"So what happens next?" Emry asked. "Do I make my peace an' ascend to heaven, or what?"

Hawk hesitated. "I dunno what comes next, Em."

The last of the rain dripped from the saw palmetto leaves onto the freshly turned earth. Dusk was coming on but Hawk was locking the front door of the house anyway. The lock was rusting, the door handle was rusting, the key had gone dingy. He put it on the door frame, above the front door.

Emry stood for all intents and purposes leaning up against one of the porch's wooden support beams. "Huh," he said, cagily.

Hawk shouldered his bag, moving his wings around the strap that went across his back, and turned. Emry looked round for him as he reached the edge of the porch. "Hawk--"

Hawk stopped. Emry fumbled for a moment.

"Look, I--" he bridled, "...Just be a decent person, okay? As decent as y'know how."

Hawk couldn't quite get himself to smile--he grimaced instead, and said with the tone of someone who had expected nothing more from Emry, "Yeah, Em."

He set off across the yard. Emry stood with his bare feet in the overgrown dirt driveway, watching him go.

"You an' Liya keep each other safe, y'hear?" he shouted, and then, after a long moment, "And stay the hell away from drugs!"

Hawk found himself stirred from the memories by someone on the other side of the wall saying his name. He was sitting on the edge of the tub--his wings wouldn't have fit under the showerhead anyway. The water was lukewarm and the pressure was bad, but it was working; bits of scaly yellow-and-black skin were peeling off his arm, the feathers along his arm and neck and face were falling out into a soaked mass on the floor of the tub, and even his talons had snapped off the ends of almost all of his fingers, where they'd grown right over top of his fingernails like fakes.