Reaching the ledge of my home, I stumble inside careful to not jar Bec. I very nearly dropped her three times on my climb. She wasn't holding on and I'm weak and wet. Please don't ever tell her. Should she ever know how reckless our journey was, she may decide I should never hold her again and that would be a shame.

I clutch my head to calm my dizzying thoughts.

The cave is very open and exposed to the winds that carved it. That is good if you're like me who use to appreciate wide open very high caves. It sucks if you're a cold wet girl in need of shelter. Not that you are such a girl, clearly you are not. In my complete exhaustion, my fractured mind is further on the frits. You may very well be the girl. If you are, and saw my climb and fumble, sorry, I nearly dropped you three times.

Blink. I blink again.

Must focus.

Do it for Bec.

One more time, cold windy caves are bad for a shivering wet people. I lay Bec into my building project. Then with feet that feel like they are encased in marble, I drag the sleeping bag from the cage. I may have forgotten to mention the building project. It seems silly in hindsight as I've worked on it since my arrival in this canyon.

Bec could see it from her cage, back when she was in her cage, and she called me loony for it—the building project, not the cage. I don't think she preferred the cage either or she wouldn't have jumped in the river.

Actually, she called me a "Looney Bird Man".

Looney means crazy. I know this because one of the other people being held in the White Building called it a "Looney Bin." That person was himself very mentally off center. Also, I know what birds are, they are nice, I like birds. I'm not a bird.

From my understanding "man" is the only word in the phrase that defines me. I had yelled back at her that I was a "Scary Man." This stopped the argument, so I must have been correct.

My building project's floor is covered in tightly woven grasses that work as mats and creates a cushion from the rocky ground. Also, the sides of the project, while still in need of improvement, will shelter Bec from the worst of the wind. Pulling the sleeping bag in, I tuck it around her.

I pause.

Bec's clothing is very damp.

I rock back on my heals. She will retain her chill if the clothing is left on. While I'm identifying her as my wife, and I anticipate our wedding night, we have yet to have one. I scrub my hand over my chin. This is a dilemma. To be clear, I have seen women without their clothing on—many women. Once, women were very willing to remove their dresses for me.

Ah, the good old days.

While Bec presents herself in boy-clothing, from my experience with women, I know that they are complicated creatures. This complexity always pertains to their dress. Like I said, I have seen women in many states of undress. In my mind, I have taken great pains in examining those memories. When in a dark box deep underground for years on end, one has great opportunities to think of a good many things. Trust me, the thought of naked women was one of the better options I had for passing the time.

My hand shakes as I reach for the bottom button of Bec's top. Women layer their clothing. Should I remove her shirt, and I do think that removing her top level of clothing would be the best option towards restoring her warmth, there will be many layers still to be shed. It is these many layers, that helps create the allure of women.

As if women need more allure—trust me, they do not.

Thus I know I can take off some of Bec's clothing and she will still retain her feminine secrets. More importantly, when she wakes she won't be too mad at me—right?

I understand how crazy this sounds.

Removing a woman's outer articles of clothing without asking, even if she is passed out and freezing to death, means I will deserve whatever scorn is thrown at me. However, Bec will be alive to throw it, so I begin my task. I gently, button by button undo her top, peeling away the wet fabric that has adhered to her body.

It is clear soon, that I miss-judged the situation.

Removing her top, and taking many deep breaths, I find that women's undergarments have made interesting improvements. I scrub my hand over my face. At another time, and should I not be worried about the cold, I wish to examine this further. On quick glance, once getting her shirt, then thick pants off, that the undergarments women now wear can possibly defy gravity. That, and where once the emphasis was on covering the female physic, removing one layer of clothing I find well, skin.

Lots of skin and very little else to cover it.

I tuck the sleeping bag in around her and then, as I'm shaking, I sit down hard upon the red dirt. Sure, yes wow and I should state that after spending years in a dark box means visual stimulation can be overwhelming at times. I drop my head between my knees. My exhausted state isn't helping. But certain sights I find to be more profound. I also have to sit here because honestly, had a lot of action today and I still have a big chest issue. My chest, not Bec's—to be clear. Would have trouble finding issue with hers, if I had looked, and I did not, really.

I rub the hole in my skin as it is really barking at me. Then wince as I should know better than to touch my wound.

I should be clear, with Bec, everything I found under beyond her top layer of clothing I left in place. Also, I now understand the evil glares she gave me during the naming of her things game earlier. Really, how could I have known what I held up was clothing? The things are made of very little fabric and an interesting amount of lace.

Flicker has lit a fire near the building structure and is breaking off parts of the cage to feed it. Emerald and Sky keep flying around Bec's head in erratic circles. They want to tell me about her condition but I have no idea what all their blinks mean. I ask them questions but our yes, no communication has completely broken down.

Topaz is missing since the canyon. Good.

With a fire heating taking the chill off the cave, I move onto the next problem, Bec's leg. A long swim in a cold river has stemmed the flow of blood from the gash. And while I'd noticed the cut before we went swimming, I had missed her leg's other issue.

She should have shown greater care for how was she expecting to escape with a large gash and a broken leg?

Good thing she has me to take care of her.

I could call on either Sky or Emerald to heal her. I raise my hand but do not open my palm for them. I think a broken leg would be about their max. I pause with my hand out. My friends have tricks with limits. Sky and Emerald did work for me back in the canyon. Flicker is busy with keeping the fire going. She really likes fire. It's kind of her one and only thing. The need to expand Flickers tricks is going on my list. Having a pyro light friend has limited uses when what one needs is a healer.

Instead, I run my hand down Bec's leg to find the break. It's clean. I feel it under her soft skin. I've set bones back in my army days. It might have been a few years ago, okay more like a few thousand years. Really, time shouldn't matter. Kind of like riding a horse... I hate horses. Bad example.

Setting a leg should be like picking up a sword. Ah yes. Well, except swords break bones and here I'm about to try and pull really hard and fix one. Sky and Emerald blink once before me and I gesture them away.

Heat radiates from her skin as I skim up her calf. Hum, even if I do it right, it's going to hurt. Got to think about this.

I scratch my head. Need a way to help Bec with the pain I'm about to cause her. I go to her red bag. Inside, I've found other medical type stuff. It might be kind of rude of me to keep digging in her belongings. As she is kind of passed out, she can't object.

There. Found it. This should help with her forthcoming discomfort. I pry her mouth apart and carefully place a wad of cloth in so she can bite down. With help in place, I grab her foot and pull.

I'm rusty at bone setting.

Sorry, Bec.

Along with a rather long list of reasons for Bec to detest me, I'm worried my inability to set a bone on the first few times will also hurt our budding relationship. Turns out, it is much easier to pick up a sword again after a long absence then setting a crying woman's leg.

I did learn a few things about setting a bone I had, with time, forgot:

· Setting a leg is rather challenging

· Just pulling really hard won't work

· One should practice on something that does not scream first

· Bec is not a bite-down-on-this kind of girl—She is more of a spit, swear girl and throw punches girl

· People who are passed out, wake up if in enough pain

Having had her leg set, Bec is crying softly slumped against the wall of the building project. I move over to slump down also, but I do so against the opposite stone wall. I use to be a warrior, I would fight, help with the wounded and guard. Yes, I like to guard.

Shacking my head, I try to breathe in to calm my racing heart. I've been reduced to a weakling clueless sap. I learn further on the sandstone wall of the cave. After pulling on a leg, I'm drenched in sweat. I wipe my brow. Good thing my fellow soldiers can't see me now. Of course, they like everyone else's name I once knew is dead. I failed them. Of the long list of things I was once good at, failing tops that list.

I really wish she wouldn't cry. I've faced war with a thousand to one odds and felt better prepared than facing a weeping woman. Pulling myself together, a hard and messy business that, I break apart a side of the cage.

As I approach Bec and touch her leg, she pulls away from me. Right. I bend down, placing on either side of her leg wood pieces as a sprint, I use bandages to gently secure the brace. I handle her carefully. I kind of can't say it enough that moving her leg is like handling eggshells.

"What do you want with me? Why won't you leave me alone," she whimpers. Her head is turned away. She has asked this before. This time she can't look at me, her shoulders are shaking with her sobs.

Am I that bad?

My shoulder's wilt to my side. I want to help her. Trying to do what I can, she was the one who jumped into the river that started this current mess. My blue, green and red lights are buzzing around my head, like they want to get my attention. No, I'm sorry I thought that. I don't blame Bec. I've been a horrible host. She had reasons for taking her swim.

This sad realization has wounded me the most.

I lean over Bec, continuing as I do to roll out the bandage. Flicker runs up my bicep leaving a line of heat on my skin. Why would she do that? Emerald lights up my chest. It's like the lights want to tell me...

How often do humans need to eat again? I stare at Bec. She is growing even paler and her skin is clammy to the touch. I finish securing her leg and stand. Bec is only crying harder and I don't understand.

Oh. I stop and lean away. Do you think, that the reason she is so uncomfortable is that I'm naked? My lights circle around me faster, as if they are trying to confirm this. I left my shirt and pants by the river before I went in after Bec. Clearly, I haven't had time to fetch them. I don't have anything else to wear other than what I left the White Building in.

Women use to admire my naked form, and they did seem to enjoy the time we spent together when both of us were undressed. But I will take into account that I've changed—and my time underground means I'm of slighter frame, more angular than my physique in my sword-fighting prime.

A boulder collects in my gut.

Could being naked, and over her like I just was, be causing her additional stress? An internal chill is saying that she is terrified of me. I scrub my hand through my hair. When did I get so bad at this? I once could fight, and plan, and woo women with ease.

Well, the damage is done. She's clearly seen my goods. She's still crying softly. Yah, don't think she's as impressed as I wish she would be—or you know, like impressed at all.

I must decide what to do. With a shrug I let my condition go. Seems my mystique is clearly exposed. I go over to her things, then to the fire. She needs to eat. I unwrap one of her food stores. I've seen how she likes this form of food. Using one of the pots I found on her boat, I gently heat her something to eat.

The human friends I once knew liked to warm their meals. Me, I think it destroys the flavor of food, especially meat. Over much fermented drink, we would argue our points. The thought makes my face tight. My friends would call my eating habits gross, I would say they wasted a good fire and time – time that could have been spent just drinking. After all, never saw them heating up their mead, couldn't have been that great to warm everything.

I don't know what a good temperature for heating food is—again, not my deal. However, they use to say there was nothing on earth was as good as home-cooked meals. I thought this was soldier speak. That or they didn't know the same women as me. Either way, I'm calling Bec's food done.

Sliding the food onto a plate, another stupid human invention, I take it to her along with a bottle of water. I place it near her, but far enough away that I don't touch her. She continues to weep and leaves the food untouched.

Er, okay.

On to the next thing.

"Scary go." I make walking motions with my fingers and point to the cave entrance. "For shirt." I could feel kind of proud of my use of her language but she is still refusing to glance in my direction. Wow, I don't think our relationship could go get any worse. How about those flowers? Girls liked those. If only we weren't in a desert. With a shake my head, I leave.

I take the fast way down to the beach and find my clothing. I was not completely bare. I'm sure that was what you were thinking. Give me a little credit. I might be lacking mental focus, my mom trained me better. I still have a bandage over my chest injury. It could have been much worse if she saw that.

Speaking of my hole, I poke at the still wet wrapping covering it. Sucker hurts like hell. Even the short trip down the hill has awaked the pain. My continued activity is only pissing off my injury. Because of this, I take the slow walking climb home.

Reaching the cave, Bec is asleep. She left untouched the meal I prepared for her. She called it a "granola bar," during our name that thing game. I think it resembles horse feed, not sure if this is why she left it. When I cooked the brick-like thing over the fire it got hard, thus I added water like human use to do with their cooking, this made it mushy. Human's and their strange ways. I'm open to the possibility I ruined her food. That, and it would explain the face she gave me when I set her cooked granola bar before her.

I'm against waking her up to ask.

Don't think she would like to see me again so soon anyway.

Night has fully blanketed my cave. Tonight, a colder wind howls through the canyon. The season has fully turned from the warmth of summer into the chill of autumn. It will get cold tonight so I wrap the sleeping bag around her. Then I settle down inside my building structure and pull the very asleep Bec up next to me hoping my own body heat can help keep her warm. In her exhaustion, her head slides down and onto my chest. I don't move. For so long I couldn't feel the touch of another creature. This, her head against me, the gentle rise and fall of her breath, the silky caress of her hair, for a man so long devoid of sensation—this is heaven.

I know it will not last, this moment of her resting against me. My heart is working for what seems the first time in thousands of years. The top of her head smells of summer berries. Her weight in my arms is a comforting burden. I close my eyes, letting myself be in this moment. The isolation changed me in uncomfortable ways. But here, for moments like this, it has improved the way I view time. Given me respect for the moments in my long life that are worth remembering.

Opening my eyes, I see the darkened night sky through the large mouth of the cave. Ah, the stars. They carry a power, a soft glow that falls upon me like a kiss. I talked to my mortal friends once about their relationship with the stars and they were vexed. Maybe it's the eternal relationship I share with the night's sky. When I could no longer fall asleep each night by staring at the sky, it became one of the things I missed most—and there were a lot of things I missed being in that box.

As I grew stronger in the White Building, there was a window in the room where I was kept. I would try and find my mind by watching the rays of light through the window move across the tile flooring. Then one night, I figured out that if there was sunlight in my room, there would be stars at night.

Okay, I get how this must sound. I've been very forward with you. My mind was no longer present within my body. I didn't exist within the passing of time. I was, to use a word I learned in the White Building, a vegetable.

Once I made the "if there is a sun then there would be stars" mental leap, and let me again say that was a mighty big mental fisher to cross, I had to see starlight. When night came, I got up from my bed, er, or more like I dropped to the floor and withered on the cold ground, until I could worm my way to lay closer to the window. Like the mind, if a body is out of use for a large period of time, it withers. I was insane, my muscles turned to mush. Worm moves where all I had to work with as a way to traverse the floor. That, and I had recently made the opening in my chest.

Getting under the window, I stared up at the night sky and I saw nothing. Clouds would filter across the sky, but the stars remained hidden. The White Building had so much light, even at night. More than a thousand bonfires. The buildings around the White Building at night also put out so much light, the streets were all so bright it drowned the night sky with gray.

I think in my time apart from humanity people have become so obsessed with the sun that even the stars hide from the endless illumination. Mankind has become possessed by the need to light his world. Even, today if I squint, I can see the humans down past the white water with the lights they have brought with them into the canyon. Back in the White Building, I couldn't figure it out. Instead, with my back pressed against the impossibly smooth floor, I became concerned that the stars at long last had died.

Silly, sure. The thought bore into me, even watching the sunlight stopped satisfying me. That's one of the many reasons I left the White Building. I needed to know for sure. Well, that and I realized the White Building was trying to keep me from killing myself. Knew our relationship had to end at least over that.

Sitting here, with the stars, with Bec resting against my chest, I breathe deeply. I know this is far from perfect. Especially for Bec whose leg has got to hurt like a son of a goat, and who despite being with me, has had a very bad day. I'm going to take it, this image. Store it away and hope that I'll never need it for another jaunt in a box. Personally, I'll fall on another table leg before I let that happen to me again.

I start to sing. My people, we like to sing. Have a song for the seasons and the joys within our hearts. We sing when babies enter our world, before battle and when one of us chooses to pass from this world. My song in youth use to bring the ladies to my tent—it also helped them in the decision to remove their clothing. My voice use to hold great richness and depth. Echoing within this cave, it sounds scratchy and old. I change my song to match my shattered vocals. While I sing of the joys of starlight and moonbeams, I cover my song with the dirt of the earth. I haven't sung in so long that it should not surprise me how bad I've gotten at finding a tune. I end on a low note, the tone falls from my lips and doesn't even have the strength to resonate within the cave. Such is the way of me.

I must have slept. Before my time in the box, I could go days without sleep if I needed to fight. Anymore, I can go less than a day. Maybe it's my minds way of healing. Or that is what I tell myself so I don't wallow in self-pity at how weak I've become. Bec jerks in her sleep and I become fully awake. My light friends are buzzing about our heads.

It's their concerned buzz. Granted around me, it's the only one they seem to give. I lean my forehead against Bec's. Her head is very hot and sweaty. Infection. Gently, I move her over, until I can stand and inspect her. The wound on her leg smells fine. Also, despite how poorly the procedure of setting the bone went, her legs swelling has greatly subsided. I push on Bec's belly and she groans.

Oh. This is bad.

In spending time in the armies of men, we had a horrible enemy. This evil we fought killed many of my fellow soldiers in battle. However, far more men in camps died of the flux. I cringe thinking about the strong brave men I witnessed being cut down by the sickening of the gut.

I wrap the blanket around Bec. There was never anything to do when a soldier fell sick. They would either get better to fight another day, or their soul would shrivel and they would pass from this world.

This is another time, and I'm older. Opening my hand, I call Sky. His blue light sparks within my palm. My father had a blue sprite like Sky. He would whistle to call it, and the two would talk. Sky came to me long after the time in the box had dried up my voice. I named him after the thing then I missed the most. Also, his blue aurora reminded me of a cloudless day. That and I was quite insane by the time I got around to name him.

"Free her," I whisper. I don't need to say a thing. We understand each other. Sky blinks twice and I move the covers to expose Bec's abdominals. The light settles on her stomach and glows brightly. Humm, need more.

"Emerald." I hold out my other palm and my green light glides into my waiting palm. After the sky, I missed the rolling spring fields of my home and the lush forest around my castle. "Help Sky." The green light also blinks twice, and joins Sky to make slow circles over Bec's skin.

"Flicker." Named after fire. When she came to me I had been without light so long I had forgotten the open spaces of the sky, or the land where I grew up. I wanted light and fire so she brought it to me. However, if my sanity was straying by the time Sky joined me, it was fully missing by Flicker. I scratch my head. Flicker can be a bit of one mind.

"Why don't you keep the fire going for us, eh?"

She blinks twice and heads off to our campfire. I like Flicker, she just prefers flames far too much to let her be involved with healing.

"Topaz." I hold out both my palms. I see her from the lip of the cave. She might try to stay away but she and I are linked. "Come." She makes lopsided circles around the ceiling of the cave. Ah, fuck Topaz. I drop my hands. Two sprites are enough, right?

Bec heaves. I move the blankets to the side and help her lean over the rim of my building structure. She belches out more water.

Humm. Sky should have already removed any water from her swim in the rapids. I sniff and the texture of the smell reminds me of the river. Could it be? Is this the reason Bec didn't want to drink what I was bringing her? She knew it would turn foul inside her and make her sick? It would explain what she was trying to explain when I brought her the water.

The lights are done and fall gently like feathers until they rest on the floor of the cave. They are spent and will need at least a day or so before they've energy again. I scratch at the burning pain in my chest. Too bad, I'm also in need of a little of their little light pick-me-up. Really, shouldn't have scratched my wound, it makes it hurt worse. I'm going to need to keep my nervous habits in check until my friends recharge. Making sure Bec is again comfortable, I wait knowing that time, always my enemy, will deliver a verdict on if she will recover.