To Send Or Not To Send

[devin_capshaw]

He tapped the side of the thick envelope against the palm of his hand. The post office was largely deserted midday, which suited Devin fine. He stared at the metal flap in front of him. Outgoing mail. Just put the envelope in.

This was commitment. He couldn't very well dive in behind it if he changed his mind. And Devin changed his mind. A lot.

The blond turned around and walked out of the post office. Warm air braced him, and he took a deep breath. He leaned against the brick behind him, still holding the now slightly wrinkled letter. His draft outline.

Okay, so if it sucked, what was the worst that could happen? He'd get a no. No, not good enough. No, we need something a little different. Be diverse. Push the envelope.

Devin laughed at that. That was exactly his problem.

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[wolfs_daughter]

The lock was stiff. People must not use these things very often. In a town this size, maybe people didn't get much mail.

Echo jiggled the mailbox key in the lock, twisted it again. It resisted, then finally acquiesced, and she opened the little door to find the interior of the box empty. Damn it. The hybrid glanced at her new wristwatch. Had she showed up too early? Maybe today's mail delivery hadn't come yet.

She scuffed one shoe across the linoleum floor, closed the door and fiddled with the stubborn lock-and-key mechanism again. Tomorrow. Tomorrow was Friday, and good stuff happened on Friday, at least usually. She checked her pockets. Stamps, she needed stamps so she could mail bills when they got here. They'd probably arrive before more news about her grant did.

It only took her a few seconds because there was no one else in line, and she slipped the little book into her back pocket as she exited the building. The boxes for outgoing mail were outside near the curb, and Echo paused when she noticed the guy who seemed to be having an internal debate lingering at one of the blue containers. A faint smile touched the corners of her mouth, and she had a rare moment of opening her mouth before over-thinking it.

"It generally works better if you open the door first."

[devin_capshaw]

"Oh, is that how it works?" Devin turned toward the woman, fiddling with an edge of the letter. "I'm new here, so." He smiled, in case she didn't know he was joking.

The sun reflected off the metal, and he pulled his Aviators off his forehead to cover his eyes.

"This is going to sound weird," Devin said, sounding a little sheepish. "But could you mail this for me?" He held out the envelope to her. Yeah, that felt right. If someone else just did it, and then it was done, he could stop acting like a dog with a bone.

[wolfs_daughter]

That left Echo bemused, but she would have understood the part about being sort of superstitious. She picked up pennies for good luck, tossed spilled salt over her shoulder, and didn't trust black cats. She took two steps towards him, held out her hand for the envelope.

It felt a little heavy when he gave it to her, and she opened the mailbox's slightly rusty door and pushed it through the chute. It thumped on top of the other mail, and she released the door's handle to let it slam shut. She made a flourishing gesture.

"Letters home?" she asked with a kind smile, just in case he thought she was being too nosy. "Seems like the phone would be easier."

[devin_capshaw]

That was it. No turning back. He wiped his palms against his jeans, unaware until then that they were sweating. Huh. Had Devin put enough postage?

"Thanks, for that. I was developing a complex." He glanced at his wristwatch. Mail pickup was at 3 o'clock, and it was a little after one now.

"No, not quite. I suck at writing anything I didn't make up, and the family saw through all my bullshit many years ago."

[wolfs_daughter]

"I know all about having a complex. I've been waiting for a certain piece of mail to follow me here since I got a place, and it hasn't gotten here yet. I'd squat here while I waited, but they'd call the cops."

Echo managed a smile when she said it, hooking her thumbs through her belt loops. "So can I ask what is in the envelope? It must be pretty important or else you wouldn't have been trying to psych yourself up just to drop it into the mailbox. Is it your manifesto or something?"

[devin_capshaw]

Devin nodded. He understood all about waiting. Patience might have been a virtue, but it was definitely not one of his. He tended to bounce off the walls, drive everyone around him crazy. That was one plus of having a motel room. No one to snap at him to stop pacing.

"You can ask." Devin smiled, then shook his head. "Sorry. You did me a favor. Yeah, it was kind of an outline? To a novel. It's maybe a little past deadline by..."

He checked his watch again.

"Two weeks."

[wolfs_daughter]

And Echo had actually been joking, but when he admitted he'd been mailing manuscript pages, her posture relaxed into something that resembled casualness. She remembered the butterflies she'd had in her stomach when she'd submitted her first piece for a display when she was in her senior year of high school, butterflies to the point of queasiness, so she could relate to just more than his superstitiousness.

"Deadline are hell," she said. "I guess publishers are just as demanding as panels of judges. Except you probably got an advance, and I didn't. I've never shown anywhere professionally, though, at least not yet. So I'm the worst kind of artist, the unsuccessful one."

[devin_capshaw]

"No, don't think that way!" Devin's expression softened. "Just because you haven't 'made it' yet, doesn't make you unsuccessful." And here he felt a little guilty, constantly complaining to the universe about not feeling successful enough.

There was a distinction between wanting and deserving, and that's where his self-esteem tended to hit a pot hole or two.

"What's your medium? Painting, or...?" While not learned in art -- or much of anything, really --, he did appreciate a pretty picture when he saw it. And he knew the southwest had its own particular brand of pretty.

[wolfs_daughter]

"I make stuff."

Echo lifted her hands to display callused palms, the product of hours molding clay into recognizable shapes, and she had dim recognition of the fact that she could suppress her feeling of stranger danger if the other person came off as slightly eccentric themselves. Maybe she should remember that when she went back to Peddler's Rest.

"I'd like to work in marble one day, but that takes up a lot more space than clay," the hybrid added. "At least until I get good enough to work on large pieces, I mean. Right now I'm just sketching things and then rendering them into something solid."

[devin_capshaw]

"That's talent. To make something from nothing. Well, not nothing, but...

"Come on, let's walk this way. I can't stand still for too long."

Devin gestured vaguely down the street. "I'm Devin, by the way. Just so you don't feel weird walking down the street with a complete lunatic. At least I'd be a lunatic you could address by name."

[wolfs_daughter]

She almost snickered, managed to bury it by turning it into a cough. "My name's Echo," she told Devin, and this was the latest in a sudden string of introductions she'd made when meeting new people. She took a few steps away from the mailbox, tucked her hands into her pockets.

"So is this your first attempt at a book?" she asked as the two of them began to walk. "I knew a few aspiring poets when I lived in Seattle, some friends of my parents. Mostly what they had was folders full of rejection slips from various magazines. How long have you been working on your manuscript?"

[devin_capshaw]

Devin smiled again, and now that the sun was behind them, he took off his sunglasses. He enjoyed Searchlight, the scenery, that particular warmth native to small towns.

"Echo, huh? Are you a nymph, then?"

His teasing was in good nature. He liked her, she was friendly and took his weirdness in good stride. That was a good quality in people.

"Sorry, I have this Cliff's Notes love for mythology."

[wolfs_daughter]

That time Echo did snort, and she took one hand out of her pocket to rub the back of her neck. The day was hot, and she should had brought her water bottle. She wouldn't forget next time.

"If I'd been a boy, my mama would have insisted on naming me Orion," she told Devin. "Papa said she could name the firstborn if he got to name the second, but they had a medical problem and so I'm an only child." It was both the truth and a lie, just enough of both that she could say it without feeling as if she were making up stories.

"Besides, Echo and Narcissus is a tragedy, and I'd like to think I wouldn't dwindle into nothing over a crush." Not even for Emmeline? her brain asked sarcastically. The hybrid ordered it to shut up.

"What brings you to Searchlight? I thought authors usually went to places like New York."

[devin_capshaw]

A grin played over his features when she laughed. Devin liked making people laugh. It was in stark contrast to his work. There, he liked to scare them.

"Do you mind being an only child? I have five siblings, so I've always wondered what that would be like." He tugged at his t-shirt. "I still own some hand-me-downs, only because shopping bores the living hell out of me."

His tennis shoes kicked up sand and dirt as he walked.

"I'm in Searchlight because I like its history. I mean, it's kind of classic. People came here for gold, for a new life. Money does funny things to people."

[wolfs_daughter]

"Wow, six kids," Echo said. "I can't imagine what it would have been like growing up with so many people in the house. I guess it wasn't so bad with it just being me. I was a quiet kid who didn't get into trouble, at least not until I had such trouble adjusting to public school, and even then it wasn't entirely my fault."

That was true, since she'd retreated into herself after beginning to attend classes with children who hadn't been born within the commune. She'd been home-schooled before that, and she'd never quite felt at home in the louder, more crowded environment of a regular classroom. Her grades had been fine, but her interactions with kids her own age had not been.

"I applied for a grant to take some classes at UNLV, but I decided not to try to put down stakes in Las Vegas. Its too bright and too loud and too crowded. I like having a little elbow room to move around in."

[devin_capshaw]

"Plenty of that here. You know, Georgia O' Keeffe's most well known work came from her living in New Mexico. I know that's a little different, she didn't work with clay. But I think you were right to come here."

Devin pointed to a little store down the way.

"Want a drink? The sun's wicked this time of the day."

He knew about having trouble with school, but didn't want to get into it. His had been his fault, and the more he thought about it, the more it embarrassed him.

[wolfs_daughter]

"I have a big coffee table book of some of her prints," the hybrid said. "Her work with color is really interesting."

She looked in the direction of the store, then nodded. "I have a big water bottle I usually carry, but I left it on the kitchen counter because I was only going to dash out and check the mail. You'll need one of those if you're going to be here for a while. This heat is crushing."

[devin_capshaw]

"Oh, I hadn't noticed," Devin said, holding the door open for Echo. "I was too busy sweating through every shirt I own." He loved how every business in Searchlight had that little bell that heralded his arrivals and exits. He wondered if his penchant toward being easily amused reflected on his skill as a writer...

Nah.

"Hey," he drawled, enjoying the way the air conditioning whooshed around him, "I'll put you in my acknowledgements if this thing holds water. To Echo, for giving this book a push."

[wolfs_daughter]

Echo was not naturally playful because she was too shy and lived inside her head too much, but that made her swat at Devin's shoulder with a muted laugh. "Thanks for the offer, but I'm an artist, not a writer, which is probably harder. I have enough trouble expressing my thoughts vocally, never mind writing them down for hundreds of people to read."

The air conditioning felt like heaven, and she self-consciously checked the armpits of her T shirt to make sure she hadn't sweated through it already. Like Devin, she knew there could be major troubles with laundry in a place this hot. "So what kind of stuff were you sending off? I'm guessing fiction, but I could be wrong. What sort of writing are you pinning your hopes on?"

[devin_capshaw]

"I was hoping a little more than hundreds, but okay." Devin smiled and shook some hair out of his eyes. He opened a cooler door, browsing over their options.

"Tell you what, I'll show my appreciation by picking up your tab." The blond grabbed a cold bottle and held it out to Echo. His fingerprints showed against the condensation.

[wolfs_daughter]

She swiped the bottle out of his hand with reflexes that were just a touch faster than a normal human's, then covered for it by pretending to fumble the catch. "I'll think good thoughts for you," she told him with a shy smile. "Positive energy affects the outcome just like negative energy does. Do you ever meditate?"

She wanted to keep asking him about what he'd been writing, but she respected it if he didn't want to talk about it. She liked some popular fiction okay, and it always amused her how horror writers never got it right about werewolves, and she had a collection of battered paperbacks in the trailer. Maybe one day she'd be adding Devin's contribution to her stash.

"Do you usually buy sodas for random strangers?"

[devin_capshaw]

Devin shrugged off her behavior, thinking she must have been especially thirsty. "Does staring at a blank piece of paper for about an hour count as meditation?" He grabbed his own drink out of the cooler.

"No, just artists," he teased. "I have a thing for clay."

[wolfs_daughter]

"When I graduate to working in stone, it'll be harder," she said as they moved towards the counter. "It means I'll have to have more space and proper tools. But I think you can accomplish almost anything if you work hard enough at it."

Now if she could just apply that wisdom to her personal life...

"Maybe I'll be able to say I met you before you got really famous."

[devin_capshaw]

Laughing, he set his bottle on the counter next to the register. "Sure, but make sure you tell everyone I was so quiet and kept to myself, I just didn't seem like the type."

Devin extracted his wallet from his back pocket. "Oh, you mean for the writing. Yeah, that too." He tried to keep a straight face as the woman behind the register stared at him.

[wolfs_daughter]

The hybrid grinned at Devin's remark and at the expression on the cashier's face, and for one blissful minute it was as if she was just like everyone else. She'd used to wonder what it would be like to be that fabled thing called 'normal', and every now and then she'd get a pang of regret about it. Maybe when she got older, much older, that would fade.

"I'll make a deal with you," she told him as the register drawer dinged open to accept his cash. "I'll show you something I finished if you let me look at your next few chapters. Maybe we can encourage each other."

[devin_capshaw]

Devin held out his palm for his change while still looking at Echo. "That's a no-brainer. I was going to ask if I could see your work, anyway." He dropped his pennies in the little blue tray on the counter and deposited the rest back into his wallet.

"Deal, for sure."

[wolfs_daughter]

That meant Echo would have to pull something out of the van, one of her early pieces, but she was curious to see what an impartial opinion was like. Her parents liked her work, but they were biased and she knew it. Maybe Devin would suggest something she could improve on.

"I'll see you in a week or two, then," she told him as she uncapped the bottle of soda he'd bought her. "And good luck again with your manuscript. I hope they accept your work."