Silver Creek here we stand

Had he been looking for his family? Ravinger, Aethelstan, Rohesia, Eadwulf. They're all faces in a rearview mirror. There are three stages to memory: encoding, storage, retrieval. Wymond is a poorly written program caught in a loop that never quite reaches the end.

I miss them, he says, but in truth, he has trouble recalling what they look like. A dull seismic pain expands in his temples, his eyes are running, his face's a holocaust. 

Through the tears he can't see the stranger's face too well, a black-and-white smudge shifting like bokeh on a camera lens, like moiré, dizzying, his stomach wrenching close to vertigo. Eyes, he chokes out, anchoring himself as the last of the pain passes by. He watches its stern disappear. 

Steadier, now, I've never seen markings like yours. It's like they're moving. 

I see -- a rabbitskin. A butterfly. A skull. Or I'm just crazy. He smiles for the first time, the sunlight passing by against his teeth's low isotonic glimmer against his dark face.