Ashken found Tenos Liebowitz sitting in the living room chewing on his pipe. Tenos held his fingers in a teepee and tapped his foot against the ground. He bit on the pipe with his molars and sucked air through it. There was no smoke coming out the end of the pipe. He had long since stopped smoking when tobacco became another luxury that Washen’s Enclave could not afford to trade for.

Ashken had only seen his father briefly in the past few weeks. He looked like he had lost weight. His father was never a large man. He was skinny with a shaved head and gray stubble over his ears and above his neck. The couch he sat in seemed to swallow him. Even so, he had a presence about him. His back was rod straight and his posture made him look unbreakable. The illusion was broken when his father coughed, a hacking sound that seemed to start from his toes and worked its way into his guts. He tried to silence the cough at first by swallowing and refusing to breathe, but the sounds escaped and his father ended up almost doubled over on the couch, retching up phlegm, which he swallowed with difficulty.

Neither Moses nor Ashken moved to assist his father. Tenos was a proud man, as proud in sickness as he was in health. He refused to acknowledge he was sick, and could not stand when people around him treated him any differently. Moses had been with Tenos for many years and respected his decisions. He ignored Tenos when he had an episode, and, at least when Tenos was watching, he did not treat him differently. Ashken had watched Moses make many concessions to Tenos’s conditions when he was not looking. Nobody would mistake Moses with being a careful caretaker, but he did his best, as best as a swordsman can do with a problem that his sword cannot solve.

Ashken was not as considerate. He thought his father was being obstinate by pretending he was not sick. He alternated between arguing with his father to take better care of himself, and wanting to take care of his father himself. The second urge was harder to resist but he knew it was more painful for his father. Ever since Ashken’s mother had died when he was a child, his father had been everything for Ashken. Ashken wanted to repay his father for his kindness, but he also wanted him to take care of himself. Ashken refused to think what would happen if his father died. It was not a possibility. Moses would be there to take care of his father and make sure he got through this part.

When he finished coughing, his father placed his pipe on the table, rose, and walked over to Moses and Ashken. His father wore a long orange coat that fell down to his ankles. He was wearing a black turtleneck shirt and black pants with shiny black stripes. He looked every bit the composed statesman. He carried a black cane with a bronze sphere on top. He never used the cane to walk, Ashken knew. That would be admitting weakness. Instead, he used it to emphasize his gestures and to lean on when he gave his long talks, some of which went on for hours. Ashken did not understand how people had the patience to listen, for he did not. But for the people in town, this was probably their one chance to speak with Tenos Liebowitz. Except for the locations close to the house, Tenos would get to the outlying districts only twice a year.

“Ashken, I told you never to use that green box,” Tenos said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in the enclave heard your cry for help. We certainly heard you at the Friar’s wooden house. You know how delicate my campaign is. How close Deidre Diamond is to winning over the hearts of the people. How could you something so stupid?”

Ashken had never seen his father so angry. “It was your living house that trapped me, father. What did you expect me to do? Wait until Moses realized he hadn’t seen me in three days to go looking for me. Hope that he would think to cut open my door only to find me dead from lack of food in my room, surrounded by all the wonderful machines the Moderns’ left for us. Is this what you wanted? All for the good of your cause. The cause, which I’ll remind you, very few people in the enclave care a whit about. They’re more worried about where they’ll find more room to plant the crops for next year, then worrying about what to do with Moderns’ machines. You might know this if you actually listened to them once in a while instead of always talking and going on about what the Moderns’ did for the enclave. Nobody cares anymore. Yes, they helped us, but that was in the past. What about now? What have they done for us lately? Their machines are dying or dead, and you’re holding on to a past nobody cares about anymore.”

Ashken surprised himself by his rancor. He did not know he felt this way about the Moderns and his father. Mostly, he admitted to himself if not to his father, he was angry that his father was killing himself for an issue that nobody seemed to care about. His father should have been spending his time with his son. Not running across Washen’s Enclave to give speeches about things the people did not care about.

“Is that really how you feel,” his father asked. His face looked ashen. Ashken looked back at Moses, but he stood there unmoving. When Moses was not doing something or involved with a conversation, he could almost disappear into the background. He stood rock still, so still that when Ashken was younger, he used to sneak up behind Moses and try to sneak evidence that Moses did not breathe using his hand or a stick, or whatever tool he could find. He never found any conclusive evidence, but Ashken would not have sworn that Moses breathed at all times.

“I know what you’re doing is important,” Ashken said. “I know that you think that. I just wish you thought about yourself as much as you thought about the well-being of the enclave. It will go on well enough when you’re gone. I might not be so well off.”

Tenos’s face changed from gray to red and back to gray. Ashken could not read his expression. At first he thought it was anger, and then he was afraid that the anger had made him sicker. It was not until Tenos started laughing that he realized he had been trying to hold in laughter for the past few minutes. For such a small man, he had an incredibly large laugh. Tenos was guffawing like a man peering over the edge of sanity. His laughter was contagious, and no matter how much Ashken tried to resist, he joined in on the laughter. He was not sure what they were laughing about, but when his father shared his emotions, it was impossible to resist feeling them. It was what made him such a wonderful politician and speaker in the enclave. It was also a skill Ashken hoped he would inherit one day. Even the edges of Moses’ mouth curved slightly upward. Ashken could hear a slight chuckling sound coming from Moses’ direction, even though he looked as impassive as ever. It was good that Tenos could breach Moses’ emotional boundaries, something Ashken never felt up to the task of doing.

In time, however, Tenos’s laughter turned to gasps and then coughs. His coughing sounded choked, and when he reached out to find his balance, he tripped and starting falling. Ashken wished he was faster, wished he had seen the falling and began moving to help his father. He had not. He wondered if that was because he did not care about his father. At times, Ashken kept his emotions in check. He did feel deeply, he told himself frequently, but sometimes the feelings felt forced, as if he knew the proper emotion to feel, but didn’t naturally feel it. He was not sure what emotions if any Moses felt, but Moses was at Tenos’s side as he fell, and caught him around the shoulders, helping him back down to the couch.

“We need to get ready to return to the Friar’s house,” Moses said before they had even made it back to the couch. They will be worried if we don’t return tonight.”

Tenos continued to cough, his chest throwing spasms that his throat could not quell. Moses went on speaking. “They will be worried for Ashken. We should bring him with us as well. That will stop any of the rumors.”

Ashken realized what Moses was doing. He was covering for Tenos, making him feel that the coughing spell was not as bad. This was what Tenos wanted: he wanted the denial of his sickness. Ashken did not think this was the best way for his father to handle his illness, but for once he suppressed the need to lecture his father about how he thought the world worked, and how his father should act in accordance with the obvious and clear rules of the world. “You can blame it on me,” Ashken said to his father, lowering his voice and moving to his father’s side at the couch. “You know us teenagers, wild and crazy and always causing mischief. Just another one of my episodes. The house—your living house—is fine as always. It’s a testament to the workings of the Moderns’. I’ll go with you and look abashed. It’ll go over well.”

His father continued coughing, and Ashken and Moses waited in silence. Ashken felt the need to hold his father until he stopped coughing, but resisted the urge. Moses looked away from Ashken and Tenos and unsheathed his sword. He pulled a stone from a pouch attached to his belt and ran the stone across the edge of the blade. Ashken had seen him do this so often that he did not bother to watch. He also did not need to wonder why Moses bothered sharpening his blade. That sword, regardless of its condition, seemed sharp enough to cut anything. But those thoughts never came. All Ashken could think about was why his father was so obstinate, and why he did not accept his help and get help for his health.

After what seemed to Ashken a torturously long time, his father stopped coughing. He took out a gray handkerchief, and blotted his mouth. Yellow spittle had formed at the edges of his mouth. He coughed once more to clear his throat and stood up from the couch, using his cane to pull himself to his feet. Moses stopped sharpening his sword and put his stone away. He walked toward the door.

“I’m sure Jessica Friar would enjoy a visit from you, Ashken,” his father said. “You should come back with Moses and me to the Friar’s house. I also think Jessica’s parents will enjoy hearing about your adventures with the Moderns’ green stone. They seem to have a fascination with some of the more unusual artifacts. Moses, can you ready the carriage? I’d like to get there before dark. We may have to impose on them this evening. It gets dark too early to ride back tonight.”

Moses left the house without answering, no doubt preparing the carriage for the ride back to the Friar’s house.

“I’ll get my things, father. Should I bring the green stone? They might be interested in seeing it.”

“I don’t think that will be necessary. And do try to look abashed when you tell your story. You come across as sometimes too well behaved for your own good. You do know that teenagers are supposed to rebel against their parents.”

Ashken laughed at that. “It’s just that in my case, I save my rebellion for when we’re alone.”

“That you do, my boy. That you do.” His father placed his arm around Ashken’s shoulder and led him out of the door. His father’s arm felt light. While his father had never been a big man, there was a time when his body had meat to it, when he would have put his arm around Ashken, and Ashken would have felt it. Now his arm felt nothing more than a light scarf.

Word count: 2,097

Words remaining: 53,795 (6,205 words in)

Feeling: I know it’s terrible. The writing. The story. The typing. But that’s what this is all about: writing lots of terrible things. This is one of the reasons I put a lock on the writing. The less people that read the first draft, the better I’ll feel—irrespective of what I’ve said in the past about not caring about my non-existent audience. The last half was easier, faster. The not caring about the writing and the not editing certainly helped. I really wanted to get my characters out of the house—but it wasn’t to be today. Until tomorrow.