I woke up feeling refreshed, if a little melancholy, thinking of her and what she'd been through. I really couldn't relate to that level of loneliness. I was far too lucky, despite our situation. To be honest, my "warm thoughts" were just me imagining the feeling of one of Gran's hugs and sending that her way.

Yeah, that's right, even the memory of those is good enough to make a moon lady feel better, 'cause Gran's the best, I thought. Then I went and found the source, cause you know I did. Definitely helped the melancholy. Although I was still stuck on the idea of having another consciousness in my soul. Not like the existential bits, mind you.

I was stuck on something far less erudite than that.

"I think we should call ourselves 'CeleChar'," I mumbled under my breath.

"What was that, dear?" Gran said, it was a weekend, and she was still celebrating my promotion, she'd made a big fat stack of pancakes.

"Oh, nothing," I said absentmindedly, mouth on full autopilot, "Just pondering the ramifications of having someone else inside you."

"Babies, usually." Gran replied instantly, with not even a hitch in her pancake production line.

I just stopped and stared for five solid seconds before it hit me and I turned what had to have been at least eighteen shades of red. I buried my head in my arms on the table, having literally no recourse without raising way more questions. I kept it there until she dropped the pancakes in front of me in a big, heaping pile. There was even some sort of fruit sauce she'd clearly made herself. "Here you go, once you're finished with your fantasies and want some real sugar."

It was only for a moment, but I swear I caught her smirking at me. I suddenly understood why I'd heard Grandpa call her "that little shit" under his breath every now and then, back when I was a kid.

I mean, not that I wasn't still kind of a kid. I might be "of age" but I'm pretty sure my brain was just barely a teen at best, most days. I guess I should just count my blessings I managed not to walk around the house with a pair of shorts on my head and trying to figure out why there's an extra leg hole in the shirt I'm trying to put on, like Liam had been doing up until a year or two ago.

"Ooh! Pancakes! Yay!" The subject of my thoughts said, as if summoned out of nothingness by the smell alone. The kid had a sugar radar and would pop of the woodwork any time you so much as thought about something sweet.

I quickly turned to my stack, lest he absorb it like some sort of carb sponge. They were exactly as delicious as you'd expect them to be, and I didn't have any problems polishing off the entire stack.

"Hey 'Shar," Liam said, face literally packed to the brim with food, "Tah meh too da parh."

"Say what now? Chew and swallow, bud, Gran isn't serving seafood." I said, prompting him to look around, confused. "We. Don't. Want. To. See. Your. Food." I said slowly, pointing at my mouth. Gran nodded in agreement with my sage words.

Alessa arrived just about the time Liam finished up, which is to say well after Gran had finished cooking. Mom was nowhere to be seen, which was fairly normal. She was kind of like a timid mouse, you'd only see her peek her head out of her little room every once in a while. I couldn't ever remember the last time I saw her outside.

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So I was eager to help Liam spread his wings when he asked to go to the 'parh'. Or park, as it were, once he figured out how eating worked.

What he called a 'park' was more of an 'artfully arranged dump' that someone had kindly removed most of the biohazards from. There was still plenty of things you could hurt yourself on, but it was a very relative kind of danger - as in the kind you'd want at least one relative of the kid in earshot to let know when they sliced a shin open.

Puns aside, most people just dumped their kids there. A few well meaning older folks - younger than Gran, but aged out of the physical labor that most jobs in the area entailed - would sit around and keep an eye on things to keep activities from getting too rowdy. It was a pretty great arrangement, but after what happened to Alessa, Mom wouldn't allow Liam to go anywhere without one of us as an escort.

I came bearing some bags of food, and gave them out to the babysitters, even though I'd be there to watch my young charge. It was a kind of payment for their time, so to speak - a custom that had spread at some point among those able to do so. When they saw who was carrying the bags, they were especially excited since they knew who's cooking would be in them.

I patted Liam on the back to send him off to play… not that he needed any encouragement, since he was practically vibrating at this point. I continued my rounds with the bags.

"Great to see you Charley," one of the regulars said when I walked up, "And congratulations on the promotion."

"Ah, thanks!" I replied, surprised he knew already. Of course, one should never underestimate the power of people with too much time on their hands and plenty of gossip to fill it. It was like GNN, the 'Grandparent News Network'. I realized that I, too, could use this valuable service.

"Here you go," I said, handing him the bag. He opened it up and enjoyed some premium smells for a bit before digging in. "Say, you haven't heard of any buildings with a bunch of pipes on them, have you? I was walking home the other day and saw one with so many on the outside, it was like snakes."

He sat in thought a bit. "Oh, right! The one that blew up!"

I nodded with my best poker face, having completely forgotten that an explosion big enough to break through the floor of the building (or was it the ceiling of the cave?) definitely didn't do any favors to the rest of the structure.

He sat pondering for a moment again, then looked up at me. "Nothing comes to mind, sorry."

"Oh, no problem, I was just curious," I replied, wanting to cover my tracks a little.

I wandered off to a bench… well, a large chunk of concrete that people used as a bench, and sat down, watching Liam have fun. The kids had taken a bunch of chunks of sheet metal and were constructing forts with them, using old tires and other things to prop them up. They seemed to be having an absolute ball making their own little junk nation out there.

I was watching for a while when a shadow hung over me, and I looked up.

"Mind if I sit here?" It took me a few moments, partially because I was squinting, to recognize Alex from work.

"Oh yeah, sure!" I said, happy to have someone to talk to, "What brings you around these, uh, parts," I said, gesturing out to the Land of the Lilliputian Trash Tamers.

Alex propped his elbows on his knees and his chin on his hands. "I have a cousin I sometimes watch. On the days with halfway decent weather I bring her here." He pointed to a little girl in a formerly light-colored dress that was now at least half dirt by weight. "That's her."

"Cute!" I remarked, not exaggerating at all. I could see a bit of family resemblance between the two, hidden in the rounded features of a girl probably five or six years old. I pointed to Liam, who was leading the charge on what was apparently an imaginary ship or chariot, I wasn't sure. He had a bit of cloth he was using like a flag and rallying his troops with it. "That one is mine, insofar as you can contain a force of nature."

"Isn't that the truth." He stared out over the play area, fidgeting with his fingers for a bit, obviously wanting to say something but unsure about it.

I left him to his thoughts, instead enjoying the impromptu show the kids were putting on. Somehow Liam had persuaded the others to push their contraption along towards the other side's fort, like some sort of slow moving junkyard wars. That kid was going places. Maybe 'places' being the ruler of a feudal junkyard society, but places nonetheless.

"So," Alex said, after a few more minutes, apparently resolved to ask his question, "You wouldn't happen to know anything about a Rift opening up spontaneously the other night, would you?"

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