Elton looked at them both and then down at his phone. He thought about it a moment and stopped recording. He stuck it back in his pocket and seemed to deflate.
“Ok. I’ll talk.”
“Elton, don’t think of it like that.” Delores said. She stood, walked over, and sat beside him. She waved for Terry to come over and sit. He did and sat on his other side and watched the bard's face. Terry spoke to the man gently.
“I’m sorry if I gave you the feeling that this was an interrogation. You continuing on with us is not dependent on this. I will help you keep your oath to me. But, if you have resources for helping people, I’d like to know before hand. And then I can help YOU help people. Again, I’m sorry if this hurts. That was not my intention.”
Elton nodded. He looked back and forth between them again.
“Thanks. That. . . That actually helps. Have either of you ever heard of Therman Beasley?”
Terry shook his head and Delores’s eyes got as big as oranges.
“You have got to be kiddin’ me. THOSE Beasleys?!”
Elton side-eyed her.
“Yeah. I’ve been getting that a lot lately.”
Terry just felt confused.
“What am I missing?”
“SERIOUSLY?!” she squeaked. “This was the biggest financial scandal to hit the state since-you lived in the woods and chased trolls. Nevermind. I forgot.”
Terry narrowed his eyes and looked at her but all it did was make her burst into a fit of the giggles until Elton started laughing too. Terry did not have enough dirty looks in his repertoire to split between the two. Finally Elton sputtered out and calmed himself.
“Ok. I needed that. And thank God SOMEONE doesn’t know my dirty laundry.” He looked at Terry when he said it and Terry thought the man looked more at ease with them. Maybe it had been worth it to be the butt of a joke.
“My father was the CEO of Beasley Communications based out of Canton. They did long distance phone and early ISP stuff. That means internet, Terry.”
Delores put a hand over her mouth and Terry just rolled his eyes. 
“He’d been cooking the books for years and was responsible for one of the biggest Ponzi schemes in the telecommunications industry since Worldcom. I was being raised as the heir apparent as the eldest son. I'd been training my whole life to do it. Well, that all fell apart.” Terry suddenly felt a kinship to the bard. They had that one thing in common at least.
Elton slid off of his log and laid his head on it, stretching his legs out. He stared up at the sky as the stars came out.
“So dad handed over as much of the money that hadn’t been embezzled as he could and set up a deal to reduce his sentence. The company got liquidated for the settlements, leaving us with the not insubstantial family fortune that we'd had before the whole mess. I figured dad would try and start over after prison. He never went to prison though. Did he, Delores?”
She shook her head.
“No. He disappeared. ELTON. Your dad didn't. . .”
“Oh!” He turned his head to look at her. “No. Nothing like that. He was too proud to take his own life. Dad DID spend entirely too much of his personal money before sentencing to find a group of elves that would agree to perform a Sending to the Everywhen. The only group willing were snow elves in the Northwest Territories in Canada. He flew me, my sisters, my brother, and my mom out there with him, to say goodbye.”
Terry watched Elton. There were no tears. There was no anger. Just a numbness in his eyes. He thought Elton had hurt over this all he could already.
“The last thing he said to me before they sent him was “Elton, don’t be me. Don’t be even remotely like me. Find something that makes you happy. Hopefully it helps people. Just, be good.” And then he left us standing there in the snow with strangers and elves.”
Delores put a hand on his shoulder.
“What happened after that?”
“Well,” he said, “mom started losing it. She started yelling that I was just like him and I’d be the ruin of the whole world. Then she said monsters were reaching out to get her from under all the doors. She got diagnosed with a soup of awful mental illnesses after that and she wasn’t able to take care of herself. All she does is scream now. Emily, my oldest sister, takes care of her most days. I offered to help but she said I would make things worse. My brother and youngest sister won’t speak to me.”
Terry put his own hand on Elton’s other shoulder and squeezed. He caught Delores’s eye. She just shook her head slowly and sadly.
“So I took my part of the money," Elton said, "made some investments, doubled it a few times, and set off on walkabout. I toured the world seeing everything the Fantastics had brought over. I met elves, dwarves, green dragons, gnomes, goblins. You name it. I finally hitched back to Jackson and got my degrees from Millsaps College in absolutely nothing that could be used in business.” He smiled at that.
“Well that sounds fun at least.” Terry said.
“It was. I decided following knights around and writing might be fun too, so I joined the Order. I’d always wanted to be a writer, but business training and financial studies never let me take the time. It would give me an excuse to travel with the lowest of the low, no offense, and maybe do some good for people. Then I got bullied into working for Lawless. He was the first knight I’d met and I thought he was going to get me killed. Or kill me, the dangerous fool that he was. Then you two showed up.” He looked at Terry. “I never thanked you for that, did I? Thank you.”
Terry didn’t know what to say. He’d assumed some of what Elton’s life had been but this was a lot. He just nodded to him and Elton nodded back. He understood the moment. Of course he did. He was a bard.
“And then there’s Natchez.” Elton started up again. “I can’t stand the institutions of the Old South. Those goblins got shit on. When Terry said he wanted to help them and he had no idea how, I knew I wanted to step in. Runt’s talk about that tavern. . .”
He smiled. It was a look of satisfaction.
“That old bitch. I’d eaten there before. No reason Runt would remember me. No reason I should have remembered him, except that the goblins were what made that place. They were like the crap on the wall at a Friday night chain restaurant but alive. It was like a place run by tamed gremlins. It was fucking amazing.”
He turned to Terry again looking for validation.
“It isn’t right, man. All they were trying to do was make people happy. So last night at dinner I made a call to Susan, that’s the woman who runs my business stuff while I, well, while I don’t. She pulled some strings and we got them a grant so they can start their own restaurant and we rushed some things through. Money greases a lot of wheels.”
“I’ve noticed.” Terry said.
Elton continued.
“So the sticking point was legally we couldn’t do any of this with lower classified Fantastics. Goblins are what the government calls your “mob” races. So I had to get a human involved. Larry is a good man. He stepped up as soon as I tossed it toward him. There's a lot he doesn't like about the way things work in that town. So he signed for Runt, I signed off on the grant, and now everyone should be happy. Hopefully. It’s still a business, after all. Business fail all the time.”
Terry looked at the bard. He seemed drained now. 
“Elton?” Terry said quietly.
Elton rolled his head and looked at Terry again.
“Yeah?”
“Ya did good man. You did really good. I just wanted you to know that.”
Elton’s eyes got watery for a second before he sat up.
“I’m really tired now.” He said. “I’m going to turn in, you two.”
He stood up, rubbing his eyes, inhaled with a runny snort, and looked at them both.
“Thanks.”
With that he walked into the gloom to get some sleep.

---

After Elton left, Delores sat quietly by Terry at the fire. There was something bothering her from earlier, and she decided that this was the night for openness. She turned to find Terry already looking at her and she was suddenly glad the fire hid colors so well.
“Hi.” Stupid. You’re already here, she thought. He just smiled. Damn it.
“Look, you did a good job with Elton there. And me. You’re good with people. Better than you think you are.”
“Thanks. You helped a lot. I just. . . .” he looked out at the night. “I just want us all to be friends, you know? Especially if we’re going to be working together. I miss having friends.”
“About that.” She said. There was no point in waiting. He raised an eyebrow when he looked back at her. “I need to apologize.” She blurted out.
“What for?”
She squirmed. She really was going to have to get used to this kind of honesty with him, and someone wanting to hear what she had to say as well.
“Something I said earlier. I’m sorry if I made you uncomfortable about your childhood. You said no judgments. I don’t want you to think I was judging it, or you.”
“Oh.” Was all he said.
An awkward silence fell on them and Delores watched the flames dancing. Terry sat there looking around as if he could see past the reach of the flames. Finally he smiled again.
“I never really thought I had a bad childhood or a bad life. Not until I said it all out loud to someone else.”
“You didn’t talk about it with anyone before?”
Terry shrugged.
“Who would I tell?”
“Still. I’m sorry.”
“It’s ok.” He said and sat there for a time. She felt like she needed to say more. To try a little harder. Neither she nor Elton had really known what to say as he told his story, but she’d been thinking.
“Were you lonely?”
Terry took such a long time to answer that she didn’t think he would. Finally he let out a long breath, dropped his shoulders and tipped his head back to look at the sky. It looked to her like he had just set down something massive after a long time.
“Yes.” He whispered. “Very. Always.”
He twisted on the log to face her. He looked nervous, pained. It was the first sign of this sort of vulnerability she’d seen from him since they’d met.
“When I was twelve,” he said, “I moved out of my aunt and uncle’s house into the storage trailer we kept on the property. I converted it into a basic bedroom. Lumpy mattress on a cheap frame. Night stand. Just enough to live in.”
She watched his face. Why was everything he said about his past so sad?
“They let you?!”
He looked embarrassed.
“After a week of me sleeping in the yard in a sleeping bag, yes.”
“Why would you do that?” she asked, suddenly deeply concerned about this man. He turned his face away. Before she realized what she was doing, she put her fingers on his chin and turned him to face her again, then let her hand drop. Oh what in the hell? she thought.
“Hey,” she said softly, “I’d like to know if you’ll tell me. If not, it’s ok. Just know the option is here.” She smiled. “No judgment this time.”
God. His expression. He looked like a boy who had suddenly realized he wasn’t actually in trouble over something. She tried to keep a friendly smile on and not let her heart break for him. Finally he seemed to decide on what to say.
“This is going to sound stupid.”
“I bet it isn’t.”
He seemed to struggle with something inside himself before speaking again.
“I’d decided two things that year. First, I needed to forgo comfort. I’d live as Spartan a life as I could to prepare for being out here.”
She just listened.
“Second, I just needed to be prepared to be alone.”
“Jesus. I thought it might have been the Order. You did it to yourself.”
“Yeah.” He said. “I lost my folks, Sean and George had moved to Jackson and I saw them very infrequently. Dottie and Ernest aren’t getting any younger. They were going to die some day.”
The pain truly broke through then. His facade crumbled and he ran his hands over his face trying to hide it. She put a hand on his shoulder and slowly he started pulling it all back together. It was like watching him suit up in his armor. Finally, he lifted his head to look into the fire and took a deep breath. That armor fell right back off.
“I just want to stop losing people.”
Before she could talk herself out of it, she was hugging him. At first he was stiff and gave her a “there-there” styled pat on the back, like she was the one hurting. She refused to let him go and he eventually hugged her back. After a moment, she felt him start to quietly cry, and she let him. For a long while she didn't know whether to say anything.
“I’m here. It’s ok. I’m here.” she finally murmured. She rocked him slowly. 
As they sat there in the embrace she realized that this was the first time he’d ever let any of this out. She thought of him, a lonely, frightened young boy in the woods surrounded by monsters, thinking that was all life could be for him. This poor hero. Maybe he was just as broken as the rest of them.
She let him break the hug when he was ready and she was glad he took so long. He pulled back wiping his face with his hands.
“I’m sorry about that. Aunt Dottie always said my family keeps moving because if we ever stop to think about anything, we’ll just break down.”
She smiled at him.
“It’s ok to do that sometimes. I know I have.”
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath.
“Thank you, Delores.”
“You gonna be ok?” she asked.
The smile Terry put on was one of the saddest things she’d ever seen. 
“I will be. I’ve got no other options.” He said with a shrug.
For a long moment she watched him as he turned to face the fire again. This time, the armor stayed up.
“Ok,” she said, “I’m going to try and get some sleep. If you need me, you know where I am. I’ll be here.” 
He nodded with his tiny smile turned to the fire.
She kissed him on the cheek, got up, and started walking to her sleeping bag. She was just past the fire when she started screaming internally at herself.
WHAT IN THE HELL WAS THAT OH MY GOD. Three days, you idiot. You’ve known him three whole days! He could have been a serial killer! Ok maybe not a killer but STILL. Turn around RIGHT NOW and apologize for that kiss DON’T DO THAT YOU IDIOT! That’ll be even more embarrassing! Just keep walking. Keep walking like a normal human being who knows how to walk and didn’t just do that. Go to sleep and pretend the last several seconds didn’t happen! AAAAAAAGH!!! What the hemorrhaging Hell is wrong with you?!
Delores climbed in her sleeping bag and tried very hard to sleep.

---

Terry sat at the fire for several minutes watching Delores walk away. He felt the kiss on his cheek burning like a brand and didn’t dare move in case he shattered like glass. He knew he was emotionally compromised and wasn’t thinking clearly right then. It was nothing. Obviously. It was her comforting him and he was keyed up. He’d just broken down. It felt awful, like a bleeding that wouldn't stop. He felt better, though. It didn't make sense to him how both could be true. He realized that, above everything else though, he didn’t feel lonely.
Eventually, when he could trust his legs, he kicked the fire out and went to bed. He tried not to dream. He didn’t want two people in there that night besides him.