Of maple leaves and dirty knees.

"How long have you been apart?" asks the Samaritan, his eyes lined, his features careless.
"Three months."

Do you know what can happen in three months? Do you know how a stranger can tell that two people have been without one another for that long?

There is an answer.

Let's pretend this is wartime the way you know it ought to be - some demon of a man behind a podium bearing Hell's own colors. He preaches and the crowd jeers and they love him for every bead of sweat on their foreheads, for every moment of their lives that they give to him and his cause. They move as one, they think as one, and they are all of them his children.

On the other side of the wall, there are others. Others who are too dark to show their Anglo pride. Too dark to blend in although they are allowed at the edges, usually. It's just that the words they speak are never truly theirs. It's just that they are the ones who have seen ghosts, who have heard the angels speaking in a language they could not understand.

So when this power moves like thread, like blood in water, the way it infiltrates and snakes in and around is permanent. One heart to another to another and unbreakable as an airplane, unforeseeable as a tragedy.

What I'm saying is, stand by your own. What I'm saying is, I'm a teenage girl in dirty blue jeans with the kind of voice that makes people nervous, and I just want to see your fucking eyes again.