It is windy. The sand blows up, the sand settles down. The waves lap the shore, rhythm not matching anything, marching to an internal beat. And in-between them shuffles an angel, making patterns in the sand to a third beat entirely.

He doesn't know how to dance, but he knows how to draw. Backwards, forwards, side to side, circles and figure eights in the sand, arms held out to his side in concentration, feet a constant movement, like some demented tap dancer.

If he were at all concious of his looks, he'd wear something skintight to emphasize the curves of shoulders - which is why the fuzzy blue sweater doesn't quite work, somehow, and yet it is so very him. He's also wearing jeans.

He's barefoot in the sand. He left his shoes behind two beaches ago.

His trail stretches backwards, a crazy testament to his discovery of the shoreline.

Charlie is barefoot too. He loves to let the sand get in between his toes. He really is Charlie today, not that old Fuddy Duddy George. Somewhere in the back of Charlie's head, the ghost is still there though.

Charlie's slippers are sticking out of his pea coat pockets. Yellow fuzzy ducky slippers, they're tucked in such a way their little ducky faces can look around. His khaki trousers are rolled up to his knees so he can wander in and out of the shallow waves as the tide rolls out. His glasses are perched crookedly on top of his head. Sea spray and salt made it hard for him to see out of them about an hour ago.

He is humming, badly, out of key and, bits and pieces to differeent songs to boot. He is almost in his own little world. This time of year it isn't as though there are a lot of people at the beach. Aparently today there is though, for Charlie is just now noticing footprints, many footprints and so he decides to follow them still humming loudly and tunelessly. Doing his best to follow the footprints in spite of having to squint from being near sighted.

Perhaps if he had pulled his glasses back on he wouldn't have failed to notice the footprints had ended and bumped into their creator.

Eep!

Gabriel is not used to so much touching.

He startles backwards, stumbles and falls, hard, into the soft sand.

He lies there, a bit shocked, for a moment.

He has no idea what just happened.

It's the first time someone's run into him.

It didn't hurt or anything, but he's still a bit at a loss.

Charlie isn't completely sure what happened either. He has lost his glasses in the collision and also knocked down a complete stranger.

"Oh, crap. Sorry." he says flustered by his clumsiness and the loss of his glasses, which may or may not be glinting there in the sand right beside the stranger, it's hard for Charlie to tell. "Are you hurt?" he asks as he wobbles to his feet.

"I'm okay."

He is okay. Right?

He thinks so, anyway.

"Kinda shaken."

Which he really is.

He's just going to stay seated for a while, thanks. He has sand on his sweater, which he brushes at fitfully as best he can. He doesn't want to get sand on his sweater.

"Oh, shaken. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to bowl you over. I was trying to make sense of these footprints and follow them."He says as he walks to the glinting spot, that may be a piece of seaglass or may in fact be his glasses. As luck would have it, it happens to actually be his glasses. He takes out a handkerchief and spends a few minutes silently polishing them. He puts them on once he can see out of them again.

Then he asks what he's been dying to ask, since learning this person is the origin of the foorprints, that seem more orchestrated than random. "Is it a signal?"

"They're just a pattern."

He thinks they're probably a pretty pattern.

"Art and not science then. That's good. You don't look like the signal type anyhow." Charlie says. He likes patterns himself, as long as there is nothing hidden within them. Luckily today Charlie's paranoia is low. So he won't start barking at the moon or run home after his tin foil helmet.

"You think you'll need help up?" he asks. He's begining to feel very bad about knocking this fellow over and getting him dusted with beach sand. This is an attempt to offer assistance. George is a better people person than Charlie, who tends to not really know what to do in situations like this. It comes of spending most of his life in isolation on a psych ward.

"Yeah, I think so."

He could manage without it, but it involves touch and he has discovered that he likes contact with humans.

Skin on skin is lovely.

"I'm Charlie. Errr, I really do feel bad about this. Let's get you on your feet again."

Charlie leans down with both his hands extended prepared to help bare any weight if the other man needs him too. Charlie is quite strong, he moves furniture for a living. He does his best to be careful, unlike some strong people he does know his own strength. It's gotten him in trouble in the past, so he does his very best to be gentle, especially since he knocked the other man down.

Gabriel accepts the hands and bounces to his feet - forgotting entirely to put any weight on the other man.

He has these little slips.

"Thanks," he declares.

Charlie laughs. He feels better that he has seemingly done no serious harm. It's a nervous sort of laugh initially. He is certain now that this man was not signalling aliens or any sinister secret government satellites. There is an inocent quality to him, that would not fit with the sort of person who would do such things.

"The least I can do after knocking you down and all.....I'm afarid I didn't get your name." he says.

"Gabriel. Gabriel Lichtenberg."

He's very proud of his name. It makes him smile.

"What's yours?" He asks.

"Charlie Galloway." He answers. He likes his name too, it's a freindly sounding name to Charlie. He feels that bodes well.

Charlie looks down at the pattern in th sand again. He's sad that his collision scuffed part of it. It's neat to look at. The pattern goes on as far as he can see. "How long did....he pauses and looks at gabriel, it's important to look at someone when you talk to them he remembers, "How long did all this take you Gabriel?" he asks gesturing at the pattern in the sand.

"I've been here a couple hours."

Sometimes he went slowly. Sometimes he went fast.

The boy really needs something to do with his time beyond wander and play, but he has so few needs that it really isn't an issue at the moment - he eats and sleeps for fun, has a house with the bills paid until the end of the month, and does not yet need to do laundry.

(He will need to do laundry after today, however, for he has to wash the sand off his sweater.)

"I see. This is impressive, though, the tide will come back in the afternnon and erase it." Charlie says. Then he asks, because he is curious and not as aware of what my be rude questions as some people, "Do you do this sort of thing a lot?"

He had been going to ask Do you do this all the time, or do you have a life?, but in the back of his head George let him know that it would definitely be rude. Sometimes Charlie doesn't ignore the ghost entirely.

"This is the only time I've done it," Gabriel says.

He should pretend to be normal, he should - and he would, if he knew what normal was, exactly.

That's his excuse, anyway.

"Do you bump into people a lot?"

He doesn't mean to be rude with the question, or accusatory. He's just getting the hang of answering a question with a question.

"I try not to in the literal sense. I meet a lot of different people where I work though. " Charlie answers. "Though I suppose I do sometimes bump into them and other things while moving the furniture."

If Gabriel seems abnormal it hasn't occured to Charlie, what the heck is normal really. He's seen demons, sirens, telepaths, crazy old ladies who collect and name coockoo clocks and a man who intends to leave his entire estate to his iguana when he dies, and a healer woman with crystal wings. Normal may merely be a myth. Gabriel's behavior seems relatively mild.

"Why would you move furniture?" Gabriel asks with a slight frown.

As far as Gabriel knows, the point of furniture is to stay in one place.

All the furniture in his house stays in one place.

He pulls his sweater off, stripping down to a white t-shirt, to see if he can get more sand off it by holding it in one hand and brushing it with the other. This does not actually work very well.

" Well people don't buy the stuff to just leave it at the antique shop. I get to deliver it." Charlie answers after a good lengthly pause. He wanted to ask why wouldn't you move furniture. However, he does realize that not everyone does so as frequently as he does. Not everyone crawls through their own home inspecting the nooks and crannies in case the government or evil exraterstrials have left surveilance devices. (I'm glad Charlie was never allowed to watch X-files)

"Not everyone has a way to load the furniture up and haul it to where they want it. I'm strong enough to move most things on the dolly and I have van to haul it around in. Sometimes people move to a new place too, and if they remember me from the shop they might hire me for a day or two to help them move." he explains. It occurs to him that not everybody has ever had to buy furniture or move, he remembers not knowing about these kinds of things until he got out of the hospital and George explained them.

"Where'd you come from?" he asks, now he's wondering if Gabriel was in a hospital too.

Huh.

An antique shop.

Interesting!

"Nowhere."

Most people would say somewhere. Gabriel is strange.

"Oh, I get it, you aren't allowed to say." Charlie says. He doesn't exactly run around letting people know he was institutionalized himself, now he's certain it must be something similar.

"Well if you can't talk about that, how about where you're going after the beach?" he asks. So far he has not reached the conclusion Gabriel is any stranger than anyone else, but he is terribly curious about anyone who sticks around this long to engage him in conversation.

"Home, I think."

His home is cozy and he can worry about his sweater there. He needs to clean it, you know. It has to be clean, or else Bad Things will happen if he wears it.

"Oh, that makes sense. Where's home?" Charlie asks. He feels a little absurd for thinking that he'd get any other sort of answer.

He's trying not to dwell on the sand all over everything, it reminds him how bad he feels about knocking Gabriel down. Charlie doesn't like feeling bad.

"Gifford Street. It's half an hour, walking."

He likes walking. He sees all sorts of interesting things.

Charlie knows that street, the coockoo clock lady lives on that street. "Did you need a ride? I know right where that is. One of our best customers lives on that street." he says. He's trying to make up for knocking Gabriel over. Besides, he likes to listen to the radio in the van.

"Sure!"

Gabriel is thrilled.

After all, he can't put his sweater back on, but he also can't go around in a t-shirt. It isn't a human thing to do in this weather.

This human, he concludes, is very nice.

In the back of Charlie's head, George grumbles about encouraging people who are obviously innocent and vulnerable to the notion of taking rides from strangers. George has always been the practical one. Charlie realizes, George may have a point, but isn't sure how to bring the matter up. So he is quiet while he thinks on it as he leads Gabriel to the van.

The van is clean, George insists it looks more professional. Charlie is just obsessive about knowing where and what everything in the van is, might be alien technology hidden anywhere. One can never be to careful. He checks out the van for anything suspicious before unlcoking the passenger side first. Just because he tends towards paranoid doesn't mean he can't use his manners sometimes.

"The heat gets hot in here fast, so let me know if it gets so hot it's uncomforatble." he warns as he pulls the door opened and stands by to close it for his passenger.

"Oh, don't worry," he says airily. Gabriel is happily immune to temperature change.

"Thanks again for the ride."

Gabriel is a polite lad.

Charlie beams happily as he climbs in and starts the van up. The radio is playing jazz. Charlie fastens his seatbelt and makes sure there's nothing nearby to run into as he pulls away from the curb where he was parked.

"This okay, or would you rather listen to something else?" charlie asks. George had been listening to the radio last, some folks enjoy more modern music than George likes.

Charlie gets on the main road and into the appropriate turn lane for Gifford street, which is still several blocks distant.

Gabriel gets in, and completely fails to put on a seatbelt.

He tilts his head to one side.

"I'm not sure. I'll have to listen for a while."

He's never heard jazz before.

Charlie leaves the jazz on. Luckily they seem to have tuned in just after the last set of commercials, so three songs play before they're driving down Gifford street. Charlie asks as commercials start. "Want it changed now, and what house number am I looking for?"

"It's the white one with blue shutters."

It's a rather large house, and as such, it is hard to miss. It has no particular yard, just a painfully short lawn, a drive and a concrete front walk. The house is vaguely Victorian, and just plain nice in general.

"There," he says, as they come up to it. Just in case Charlie missed it.

Charlie laughs, it's kitty corner across the street from the coockoo clock lady's place, which is rather shabby looking. It had been a nice Georgianstyle house in it's day. Obviously money intended for maintenance has been long since spent on coockoo clocks though.

Gabriel's house on the other hand is nice, very nice to Charlie. George tends to agree in the back of Charlie's head, it's neat, tidy, and orderly. Those equate in George's mind as nice. Charlie on the other hand likes that it has blue shutters, and not a shade that is too dark or too light.

"Nice place." Charlie says happily. He pulls into the driveway still admiring it appreciately. Much nicer than the stuffy old coockoo clock lady's.

"Thank you," Gabriel says simply, because he isn't going into the complexity of his living situation today.

"It was very nice to meet you. I hope we see each other again."

Then they could talk some more. That would be nice.

"Sure, Sorry I bumped into you and all." Charlie says. He reaches into the console and pulls out a card. It's simple in design no flashy logo or graphics, just the antique shop's name and number in gold lettering on eggshell white. "If you need to reach me, you can call this number. I live in the shop." Charlie says. "Just in case you need anything moved, or want any antiques." he says smiling.

Ou, buying things.

Gabriel considers this, taking the card.

"I'll call after I find a job so I can earn money."

With money, he can buy things! Hopefully pretty things. Or wind chimes.

Gabriel has a feeling he'd like wind chimes.

"Where is your shop?"

Gabriel will remember to get out of the car in a minute, really he will.

"Montrose street." Charlie says quietly. It's not the nicest neighborhood anymore. It was thirty-five years ago, when Mr. Jenkins opened the place, but it wasn't now, and to there were bars on the windows.

"Goodluck with the job hunting. You looking for a certain feild? I can drop by and let you know if I hear about anything good." Charlie offers.

"I'm looking for something simple, I guess. I don't exactly have qualifications."

He does, actually, he just doesn't remember earning them. Such is life and interfering magic.

" Well maybe it won't take you long to find something, if you aren't after soemthing specific. What'd you do before? Maybe you can find something similar." Charlie says.

Then he thinks about it, what if there wasn't anything before? It can be hard for an adult to find a job with no work history. He remembers it took him forever and no one really wanted to hire a man who had grown up in an institiution for those with mental disorders. Surely such wasn't the case with Gabriel, he seemed so serene and content, and artisitc, mental medications seemed to squash artistic ability and the imagination.

Charlie turns the engine off, vaguely thinking about how expensive gas is.