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When there was time for thinking, he shaved the memory of Spitter's feed throat on a piece of scrap and nudged the imagined rune forward a thumbnail's width until the flow stopped pooling where it loved to nap. When there was space and no one to laugh, Fizz rehearsed stick-work with a length of broom handle he called a spear and John called "please stop."
"We are stronger," Fizz said one dawn when they had both failed at something worth failing and succeeded at something no one had asked them to do.
"Not enough," John said.
"Never enough," Fizz agreed cheerfully. "Which means more."
One week has passed…
A storm began, reconsidered, and sulked back over the hills. Under a clear sky they camped by a shrine stone in a sheep meadow where the sheep pretended to be rocks and the rocks took no offense. John chalked a circle — not to perform, but to ask — and set his breath in it.
"Show the road to the truth," he said, knowing circles are not maps and questions are not keys.
