[b]May 1st, 1980: Sevan, Armenia[/b]

The sun set over an old, blocky cobblestone cottage to the west. Red sunlight burned through its empty windows like fire, and when it disappeared over the horizon it felt like a chill had taken the air. For the four musicians, it was time to rest.

Yared drove their new ride off of the road. They had found it abandoned on the border of Syria and Armenia, lacking only gas and a driver. It was some military vehicle, thick and olive drab with a solid armored body and the smell of rust about it. It drove rough and sounded rougher, sputtering and choking like something near death, but they kept her moving all the same. There was only a front seat, as long as a sofa but made like a steel bench. In the back, there was nothing but empty space and a cold metal floor, and the red-stained weld marks that bubbled along the wall. They had covered it in blankets to warm it, but a ruffled sheet or a folded edge sometimes exposed the skin to the chilly steel below.

Yared bounced in his seat as they drove over folds in the landscape. His baggy clothes flopped on every bump. He did not look like someone who should be driving this rig. His bushy beard and the small-framed pair of yellow-tinted sunglasses posed playfully on his nose was a far cry from whatever soldier or rebel had sat on this seat before him. His freckled black skin was certainly different then the Turks who had owned this thing before, and even here he wore a contented smile as he drove.

They found a place on the other side of a bald hill and stopped. All the hills were bald here - trees were as rare as people in the Armenian countryside. Instead, a rolling grass plain surrounded them, green except for where it was brown, which was often enough that either color described half of it. In front of them, a long lake stretched on endlessly on either side, but they could see the shore distantly in front of them. Turquoise waters caught the wind and marched across the jeweled surface in gentle lines.

"This should be it, friends." Yared said. "We can sleep here for tonight."

"How far are we from Sevan, brother?" Marc asked. His voice was hoarse from smoking for the entirety of the last hour. The younger man, he wore baggy clothes in the same way as Yared and had the same dark African skin, but he was clean shaven and had the look of someone who was about to fall asleep.

"It's right over there, brother." he pointed. A vague orange glow stained the northern sky, hugging the hills next to the lake.

They had heard it from Armenians and Syrians, Palestinians and Greeks. As the Ottoman Empire fell into pieces, Armenia had turned into a sort of temporary leader. There were still grudges and differences that made the relations between individual people run chilly, but the threat of their shared Turkic foe brought them together all the same. Armenia was a place to find weapons and training. Armenia was a place to meet with foreign ambassadors and discuss shared tactics. And in Armenia, Sevan was a place to get drunk and find a whore. The small resort town brought foreign agents and ambassadors just as quick as it did middle eastern rebels, and soon enough expatriates brought exotic foods and exotic ways to accommodate them. There had been a war on the front, but there was party behind it all in Sevan.

And they were a band. They had been fleeing since Cairo, where Barnham had taken Aaliyah's eye. He would have taken more if they hadn't run, and they were still running. The thought of settling down seemed like a dream coming to life, and they were nearly there.

"Samel, brother, are you going to want some of the shit?" Marc grinned.

Samel. That was still his name here. He had been born Sahle, first son of Emperor Yohannes of Ethiopia. He had been that, and more. When his father died, he had been Emperor for a time, but his brother had overthrown him and assassins had driven him out of his mansion-prison. Now he was Samel, a traveling musician of no accord. He had grown a beard to hide his face, and grown his hair out long for good measure, but somewhere inside he was still Sahle, and nobody could ever know.

Not even her. Aaliyah. He had fallen in love with her in Cairo, and she had lost an eye for it. His dark haired Bedouin beauty. She was hardly five foot tall, but she was thick in the chest and her remaining eyes was as green as its twin had been before Barnham. Even the place she had been wounded was covered with not but a delicate silk bandage. He has caused that maiming, he always felt. He had caused it by suggesting they skim money off the top. But she still loved him, and he only wished that she could know who he was.

"Yeh." he nodded, ready to hide from his feelings. "I'm ready for some shit."

They crawled in the back, all except Yared who seemed to be enjoying the view of the lake. They had mescaline and mushrooms and acid and cannabis. Sometimes Sahle wondered how Marc managed to maintain his stash - he was stoned more than he was sober, yet he still had the wits to find all the drugs he needed to replenish his supply. Sahle never questioned him. He seemed to know what mixed with what, and and he always delivered the feelings Sahle wanted.

Yared turned on the radio. Armenian folksongs. Yared looked at the static-babbling machine as if it had just farted. "I hope this is not what they expect us to play, friends." he giggled.

"It sounds like somebody dropped all their grandpas instruments down the stairs." Marc choked.

"And listen now." Yared said, "He is getting yelled at for it."

Smoke filled the truck, and soon its rusty smell joined with richer scents. Aaliyah had curled into a blanket, and Sahle wrapped himself around her. The world seemed to throb in his vision, and it gave him a headache. He closed his eyes.

The music came to an end, and the strong monotone voice of an old man began to drone in its place.

"This is the news, from the Armenian people and to the Armenian people. The time is twenty two hundred hours."

Sahle began to drift into sleep, and the newsman's voice accompanied him. At first it played in the back of his mind, like a soundtrack for the night.

"The Turkish Government have claimed that the Greek incursions on their lands on the Aegean coast of Anatolia is an illegal breech of their sovereignty. Meanwhile, the Turks have yet to reclaim the capital city of Istanbul, which remains in the hands of the civilian coup which took control of the city after the death of Suleiman the third was first reported."

And then the voice started to fade. Sentences fell apart, and a dream took over.

"At twelve hundred hours today, Turkish officials confirmed..."

He dreamt of an ancient city crumbling into ruin. In front of him, an towering domed church painted in rusty pinks cast a shadow and bells rang. A man in flowing white robes and a great red turban stood in front of it, jewels flowing from his wrists and neck and a twice-pronged cross on his brow. Blood and semen gushed from an invisible wound in his chest, and it was all gone.

"the third is dead. It is official as of ten hours ago..."

And then the voice ceased, and all that was there was the dream, and it kept going.

A man with sharp features and hair as black as coal sat atop a throne of disembodied hands black with rot. His suit and face alike were covered in a thing layer of white dust, and he laughed hysterically until one of the putrid hands grabbed his ankle and caused him to scream. Into smoke, he and his grisly chair were gone.

In their place, one thousand banners danced against each other to a visceral drumbeat, catching fire from an invisible torch and burning up like matchsticks until there was only one, and its pole was tipped with a spearhead. In a moment, it was gone as well.

An elderly Asian man sat in a simple canvas chair, his palm pressed against his forehead. He was surrounded by younger men of his race, and they bickered amongst themselves while he remained quiet. When everything around them caught fire, his comrades did not seem to notice, but he did, and he looked defeated. The smoke swallowed them and they disappeared.

A faceless army marched across fields and left mud behind them. In front of them, a bearded eagle proudly carried a land deed and shoved it in the face of a rabid bear. The bear roared and they vanished in a puff.

Fainter dreams followed. It felt as if he were looking at something he was not supposed to see. An alligator was smothered by a red flag, and the sea drowned a young wasp nearby, washing it all away. In its place, he saw a jungle that stretched from coast to coast. It began to wither and die until there was only a patch left on the eastern shore, and then it was gone. A man in chains offered his hand to a king, but the king spurned him and shook hands with the mans master instead.

When he awoke, the radio had turned back to folk music. Yared had fallen asleep in the front, and his head was draped uncomfortably over the top. In the corner, Marc was hugging a long pipe, and its thin glow was the only light in the compartment. Night had brought the cold, and tousled blankets had left patches of the cold steel floor exposed to his skin. He shivered and sat up, then realized Aaliyah was not there.

Rubbing sleep from his eyes, he opened the back hatch. The unoiled hinges cried and scraped as the hatch swung open, and Sahle leapt to the ground. His bare feet felt the cool ground and scratchy half-green grass between his toes. There was a strong breeze, and it carried the wet sounds of the lake with it. By now, the moon had taken the sky, and the blackness was filled with infinite stars.

He saw her at the crest of the hill, staring out across the water. The wind caught her hair, and the fringes of the white dress she had wore ever since Bethlehem. He walked up to her and pressed himself against her shoulders.

"We should be sleeping." he said.

She was silent for a moment, leaning into him but saying nothing. He could feel her warmth, and it was his favorite thing in the moment.

"It is over there." she said, pointing out across the lake. "What we have been wanting."

The orange glow seemed close, only kept from them by the rising Armenian hills. They had nearly went there that night, but Yared had talked them out of it. "Do you want to go to a crime town in the dark, brother? Lets get there when there is some light so we can see before we get stabbed." His reason had won them over.

"I wonder what they have." she said softly.

He kissed her neck. "A job and a room." he said, "We can live together this time. In the same place, in the same bed..."

"It will be different this time?" she asked hopefully.

He smiled. "It will be different this time."