He woke with a start, quietly. The former was inescapable; when you lived in a nightmare, startled was the only way to wake. The latter was something he"d trained himself to do; in all things – be quiet. It took him a moment to recognize his surroundings, his bed such as it was, to ground his brain in the there and then (to him, the here and now, of course). Once that was accomplished, add a moment for him to realize he was alone, and another to accept the fact that she had not returned. That was a disappointment.
Wasn"t that just about all that life was anymore? Come to think of it, wasn"t that pretty much all it had ever been? He laid back to consider the question and couldn"t help but ask himself how much (or indeed how little) things had changed. He asked the question again. Wasn"t th
