Where he first met Alana’s mother. Where he saved her, and she saved him. Where she vanished.

And where he fully expects she will return, someday.

People were always asking Alana where her people came from, trying to figure out what she was without being too obvious. She looked different than the overwhelmingly white-bread majority of Middleton. She lost count of how many times people said she was “exotic,” like she was some kind of stripper.

For the outside world, her parents had rehearsed a vague story about Gabrielle coming to Middleton as an exchange student. For those who got curious, they had a few specifics (“Greece.” “A very small village. You’ve probably never heard of it.”) and one wholly imaginary account of their wedding day, complete with a cliff-side ceremony by the Aegean Sea. (“And your uncle got so drunk he fell into the pool at the hotel.”)

Her dad did not have many people who would call him out on the inconsistencies. His father left before he was two and never sent so much as a postcard. His mother died of cirrhosis of the liver not long after he was out of high school. Any other uncles, aunts, or cousins kept a healthy distance, as if they were afraid that misery was catching.

Richard, with his size and history, could have been a small-town thug, the kind of guy who resigns from a job by punching the boss in the face. Nobody would have been surprised.

But by some twist of personality, he was moral and decent to the point where he was boring to most people. He worked building houses and studied at the local college until he got his nursing certificate. Then he began caring for the sick and broken full-time. He was quiet. He was kind. He read. He fed stray cats and dogs and patched their wounds and never tried to keep them when they wandered away again.

He was alone most of the time, but not lonely. Or not so much that he was willing to do anything to change it.

One day, he was walking in the woods when he found Gabrielle, bloodied and broken, wearing what was left of her armor, carrying only her sword.

She probably would have killed him if she’d had the strength. She had been fighting for what seemed like years to her at that point, and had only stumbled into this world when it was clear that her side was completely lost to The End.

Gabrielle was an orphan, like Richard. What else she was is not easy to say, even for Alana, who should know. The words and the concepts didn’t necessarily translate, and the best explanations were only approximations, using terms that were too limited, too human, in scope to convey their true meaning. Alana, being raised in this world, half-human, lacked the framework, and possibly the right DNA, to fully understand.