Outside, the Rose Moon was a cow-heavy sphere of howlite atop the velvety blackness of the diamond studded sky and there wasn't the slightest signs of white cotton candy clouds to mar the majesty of the night. The full bodied moon cast down daggers of limpid phosphorecent light unto the back yard, illuminating the posterior façade of the peach and cream Victorian, wherein Zelmir slumbered.

In that crystalline light the house looked like the no longer docile figure of milky-skinned Kore, a tenacious spark burning in her eye. The picket fencing became the Acheron. The shadow clad willow tree, that took up residence near the back of the garden, became the likeness of Khron and towered over the Stygian river of pristine grass that was broken only by a scant row of moon flowers, that glimmered in the lucent moonlight like lost souls. Zel had had them planted a few years back to give himself something to do on nights when slumber came to him as easily as catching water in his hands. Those nights he was a bundle of nervous energy wound so tightly he could powder a New York city block for a week with just his bare fingertips.

The night had about it the quiet, mournful destitution of a grave. Not even the chirping of cicadas pierced the veil of silence. A soft Zephyr breeze blew down Grove Street and across Addison Avenue and danced through the leaves of the willow tree bringing with it a haze of mist from the falls. Inside, Zel turned over, once again, in his now fretful sleep.

“Ok,” Ian says as he puts the car in drive. As he pulls out of the lot they are in he turns to Zel and smiles a gentel and quite smile. The silence that surrounds them is a contented little things; as happy as a well fed and napping infant.

The single gun shot rings out shattering the happy quiet of the night. Almost at once, Ian is no more. In his place is a fountain spewing forth sanguine waters that flood the confines of the car. In no time at all, Zel is drowning. He is alone and he is drowning in a sweeping sea of blood. He screams, but, the sound doesn't carry beyond his own mind.

Zelmir sat up in bed, as stiffly as a kindling log, and through sleep rattled eyes peered at the alarm clock on the nightstand to his right. Those angry red gashes in the blackness of the darkened room quickly resolved themselves into the time. 5:45.

Zel, usually, would have been up going on three hours by this time. With no husband to contend with, as Blaze had gone down to Raleigh to put in his bid on a house he wanted his firm to do, and no hormonal teenage boy in the house, school had let out for the summer and Fabian was staying over at a friends house, Zel had promised Blaze that he'd actually sleep in for a change, and so he did. He'd planned on sleeping until eight o'clock, eight thirty at the latest, and he'd still, probably, be asleep if it weren't for the noise.

It sounded close; tantalizingly close. Like Zel could reach out, with a shaky hand, and take a firm hold of it. “What was that noise,” Zel muttered to himself. “Is it a trailer-less big rig? A small party bus?” It sounded close. Too close. It sounded like it was coming from the back yard. It was that close. Then, came the deafening, empty, silence of the engine falling silent.

Zel slid from within the plush comforts of his bed, hissing slightly as his bare feet made contact with the cold hardwood flooring, and stopped at the foot of the bed to dawn his robe. How he hated that robe. It was a gift from Blaze for Zel's thirty-ninth birthday. The robe itself wasn't so bad, it was the idea that Blaze had given his father the same style robe for Father's Day. Of course, they were different colors. Hunter Westborne's was Hunter's Green and Zel's was a pale shade of Paris Green, a shade darker than his eyes. But, the cut and material, mohair, were the same. It was the perfect gift for a man of seventy plus years, of which Zel most certainly was not. 

He slid into the robe and his slippers and walked, bumble-footedly, in the dark to the window. He peered out the window, through the veil of lacy curtains, at the unadulterated splendor of the night. And, then he saw it. The source of the noise was an Indian motorcycle. As he rubbed the sleep from his eyes in a frail attempt to not slip back through Morpheus' ivory gate, he thought: “Fabian Hallam Westborne-Kenny, you better not have bought that GD thing!”

In the back of his mind he knew, or at least he hoped, that his Fabes wouldn't be that reckless; to go and buy something like that without checking with him first. And then, he saw them. Two strapping youths. One with a shaggy mane of hair the color of honey, and, the other, a brunet.

From what Zel could see in the moonlight, they were dressed in little more than bed sheets, worn toga style and appeared ghostly white, boots of some indeterminable fashion, and crooked smiles, like the cat the finally caught and ate the canary. Zel assumed that they were from the university. Landing Point University was famed, at least amongst the inhabitants of Landing Point, as the tenth best academic institution in North Carolina; the best in the Carolinas, depending on whom you spoke with.

The Brunet wrapped his arms around the slightly taller blond, and pulled himself to the boy for a kiss. It was one of those kisses that made Zel drop down below the windowsill. His face burning vermilion red. Like the cat the satisfaction resurrected, Zel found himself peering over the top of the windowsill at them. His eyes, alive with a scintillated spark akin to a child’s first trip to a sweetshop.

The kiss grew progressively more intense, so much so that Zel had little doubt that the pair would be breathless when it ended; as breathless as Zel found himself, inexplicably, to be. The Blond reached up to untie the knot holding his toga in place, but, The Brunet slapped his hand away before undoing it himself. The Brunet broke the kiss and took a step back, no doubt to take in the sight of the god before him. Zel couldn't help the gasp that escaped his lips; releasing the breath he didn't know he'd been holding in. The Blond had a crooked and cocky white toothed grin plaster on his face. His beauty is beyond description Zel though to himself and damn if he doesn't know it. Zel found himself suddenly dizzy. His heart was racing so fast he had to place his hand over it just to keep it from flying out of his chest. The blood roaring in his ears drowned out the ravenous silence in the room.

He turned around on his haunches and slid the rest of the way down the wall. He need to feel the hard dark wood of the floor, cold as it was, underneath his not-quite-as-firm-as-they-used-to-be buttocks. He needed the safety it afforded him, because, he of a sudden felt reckless. It was the ghost of a feeling he hadn't felt in nigh over two decades. Twenty-one years. He hadn't felt this way since that summer he was eighteen and he'd decided that he no longer wanted to be a virgin. The summer met Blaze for the first time at some dull as ditch water party some friend of a friend had thrown when her parents had gone out of town.

That summer had been a summer of first for Zel. His first party, were cheep booze flowed more freely that water over the falls; his first honest to god kiss, stolen by Blaze in the Angel's Cave with the roar of the sheet of water that closed then in the cave; his first time skinny dipping with a boy like him, Blaze had asked Zel if he wanted to go swimming and his liquor addled brain say yes and suggested they go to the falls as he had something he wanted to show Blaze; His first time bringing a stranger to The Fort (the first time he'd gone back there after Ian's murder) — a makeshift club he and Ian had made out of one of the out of the way caves jutting off from the main chamber of the lesser Angel's Cave system that they had found the summer they'd turned twelve and had decided that they wanted to see for themselves the four angel statues atop the falls for themselves. They never did find them, but, they did find the well self-lit cave and decided then and there that that would be there new hideout.

With himself somewhat back to normal, Zel turned over onto his knees, sitting on his feet Japanese style, he dared a peak out the window. The Blond now had his hand on The Brunet's head guiding him, lovingly and gently, in his oral ministrations. Zel thought about calling someone. The police, maybe. Blaze, at the very least. But, he couldn't draw himself away for the carnal delights in front of his eyes. He wondered if they knew that they were being watched, or if they even cared one way or the other.

Not even ten minutes later it was over and they'd hopped back on the bike and speed off into the night, clad slightly more that the day they were born. With the rumbling of the engine came the call to action the Zel needed to break the spell he found himself under. Rising to his feet, he tighten the sash on his robe in a vain attempt to not feel as dirty as he felt, went to the head of the bed, and grabbed his cell phone before making his way, in the familiar darkness of the hall, down the stairs and out the back door.