Chapter 5

"A boxer would at least try to stand up." I flinched as someone touched my shoulder. The person who was standing before me was smiling, and he extended a hand as he saw my puzzlement. He was wearing a pointed cap on his face that hid most of his features in shadow. He was short but slender, and the twig-like hand he extended to me spoke of malnourishment.

"er ... I am not sure I understand..."

"That is perfectly normal, for a while at least."

"I see ... Who are you, if I may ask?"

"Uh, oh ... Where are my manners," he chuckled. "I have many names."

I sighed. "Could you mention just one, at least?"

A sigh matching mine escaped his lips. "Here we go. Do we have to do this again?"

"Do what again?" I ask, dreading the answer before it came. I somehow knew it.

"This pointless meet-up and greeting and things. I honestly don't know what you people are doing. Do you not know me, Truthbringer?"

A chill the likes of which I had never felt before felt its way down my spine, like the fingertip of a lover. Teasing, slow, strange. But something was different: it filled me with dread.

Should I know him? Who was he? Who was Truthbringer?

But this was not the reason for my dread.

I knew Truthbringer.

It was me.

I shivered uncontrollably. My brain was threatening to burst through my head. Just yesterday, I had been a lawyer, a lawyer like many others. And now, in an instant, it was like my feet were pulled from under me. It was like I had crashed down, and my limbs weren't responding to my brain.

His hand dropped by his side. "You do not remember, do you?" He said, a look of sorrow coming over his face, but instantly being replaced by that empty expression; the expression of having no expression. I hated this. I hated being in the dark.

"I almost do," I bluffed. "At least, the part about me and Aldrin. About Lornath."

He reeled back, as if I had slapped him. For the first and last time in that cursed day, I felt pleasure unfurling deep in my guts.

"Well, well," he said, as if nonplussed. "That is actually not in the past."

The finger of my lover traced its way up my spine, slowly making its way up to the nape of my neck. "What ... do you mean?"

"You will know soon," he said, grinning. "In fact, you weren't supposed to remember anything about me. We haven't met before. I just did that to see if you had seen what I hoped you would."

Questions flipped through my mind, like pages going too fast to follow. I picked the most valuable one, and asked it.