me and my friends understand the future.

[Ryan de le Poer]

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SOMEWHERE THERE'S A CRACK IN THE SIDEWALK
BIGGER THAN THE SHADOW OF DEATH IN THIS TOWN

She let go of the tree, but instantly, she wanted it back. She cast a sideways gaze at it, determining what she would do, but then left it behind. She didn’t need a crutch right now – she was fine. This was something she had thought about doing many times before. It wasn’t exactly how she had imagined it would play out, but it was good enough. He even seemed to be taking it relatively easy. Ryan would have figured there would have been a complete stage of denial – one similar to the feelings she had suppressed upon discovering Anselm in the bay.



When he muttered her mother’s name, Ryan shuttered. She had, for the most part, dealt with her mother’s death, yet hearing someone else mention it was something completely different. Anselm knew then – it was completely true. Her speculations had been right, and of course they would have been... How many Anselm de le Poer’s were there in the world? One. And she had happened to have found him.



"Angry? No," she replied, but there had been plenty of times when she had been. She knew that it was his powerful, yet gentle demeanor that had eased that emotion. He had been nothing but kind to her since she discovered him, so she couldn’t help but shy away from feeling angry. She didn’t know how else to describe her feelings though. "I’m content," she responded, though was that the right word? "It’s just me," she told him, since that’s all she knew. Ever since she was little, it had been just her and her mother – no one else. There could have been others, perhaps stillborns, but she wouldn’t have known that.

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