"It's more than that," and he sounds... well, I have heard a similar undertone to my own voice, before, and I suppose we cannot all be lovers of medicine, and history is no lesser a calling. "They have an opportunity to make something new, to break completely with what came before. They might not be footnotes to some larger history. Somewhere out there might be the makings of a different history entirely."

I murmur agreement, again. "I imagine," I say, "it must be difficult to study such things and not know which sort of community one is recording. Have you always been drawn to history?"

Turning to more local matters, his description of eyes does briefly lead me to wonder if either of them could have been Glass Beddau, but Durand did say warm, and I can't quite say that seems a reasonable description... On the other hand, being aware of things that one has no rightful way of knowing calls up a memory, and a twinge in my bones. "I can imagine meeting such people in town, certainly," I say. "I don't suppose one of them was a young girl?"

He apologizes for what sounds like fanciful descriptions, but at least he is standing by it. "And in my travels I have learned to trust my instincts. What are these beliefs you mentioned?"

"Oh," and I mull it over a moment, "what I suppose one would call local folklore. An unnaturally intelligent hound that cannot be killed roaming the outskirts of town, a being that can grant wishes if you visit the water tower--you may have seen it, it lies to the north of town? That sort of thing." Really no more nor less than one could find in a dozen towns within three days travel.

"And certain things occur which lack an evident explanation... Doctor Constantine began looking quite shockingly younger in early March, and there was a young man viciously attacked and left in his former fiancée's establishment the same week. A horribly unfortunate coincidence, I am sure, but it is the sort of thing that lends itself to gossip." Quite beautifully so.