"Jay," Chessie mumbled quietly the moment she woke up.

"Yeah?"

"I'm tired of all of this."

"What?"

"This," she replied, "Everything-all the moving and all the doubt. I just want to find a place that I can say. Yes, twenty four hours from now I'll be in the same place."

Jayere sighed, "I'm sorry but that just isn't our lives. Other people are like that. Not us. We're travelers that\'s what we do. Travel. Which reminds me. We have to get going."

Chessie reluctantly got up and started to stuff her blankets into her tattered leather bag. Jayere was doing the same. Within ten minutes they\'d packed up and headed off, nowhere to go. They just had to go. What Jayere said was extremely accurate. Since they escaped from him. He'd branded both their shoulders with strange black spirals surrounded by red dots. With most people the brand mark just got the pain when they got it and that was that. But, with Chessie it was different. Chessie nervously fingered at her mark, tracing the lines with her dry fingers. Jayere noticed both her nervousness and her fingers on her mark. He quickly slapped her hand away and looked at her with a knowing look.

"Calm down, I\'m not going to do anything," Chessie snapped.

"That's what you said last time," Jayere replied. It wasn't stated like a comeback-just a simple statement. A statement that was one hundred percent true.

Chessie pouted a second longer before placing her head on Jayere's thin shoulder. The two of them had known each other from the second they were born and despite what many people thought they were just close friends.

"All of this will end someday," he assured, "I mean he can't live forever."

"The problem is neither can we," Chessie pointed out glumly.

Jayere instantly shook her off of him, "I told you not to think like that."

"Since when do I listen to you?" Chessie shot back, not missing a beat.

A rare grin formed on Jayere's mouth, "That's the Chessie I know."

"Don't get all cocky now."

A small hand tousled the young seven year old girl. She smiled with pride. "So we're ready, master?" "Of course." The girl's name was Kine, her mousy brown hair fell into her overly large eyes. Her eyes weren't only overly large they were also overly gold. Looking at her eyes was like looking at a pair of gold coins. The girl was small and agile and had the general appearance of a child pick pocket. Which she sort of was.