Tragedies always left echoes that lingered. Places where the Dragon had been drawn to roost. Where the cycle of life spun askew, gestated malformed, out of a seed of destruction too toxic to gestate a healthy birth.
Anasztaz stood in front of the memorial plaque in the corner of Freeport Boulevard. The very same place where the private-owned fighter jet had barged through the wall of a Little League meeting in an ice cream parlor, bringing with it death in a conflagration that had spared none.
The names. Entire families engraved on the stone for remembrance. For some the blows were too heavy to ever recover from, for others the cuts were so deep that deadened the nerves. The wounds might have been, then, merciful. But the scars lingered for all and everyone involved, like spokes of a wheel spreading from this point in every direction.
He raises his gaze and closed his eyes, inhaling the air laden with the smell of jet fuel from the airport runway still nearby. Traces that time and nature wouldn't wipe. Yes, there were places where the honesty of death and rebirth could be questioned.
With his suspicions somewhat confirmed, Anasztaz turns to the corner where there was a pay phone and dials the number Amelita had given him.
"Yes, I think it is here. Come?" he looked back over his shoulders, through the spray painted glass.
"Bring Initiate Green with you too. Please." he adds after a pause.
He wasn't sure just why he had asked for her to come just yet, but it had felt appropriately necessary.
"Thank you."