Low Tide

Abandon Ship!, a nautical-themed bar, opened onto a wharf at the Historic Seaport Walk. In its former life, the building was a seafood restaurant, and on the scalding hot days of summer, the kitchen still smelled of fried shrimp. Its co-proprietor, Hayden, had been a bartender in a tiki hut prior to securing a small business loan from the bank. Though he came to work in a collared shirt instead of a tee now, he considered it a fair trade, because he no longer had to wear a lei or listen to a Hawaiian guy play 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' on ukulele. The staff was small in the off-season, just three bartenders and five waitstaffers. Hayden and his partner pitched in where needed.

He liked day shifts. Slow business meant he could grab a book, duck outside, and sit on the deck furniture. Boats, gulls, and sloshing ocean water made good white noise for reading his book on pirating, which he picked up from The Next Chapter. Looking at the sticker on the back, Hayden thought about Mallory and how she hadn't come in for that drink.

Aidan had stared at the schedule in his own handwriting that hung from a garish tourist-theme magnet on the refrigerator in his bright pink kitchen for a good minute or two before it clicked in his head. He had planned to spend his time going over paint swatches for the kitchen - unable to believe that he, or rather, his alter-self, hadn't gotten around to repainting as yet - but what was clearly a work schedule had him booked for the better part of the day. It was something of a switch; Aidan had left his life when he worked a sporadic schedule and still received a steady paycheck. Having written, controlled hours would take some getting used to.

( Just a Little Advice )

"How the hell do I always end up in a trailer?" Aidan spoke aloud to no one.

Nearing the end of the life he had left behind - or, really, lost - he had cut homestead ties with Emmeline and moved into a trailer on a small patch of land that he had got at a bargain price, due to it being the site of a recent grisly murder. Finding an up to date driver's license in a wallet in the glovebox of his car, his car, the old Mustang he had traded in for a Jeep back in Searchlight, Aidan had made his way to the Coconut Grove Mobile Park and searched out Lot #9, finding a fairly new modest blue trailer waiting for him.

( Not There )

Dusk.

He liked to watch the sunset over the water, wading through the waves up to his ankles, deeper to his knees on the warm nights. With no one left to call family - disowned by a disinterested bunch, who might even think him dead now, like their fallen daughter - and only a few friendly acquaintances on the island, Aidan felt a kinship with the fading sun. It was the last constant, the one unchanging thing in the life he had never expected.

Tending bar wasn't bad. Tips were good. Steady stream of tourists kept things interesting. And he had his work, carving the ancient runes into his own skin, calling up the powers they controlled and spilling blood to stain the ground and seal the promise of the strength the symbols carried. But it was a routine, just as the evening treks into the surf had become.

And then everything changed.

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