The early morning mists curled lazily around the cold gray stones as the young man sat quietly playing his guitar. The sun had risen an hour before, though you couldn't tell that through the sullen gloom overhead. The light fog clung to him, making his clothes hang a trifle heavy as he practiced but the man didn't seem to care. A few tiny droplets of dew clung to his long lashes, stubbornly refusing to budge as his eyelids rose and fell, sitting heavy and half-closed for the most part.

There were no other sounds in the graveyard as he played; just the slow and haunting tones of his guitar as they lilted among the markers to people who had come before. The night animals had all fled to the safety of their homes, knowing even without seeing that the sun was rising into the slate colored skies. The diurnal creatures seemed to sleep as well in the stillness of the dawn, or perhaps it was simply the nature of the cemetery that kept them away. At any rate, he practiced in silence, all alone save for the silent witnesses beneath the earth who neither critiqued nor passed judgement.

The young man was good; very good in fact. His accomplishments were all the more remarkable considering the surprisingly short span that he had been performing. While the dead remained still beneath the cold earth there still was an Orphic quality about him as he played, not that he had any desire to raise the dead with his songs. For one thing he knew none of these people. They were never family or friend to him. They were simply faceless beings who had come before him and who now lay beneath the ground. For another, he would never dream of disturbing their peaceful slumbers. They had lived their lives and suffered their pains and whether they now slept the sleep of the just or the punishments of the wicked he would not presume to bring them into this world again.

The scene was surreal, much like the dream he had dreamed a few nights earlier but with a sense of reality they dream had not possessed. Here the tombstones were written in English and while still packed rather closely together they stood nowhere near as cheek to jowl as in his dream. There was also a certain ineffable solidity to all of this that promised that it was of the waking world. Finally, there was the fact that he was here alone with his thoughts.

His fingers slid easily over the strings, drawing forth the beautiful tones, and his eyes were heavily lidded in thought; yet despite how well he played he knew that he could still play better. He had not fully abandoned himself to the music, not yet. For one thing he had left his clothes in her room the evening before and his keys were in the pocket, so he kept one eye on the unlocked back door of the house, watching it through the morning fog as he played. For another his mind was troubled by too many questions and feelings and simply refused to grant itself the release.

He'd lain awake after leaving her, staring up at the ceiling of his bedroom, his mind turbulent in its emotions from the evening before. His gut cramped slowly, roiling with the sensation of his having swallowed dull razor blades and broken glass. He needed a fix and he knew it but refused to give in. He wished desperately that he had kept his head about him and given her his kit before she had turned in for the night. Still, he was out of the stuff so it would take more than his kit for him to get high. The image of him heating the dry spoon and scraping feverishly at the pieces of the kit, trying pathetically to find enough junk there for just one more hit flashed through his mind and he shivered. There was an aching need in him and he could almost feel the sharp kiss of the needle as it entered his vein with a savage tenderness, the hot ecstasy spreading through him and suffusing him with its light as it removed his doubts and uncertainties.

A light sweat had covered his forehead and he had forced himself to focus on memories that could push away the need and want for the junk that he was feeling. He could feel her hands on him once again as they moved over his back with their tender strength, easing the pain from him that he felt in his need as they talked about his habit. Those thoughts created their own hunger in him, but it was a hunger he could turn into a strength rather than a weakness. He would fight and not give in to his addiction, not now. She saw him as something better than he was, something better than he had been, and he wanted to become what she saw.

"You have a gift" Hyacinth had said, "a talent to be preserved, protected...and I'll be damned if I watch it go to waste." He knew that what she said was true, yet it saddened him to hear her say it. He knew it made no sense. She was giving him a compliment, but she couldn't know how those words hurt. He shook his head, angry with himself. If she had tried to sleep with him would he be feeling hurt right now? Probably so. In fact, if she had tried to do that when he first arrived would he have been feeling the way he felt about her now? No. He would just view her as another kind of junkie out getting her own fix. Everyone wants what they can't have and finds their own drug to escape the pain. It wouldn't be as if it was the first time this had happened to him. Why did he have to feel that her interest in his talent was not an interest in him? Is she loved his body he would feel she didn't love him. If she loved his talent he would feel the same. What did she have to love for him to feel loved by her?

He didn't know. He reached inside himself searching for the answers. What was he? He had known women who loved his body, who loved his talent, who loved his pain. Always he ended feeling like they didn't love him, and he knew he was right as well. Always there was that emptiness to the relationships, a falseness to them that could never be fully dispelled.

Then again, as a junkie what right did he have to expect anything more? How fair was it to complain that they never loved him when he never loved them either? He had always been in love with the horse. They had never been anything more than a convenience; someone with a place to crash at, someone with a bed to share. It wasn't their fault he found nothing in a relationship that he put nothing into. Still, such thoughts did little to ease his soul as his fingers wandered among the frets of his guitar. Knowing he was responsible for the failures of his life gave him no insights as to how to·what? What was it that he wanted? He shook his head as soft chords drifted on the morning dew. He was being idiotic, he knew. Unable to let himself be happy with what he had he was creating something just out of reach, thirsting for what he could not have like Tantalus thirsting for water.

He sighed and set the guitar aside, memories of her hands returning to him as he did so. He did know what he wanted but he didn't know how to get it. He didn't even know if it was possible. Her own life held such pain, he knew that. Did she still have the capability to care about someone? To really and truly care about someone, about the totality of what they were, all their strengths and failures? She spoke with such pain when she mentioned her son, and seemed so earnest when she spoke of Germany. Was there room in her heart any longer for anything other than her pain? He wasn't sure.

He knew the depths and the crushing despair and how it could jade you to everything. How it could take you beyond the boundaries of caring about anything except finding sweet release. How it could consume you from the inside until there was little but a hollow shell, leaving you as nothing but a mask hiding your own emptiness.

And as he thought he realized something else. He had felt that way and yet did not feel it now. The hollowness he had felt was filled, something he had not felt in several years. It may be filled with a new hunger, a new addiction, but it was more than the empty cravings that had filled his heart earlier. This was not the desire to simply escape emptiness. This was something more, and perhaps if he could still find such feelings within himself she could as well.

He sighed and looked out over the silent graves, knowing the destination but not the road to travel. The demon in his belly continued to gnaw at him in the early dawn but he scarcely felt it now. He new it was simply bidding its time and waiting for a better moment to strike, but for now he could tame that beast.

He had to work tonight at the Squirrel. It was Thursday and while he no longer was in such desperate need for money he needed to be up on the stage in front of people who could smile and applaud. What's more, perhaps he could use the money to buy something other than the drugs that had sustained him. Perhaps something to give himself some focus, help him to attain the vision she saw of him.

He shook his head. He would need to talk with her, make sure it was all right to set up some equipment. He suspected that she would offer to buy it for him. Money seemed to matter so little to her, but he knew it was important that he do this himself. He needed to earn back what he never was, he needed to cast himself anew. The equipment wouldn't be cheap, several thousand dollars at least. He had to laugh at that. Two weeks ago such thoughts would have been nothing but a bitter joke, yet already he was thinking about where to get the money. He knew that his job with Erik would pay well. Hell, it might even pay the entire bill. Still, he wasn't sure. She had said she had a friend, Harvey, who might need someone to do work for a soundtrack. It sounded strictly B-budget but between the two he should have enough.

He smiled a little as he looked at the path back to the house. The sun was beginning to come through the gloom overhead and the morning fog was beginning to burn away. The house no longer looked quite as vague as it had in the early morning light.

"Thank you" he whispered as he reached down to pat the surface of the tombstone he had been leaning against as he practiced. "Thanks for listening."

He shook his head and chuckled a little to himself. He had never been the sort to talk to the dead before, always viewing them as nothing but empty shells left behind. Still, somehow it felt as if it was the right thing to do this time. He straightened up and began walking back to the house, the pain in his gut a weak and feeble thing know and his mind clearer than before. He had to get some sleep so that he would be ready for work tonight. She had said she would try to be there and he wanted to be sure it was a good show.

With a relaxed stride he walked down the path, leaving the small cemetery behind as the house drew nearer, and as he did so the sun broke through the clouds, casting her rays across his previous seat, a stone far newer than its silent companions.