Thanus91

I had a key to the door still, and I opened the place wide. Things had been disturbed—moved around. I saw medicine bottles still wet at the lip and the scents of fire, roses, and cold steel still fresh in the air.

“They’re not here anymore, but they were here.” Tears tickled my eyes.

“How did they get all the way here by themselves?” Kahera said.

“I’m sure they’ll tell us.” I glanced around and grabbed some paper from a stack of mail on the table. I wrote over it with my pilfered pen.

“SONGBIRDS. EITHER COME OR STAY HERE. WE’LL KEEP CHECKING.” I wrote across the envelope. I stuck it up on the fridge and swiped my ault over it. It made the ink smear a bit.

“You don’t think Revik is still alive, do you?” Kahera was one of the few that still remembered Revik, and I hadn’t said it out loud, but he agreed with me.

“I don’t know. I want to think so, but….” We bustled out of the building. Maybe they hadn’t left just yet. As we exited the office, we saw a curious onlooker, one of the bartenders at the ‘watering hole’ bar nearby, sitting and glaring at us.

“What happened to your little commune? They had the national guard out here,” He asked.

At least he didn’t say cult.

“That’s what we’re trying to figure out.” I didn’t want to explain everything to a human.

“Some of your kids were running through the town today looking scared as hell….”

“Kids?” My heart leaped.

“A redhead and an Asian girl.”

“You see where they went?” I practically bounced on my feet with excitement.

“Not since they went in here a few hours ago.” He shrugged off towards Revik’s office.

My men and I made knowing eye contact.

“Thank you,” I told him and turned to lock the building back up. “Did they seem ok?”

“I mean, they seemed as ragged as your crew always does, but they didn’t seem hurt.” He wanted more answers than we were willing to give and stared at us expectantly. “They said not to go up there, and the area’s under quarantine. So what the hell happened up there?”

“Your guess is as good as mine. We were doing our summer traveling and heard about it second hand,” I said, and he squinted at me.

“Well, you tell Roman he needs to come by and talk to me.”

Roman… The humans never could pronounce Kiromir’s name or mine.

Kee roh meer, I wanted to pronounce to him, but then again, they’d been calling me Dennis for as long as I could remember.

“I’ll tell him. He may be back to wrap things up, but I don’t think we’re going to be able to come back. It’s beyond repair.”

“Well, it won’t be the same without you yahoos out here.” We gave him awkward laughs and watched as he scampered off. He seemed uneasy. I put ten bucks he’d be making a phone call in the next five minutes.

“Back to the songbirds, and we can come back tomorrow,” I told the men.

“Shouldn’t we wait?” Nodak looked upset and glanced around. I didn’t want to wait around.

“No, best we not hang around. They know, and we’ll be back soon.” I had to go tell Kiromir. I had news. News was good.