffed loudly.  “What? Trunks and towels?” he yelled.  “Why?  How far off is your nearest neighbor?”

“The Cannings are about 9 kilometers across the highway,” Shayler said, trotting up to the pond.

“So if we don’t have trunks, who’s gonna see our dicks?  Nobody, that’s who,” Jim said, grinning.

“You don’t want towels either?”

“Last night after your bath, you didn’t use a towel,” Jim said.  “Why dirty one now? It’s been a long time since either of us had a blow job.  Let’s just let Aeolus blow dry us.”  He leaped, curled into a ball shouting “Taaman forever!” and splooshed into the pond.   When he surfaced and shook water from his hair, he gave him a look that said:  Well?

Shayler folded his shirt and trousers slowly.

“Brother, I know you’re stalling,” Jim said.

Shayler stood in his white underwear, not sure what to do with his hands.

 “It feels … weird,” Shayler said.

Jim walked up out of the water and stood in front of him.  “God, you are so repressed.  I can hear your trepidation.  Wanna say it aloud?  Or you want me to?”

Shayler put his thumbs in the elastic waistband of his boxers.  He looked at Jim, so beautiful standing there with water glinting on his hair, beard, and poor broken horns.  “Mine’s just so much smaller than yours,” he said in a small voice.

Jim put the tips of his index fingers next to Shayler’s thumbs and slowly, purposefully, pulled down Shayler’s underwear.  He stood back and looked at Shayler’s penis, then up at his face.

“I think it’s the most beautiful dick I have ever seen.  And I’ve seen a lot,” Jim said.  He reached down and cupped Shayler’s scrotum and slid his hand up to his quickly growing penis.  “And it’s big enough for me.  You pure humans’ obsession with size is ab-fucking-surd.”  He put one hand on each side of Shayler’s face.

“Quit worrying,” Jim said and combed Shaylor’s beard with his fingers.  “Never hide your beauty just because you’re afraid.  Don’t deny the world the honor of seeing it.  And no, I am no longer talking only about your dick, but it’s included.”

 “Seriously, how do you do that?  Make me let go of my embarrassment?”

Jim just smiled.  Shayler suddenly realized that Jim’s penis had made its presence known too.  “Sure I can’t help you with that?” he asked.

“No, brother, thanks.  We’ll get there in time,” Jim said, pulling him into the water.

The pond’s chilliness should have put a dent in his erection, but it didn’t.  Jim splashed around, doing his imitation of whales jumping out of the water playfully.  He dove underwater and came up between Shyler’s legs, his thighs on Jim’s shoulders.  Shayler gasped in as Jim pushed him high into the air and caught him just as he hit the water.

Cradled in Jim’s arms and buoyed by water, very centimeter of Shayler’s skin tingled with adrenaline rush.  He and Jim laughing, with their faces inches apart, with his heart pounding: a vaguely familiar feeling crashed through him, and he wondered what it was.

“Think about it,” Jim said.  “You know what it is.”

“Tired of thinking,” Shayler laughed.  “I just want to feel.”

Jim let him go and helped him stand.  He put his lips up to Shayler’s ear and whispered, “It’s joy, brother.”

Of course Jim was right.  “Joy,” Shayler said.  “Yes.  It’s been a long time since I had any of that.”  He blinked rapidly a few times as if he was stunned and dazed. “It’s overwhelming.”

“It is. Damn!  Practically getting a sunburn from it, brother.”

“You feel my joy?” Shayler asked.

“Yeah, I do.  Gotta tell you, I’m in fucking awe of your capacity to feel.  Fear, joy, love, anger: they’re off the map with you.”   Jim rubbed one horn affectionately against Shayler’s shoulder and neck.  “Honored that I can experience that with you.”

“Honored?” Shayler laughed.  “I’m thankful that you make me feel this way.”

“No, no, no,” Jim said.  “I’m not making you feel anything. Don’t assume that.  That’s a basic fact that pure humans never get.  Nobody can cause you to feel anything.”

Shayler hit the side of his head with the heel of his hand to jar loose water in his ear.  “But if you weren’t here with me just now, I wouldn’t be feeling this now.  Wouldn’t be standing in the middle of a pond feeling this way alone.”

Jim pushed off and floated on his back, kicking his hooves to propel him around Shayler in slow circles.  “You don’t know that,” he said, “Maybe, maybe not.  My point is, I might have done something that led you to toward that feeling, but your reaction to it is yours.”

 “Too much philosophy not enough swimming,” Shayler said.  “I think all the time.  All the time! And it’s exhausting.  Can we just swim and be happy?”

Jim laughed and said he’d love that.  They played tag in the water for a while until Shayler was out of breath. 

“Didn’t know goats took so well to the water,” Shayler said.

“They don’t.  But I’m not a goat.  I’m a faun.  Like I said: human but with a little bonus.  It’s like your pluots. If you interviewed a pluot for a research study, and asked him what’s it like being a plum, he’d say ‘Fuck if I know.  I’m not a plum.  I’m the inextricable union of plumness and apricotness’.”

“You have goat, you have human, but the way you’re splashing around, I’m wondering if you might have a little otter in there too.”

They stood in the middle of the pond, where the water was less than a meter and a half deep.  T-2 was bright, almost full, and dousing them with dim bluish light.

Shayler waded to the edge of the pond and lay at the edge of the water.  He was getting to like the feel of his penis out in the open with nothing to be shy about.  Jim seemed to be testing himself for how long he could hold his breath underwater.  He dove down and stayed underwater for long enough that a time or two, Shayler worried about him.  He’d pop up for a gasp of air, then go back down.  Finally, when he broke the surface and hooted.  “Finally I made it past thirty….”

Jim stopped in mid sentence.  His victory fist pump was frozen in the air while he stood completely still and sniffed three times.  At that same time, Shayler was startled by a tall thin man with very long fingers standing at the edge of the pond, but when he looked over, nobody was there.   Before he could even blink, the man appeared on the opposite side of the pond, this time wearing some kind of wide, square hat.

“What the hell?” he said.  Jim had an intense look in his eyes.

“Look at me, Shayler,” he said quietly but urgently.  He held out both arms.  “Walk over to me as quick as you can safely, and don’t take your eyes off mine, okay?”

“What….”

“Shayler.  Just do this.   Lock eyes with me and don’t look anywhere else.  Got it?”

“Okay, I’m going,” he said.  Holding Jim’s gaze was hard, because the pale, long-fingered man was appearing and disappearing on all three sides of the pond, sometimes at different heights and sometimes wearing different black clothes.  Once he even appeared in three places at once, but for only a fraction of a second.  The air around him got warm, like somebody had opened a furnace nearby.  He was terrified but fought to keep his eyes on Jim, whose eyes had begun to glow amber in the dark.

When Shayler got close to him, Jim pulled him in.  “A little while ago I told you not to indulge any fantasies about me, about our future, about relationship with me and stuff.  Told you not to jump the gun, and so forth?” Jim said. 

“Uh-huh.”

“Let’s quit that.  Forget I ever said it. Now I want you to imagine all our life could be.  Take off the brakes.  You and I live together, we love each other more every day, we grow things, raise animals, hold each other’s bodies close at night and hold our hearts close all day, have mind-numbing sex, argue about stupid stuff then make up, have a humdrum boring life that we wouldn’t trade for the universe. All of it.  Pull out the stops, brother. Imagine it.”

The air became hot enough to actually sting his flesh and the water was warming fast.  He focused on Jim’s softly glowing eyes and let himself imagine being in love with him for the rest of his life.  Even with his fear and the rising heat, that was easy.

“Good, good, good!” Jim said.  “Now close your eyes and picture it.  What’s it gonna look like, what’s it gonna feel like, what’s it gonna be like.  All that love, all that passion, all that joy.  Imagine it.  See it.”

He closed his eyes.  He took a step toward Jim and put his arms around him.  He saw them laughing.  He saw them working, playing, eating, traveling, sleeping late on Seventhdays.  He saw them both on the verandah in autumn, sitting on the front steps and eating sweet yellow roshi melon, watching Spot chase pewter bugs in the grass.  Suddenly in his vision, Onyx appeared and put his big, furry arms around both of them.

In his mind, all that love roiled and churned among the three of them.  Even with his eyes closed, Shayler could tell a bluish light was growing all around him.  He realized that Jim was speaking in a foreign language, but he focused on the image of him and Jim being held tight by Onyx.  Just as the heat in the air reached an unbearable temperature, the love that image evoked drowned out all his fear.  He was sure both he and Jim were getting at least 2^nd degree burn blisters, but it didn’t matter.  The light got brighter and brighter then flashed like a super nova, and ultrahigh pitched screeches assaulted their ears.  There was an enormous pressure in the air that made his ears pop and is skin tingle, then everything went dark and quiet.  The heat vanished. The air was cool and the water as chilly as if it had never heated.  Jim’s cheek was next to his and he was breathing hard.  He slowly pulled away and Shayler opened his eyes.

“You all right?” Jim asked.  Big wrinkles of worry creased his forehead.

“Think so.  What was that?”

“Let’s get out of the water,” Jim said.

They sat in the Adirondack swing under the tallow tree.  Moonlight filtered down through its spade shaped leaves and mottled their skin. The close cypress slats pinched at his naked backside.

“We’re safe?”

“Absolutely,” Jim said.

“My hands are shaking,” Shayler said.  “What just happened?”

Jim leaned toward  him and kissed his forehead, cheeks, and mouth over and over.  “Thank you, brother,” he said.  “This is the 2^nd in 24 hours that you saved my sorry, furry ass.”

“He could’ve killed you?  Who was that creepy man?” Shayler moved closer to Jim.

“Not man.  Not humans. ‘Creatures’ would be a better label.  And not just one, there were at least 5 of them here tonight.  As a collective, they don’t have a name.  We just call them … um … what’s a good English translation?  Sallow.  Our name for them translates into, like ‘the sallow ones’ or, ‘the ghostly ones’.  My mother once told me that they had a name a long time ago, pre-historical Old Earth, but they were so evil that even saying that name could fuck you up, like, bad.”

“Thought you said there weren’t any evil ghosts?”

Jim shook his head.  “GhostLY, not ghosts.  They’re fully corporeal, but one dimensional.  I’m sure they have everything humans have, even ugly creepy dicks and ugly creepy vagges.”  Jim shuddered.  “They move through time/space in these sneaky, weird ways that let them appear and disappear real fast.  They can’t do it for long, though.  Apparently it takes a lot of light and low wave chi to do.”

Shayler wondered what ‘low wave chi’ meant.

“Low wave chi. It’s super interesting.  It’s what ….”

“Whoa,” Shayler said, raising his hand.  “Later, please.  My brain is at saturation point.  So, no more information for now, all right?”

Adam put his arm around his shoulders.  “Yeah, brother.”

“So they’re the things who attacked you last night?” Shayler asked.

“That’s them.  Why they want my hair and horns would take some explaining, but believe me; they’re powerful enough to do astronomical damage to bodies and psyches of either mythics or pure humans.  They can’t touch hearts, though, but I’ve seen them rip through bodies and minds like wild sotoi beasts on a deer.  It’s one of the most horrible things you’ll ever see.”

“For all things holy,” Shayler said.  “Will they be back?”

“Not these.” Jim chuffed.  “You killed them.”

“I …. killed them?  How?  With just my thoughts about you?”

“Your thoughts about us,” Jim said.  “Specifically, the love those thoughts evoked.  You did exactly the right thing when you pulled into me and held me tight.  That’s when the love between us created a frequency that annoyed them.  I was hoping it would kill them, but it didn’t.  It’s not developed enough yet.  At this level, it just pissed them off.  Then when Onyx showed up, he hit the right frequency and brother, did it rock them off to everlasting fucking hell!”

“That light?” Shayler asked.

“Yep.  They can’t perceive the light that love generates. It’s like it’s so alien to them, it doesn’t even register to their eyes.  They can’t feed on it like they do photon particle light.  But, they can feel it, and  like photon light, love light can burn them if they’re exposed to too much at once.”

“So, Onyx came into my mental scenario and embraced us, and that’s when the light intensified enough to burn them up.”

Jim pushed with his hooves to make the swing rock gently.   “Fried ‘em like tater crisps,” he said.  He put his head on Shayler’s shoulder.  “You’re my hero,” he said, grinning a little shyly.

“Sounds to me like Onyx is the hero.  He’s the one who brought the real power, right?”

“Put it  mathematically:  Onyx plus Jim could never equal the power we needed to kill the slimy fuckers, not by ourselves.  Jim plus Shayler didn’t quite equal it either.  But Jim plus Onyx plus Shayler generated the output needed. He and I just don’t have that connection.  And you and I don’t have that connection … yet.  So your deep connection with him plus your deepening connection with me,  plus the energy that was gushing through the 3 of us as a circuit, raised the frequency, like, a hundred fucking times.  Then it was like multiplication instead of just addition; a hundred Shayler hearts times a hundred Jim hearts time a hundred Onyx hearts.  It’s an example of the system being more than the sum total of its parts. So no, Onyx helped, but without you, I’d be meeting him in face to face in transcendence right now.  You are the taproot of something weird and exceptional and portentous that is growing in the world.  I don’t know what, but … I think it’ll be interesting to find out.”

Jim looked up at the tallow leaves that shuffled the moonlight into winks and flashes. “And … I’m sorry.”

“Sorry for what?:” Shayler asked.

Jim stood up and sat on the ground in front of him.  He took both Shayler’s hands in his and kissed them.  “Sorry that I put us both in danger, underestimated their tenacity, and sorry that I was distracted when they started closing in.”  Jim grunted.  “They’re smart.  They waited till they saw me go underwater, then attacked.  Because I was fucking around instead of watching out for you, I didn’t pick up their scent until it was almost too late.  How do you feel right now?”  Jim looked him directly in the eyes, with those beautiful yellow irises and his hypnotizing vertical pupils.

“I feel like I want you not to apologize about anything.”

“Why do you think that is?”

Shayler thought.  “I guess because even with all the terrifying, unbelievable crap that has happened in the last 24 hours, I’m not scared.”

“Good, so that’s how you don’t feel.  Back to my question:  How do you feel?”

Shayler pulled him up off the ground and kissed Jim on the forehead.  “I feel calm and alert,” he said. “About you, about creepy sallow time jumpers, about falling in love with a faun –a faun!! -- I met barely a day ago, and about letting my penis flap free in the night air.”

Jim butted him in the chest with the unbroken curve of one horn.  “Holy fuck.  ‘Penis’?  You are so repressed.  Say ‘dick’ like normal people.  C’mon.  Say ‘dick’.  It’s easy.”

Shayler spun around and tugged once on Jim’s tail.  “That’s adorable!” he said and ran toward the house.

Of course Jim caught up with him and tackled him.  He pinned Shayler down and said “Say dick.  Say it, if you’re not repressed.”

Shayler screws up his face and with enormous (pretend) effort, said “D-d-d-d-dick!”  Spot ran in and licked both of them wherever she could, her tail a blur of motion.

Jim laughed and let him up.  Shayler ran in circles shouting “Dick!  Dick!  DICK!  Look, Jim, I’m shaking my DICK at you!  Look, there’s a caster bug on my DICK!  Look,, Spot, I can wag my DICK!”
"And what's under directly under your dick?" Jim asked.
"Testicles."
"Balls."  Jim pronounced the word very slow as if it were a foreign language.  "Go.  Say it.  Say 'balls.'"
Shayler positioned his lips in the exaggerated way Jim and positioned his and said, "Buuuuuhhhhh Esticles!  Buh'esticles!"
"Say it, or I'll show you who 'best tickles.'  Balls.  See how easy?  Or 'nuts', if you'd rather."
"Nuuuuuhhh-Esticles!  Nesticles!  That right?"
"Or 'huevos', even though it always struck me as odd since it's the women who have the eggs and the testicles hold the seeds, but who can understand the Spanish people, si?  Or your courage bag.  Or your 'princely delicates'.
"Aw, yes.  I like that one," Shayler said and tried to tickle Jim.
But Jim was fast.  He eluded Shayler's fingers and came around behind him for a bear hug.  He got his arms under Shayler's and held him tight around the chest.  He picked Shayler off the ground and spun around fast, causing Shayler's feet to fly out from under him via centrifugal force.  Jim hooted.  Shayler couldn't remember the last time he laughed this much.
"Or 'ahuacatl' if you're an Aztec," Jim shouted.  "Or dangly bits, or spunktanks, or nads or berries or marbles or dimissaries or cajones or bollocks or man-plums or stones ...."
As Jim added even more speed to his spin, Shayler looked up and the stars were a blur.  This is what joy feels like, he thought.
"Or junk or baby-batter-bakers or les cullions, or baubles or tackle or hangers or the boys or ye old creamery or family jewels or pounders or clangers or bangers!"
He staggered, dizzy, when  Jim let him go.  The ground seemed to move like ocean waves and he couldn't walk.  He let himself fall.  Spot was there immediately, almost frantic with happiness, determined to lick his face no matter how much he fought her off.
From his roller coaster in the grass he could see Jim staggering, trying to walk.  He laughed even though his stomach was lurching.
"You're dizzy too!" he shouted.  "The prowess of the mystic can't overcome the vestibular power of the endolymph!"  He reached up to the sky.  "Hey stars!" he yelled.  "I have my dick out and I don't care because I have JOY!  Wooooo-hoooooo!"

Jim crawled over to him like a drunk looking for the door.  “You’re a lunatic!” Jim laughed.  “Better be quiet or you’ll wake the Cannings!  Hell, you’ll wake the corpses 12 kilometers away in Iota graveyard.”  He pulled Shayler up gently and with some wobbling, then held onto Shaylers shoulders and sat on his lap, facing him.

Jim was out of breath but still laughing and Shayler laughed with him.

“Notice something?” Jim asked.

“What?”

“Laughing, but not coughing.”

“That’s miraculous,” Shayler said.  “You notice something?”

“What?”

Shayler put his lips up against Jim’s long ear and said, “You’re sitting on my BAAAAALLLLLLLSSS!”