His eyes were screaming, screaming past their lids, past their lashes. Blood coursed through them, a vein of quartz full of precious, living gold.

They'd been screaming for hours and hours, begging to be closed, begging to rest, but Kip had no intention of satisfying them. There was work to be done.

Each and every stump in front of City Hall was to be covered in sheep intestines. That was the plan, and he was sticking to it. It did not matter that there were over seventy stumps. He had an entire truckload of offal, and he had the will.

He had his tools; a five gallon bucket, a shovel, a spade. Shovel the guts into the bucket, carry the bucket to the stump, slather, slather, slather, scream.

No one had seen him yet. It was three in the morning, thirty stumps done. Thirty bloody stumps, torn limbs, severed heads, bleeding bodies.

"God," Kip swore, "the Mayor better be pissed."

Of course, that was the whole idea. Piss off the Mayor, save the trees down on Main Street.

Kip stopped, looked at the spade in his hand, the blood on his shirt; the utter horror of what he was doing hit him in the chest like his bloody shovel, point first. Upon further inflection, he had a hard time remembering why, exactly, this had ever been a good idea. Gory bits of slime made a sopping blanket under his feet, and he was struck by the fact that all those guts smelled like dung.

That's what his father had told him:

"War smells like crap."

He'd never thought he meant it literally.

He dropped his spade into the bucket and walked towards the truck; eyes wailing, hands shaking, heart pounding, pounding, pounding,

war.

The girl sat next to him, slipped her tiny feet between the velvety blades, wiped a tinge of sable from her cheek.

Kip extended a hand, touched her knee. Felt it touch him back.

"You're real."

She smiled. "Yes. All of this is real."

A surge of joy splashed over his senses. Something about this place, this child, this glade, these clouds; something about it sang hope. He heard the trees whisper, whisper, Live, for all is lost, all is lost;

all is lost
all is found
all is forgotten

all is lost
all is found
all is given away

it's not the end
it's just one tongue

for all is lost, all is lost, whisper, whisper.

For the first time in his life, Kip felt no shame; and in that perfect absence of shame, he felt the dying son of that hope;

the girl must have sensed it, smiled at the sensing of it; smiled with no darkness in her eyes, in her hair, in her limbs.

"My name is Kezia."

Live, for all is lost, all is lost.

"Kezia," murmuring, whisper, whisper.