Emrys had been released from the hospital two days prior to the day. It was high noon and high tide and Emrys was sitting just out of the waters reach, his legs pulled nearly up to his chest, his forearms resting over his knees. The sun on the scars creeping up his arms made them shine. He was dressed like he didn't commonly dress. The blind man was wearing a pair of long black pants with baggy legs and white straps. Over his chest was a white muscle shirt and over that, unbuttoned and flapping in the wind was a white button up shirt with black patterns up both sides of the chest. The blindfold over his eyes was the usual black strip of material.

As Sinister had warned him once before, the scars on his chest would have shown through the shirt was it not for the white bandages. He didn't walk with his usual one wooden cane but intead had had to use the metal pair that the hospital had given him. His ankles were still weak so they'd given him the canes that strap to your arms and have a handle that lets your put your upper weight on your arms. It had been hell trying to get down the beach alone with them.

His face looked serene for once, calm and still. He'd even pulled the blindfold off and left his scared face show to the sun, his narrowly and strange shaped eyes open and unseeing. His lips were set in a straight line indicating that while he looked serene he was in no way very happy.

I miss you. I don't know how I've lived so long without you. I need you. I can't keep living alone like this.

There is a boy whose showing special interest in friendship with me. He has no idea how dangerous that truely is. And I cannot very well tell him. I already like the boy. But how can I consciencly create a friendship with him and knowlegeably put him in the way of danger? I can't do that. Not with Verkur near. He would only want Sinister too. And that boy, the one who seems to be after me, he would not hesitate to hurt Sinister were he connected to me in any way, I'm sure of it. I am only lucky I did not take the boy with me that night.

What am I suposed to do? I can't very well abandon the boy. He's got no family, and he's sat with me when I was alone.

I need your council again. I need you.

Mother...

One tear ran down Emrys' cheek and he didn't brush it away.

Jules was walking along the beach humming jazz tunes. She had nothing else to do really, she was waiting to here back from her half brother. She seemed to be at a pause in her efforts to communicate with him. She'd called her other half brother in Mexico, she didn't really have anyone else to call and talk to.... some cousins, but hr mom was dead, her father was long dead and she'd never known him. It was rather strange, she'd always been used to her independance. It had never bothered her, until she'd been stuck here seeming to just kill time.....suddenly she had nothing to do and no one to talk to.

So here she was walking along the beach. Thinking baout what was she really accomplishing here,she should just leave the legal documents for Gattling about his inheritance and move on. For some reason she clung to the idea she might make a connection with him like she had with Marcus, which was really why she hadn't left yet.

As she walked along she saw a man sitting in the sand, he seemed to have half crutches, often used as double canes. He almost seemed like he was meditating. She moved in a wide arc around him and stopped humming. She didn't want to intrude upon his obvious solitude. Other than her and him this stretch of beach seemed deserted.

He'd just stopped 'praying' to his 'mother' when his overly sensitive ears had picked up the humming far before she'd stopped. It's amazing that he could still hear her over the sound of the waves and the soft whistleing of the wind. But he had. A blind man's other senses were heightened but it seemed that his were overly so. Maybe it had to do with those pointed ears beneath his long hair.

Maybe it had to do with the demon half of him that he didn't know about.

He turned his head as she arched around him, or should I say they because he did not know if this person was male or female. His head turned to the side as if he were listening to her moving, which really he was, though that should be impossible. Another tear rolled down his cheek while he listened.

It's not really crossed his mind yet that his scars are there for her to see. As for his whitened eyes, they're closed.

Something bad had happened to him, crutches, scars, she thought he might be blind too. He had a blindfold. She wasn't sure why else he'd be wearing one. She sighed and watched him turn his head. "I'm sorry." she said genuinely contrite," I didn't mean to disturb you."

"If you hadn't someone else would have." he replied.

Certinly, after all he's been through, you couldn't expect him to be anything other then brutally pesamestic. She might have, but you couldn't.

Emrys unbent one leg and straightened it in the sand, dropping his hand into the sand to lean back on the bandaged hand and arm. He keeps his head in her direction, listening. He doesn't trust her, but then, Emrys doesn't trust anyone right away. The only one person he actually trusts is Sinister. He hardly trusts himself as it is.

"I'm sorry I stopped you," he sounded more at peace then he usually did. His voice was raspy and damaged.

"You didn't stop me, choice stopped me, you didn't make me chose, only I did." she says to him. Her voice has a very musical quality, deep and rich.

She walked along the edge of the water, she was wearing a grey dress full length. The hem trailed in the waves. Her short hair was loose ringlets billowing around her ears. She was listening to the waves crash, it was restful. "I don't see anyone else who would have disturbed you though, I don't think there's anyone else around here." she said pausing in the waves at her feet.

He shook his head, his coal black hair falling around his face. It was cut into at least six different layers, falling full and dark, the longest at his shoudlers, the shortest at his narrow, abnormally long thin eyes.

"There hasn't been for three hours," he replied quietly. "But if you hadn't someone else would have." He's set that if she hadn't have disturbed him, eventually someone else would have come along. Maybe someone meaner, maybe someone nicer. It wouldn't matter, he trusts them the same.

One hand dropped to play with the metal cane of one arm crutch. He's not opened his eyes. Her assumption should be prooven correct at this point. He's blind.

The normal question would be, what happened. She doesn't ask it though, instead she asks "How'd you get here?" she asked she moved out of the waves but kept her distance, something about him seemed to demand it. There was something intriguing about him at the same time though. Some reason she felt she should linger instead of just going on.

"I walked." He replied. The college was not so very far away that a strong person like Emrys can't walk the distance easily. And with his ankles messed up, he'd opted to walk and rest every few minutes. The bandages around his ankles were thick to keep sand out.

"How did you?" Because it seemed the right question. He didn't tense or become worried like he usually does upon meeting new people for two reasons. Usually a person is nearly on him (with all of the city noise) before he hears them, and he'd heard her coming. Second, she was standing at a distance and not moving in on him. It helpe dhim to relax.

"I followed the water, It's right behind the Marriot, went down stairs after sitting on the balcony on the phone. Felt like following the water when I was done talking. Now here I am, can't even see the Marriot from here. So I don't know how far it is. I'd say I walked, but I don't remember the aspects of walking, I know I must have, but all I remember about the journey is the songs the waves sing....I wasn't really paying attention to things. I was just thinking.....And then I interrupted you." she answered.

As if talking about her long walk had made her legs tired, she simply lowered herself to the sand where she was.

Emrys listened to her long tail about how she'd gotten here but couldn't tell him how far she'd come with the silence and patience of a child. He even looked comfortable. Maybe it's because he met her on the beach, more likely it's because recalling his childhood and trying to recall those years that he could not had made him feel like a child. And Children were trusting.

"You are staying at the Marriot?" He turned his face as she sat, almost looking at her but still giving her the side of his face so he could listen. "Where are you from then?"

"Yes I'm staying there. I'm from New Orleans." she answered him. At least she didn't seem to be bothering him overly much. He did indeed seem to have a childlike quality about him. She wondered why he'd walked here all alone, surely he had a caretaker? She didn't ask.

"New Orleans. What are you doing in Bayfie..." He trailed off, turned his head. "Sorry. I'm prying." And that's exactly what he hates people doing. He pulled his straightened leg back up to his chest again and dropped his scared arm over it. He turned his head back again, almost as if to listen again. There were child-like qualities, but he was definatly still not entirly trusting. As a child, he'd not been completely trusting either.

"What's your name?" Because he never gives his first.

"Julliette, although most of the time just Jules." she tells him. "As for what am I doing here, I'm not sure myself anymore." she answers honestly. She's playing with a driftwood twig that was near her foot. The sun feels good and the pounding waves are soothing, so she's rather relaxed.

Emrys nodded. "Jules. I'm Em." Because that's the only name he ever gives entirly. He didn't offer his hand for her to shake and dropped his hands off of his knees, digging his fingers into the sand.

"Well....what were you in town for before you've gotten confused?" Not that he could help, but he certinly would if he could, as long as she kept a distance from him. Right now he's seen all of the visions he can hangle.

Jules offer her hand, no, absolutely not. Everyone she has touched in Bayfield has caused her to see things.

"Well I had come to meet my half brother that lives here...." she tells her story, her mother's affair, of half brothers she never knew existed until her mother was dying, and the fact that her mother had left them both something in her will. She talked a bit about her trip to Mexico and how she's already met her brother Marcus. Then she told of her encounter at the art gallery the other day and how she still hadn't heard anything either way, not yes or no.

He nodded and listened in silence. It seemed even that he'd fallen asleep entirly the way his face had relaxed, his eyes were still closed, and his head tipped just slightly. But when she stopped talking he took a breath and dug his hands deeper in the sand.

"Maybe she's just not confronted him yet?" He asked her. "She sounded nice enough to say she'd call right?" Of course, this coming from someone whom you must proove to that you are nice or trustworthy.

"Well I didn't get the feeling I was very trusted, I may not hear anything. I shouldn't let in bother me. You can't be too careful."

"So what about you? You've asked about me, what are you doing out here all alone?" she asks.

"Remembering." He replied. This was actually quite relaxing, having a conversation where he wasn't worried about hurting the other's feelings because he wasn't friends with her, like he was with Sinister. And he wasn't worried about trust because she was keeping her distance. He was well aware that if she ran at him, he was too injured to do anything. But it was nice knowlege.

"I grew up on a beach in Wales. Used to run around all day on it. It's nice to sit on the beach and listen. I'm sure it doesn't look the same but the ocean always sounds the same."

"Yes it does, everywhere I've ever been anyway." Jules agreed. "You're along way from Wales though." she said. "I used to go down to the waterfront a lot myself when I was younger. back home. I don't always have time now, if I even am any place near water."

"Yes. I moved here after...for college. My mother passed away and left me a lot of money for school." He frowned. "I wanted away from there so I came here." He'd wanted away from the people in that town. Away from anyone who would remember him as the devil's child. "Used to spend every day on the beach. Here I just...do it when I have spare time."

"I left home for school too. Went to conservatory in San Francisco." Jules said.

"What 're you studying?" she asked, afterall admitting she'd attended a conservatory at least gave away she had a background in music, if her trained voice hadn't already. She does wonder what a blind man might persue for studies.

"I was wanting to be a surgan," he replied. "Before," and he sort of waved his hand at his face, opened his eyes breifly. They were white with a hint of blue behind them. Once a blue eyed charmer. "Now I'm just working in the basic feild of medication. My mom was an old world healer so I've practiced old remedies. They work better then a lot of the scientific findings, as long as you arn't allergic to the plants."

"That's very interesting, My greatgrandmother was that way until a few years ago, always making teas, and salves. She's barely barely to move now though. When I was younger though I never stayed sick long, she'd always know jsut what to do to fix me up.

I think most of the city of New orleans knows who she is though, one of the few hedge doctors, as they call them down there, who doesn't mix her knowledge with VooDoo. It was never my cup of tea to follow in her footsteps though, forgive my pun." she said.

Her pun didn't crack a smile or draw a chuckle from him. The most it got was a nod for her apology. He hadn't taken offense, he simply didn't find very many things funny. He unburried his hands and sank his fingers, claw like, back into it until he felt moisture. The bandages would need changed, he could feel the sand sliding into them.

"The village we lived by was small and set in their ways. They didn't like my mother and they hated me. Most of the people she cared for were older, the sons and daughters and wives of people who didn't live in the villige and didn't trust the doctors. She even treated me when she found me. I had a terrible gash in the back of my head. And she was always taking care of scrapes and bruises and bites."

He turned his face towards the water again and when his hair tickled his eyes, he realized his scars weren't covered. His hands came up from the sand and covered them with the back of his fingers, getting the skin sandy. He dropped one hand to search around for his blindfold and pulled it on, brushing most of the sand from his cheeks.

Jules doesn't notice, she's had her eyes closed for a while while they talked. What did she need to see right now, really? So she doesn't notice what he's doing at all.

"You always come out here alone? I hope you don't come from too far, people can be cruel to anyone who's different." She just knows the world must be cruel to blind sacrred men, if it's cruel to Mulatto women.

He paused. "I come from the college, alone, often," he answered. It's true, the majority of his time is spent in his room, in class, or at this beach. The last time he'd brought Sinister. But most often he was alone. "Trust me," he replied, his ringers on one hand touching the canes and his mind on the pain he was still in. "If anyone knows, I do. Three times over."

"The crutches, something some one else did then?" she asked. HEr eyes are still closed and she hasn't moved. The sun feels good, it's peaceful here and she isn't thinking about her unmet brother right now. She's just here, talking to a stranger.

It's easy to talk to a stranger. You may never see them again in your life.

Leave it to Emrys to meet the one stranger that was crulest and meet him twice by chance. Logan had been a stranger. Emrys isn't sure what to call him now. Fear?

"Lets say," he said in a sad voice, "that these are the only things on my body not caused by someone else." He touched his forearms, where the scars reached from fingertip to half way up his arms, then he touched his blindfold, indicating the scars beneath and the white eyes. All the other scars, all the other places that were bandaged and bruised, those were other people...things. Verkur, the people from the town in Wales, Logan.

"Remind me not to touch you." she says.

(Sorry that's all she can say)

He should have said 'what do you mean' and sounded suspicious. Instead he replied: "I won't touch you if you don't touch me." He turned his head towards her, incidently a few inches too far and looked as if he wasn't even looking at her.

This does get enough of her attention that she opens her eyes.

"Good plan." she agrees, this is no stranger than anything else that's happened to her since arriving in this city. His headmovement isn't strange in that he's not looking at her, he's blind, of coarse he isn't looking at her. However she does think he ehars something. "You hear something?" she asks looking around herself.

"No," he replied. "I don't."

But finally he'd smiled just a little. If your could call the half crooked twitch of lips a smile. He corrected his eeror by turning his face directly to her, as if he could actually see her.

"Why wouldn't you want to touch me?" Because he wouldn't touch her for specific reasons, and he'd like to know hers. It's a safe question to ask an innish or an unnish person.

So she gives a safe answer for either an innish or unnish person. "I might get bit." she says. She means by images, but it could be interpreted other ways. Luckily most of the time it only happens with objects for Jules, but people who've been through intense trauma almost always "Bite her" so to speak.

"Now you, you're blind, how do you know you don't want to touch me?"

He understands, but just to be sure, he gives her an equally double-sided answer.

"Some people don't always like what they see." This could mean his blindness. He can't see so it wouldn't matter if he could or couldn't see her to decide that he liked her or not. Or he could be talking about seeing things.

"I'd probably bite you," he said after a moment. "It's not just a possibility I'd get bit. Every person I've ever touched since this," another wave at his eyes, "have bit me."

Meaning I might give you a 'sight' or 'vision' but you most definatly will cause me one because every person I've ever touched gives me one.

"Everyone I've touched in this city has bitten me, It's not usually people, it's usaully objects. That's why I have my own Piano that gets shipped to whereever I'm giving a concert. I won't touch you if you'll get bit.....but I don't think I have anything bad in my bite." she says, she's sure the inuendo could be dropped at this poiint, but it is somehow less awkward.

"I understand that." It's the same for many of his possesions. No one else touches them. They're his. "It doesn't matter. The most innocent person in the world would bite me. Intintionally or not." He shrugged slightly. "Mother called it a gift. She told me it was a replacment for my eyes. A second sight. I never told her about what came along with seeing people. I didn't tell her I see what people do." He dug his hands into the sand again.

"I called it a curse, a punishment for my stupidity. Does yours...cause...seazures?" He's never spoken so freely about it. But then, he's never met another seer.

"No, no seizures just too much information. I don't need to know people cut themselves with knives, or iceskate, or anything about them they don't tell me. Creepy enough to have all these vibes and images come from objects, but lately it's people too, it seems to only be traumatized people, or people very intent on something, I've never had seizures though. Gram alwasy just said it's in the bloodline, never called it a gift or a curse." she answered him.

"Mm," he replied. He unbent his knees and tried to roll his ankles, finding it impossible under so many bandage. No unninitiate person would believe that three weeks ago his ankles had been stripped to the bone. Now he was walking with aid.

"I have the seizures." He shrugged, because to what he was seeing, those were nothing. "And your right, I see way too much." He shook his head as he remembered all he'd seen in Logan's mind, how he'd pushed it back to Logan. And he shivered. "I'm sorry," that you have this curse too.

Jules wasn't even sure what to say at this point. She was at a loss for words really. She felt awkward listening to him apologize for things that were beyond his control. She was simply silent for a long time. She listened to the waves.

"So have you ever.....found anyone else who could?" she asked softly.