It was turning out to be a rather peaceful Sunday. The bloated clouds lethargically floated amongst one another in the sky, just passing, never meeting. The birds were preoccupied with their beaks on the ground as they tried to rustle up their lunch. There were a pair of two fat chipmunks eying each other, one atop of a branch of a city manicured tree, and the other at the bottom as if they were daring each other to make a move first.

For Tristan it was shaping up to be a nice day. He rose around eleven in the morning, which was something he found rather amusing. The day almost half over and it was considered morning. It was one of those things that made him feel slightly better for getting up so late. Tristan was always a night owl. He suffered from insomnia, and when he did get sleep he often had vivid dreams, which in turn led to vivid, heart stopping, gut clenching nightmares. When he awoke though he could barely remember his dream. He was standing in a tree made of emeralds. Every avian around were crystallized, their feet melded to the trunk. As he observed his surroundings he noticed the leaves were grey tinted brown and made out of bark. In a sudden realization he knew he had no supports as he was standing. He quickly lurched forward off balance, but only found himself now walking upside down on the branch, his feet melding into forest, the green creeping up his legs, consuming him. The panic of falling was gone, replaced with serenity. The peace with oneself, but could it really be that? Was this how it felt to belong?

The dream quickly left Tristan’s mind as his phone buzzed, alerting him to awaken. It flashed with the reminder that he had an appointment with one of his fellow employees. Well not really an appointment, or a meeting, that was too formal, what could he call it? It certainly wasn’t a date either. A rendezvous maybe? Whatever it was he was to find his co. worker at La Belle café among the streets of Hart. On his way there he passed the birds, the chipmunks, and several other animals. He walked with his shoulders slightly slumped and his head downward, his eyes trained on the sidewalk cracks as he purposefully avoided them. Not that he was superstitious, but it was a habit he had gotten since he heard the expression, “Step on a crack, break your mama’s back”, in grade school.

The thing with Tristan was that if he didn’t form habits than nothing would get done. He lived life in a sort of fog. He was moving, breathing, being part of society, without his head being entirely there at times. When he was alone time seemed to either be at a stand still, or in a sprint. Things got done on time, but not without heavy sighs, and reminders everywhere. If it weren’t for hunger he was the type of guy who would forget to eat, and even with the instinct to eat, he would often find himself not eating days at a time. Sleep was something else that was normally not implicated in his schedule, there was too much to be done in a day, that’s why night was there, to simply supplement.

He made his way into the café and removed his black cab driver style hat. His blonde hair tumbled out; it was in need of a cut sometime soon. He had not shaven since Friday morning and had definite stubble. He made sure he looked at least somewhat presentable; he wore a navy and white pin stripe shirt, the sleeves rolled up to his elbows. The jeans he wore were designer and creased fashionably, though he bought them mainly for comfort. He wore a pair of black loafers as well. He had a silver necklace chain on; it had the key to his old apartment in Britain attached. He had the locks changed when he left for the new owner, as he didn’t want to throw away such a keepsake. It was his first place of residence outside of his parents’ home. No regulations, no more pestering, or what they called “concern”. There was silence there, invigorating silence, mellowing silence, solitary silence, depressed silence, sordid silence, so many different types that never spoke up, but he knew they were there.

He maneuvered around the “seat yourself” sign and approached the doctor. He sat down and said, ”Have I kept you long?”. Tristan was running about five minutes late, but Tristan didn’t exactly do time too well. The café was small, but full of buzz. It had a wait staff that served coffee, tea, and made paninis, soups and crepes in the back as well as having a desert cart that they were eager to bring around.

Ever since he'd begun his work at St.Valentine's, around the start of the millenium, Andrew had made a point of socializing regularly with his fellow faculty members off-campus. As regularly as his schedule allowed, anyway, which depending on what was going on around campus and the rest of his life could often be not at all. There were several reasons for this habit, the most important of which was that it made interacting with his fellow faculty members more enjoyable when they got to know each other better as people. Almost as important, though, was that it them more comfortable with him, which in turn made it easier for them to come to him with their concerns and questions, be they academic or personal or, most significant sometimes, concerns involving one of their students. The faculty interacted with these kids every day, after all, often in some very intense settings; nobody on campus knew them better, and often the teachers' reports were the first clue anyone had that a student was having difficulties, whether magical or mundane, that Andrew could help resolve.

Lately, he'd been receiving quite a lot of those reports, which was no surprise given, well, given whatever had actually happened at the Lambert Gala this year. Officially, it had been a chemical spill leading to psychotic behavior, hallucinations and delusions... though after his last discussion with Wei-Ho, and some surreptitious scanning of the memories of some of his patients, Andrew was fairly sure he didn't believe the official report, and he was inclined to believe Wei-Ho's suspicions about the Cabal having been involved, however paranoid the adolescent ghost might otherwise be. Whatever it was, though, it had left quite a number of students traumatized in some fairly extreme ways, although the majority of them could not remember details. So he'd been counseling a number of students, as well as some of their families and some faculty members, in addition to his usual extracurricular activities... which had themselves been stepped up now that his mysterious master had chosen to reveal himself again.

So when Tristan Lane, the handsome new Senior English teacher at St.Valentine's, had taken him up on the lunch invitation he'd issued shortly after the man's arrival on the faculty, Andrew had actually considered begging off on grounds of pure scheduling chaos. He didn't, though, both for the abovementioned two reasons and a third: the younger man intrigued him, both personally and professionally. He seemed to lead a complicated inner life, and that piqued Andrew's interest: he wanted to know what was going on inside Tristan's head. Andrew arrived at La Belle a few minutes early, and ordered a a pot of cardamom coffee while he was waiting. He entertained himself while waiting for Tristan, who arrived late, by watching the other customers, and when Tristan finally arrived he stood up to greet the man. "No, not too long," he replied. "So," he continued casually as they sat back down and he offered to pour his guest a cup of the excellent coffee, "are you settling into St.Valentine's well?"

Tristan wore no watch, so he didn’t exactly know what time it was. His phone was currently sitting on his bedside table, unplugged and slowly dying off of lack of energy. The phone was on silent, and not even on vibrate. He had really know reason to be antsy about it having power, or having it around. The only people who really called him were his parents, maybe some of his siblings once and awhile. Tristan always felt like they were examining them every time he talked to them. It always started with a polite hello, then them asking how he as doing, and him answering them rather frankly that he could be worse, or could be better. That was the normal reply at least. Something non-committal. It was vague, and was a true fact as the expression went it could always be worse, and the truth of how it could always be better.

Tristan had to watch his words. It amazed him how humans could paint such grand images at words, that were not whole truths. Tristan had to talk in an honest tongue, one of no exaggerations, no sarcasm, and no lies. It made life difficult, he couldn’t hide anything from anyone without having to carefully maneuver his mouth the right way. It was stressful, and something that Tristan wished would go away. The doctors didn’t understand why he felt pain whenever he told a lie. Even with hypnosis therapy they couldn’t dig up any traumatizing memories that would have caused a mental block to set in. Nothing, it was almost as if this curse had been caused by magic, or some other nonsense as there was no good reason to why it had occurred.

Then they’d continue asking about how his time was, and the insistent question of whether or not he had met someone new. Tristan wasn’t interested in forming lasting bonds. He had to be careful, one could never tell the nature of another human. Maybe the Dr. could, Tristan knew how valuable that knowledge could be, but at the same time he wasn’t sure whether or not he’d want the gift. His paranoia was enough to keep him occupied away from the world, he didn’t need something else that made him want to crawl within his own ribcage and remain there until he rotted from the inside out.

”Supposedly well” he said as no one had told him he looked uncomfortable about him. His parents were overjoyed in fact that he had decided to come back to America. They thought it was a big step for him to go back to the place where they all started, they said it’d provide some closure for him. ”I went to high school at St. Valentine’s, but I graduated twelve years ago” he told the Dr. informing him of how he’d be in Hart before. ”How do you like it?” he asked, ”The town at sometimes is not terribly dull with green goo infecting the water and all” he spoke grimly about what had happened prior in the month. He wasn’t out when it happened, but he had read the newspaper, not knowing of how it was really supernaturally caused.

The waiter came over, a young man at about the age of twenty. His brown eyes were full of life, and Tristan thought it was a shame that he would probably be stuck working menial labor the rest of his life, or possibly slaving away on a mortgage and loans. ”I want have a cup of espresso shots” he told the waiter to which he got a strange look. ”No sugar, just lemon”, he requested. Now Tristan could only want. He never could "have" or something of the sorts. Tristan could want all he wanted, feel all he felt, yet he could never be certain what the future held. He never knew what he'd get, thus he never knew the truth to the statement. All of it was overwhelming for Tristan at first, to learn a new pattern of speech, but in the end it made him at least a very interesting person to talk to.

(Note: Completed)

"Yes," Andrew agreed drily, "Hart is many things, but it is rarely dull." Of course, that might not correspond to Tristan's experience of the town, but it was true nonetheless. The incident at the Gala that the younger man alluded to was unusual for being visible to the ordinary citizenry, the ones who were normally protected from peering too far behind the veil for the sake of their own sanity. But whatever had happened there had clearly been too big a rupture in that veil to simply paper over, and the Powers That Be had been forced to adopt a more clumsy ruse. So Tristan, and those like him, had had an opportunity to peer beyond that veil. Andrew wondered what the ultimate results of that would turn out to be, especially given the unexpected emergence of Wei-Ho as a player on the field; he doubted they would be peaceful.

But none of that was relevant to their lunch date, and Andrew deliberately forced all thoughts about ominous supernatural events from his mind and concentrated his attention instead on Tristan. The man seemed distracted, himself, though Andrew could not determine by what; some private bit of history, he supposed, probably related to his return to the scene of his adolescence. "I'm rather fond of this town, actually," he said in reply to Tristan's question. "And of the school. Though I was never a student here; I've known it only as an adult. It must be very different for you, I suppose? My own adolescence was spent in Connecticut, and I really can't imagine returning there more than casually." Privately, Andrew was amused by that statement. It was true enough, he supposed, but true in the way that 'the planet Jupiter is larger than a duck' is true; what it left unsaid could fill volumes. Andrew's adolescence had been spent on the streets of Hartford, recovering from his parents' evil, the shock of their deaths, and the touch of necromantic magic on his soul; returning to that was very much what he imagined Hell to be like. "So, I'm curious: what inspired you to return?"

Tristan couldn’t say he was fond of Hart. In fact he felt mixed emotions towards the whole place. He knew it was irrational to blame his downfall on the town. He didn’t know that if he did it was partially right. He’d just have to specialize in a smaller area. The school where his father had went, his brothers, his uncles and cousins. He didn’t know whether they had powers or not, he didn’t think of his own ability as some sort of supernatural blessing, more like a terrible curse that he had been unfortunate enough to be afflicted with. ”I would not say I’m fond of the town. It is nice enough being back in familiar territory, some parts of me missed America” as he had studied in England. ”I’ve never been to Connecticut, is it warm there?” he inquired as he was one who was not fond of the cold. Tristan loved to travel, he never really put Connecticut up on his list of places to visit, but some of the less traveled places he had been to where the most interesting.

There was a lot that inspired Tristan to return. Most of it wasn’t very pleasant. ”This might make me sound like some sort of apparition, which I assure you I’m not, but I had unfinished business” he told the Dr. He didn’t want to get too personal. This wasn’t a therapy session after all.

Trying to change the subject Tristan went on to talk about something more in his element. ”I’ve read your books, I enjoyed them” he could say this honestly as the Dr. had a way with words, which was a definite turn on to Tristan. ”I found them very well written” as he had to be careful in choosing his words, though now it was second nature to him, giving opinions was a simple, almost full proof way not to lie, as one’s own perceptions were inner truth. ”If I may, are you in the midst of writing anything else at the moment?” he asked as he was genuinely curious. He was always looking for something else to read, as he dined on novels at midnight instead of physical snacks.

The waiter returned once again with Tristan’s cup of almost pure caffeine. ”I want a Greek salad” he told the waiter once he requested to know what the pair wanted to order. Once the man had collected their menus and left Tristan said, ”I insist on letting me cover the bill.”

"Well, it's warm in the spring, mostly. And hot in the summers. Fall can be pretty chilly, though, and the winters can be brutal. The Northeast in general is like that, although Connecticut isn't as bad as, say, Maine, but it can still get fairly extreme during a bad winter. The climate around here is far more pleasant." Unlike Tristan, Andrew had a certain fondness for places like the Northeast U.S., with its periodic forays into below-freezing temperatures. "I miss it, in a way. I suppose weather is like life itself," he mused idly, "it becomes uninteresting without a certain amount of challenge."

Andrew chuckled at Tristan's comment about unfinished business. "Nothing too ominous, I hope?" He was curious, of course, but didn't want to pry into Tristan's business without invitation. "I assure you, though, you're in no danger of being mistaken for an apparition. In my experience -- well, with one notable exception -- apparitions are noticably less substantial." Although it was entirely true, Andrew expected Tristan to treat the comment as a joke... unless, of course, the other man had some experience with the occult of his own, in which case it might resonate with him. It was a technique he used often, a kind of double-talk that meant different things to different audiences. He'd found it useful in his professions -- both the official and unofficial ones -- to maintain an air of openness to strange phenomena, to make people more confortable sharing their own experiences. At the same time, it was also useful to maintain a reputation as, if not a skeptic, at least a reasonable and careful thinker; police forces, for example, would not willingly work with him if he were classified as an occultist crank.

He was pleasantly surprised by Tristan's comment about his books. "Thank you! And yes, I am, actually; I'm working on another book in the same vein. I've really only had one sellable book idea, it seems," he said self-deprecatingly, "but I milk it for all it's worth. The working title is 'Personal Mythology'... basically I'm exploring the ways our self-image is shaped by the stories we tell, even the fantastic stories about gods and demons and super-heroes and wizards and the like. I haven't yet decided on the structure of the book, though; I'm still in the data-collection stage." Like his other books, his third would straddle that same "double-talk" line he danced in his conversation... for a reader who had experience with the inhuman powers abroad in the world, it would mean one thing; for a skeptical reader it would mean something different. "That is, I'm conducting interviews and so forth. I find it's easiest working with younger subjects, so being at the school is helpful... you can ask a fifteen-year-old boy what superhero he'd like to be and why, for example, and get a fairly honest answer, whereas most adults would be too embarassed to answer. That sort of fantasy is low-status in our culture, after all." He shrugged. "That said, I need a broader base of subjects before I start drawing any conclusions... teenaged private-school boys are hardly a representative sample, after all."

He ordered a quiche to go with his coffee, and tilted his head in surprise when Tristan claimed the bill. "All right, then... thank you. You'll have to let me get the next one, though." After a moment's consideration, he quirked his mouth into a half-smile and added "And don't think buying me lunch is enough to get me to go home with you... I'm not that easy."

”At times when I read poetry about how “wonderful” winters are, I wonder if the author has actually experienced how truly terrible they can be” he spoke plainly and as negative as he always did. ”I remember watching a Disney movie on the flight over, the one about the Native American girl, one of the lines strikes me familiar, I’m fairly certain it was, “You can never step in the same river twice”, the river being life. Though at times change can bring even more dullness. I believe it takes an individual to make their own life exciting. Unfortunately in my opinion I’m a dreadfully dull person, who lives a rather plain life.” he chuckled as he truly believed he was not someone too exciting. He considered himself rather reclusive, non-committal and too cold for his own good. He had his reasons for being the way he was, but none of this changed the fact of what a sad, albeit at times entertaining, excuse for company he made. ”I enjoy travel though, do you as well Dr. Tomkins, or would you prefer me to call you Andrew? You may call me Tristan, Mr. Lane makes me sound old beyond my years. I don’t really feel the need to mentally age myself up as long as I have my hairline in place.”

”I’m fairly sure I’m not a ghost. I hope not, being a ghost sounds very unfulfilling, not too much to be done as a ghost I would think. If I was a spirit, I’d imagine myself as one who would enjoy scaring newlyweds, maybe become a bit of my own legend, something for someone to write about. The dead can be famous, it’s quite interesting on what humans focus on at times. I feel disdain for what is idolized now ideas, with pregnant teens, fake tans, and the latest new animal skin that according to the masses is fashionable to wear.”

Tristan nodded at what the Dr. told him. Tristan was genuinely interested in the Dr.’s latest book. ”Do you ever go out in the open and poll at public places, or are you not daring enough?” Tristan asked not trying to be insulting, again, it was just the way he spoke. ”I’ve never been a huge fan of comic book superheroes. I am quite fond of Byronic heroes, I don’t know who you’d characterize that as though.” His high school days were consumed with throwing himself into his studies, examining every little detail of a novel down to the syntax.

He couldn’t help but chuckle at what the Dr. said. He wasn’t focused on thinking about taking the Dr. home except for maybe a good literary discussion. The man was a decade older, perhaps too, but intelligence was a major turn on for Tristan. ”Name your price then” he said in his usual monotone, it was hard to tell he was serious or not, but the smirk on his face indicated that he was at least amused by the idea.

"Yes, harsh winters can be terrible," Andrew agreed. Privately, he felt that the conventional West Coast disdain for East Coast weather was overrated, but there was no denying that the winters could get arbitrarily cold, and that those unprepared for it suffered and sometimes died from it. "But as for the poetry... well, there's a lot of ambiguity in poetic descriptions of winter, isn't there? What's the verse from Much Ado: 'Blow, blow, thou winter wind: thou art not so unkind as man's ingratitude; thy tooth is not so keen, because thou art not seen, although thy breath be rude'... he's rather damning it with faint praise, there, it seems to me." He chuckled at Tristan's recollection of the in-flight movie; while he'd never seen Pocahontas, the line was of course familiar from other sources. "Heraclitus," he nodded, "'You cannot step twice into the same river, for other waters are continually flowing in.' True enough, though that doesn't stop plenty of people from trying to recapture their own pasts."

Tristan's continual negativity, especially about himself, left Andrew somewhat nonplussed; he wondered whether the man was being treated for depression, and if not whether Andrew ought to suggest it. Ultimately he decided not to, at least for the moment; they hadn't established enough of a relationship to make him credible. But that didn't alleviate his concern. For the moment, he chose to focus on the one positive observation the man had made. "I do indeed enjoy travel, Tristan," he replied, implicitly accepting the man's suggested first-name basis. "Seeing new places... I try to get to one place I've never been before every year. Which, after several decades, does tend to accumulate. Not really tourist places, just ordinary places where people live... I enjoy seeing how people vary in different towns, different countries. Though they really don't, not all that much." Which was all true as far as it went, although it left out the important fact that he was usually sent to those places on missions by his shadowy Master. "And, no, I've never polled in public... my interviews tend to be a bit more in-depth than what can plausibly be conducted in a shopping mall," he admitted.

"Byronic heroes, eh? Now there's a phrase I haven't heard since graduate school. But, certainly, mythology is full of those as well... I suppose the most prototypical is Lucifer as portrayed by Milton," he ventured. "'Better to reign in Hell than to serve in Heaven' is classic Byronic arrogance, isn't it? Admittedly, Lucifer isn't traditionally viewed as a hero... but here I suspect psychological and literary analysis would diverge. At least, I've certainly worked with patients who would have classified Satan as a heroic figure, even invoked some of his attributes as part of their own self-construction." That last was true in a more literal sense than most people would understand it, actually. "As for my price, well, how about we start with one unalloyedly positive memory?"

Tristan was glad to be having an educated conversation with someone. He much preferred the company of other intellectuals than dead beat, brain eaten zombies. He didn’t understand those who did not want to learn. Even in school, though his math and science grades were lacking to say the least, he still tried his hardest to immerse himself in the subject. At a time he pondered just using his wealth to perpetually be a scholar and learn more in the pursuit of knowledge. Unfortunately it seemed to him that university had slowly degenerated into an excuse for young adults to fratenized while under the influence of alcohol and illegal intoxicants. He was in woe to be in such a state, but his time of youth he had decided was past, and he had to begin to shape up. And sitting through a luncheon with a co. worker was something that an adult would do. In a few years he knew he’d be as old as the Dr. He hoped to be as successful, but it seemed to him that his life was going nowhere at the moment. He figured that eventually he’d apply to teach at a college, write some more essays, then go senile, potentially blind, and die in a long, drawn out fashion that made the short lifespan of a fruit fly seem divine.

”The past is an interesting to me at least though. I must admit to sometimes wanting to go back in time. I don’t think I would change anything though, the butterfly effect frieghtnes me, no matter how silly that may sound. The unknown is a wretched thing, but it keeps life interesting to me, there are more than ten things I can learn in this world, and it seems that there always will be. I can’t stand when people say that they are bored, there is so much to discover you see.” Tristan was usually a quiet individual, not one to start a conversation, but he could easily keep it up if the subject interested him. He decided to give the Dr. a chance to speak as he went to sip on his bitter expresso.

Tristan was very much a traveler as well. He preferred to travel the way Andrew did as well, getting to know the locals instead of other tourists. ”I personally like the Irish country side. The grass seems a lot greener there than it is in California to me. The coasts are not warm, but enjoyable to myself. The other homes I own tend to be in tropical climates, but I burn quite dreadfully unfortunately, if it is not the case for you Dr. I would be happy to let you stay at one sometime” not for a cost, but Tristan wasn’t using them, so he decided to let others lodge in them, he wasn’t too interested in cutting business deals like his siblings. Instead he made his own modest living working as a schoolteacher. It was a life that was satisfying enough for him, it was rather simple, and a lot more clear cut than conning. They were very nice properties, worth millions that he owned, presents from his father, which was why he never felt like he could sell them away. He appreciated his father’s kindness, even though he really had no use for them.

”I’ve written novellas before, but never something as long as what you’ve written, all the research you do I assume helps add a lot of depth to your writing. I myself have a thing for the Greek’s literature, I’d love to teach an elective on it, unfortunately there’s not enough interest, not many seem to like to appreciate the past, especially the younger population, dear me, I’m sounding like my father” he chuckled as he talked about his woe for the generations under him.

Tristan loved to talk literature, he listened to the Dr. touch on Paradise Lost. ”Satan is quite the character, despite Milton trying to slander the devil he ended up showing him in a heroic light to some. I wouldn’t say it’s a problem or a good thing, but just an interesting point of literature, no matter what the author intends, it’s up to the reader to interpret it and spread its legacy.” Tristan set down his cup, which had already been emptied quickly as Tristan had needed the caffeine. ”I fancy myself with byronic characteristics, though I don’t think I’m sort of demonic king.”

”That seems like a strange request, but give me a moment please to let me think” he requested of the Dr. giving himself a few seconds to think about something. He looked serious in thought as he finally came up with something. ”When I was littler I really wanted a pet. I begged my parents for a dog, cat, and finally they buckled in and got me a rabbit. I came home one day from a play date and it was sitting in my room, with a blue ribbon on its cage. If I recall correctly I named it Snowball” he told the Dr. his expression on his face not changing, as he didn’t truly feel much happiness anymore, even within the realm of pleasant memories, the past was long gone, and he was too tired to muster childhood excitement. ”What about yourself Andrew, any outstanding memories?”

"Go back in time?" Andrew echoed musingly. "That would be interesting, though of course it's impossible. When would you travel to?" That was a lie; time travel was perfectly possible, Andrew knew, although a difficult form of magic to master, and not one he was acquainted with personally. He'd thought about it, though. "Given the choice, though, I don't think I'd travel to the past. I'd much rather travel to the future, see how it all turns out," he lied lightly, "though if I did travel to the past somehow," he added grimly, "there are definitely things I would change, butterfly effect be damned." That much was true enough; indeed, it was an understatement to end all understatements. If the creature who now held the reins on his soul had not specifically forbidden him from it, he would have spent the last decade researching temporal magics, in the hopes of finding a way of undoing the day that everything that mattered was taken from him.

"I often wonder about Milton, actually," he added, looking to change the subject. "He was a skilled writer, and he clearly had a deep understanding of the character he was writing, and of the story of Creation he was presenting. How sure are we that the heroic presentation of Satan wasn't his intention? Perhaps he was a literal Devil's Advocate, do you think?" He shrugged. "Well, just an idle thought. So, all right... if not Satan, then which Byronic hero do you most empathize with?" He nodded approvingly at Tristan's memory about the rabbit, and smiled at the question being turned back on him. "Of course," he replied easily, "plenty of them. I remember my first year at college, for example... it was a heady time for me, the first time for... well, for a lot of things. I hadn't ever thought I'd go to college, honestly, but Daniel -- my father, my mentor -- he pushed me into it. Once I'd been there for a month, I knew he was right."

Andrew wasn't sure why he was talking about Daniel... ordinarily he didn't. Perhaps the sudden arrival of that nephilim agent had brought memories back to the forefront of his mind that he normally tried not to think about.

Tristan felt a painful pang radiate through his body. His eye muscle twitched to the first lie, to the second he shifted in his seat again, trying to shake off the feeling that had taken a grip on his body. Tristan despised liars. Which eliminated pretty much everyone off the face of the Earth for Tristan to like. He simply dealt with anyone, he didn’t cast favor easily. It was a quality that made him a good teacher, but it was also one that got him into trouble as he wasn’t willing to kiss up to the high society pure bred dogs he was left to scamper around with. ”Though science is not my forte, I do believe that maybe one day time travel may be possible. I also think that once that’s discovered a lot of things will be balls upped” he didn’t hold back on the foul language since they were outside of work. His way of speaking was a light British accent, though it was beginning to fade away as Americans once again surrounded him. His time in Europe seemed like a dream away, even though he had only left during the summer. The talk of travel made him long to be strolling down the Spanish coastline, or out walking alongside a gondola in Venice.

”I often have wondered the notion of him trying to do Satan justice as well, consciously or subconsciously. Either way he certainly created a well-remembered character in literature and gave people some food for thought while being back home and bashing the brains out of their wives” he spoke with his dark sense of humor as he began to relax once more as the pain left his body.

Tristan thought for a second, his mind going through pages and pages of multiple novels before deciding to say, ”There’s so many to choose one, each misunderstood in different ways, it’d be hard to pick just one, you can call me indecisive, but I do hate to limit myself. I like to keep my options open to everything, I’ve always wondered what it’d be like to become a vagabond, and just experience the world. Actually, I’d much prefer scientists to develop teleportation than time travel, sounds a lot less dangerous to me besides the whole being molecularly fused to someone else, and winding up in the middle of the Gobi desert with no water.”

College seemed so far away now for Tristan, it had been many years since he had graduated. He was getting old, the thought of aging was not pretty. He didn’t want to end up balding, overweight and mindless with a face that looked like an iron had been dropped onto it at an unfortunate time. ”Oh college, those days were interesting for me. Were you a partier Dr?” he asked genuinely curious about the older man who seemed to having some more lustful intentions than Tristan expected.

"A partier in college? Not especially, no," Andrew replied. "I hardly had the time. I was smart enough, smarter than most of my classmates in fact, but my academic preparation was extremely poor." Now there was an understatement; prior to stating university, when he'd been Tommy Ricker, he'd never gone to school at all. His parents had never seen the point of educating a child they intended to sacrifice at thirteen, and after he'd run from them his life on the streets of Connecticut, while in many ways educational, had not been the sort of curriculum that most universities looked for. "So I had a lot of catching up to do."

Granted, most of that catching up wasn't itself academic; Daniel had used magic to impart quite a lot of the standard curriculum directly into Andrew's mind. He could speak like a college student, do math, recite the right facts and misquote all the books he was supposed to have read in high school, just like his fellow students. But there was a lot more to the experience of being a "normal" kid, he'd discovered, than what is captured in the standard curriculum. Officially, he'd been homeschooled until college... which was true enough, actually, for sufficiently broad understandings of "schooled." Plus he was studying magic at the same time, as well as a demanding university courseload. So there was always a lot of studying to do.

"Also," he added, "I was helping my father with his business at the same time, which took a lot of my otherwise free time." Especially since the business in question wasn't Daniel's official day job, but his more secret avocation: identifying and neutralizing occult threats to the population. A job that Andrew continued to perform to this day, in part as an homage to Daniel, in part because it needed doing, and in part as a way to convince himself that his continued involuntary servitude to the man, or the creature, who had killed his adoptive father and mentor was not a complete betrayal of the man. "So I didn't get to do much partying."

What he didn't say, but was also true, was that most of the "partying" that his classmates engaged in was either something he was actively trying to put behind him in his new life, like the drinking and the drugs and the whoring, or something he genuinely had no interest in, like the sorority girls and the pranks and the symbolic challenges to symbolic authorities by children of privilege who had never faced a real challenge in their lives. He attended parties from time to time, of course, but he always felt more like an anthropologist than a real participant. That got a little better when he'd found a few lovers more to his taste, though the need to keep secrets from them prevented them from being anything more than casual... as, indeed, it still did.

"And, please, call me Andrew. So, what about you? What was most interesting about college?"

”What did you two do together?” he asked. Tristan’s own father had been mostly out of the picture his whole life. The man was always traveling the word, promoting, buying, or selling properties. Sure it did allow the family to live more than comfortably, but still it was rough on Tristan. Thankfully being the youngest Tristan had older siblings that he went to for attention growing up. Tristan looked quite fondly upon his days before coming to the academy. Back then Tristan was quite popular, and had many friends who he enjoyed running around in the back yard with like darting dragon flies. Having lemonade stands in the sweltering Summer, sprinting through sprinklers with bare toes, and other leisurely child like activities.

The waiter brought their food out, placing it in front of them. Tristan put his napkin on his lap calmly and awaited Andrew to eat first as he wanted to be polite to his older co.worker. ”Partying to me wasn’t that much fun. I would say it was quite entertaining to observe other party goers than to actually party. But to me that wasn’t the most interesting part of college. To me I think it was just getting some time away from my family. It most likely sounds cliché, but I did some self discovering while abroad.” he told Andrew.

”It seems like you do many things besides your day job at St. Valentine’s, it appears to me you have a lot of passion and drive. What made you want to get into writing?” he was honestly curious about this doctor ended up becoming an author as well.

"Oh, we did lots of things together," Andrew replied. "He worked a lot with families, helped them rebuild their lives after they'd lost family members, lived through disaster areas, that sort of thing. That's how I got interested in psychiatry, actually; we worked with a lot of heavily traumatized people, and there were some things that money couldn't really fix. He paid for a lot of professional psychiatric care for the victims, of course, but I decided it would be better to have those skills in the family." He tilted his head to one side, thoughtfully, wondering how much he could really say to this man. "That's how I got interested in the psychiatric implications of mythology, actually," he said finally.

"There was a case we got involved in, when I was very young, involving a woman whose family were the victims of a serial killer. She was the only survivor, and what she remembered... well, you have to understand that the man who killed her family was deeply disturbed, and he believed himself to be an African houngan -- a witch doctor, you could say." Privately, he was amused by the fact that both of those things were in fact true. "I won't spoil our lunch with the details, but suffice to say he drew heavily on traditional African rituals for creating undead minions. Voodoo, if you will. She became convinced it was real... that she had been cursed by some sort of necromantic magic." Of course, she had believed that for the excellent reason that it was true, but it was equally clear that neither the police nor her doctors were going to believe her. "Ultimately I was able to help her by engaging with her beliefs on their own terms. That is, rather than convince her that her experiences were delusional, I studied up on voodoo and performed a counter-ritual in the same tradition. And it worked; the remainder of her problems could be addressed by more conventional means."

He shrugged one shoulder, spread a hand out on the table. "That became a specialty, after a while. I worked with people who reported supernatural experiences... who see gods, or demons, or believe they have magical powers; that sort of thing. So I had to learn a lot about different mythologies, both ancient and modern, and I started seeing parallels between the ways we think about the mind in psychiatric work, and the stories we tell each other about spirits and magic and such things. And, well, that's where the first book came out of, and the rest is history, I suppose."

He laughed self-deprecatingly and added "Well, that, and my unfortunate tendency to talk too much about myself. So, self-discovery while abroad, eh? What sorts of things did you discover about yourself?"

Tristan listened with interest to Andrew’s story. Tristan had his life preplanned for him since before he was born. Of course that plan went down the shitter as he got older, but still the sentiment kept him sane for at least awhile. To be groomed into a smooth talking, wheel and dealer. He tried not to think about what his parents thought about him teaching. They played it kindly, but he could see past the deceit, as sure they were proud of him from putting his depression in remission, but there was obvious disappointment in what he had become. Tristan tried his best to understand why they felt this way towards him. They always had said they just wanted his happiness, that was enough for them, but still he could feel a tinge of pain every time they said they were proud of him. Like many at St. Valentine’s Tristan had high expectations placed on his shoulders, he wondered as Andrew said that he wanted to go into psychiatry whether he himself wanted to do it or his father pushed him into it.

”So the man believed he was a witch doctor then Andrew, how fascinating. What mythological creature would you be most interested in being?” he was curious, it was similar to Andrew’s question about Byronic heroes. Tristan didn’t know exactly what creature he’d like to be. He quite enjoyed being human, it was the norm and easy to blend into the scenery. Of course there were many great beasts like mighty centaurs, to sky scraping giants, digging dwarves, mystical merpeople, and other such wonders. Now if only they were real, or at least real to Tristan. To him they were only kept in the realms of fairy tales, little did he know how magical the world really was, himself included.

Tristan said, ”It’s fine, I quite enjoyed hearing it” which was true, Tristan did love to hear other people’s stories, especially from someone so eloquent as Andrew. Andrew was obviously intelligent, and so far was good conversation. There was something sexy about brains to Tristan. The way people could talk, and weave their words, it kept Tristan entertained. He had been on dates with ditz before, and my he was fed up with that. Not that he’d call their luncheon a date, but it was sounding like it’d be a potential fling by the way things were going. Which Tristan had a feeling he’d enjoy, Andrew had quite the presence and a dignified aura that he liked. Sex or no sex, Tristan was having a good time, so he decided to be somewhat polite and restricted in his tale. ”I learned that independence was a good thing for myself at least, and many other things, but again, we’re keeping it to polite conversation, but may I assure you that I became quite good in some deeds” he said with a smirk as he flirted with Andrew.