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"I thought you were out of town for the weekend," I said, "not that it's not good to meet you."

The stallion's smile never wavered. "Not that far out of town, and I very much wanted to meet you as well. After I parked my car, I saw Frank in the garage, and he told me that you two had headed in this direction, so I followed on."

"I'm glad you did," Lightwing told him. "You can tell the stories better than I can."

"The advantages of having lived through them, treasured them, and embellished them so lovingly over the years."

"Stories need time to marinate properly, seems to me," I said. "After all these years, I can revamp my high school days into something survivable."

"Good stories?"

"You wouldn't believe who I asked out for prom night."

"How did that story turn out?"

"In my revised version, she still didn't go out with me, but at least she didn't laugh in my face." I held up a placating forepaw. "Not a good example; sorry. My insecurities showing through."

"You weren't the only one, Max." The stallion actually enacted the cliché of rubbing the back of his long neck. "High school is its own morass of class systems. In fact..." He paused and shook his head. "Remind me later. Let's go back to a time just past my own high school years, and I'll tell you about a group of crazies who actually decided to make a dream happen."

Unicorn waved us toward a comfortable sitting area about halfway down the length of the building. I took up part of the sofa, Lightwing a discreet distance from me, and the stallion himself in a large recliner that he kicked up to its first position, to put his hooves up. He smiled at me again. "No, this wasn't here in the beginning, either!"

Chuckling, I said, "I get the idea that the first thing to be installed was the plumbing."

"A complete accounting would get boring quickly, so let me offer a few highlights. Running rural electric out here cost a packet, and as did the costs of finding an artesian well we were assured lay under here somewhere. It did, at exactly 114.6 meters down. We kept a small sample of the gravel and stones brought up from that depth, so when you see the jar marked '114.6,' you'll know what it is!

"Once we had water and electric ready to go, we were able to start bidding for the Quonset hut design and kit. Don't ask about the financing; that's a headache for another discussion. Anyway, we worked out where to put everything, got basic pipes and a septic tank in, had the slab poured, got the concrete walls set up, put the cap on the beastie, yadda yadda yadda, and we eventually got potties." His grin widened. "See how much smoother that tale has become over time?"

"Perfect," I grinned back. "What was it like, having reasonable comforts at long last?"

"We celebrated with a ceremonial First Flush, one for each toilet. After that, we chivalrous males let the females get first call. After all, we could still go out and mark the bushes more easily than they could."

"Honorable knights, one and all!" I cheered. "Moonsong was saying that was, what, summer of 1995?"

The palomino nodded. "We satisfied the legalities for the tribe by November 1994, planned studiously through the winter, got started in the early spring, built up each step over the summer. By late autumn, we had a good chunk of this place year-round livable. It took a little while for us to learn various cold-proofing secrets, but by the second winter here, the only real issues we had were accommodations for our various vehicles. We learned the hard way about getting stuck up here, about provisions, keeping the pipes warm, being careful with use of butane... we had a tank for emergencies, if the electric went out. There are a few permanently-fitted camp lanterns here, for light, and a small furnace for some heat. It was a gamble at every level, and we dedicated ourselves to seeing it through."

He gestured in various directions as he spoke. "We had everything from camp cots to futons, to start with. Camp kitchen over there, a nearby cold chest, pantry. We rigged partitions to help keep heat in sleeping areas, in the winters, taking them down to get the best cross-breezes for the other seasons. In some ways, it was luxurious; in other ways, more like roughing it as we got other things together. We still kept that one rental house in town, and we rented another space to sell what goods we could put together -- ceramics, metalwork, textiles, and so forth. None of it happened overnight. It sometimes feels like it."

"Is there a history of the tribe's progress? Seems like it would make some entertaining reading."

"Darkstar has taken it on himself to get as much oral history as he can piece together. He's good at getting us to talk, pick our brain for memories. Some of it would make great melodrama, like the time that we got ourselves stuck up here during a big snow, that first winter in the bunkhouse. That would have been late February 1996. We were lucky to keep the power going, and Oaknail had the foresight to learn how to work with a ham radio. This was before cell phones were so easily affordable, and anyway, there wasn't a decently-working tower out here until maybe fifteen years ago. We ran a land line to the bunkhouse, but even that failed us during that winter storm.

"It was me, Oaknail, Moonsong, and Rainmist, unable to get a car down the drive and to the main road. Airdancer was in his second semester at law school, and Stormsinger, Riverrunner, Quicksilver, and Phoenix were all safely in the rental house. It was sort of an experiment, with the four of us here to see how well the place would hold up during a winter storm; we just had no idea how bad the storm would be."

"Clearly, you all survived," I observed, feeling slightly feverish in spite of what had to have been a good outcome.

"We had a few safeguards in place, including regular check-ins by radio. We figured out that, given the vehicles we had at the time, a good 25-30cm of snow would pretty well keep us stuck up here. We got just shy of 50cm during that storm." The stallion smiled ruefully. "It got us thinking about reallocating some funds pretty quickly, just to have at least one vehicle to get us out of here, if needed. Happily, the snowfall doesn't usually get so high. We probably would have made it without help, but the four of us were grateful to get a respite after only three days. Phoenix knew someone with a sturdy ATV, and the two of them brought supplies and some goodies for us. Rainmist had gotten more cabin-feverish than the rest of us, so Phoenix let her go back with the guy in the ATV. After another two days, the weather shifted enough for us to hire someone with a good 4x4 truck with a snow plow on it. We won the record for the longest drive he'd ever cleared."

"No argument!" Chuckling softly, I said, "Tell me one good memory and one bad memory from that experience."

Unicorn raised an eyebrow at me. "What made you come up with that?"

"Same Time Next Year. Great movie."

"Not bad! Something to put into the history." The stallion considered for a moment, then nodded, smiling. "A good memory would have to be the furpiles, especially with Phoenix in the mix. He's a panda, and he's a great cuddler. We joked that, with Oaknail and Moonsong, and the color of my mane, we were role-playing 'Goldilocks and the Three Bears.' The warmth of those winter evenings was juuuuust right."

Lightwing must not have heard that story before; she was laughing as much as I was. "And the bad memory?"

"Let's just say that it was years before I ever wanted to play Monopoly again."

The Husky barked another laugh. "That was the only game you had up here?"

"Something else we fixed! Phoenix brought up Pente, some dice to play Farkle with, and a few decks of cards, which helped a lot. After that, the cupboards got filled with all kinds of games."

I jerked a chin toward the locked space near the front of the bunkhouse. "Is that what's in there?"

"No," the stallion said softly. "That's where my private files are kept. I trust everyone here, and they also know that the rest of the world would want tangible reassurances that confidential material is kept that way. I have a desk there," he nodded toward the space this side of the enclosure, "so that I don't have to work in the dark. It helps to keep everything separate, between workspace and homespace."

"Like that conference room in the house," I nodded. "Do you work from here, then?"

"I have a small office in town, with hours by appointment. I don't put on much of a front. I don't work in that sort of law."

"Conveyance work?"

"That, and other things that don't require a courtroom."

That brought a chuckle out of me. "Lightwing said that you're afraid you might not be able to keep a civil tone when needed."

"Too true!" Unicorn offered a self-deprecating laugh. "I'm not always successful at keeping my tongue behind my teeth when I need to. Paperwork doesn't talk back."

"Not until another attorney does."

"Point taken."

He paused then, regarding me carefully. I didn't feel scrutinized, despite that general sense of paranoia that had plagued me earlier. Something more like "considered," perhaps. I wasn't sure just what he was looking at, what he was considering. I wasn't even sure if it made me uncomfortable. So much about me had been changing that I couldn't be sure how to react. I didn't have much time to wonder, as he was quiet only for a few seconds that felt much longer.

"Max, I'd said on the phone that I wanted you to have time to discover yourself, not to have to deal with Detective Luton for another day or so. I don't want to go back on my word..."

I nodded slowly. "There's something you need to ask him."

"Yes."

Breathing in carefully, I exhaled slowly before saying, "Who's asking?"

His eyes asked the question, and Lightwing spoke up. "Is it Unicorn who's asking, or is it Ezequiel?"

He took a moment to get the idea clear in his head, then said, "A little of both, but mostly Unicorn. I don't think that there's anything that has any legal bearing. I knew Airdancer, or I thought I did. He was a mentor, and he and I were founders of this tribe, yet he..." The stallion paused, regaining himself. "I feel that I need to know what happened, what you saw, everything you put together. That means I need to hear from Detective Luton... and that feels like I'm betraying your trust, when we've only just met one another."

Words new to me until this weekend came bubbling up without effort. "Help others, as best you can, in their work to be their best selves." I smiled ruefully. "I may have garbled that a bit."

Lightwing gave me the barest punch to my upper arm. "No need for perfection. You have the spirit of it, and in record time."

Unicorn's gaze became warmer. "How may I help you in return, Max?"

"By listening, maybe hearing something that I'm not telling myself, helping me face it."

He nodded. "I can do that."

I turned to the Husky, not quite daring to reach out for her forepaw. "It's not a pretty story. Would you rather not stay for it?"

"Four ears are better than two. And I still owe that soul-consuming thing inside you a proper ass-kicking."

"As you have no doubt discovered," the stallion observed quietly, "Lightwing is not easily deterred."

"Or frightened." I regarded each with a soft smile. "Okay. Once more, from the top."

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

The telling took quite a while. Unlike the famous "just the facts" detective, my narrative was filled with recollections of details and emotions, which was exactly what Unicorn said he wanted. He didn't intrude so much as guide my recollections, my impressions, getting me to reveal more about the scene, about Glover's life, about what had happened to Airdancer, and what all this meant to me and my own journey to Timewind. The stallion only made the suggestions a few times, at the beginning, and the rest came forth as if I were actually a storyteller instead of a tired old cop. Maybe that was more Max coming out, as if I were recounting the tale from somewhere outside of Detective Luton. It didn't hurt, which surprised me. It was actually more of a relief than anything else.

Although the assembled tribe had heard the essential information, only these two had followed me down those twisting mental corridors that had actually brought me here. Lightwing had shed a tear, and even Unicorn was clearly moved. I wasn't able to let go, not that far, but it was a near thing.

Several moments of quiet lay between us before I asked, "Did you find the answers you were looking for?"

Another pause, and he nodded. The stallion returned the chair to its ordinary position, leaned forward, arms on his knees. "You saw Thomas clearly, even sympathetically. He let go of the dream. Given what he went through, I'm not all that surprised. Perhaps if we had been there to help him..." He sighed, raised a forepaw. "And he could have reached out to us. If we're looking for blame, there's plenty to go around."

"Don't do that to yourself," Lightwing chastised softly. "It's not about placing blame."

Unicorn acknowledged her with a smile. "Causes are factual; blame is about guilt, real or imagined. And it's why we keep reminding each other. Thank you, Lightwing."

"Am I hearing something from the Manifesto?" I asked.

"Part of why we call it a dream." The Husky favored me with a smile of her own. "So-called 'reality' keeps intruding. We're taught blame and guilt from an early age. How young were you when someone told you that something was 'your fault,' and inflicted all the shame that went along with that judgment?"

The idea was all too easily relatable. It was, to make an ironic observation, our "default" mode. Any issue is treated less as something to be rectified and more as a way to find a scapegoat and avoid responsibility. To be responsible was to invite punishment; the problem itself might never be fixed, but at least the responsible party_was made to suffer, and everyone else gets to feel the self-righteous satisfaction that they weren't _at fault.

"Does that mean..." I began.

"It only means," Unicorn interrupted me gently, "that I can accept what I did or didn't do, in this instance, and not wallow in guilt or self-recrimination. I can't change the past; I can only learn from it and move on."

"Is it really that easy?"

"Oh, hells no!" He offered a weak smile. "But I can keep trying. That's all any of us can do, and that's why it takes so many of any of us to create one of us."

"By reminding each other." I felt myself understanding something more clearly. "The path to Becoming can't be made alone."

"It really can't," Lightwing said. "We need others to help us remember the best of us, or we get mired in the worst of us."

"That's what your journey here has told me of Thomas." Unicorn's eyes were thanking me. "His time in the public defender's office worked against him. He went in, alive with the dream, with hope in his heart, with the sword of justice in his forepaw, and then everything started falling in on itself. He began to see the worst of himself reflected in others, whether it be the clients who the police insist must be guilty, or the prosecutors who reduce justice to a bidding war. The failure of that system became all that he could see, until he broke away into something else, hoping to find himself there. His strength in understanding real estate gave him a different focus. He created a version of himself that he could live with, insulated from everything else, and he surrounded himself with others who reflected that back to him -- work, spouse, family, acquaintances, in a nicely-arranged package."

"He forgot you," I said. "He forgot all of this."

"He never saw all of this. He had visited the bunkhouse that summer, had even helped to build it, before his law school days, and then never came back, pleading trying to get the degree done quickly, working through summers, pushing ever forward. He fell out of regular communication, eventually, and we became a dangerous group of optimists, out of touch with the Real World. We're still on government watch lists, the type that people in his brave new real estate world would consider suspicious if not criminal. It's part of how you found us, after all." The stallion sat back in his chair. "Ultimately, he found himself at that squatters' campsite, and that was what finally broke through those false mirrors that he had been staring into. Except that he didn't really see the squatters at all."

"What he saw..."

"...was what he expected to see." Unicorn nodded at me. "You were right, Max: He saw the squatters, saw what they had failed to accomplish, and he found himself fearing that the dream he had helped to found had failed as well. At the very least, he felt that he had lost the dream."

"He never contacted any of you?"

"It would have been easy for him to find us... but no, he never contacted us."

"He felt that he couldn't come back, even though it was here. He..." The suicide note blossomed in my mind. "I have betrayed us," I quoted.

"And he took the blame for it," Lightwing whispered into the quiet. "He took on the guilt, and he punished himself."

"Max," the stallion said softly, "you asked me to tell you what I might hear in your narrative. Tell me first what you hear."

"I think you know."

"Tell us. Tell yourself."

For a moment, I had a sense of that damnable spook or whatever it was, hovering somewhere near the sofa, or poking into other places in the bunkhouse, as if looking for somewhere to call home. I had called it an Idea, or Glover's shade, or anything else to make it as distant from me as possible. It wasn't part of me, not my idea or my Idea, and I didn't want it, and I wanted to yell at it, scream curses at it, throw grenades at it, whatever it took to destroy it, to destroy it utterly...

As if of its own accord, my forepaw reached out to find Lightwing's, and she didn't hesitate. I felt her squeeze me, and it helped to push down the sense of panic but not the thing itself, that black thing. It was still there.

"Max." Unicorn was leaning toward me again, his voice low and quiet. "It's not an illusion, not a fantasy. It's also not what you think it is. I trust Stellamara's intuition, because she's seen it before. I want you to trust us. Can you do that?"

Slowly, I nodded. "What do you want me to do?"

"No mystic rituals or spellcasting." The stallion smiled with great affection. "More like dubious psychotherapy, but it will at least help. What does it feel like?"

"Lightwing asked me to name the feeling this morning. 'Terrified'."

"That's what it makes you feel. What does this thing actually feel like? Can you describe it?"

Hovering. Slithering. Grasping. Clinging. "It's like a physical thing, sometimes. A weight, or something shifting around my shoulders." I felt my fur bristle, not quite settling down afterward. "It... sneaks. I don't notice it until it's... well, there, like it's in front of me. Then it won't go away."

"This isn't a new feeling, is it?"

"Not really. It keeps sneaking in, once in a while. Keeps trying to come back."

"What keeps it down?"

"Yelling at it. Cursing it. Putting up blocks against it."

"Does that stop it?"

"For a while."

"Does yelling at it keep it in your head?"

My brow furrowed enough to feel painful. "What do you mean?"

"Using up all that energy. The feeling stays with you. It's feeding on that negativity and sticks around."

"What..."

"Breathe," said Lightwing.

I knew what she meant, and I took a good solid breath. I gave her forepaw a grateful squeeze.

"It was worse this time," Unicorn said. "Can you tell me what made it worse?"

"Glover," I replied. "The more I learned about him, his life, the sense of hopelessness that led to him killing himself... and the sword. Albion. From the start, I knew it was a symbol, something so intensely important that he held on to it even as he ended his life. It felt as if..." I turned to look at the Husky who still held my forepaw so strongly. "You said it. Taking on the guilt. Punishing himself."

She nodded. "You felt that about him."

"Yes, I could feel it. See it. All around him was wealth and status, the trappings of success in all areas of his life, but he still killed himself."

I took another breath, pushing down the fear as best I could, because I was safe here, Lightwing made it safe, Unicorn made it safe, and maybe even Max made it safe. In a swift recounting, I watched Detective Luton working through the crime scene, through interviews, through clues and reports.

"I had to know why."

"Why he killed himself?" the stallion asked softly.

"Why I didn't. When everything wasn't enough, how could nothing make up for it?"

"What does 'nothing' mean here, Max?" His warm amber eyes held me gently, not accusing, just asking to understand. "Can you tell us?"

"Feels like nothing."

He nodded. "Tell us what feels like nothing."

I felt my own head bobbing, following his lead. "The work, the hours, the relentlessness of it. Always more cases, more bodies, so meaningless. The endless stream of death and destruction, for stupid reasons, or no reason at all. Loneliness. Empty house, empty life. No one there. No one home."

"No one?"

That wasn't true. "Michael."

"His pup," Lightwing supplied.

"He's his own dog now," I told them. "He used to think I called him 'pup' to belittle him. I didn't mean it that way. Finally understood it, worked that out with him."

"You're close."

"Well... maybe."

I told them about his youth, his growing, his making something of himself that he's proud of. I told them about his tea shop, and Unicorn smiled at the name of it. I told them of the phone call, how he worried that this case might be too much for me, even though I didn't go into too much detail about it. I told them that he wanted me to come visit, get a good cup of tea, to relax a while.

Lightwing gave my forepaw a squeeze, a smile on her sweet muzzle. "At least you got some tea here."

"More than that." The smile I returned to her wasn't exactly discreet, and I started blushing. I looked to Unicorn, whose benevolent gaze didn't falter for a moment.

"Keep going, Max," he said softly. "Look at Thomas' life again. He had everything, you said?"

The sword, I thought strangely. In his final moment, he had gripped Albion with his right paw, his true paw, as if to find strength... to kill himself? That didn't feel right. The note.I have betrayed us. Death was his atonement, his payment of the capital crime of betraying...

I breathed again and, heedless of my own inhibitions, I raised Lightwing's forepaw to my lips and kissed it. Turning back to the stallion, I favored him with as warm a smile as I knew how to give.

"He didn't have this. Someone to help him become."

"He became someone, though, didn't he?"

That was not the response I had expected. I blinked, and that specter tried to make itself known again. It was smaller than I remembered, not as close to me now. It was a more strange, less frightening form, like a lost child, if demons ever lost their children. The darkness of it was a feeling, not something I could actually see. There was something familiar about it, yet it wasn't something I could identify.

"I'm going to invoke a little hoodoo on you, Max." Unicorn smiled at me. "There's a psychological and metaphysical truism that says that your reality is what you think it is. If you're in a bad mood, everything seems to go wrong; if you're in a good mood, things aren't so bad. Nothing has changed other than your perception. If you keep seeing that specter, it stays with you."

"I keep trying to battle it, hurt it, get rid of it!"

"That's another form of giving it your attention. It's still there. That's how it works, how it keeps you trapped. You become what you focus on."

Another breath gave me time to think about the idea. "That sounds really simplistic."

"It is, my friend. So simple that it's overlooked, or else it's turned into some New Age 'secret' cure-all that will actually solve problems. Trust me: It won't solve them. With support, though, it will probably help you find solutions."

"Support?"

"Yes." Lightwing squeezed my forepaw again. "We're back to the Three Steps to Becoming. I truly feel that it's impossible for someone to become her best self on her own; it's far more likely to happen with the support of others."

"So," the stallion leaned toward me, "choose those others wisely. If you don't know who you want to become, you'll probably become someone else."

The breath I took came out as more of a sigh than I had intended it to, but my companions didn't seem to mind. They both smiled at me. I had the feeling that they understood what my sigh had been about.

"Ain't cured, am I?"

"Nope," Unicorn agreed, his amber eyes giving me all their warmth. "That's gonna take a while, and a lot of work. You don't have to do it alone. Probably better if you don't. The good news? You get to be Max again."

"For today, at least."

"That's the day that matters. Another cliché, that 'one day at a time' thing. Trite, but true." The stallion clapped his forepaws and rubbed them together, grinning. "Okay then. Enough work for the morning. Anyone want lunch? I'm starved."

"You should have enjoyed Heartsinger's breakfast." I grinned a little at the horse's groan. He clearly knew what he had missed.

"Meanwhile," Lightwing announced, rising, "I propose we go raid the kitchen. Lunch is rather 'catch as catch can' around here," she explained.

"That can be fun," I allowed. Unicorn and I stood with her, making our way toward the door. "And afterward, we can play Monopoly."

I think the sound the stallion made is called a "horse laugh," but it didn't sound like laughing to me.