Halfling

Prologue: The Returned Boy

                                                                 Come away, O Human child
                                                                To the waters and the wild
                                                               With a faery hand in hand,
                                                              For the world's more full of weeping than you can understand.

                                                                                                                                         -William Butler Yeats

          The people of Eden Alabama had long since given up the search for Bo Richmond, while the golden boy was loved by everyone the people of Eden had assumed he ran off with some hussie from a neighboring town or maybe-according to some rumors he went to college on a football scholarship.  Even his parents and older brother James had resigned themselves to the fact that Bo would not becoming back.  That is until July 23rd 1994 two long years after he had disappeared, a day where if you tried to go swimming you'd feel like you were being boiled like a frog.  It was Danny Knoll that spotted him, at first Danny wasn't quite sure that it was Bo on the account that of the heat.  But soon Bo came close enough for Danny to be sure, "Bo fucking Richmond?" the twenty-one year old asked, "is that you?"

"Danny?"

"That'd be me." Danny said wiping his grease covered hands on an already dirty towel, ready to give his long lost friend a side hug.  That's when he noticed the small bundle in Bo's hands.  "Shit Bo is that a kid?"

Bo nodded looking rather confused and ignored the question, "Danny, what day is it?"

"Saturday the twenty-third."

Bo's eyebrows furrowed, "What year?"

"What year?  1994 of course!  Where you been all this time Bo, living under a rock?"

Bo realizing something was very wrong but not wanting to let on laughed, "Ha, guess it's the heat getting to me.  Hey think you can give me a ride back to my place, I wanna get Lorrie inside." he didn't know where the name came from  but it felt familiar as though he was used to calling the little girl in his arms by that name.  The little girl felt familiar too-he knew she was his but he couldn't recall ever seeing her before then.  

Danny suddenly went really quite, "Look Bo about a year after you left-or disappeared-or whatever, David and Hannah got into an accident.  I'm sorry Bo." Danny sighed.

Bo was suddenly overwhelmed by the wrongness of it all.  It felt like just yesterday was graduation.  He'd skipped a grade and graduated by seventeen, he was going to get a football scholarship.  He was going to go to college.  But now-now his dreams were gone, he'd had a baby he didn't recognize, and worst of all his parents were gone.  Gone thinking he'd left them without looking back.  He felt hot tears well up in his eyes but held back as he didn't want his buddy seeing.  "Um is James still there?"

"James, yeah he's still there.  I can take you, I'm sure he's flawsen."

"Flossing at this time a day?" Danny looked around it had to be around three maybe four and if he remembered his brother, James only ever brushed before bed.  

Danny shook his head, "No, flawsen.  He got married a few months back and he's more whipped than Cool Whip."

"Oh...right."

"How long you been out in this heat?" Danny asked perturbed by his friend's increasingly odd behavior.

"Not sure."

"Well you better get in the truck, if the heat's getting to you that kid must be frying by now." Bo nodded getting inside wondering what else had changed in the time he couldn't remember.