Chapter 5: The Aura Master

He rushed across the forest floor. His claws dug into the ground, and sent him off with a mighty power in each bound. He could feel each leaf as it scraped his fur, the tang of the decomposition on the air. There would be rain the next morning, he was sure of it.

He could smell the trees around him — — a red oak, just coming into its own, a hickory tree, still with no nuts, a black walnut that might not make it past the next storm. Each of these trees he had a full accounting in his head of when they would produce food and how much was to be expected.

He bounded from the ground up into the trees. His claws dug into the tree bark and clambered up. Vertical and horizontal meant little; he had no fear of gravity.

The branches as they swayed in the breeze sent scattered rays of light over the tree bark. Each step was cast in shadow, the next in light.

He felt close to home, that warm place filled with moss and displaced feathers collected. Home where there would be his partner Juniper and his three kits. The thought of them sent rolls of love strumming through his body and out through his tail. Wordless, boundless. He rushed on ahead.

The next morning Daniel felt tired and empty, but in a way that felt good, as if he suddenly expanded in space and there was now more room in him to be filled. His limbs felt heavy and sore. But where there had been pain before, now each limb felt heavy in a calming way. His blanket had never felt so comfortable.

A part of him wanted to stay under the covers all day. But he looked down and saw Scamper on his chest quietly sleeping. He reached out and gently touched his tail.

Scamper fluttered his eyes and slowly stretched.

“Was that your dream buddy?” Daniel said quietly. He had never known a squirrel could feel such deep love.

“I haven’t the faintest clue. Was it a good dream?” Scamper groomed his tail.

“Yes…,” Daniel thought back to the woods he ran through, the feeling on the air that seemed to linger on him. “It was really beautiful.”

Scamper, done with his morning grooming, leapt on to Daniel’s night stand. where he kept a bag of nuts. A bag of nuts that seemed to be disappearing at an alarming rate. He should probably tell Scamper he needed to stop buying nuts.

But instead he said “Ah, yes, breakfast. What will it be today? Walnut? Peanut?”

“…got any almonds?” Scamper nuzzled Daniel’s hand out of the way to peer at the bag of nuts in his hand.

“Of course,” Daniel chuckled, and reached all the way to the bottom of the bag where the almonds were hiding. Of course this squirrel liked the most expensive nuts.

Daniel heard rushed footsteps through the floorboards.

Scamper took the almond and darted out the window.

Daniel went downstairs to find his mother frantically racing around the house. There were two dozen pillows and throw blankets piled at the front door. Against the wall leaned a folding table and chair along with a handmade sign that read “Becca’s Handmade Embroidery.”

“First farmer’s market of the year for Eddington! My friend Kelly suggested I go a few towns over to sell things, more people with a dime to spare. Here is looking at how we’ll make rent.”

Daniel nodded and sidled through the pillow mountain into the kitchen.

“Eaten yet? I can make eggs in a basket.”

Becca paused. “Actually, that would be incredible if you could.”

Sheepishly she added, “No chance you don’t have work today? I could really use the extra hands,” and she gestured to the mound of farmers market supplies that was creating a fire hazard at the front door. As she spoke, a pillow perched precariously on top fell to the bottom, taking two of its companions with it.

“Just let me tell Amadeus, but I’m sure I can get off.”

He made them both eggs in a basket and then went outside. The morning air felt good on his face, and he somehow felt excited to be up so early. Scamper fell in step with him. As he crossed the grass to the center of the field where Amadeus stood and waved the thought floated into his head, this is kind of nice.

He saw Amadeus stood next to a man a good twenty years younger than him. The man looked Middle Eastern, with tan skin and dark brown hair that had started to grey. He wore a lightweight white cotton shirt, embroidered at the collar and sleeves. On his feet were sandals. The days were certainly getting warmer, but Daniel did not know how he was not freezing.

“I tend to run warm,” the man said, as if he could read Daniel’s mind.

Daniel’s head snapped up. He did not realize that he had been staring at the man’s feet.

The man had high cheekbones, out of which flashed light blue eyes. He smiled at Daniel. Even though Daniel considered himself straight he had to admire that this man was extremely good looking.

“Avron,” the man stuck his hand out. Daniel shook it in his own.

“Avron is a long time friend, who generally lives near the Sea of Galilee, but he has come here to teach you to read auras.”

“You’re a Gardener?” Daniel asked. He did not know how many Gardeners there were.

“Not quite, never got the hang of that kind of magic. My skills lend themselves more to people.”

“Daniel, magic, if used in conjunction with unconstrained emotion, can run havoc on your body, mind, and the people around you. In teaching you to read auras, my hope is for you to have better emotional control on the magic you will wield.”

Daniel nodded. He remembered how much power ran through him yesterday.

They settled in the grass. Daniel remembered that he needed to ask them how long this lesson would be, since he would need to leave to help Becca with her farmer’s market stand. But Avron was already breathing deeply.

He decided to just try to get through the lesson quickly.

“Breathe in….one….two…three….. breathe out….one…two…three…,” Avron’s voice was deep and melodic, unlike Amadeus’s gruff rumble.

“Breathe in….one….two….three….breathe out….one..two…three…,” Avron repeated. He really should have checked how long this lesson would be.

“Breathe in…..one….two….three….”

Daniel slowly eased into his breathe, feeling it mingle with the wind. His heart beat loud in his ears.

“Every living thing is a storage of concentrated energy. Some stores are simple, like the moss that lives along the forest floor. Others are complex, like humans with their circulatory and nervous systems. With every interaction in the world around you, you are either giving or receiving energy into your store. Keep breathing, in one….two….three….feeling the energy you take in, the energy you give out to the world. You take in oxygen, and give back carbon dioxide. You take in food, and give out heat. Each living and breathing thing takes and gives, transforming the world around it with its life.”

They sat for a moment just breathing. Daniel had never thought before how his simple breath changed the air around him.

“Sometimes, when there are strong emotions attached to the energy sent out, stray sparks will be cast out with it. You can often feel, or see this stray energy in the form of an aura.

Amadeus told me yesterday you opened the door to your mind. Today you are going to imagine you are already inside of your mind. This place can look like perhaps your room at your house, or a living room at a favorite relative’s. Maybe it looks like a room from a favorite movie you have seen, or maybe it is fully different than any place you have been before. Look around you. What are the floors made out of? The walls? Is there art hanging on the walls, or tapestries?

Is there a table? Is it a small table comfortable for one, or a long table made for gatherings? Is there a window? What do you see when you look outside? Take a minute and look around.”

Daniel had never imagined his mind as a place before. What came to him was a simple room, with wood floors and wood walls and wood ceilings, a light orange-brown wood that was newly washed. The place looked like a traditional Japanese house, even though he had never been to Japan, and certainly did not have any Japanese heritage. He just guessed that if he could decide, he would choose to have a place very different from his existing room. This place had no mess in it, no piled high clothes that he needed to wash or toys from his childhood under his bed that he had sworn a dozen times that he would donate.

This place was clean, and filled full with light in every corner.

On one end of the room was a paper wall. Traditionally there was probably some kind of Japanese art on these walls, but here it looked blank.

Daniel walked closer. As he did, the blank wall shifted to show a rectangle in blue ink. He walked closer. No, it was a diagnostic plan of the garden.

As he watched the plain rectangular box shifted and changed. Winding path emerged around the garden. Flower boxes appeared scattered across the panel. Trees took root and bloomed, furling out leaves like scattered paint strokes. Fairy lights appeared strung across the trees and bobbed in an invisible wind.

He had no idea that these plans for the garden were inside of him. Looking at the whole of it, he was suddenly seized by a feeling close to what Scamper felt as he neared his home: he wanted to move closer to this vision with all his heart. He had messed up every other job he had ever done before. But this, he wanted to do this right.

“Find a place to sit in your mind. This could be a bed, a couch, a bean bag chair. Create a place in your mind that you feel like you can fully relax in.”

Daniel conjured up a bed, but that did not quite feel right. If there were really no constraints, he would probably sleep in something like a nest. But one not with moss or twigs, but pillows and blankets. He conjured up this blanket-nest, and tucked himself into it.

He saw that the pillows in this bed all had his mother’s embroidery on them, with intricate flowers and birds and twining vines. In his conscious mind he had always thought that his mother’s needlework was too much…who cared what their pillow looked like? But here he had the realization that his mother’s needlework made small things nicer. Somehow they could be in a house that was falling apart from the inside and the outside and she made it still feel like a home.

“When you are ready, stand again. Find a door to the outside. Turn the knob and open it very slowly. You are opening your mind to the world around you. You should see the world similar to as it is now, but with your mind open you should now be able to see the energy in the people around you. Keep this door open as you step forward into this world, with your mind newly open to people’s energy. When you have done this you can open your eyes.”

Daniel opened his eyes. He immediately saw Avron, but with a sort of pale light that emerged from his shoulder blades and collected around his head. His aura was a calm yellow light, like light pouring on a buttercup’s petal. Daniel could feel that he felt deeply comfortable interacting with the world. But below it was a dark grey light. Daniel reached for it, turned over this feeling in his mind, almost tasted it? It felt like guilt. Avron was deeply guilty about something.

Daniel turned to look at Amadeus. His aura was a deep green and intense. He could feel that Amadeus felt both pride and concern for him the way a father felt towards their son perhaps the first time they get on base in baseball practice, or the first time they learned to drive. Daniel was seized with happiness that Amadeus felt that way towards him, since the man had never said so much in words. But it was happiness mixed with guilt; Daniel had a perfectly good father that was alive and healthy. He doubted that his father felt the way Amadeus did towards him.

Daniel looked down at Scamper, who was fast asleep curled in his hoodie a few feet away. Scamper’s aura was smaller but there. It was a bright orange, filled with contentment at the feeling of a warm sun on his fur and a full belly.

“Daniel!” He heard his mother’s voice ring out.

He turned to look at her. Becca hurriedly piled the last of the pillows into the back of the truck. He could see bright yellow sparks of anxiety come off of her.

“No chance you’re free? I could really use the extra hand at the market!”

Daniel stood up quickly. As he stood it felt like he moved through thick water.

“Woah,” he said under his breathe as he tried to get his footing.

“Wait, where are you going?” Amadeus asked.

“Eddington. I told my mom I would help her out with selling her pillows. Sorry, I meant to say something earlier.”

Daniel turned to leave.

“Daniel, you can’t leave right now.” Avron said.

He waved back at them as he ran towards Becca, “Sorry I didn’t say anything before! Should just be a few hours!”

Avron started towards him. “Daniel, it really will not be good if you leave now.”

He hesitated, halfway to the car. He had no idea what kind of repercussions having an open mind might lead to. His body already felt like it moved in a cloud, buffeted by unseen winds.

“Daniel, we really need to get going,” Becca called out. She was in the car now.

He figured it could not be that bad. He ran and hopped into the car with Becca.

“Everything ok Daniel? I hope I’m not pulling you away.”

“It’s fine, we’ll be able to continue in a few hours when I’m back.” Daniel looked at his mother. She seemed extremely nervous. Her anxiety felt like needle pricks on his skin.

He took her hand and squeezed it and gave her a smile.

She smiled back. The pin pricks subsided.

They drove. Out of Burton, into the flat plains of what would be corn fields in a few months. Now they were simply blank brown canvases. Here and there was a patch of clover.

“How is work going?”

“Good, they’re really nice.”

“The transformation of that land already is so incredible. There’s still a lot of trash, but it doesn’t look like a complete trash heap anymore, you know.”

Daniel nodded.

“I think it’s so great that there are people who want to help struggling communities create community gardens. And I see him out there every day working with you. It isn’t usually the same people that put their money and time towards something.”

Daniel nodded. He realized he knew so little about Amadeus’s actual life. They spoke plenty, but it seemed to always be about birds or plants. He had accumulated a great many bird facts in the few short weeks he knew the man. But he was unsure how Amadeus had purchased the land, or what he planned to do with it after he taught Daniel magic.

He made a mental note to ask Amadeus.

“So, getting down to today’s business! The plan is to sell all of these pillows.”

“What’s the price?”

Becca hesitated… “Well, I was thinking forty-five.”

“Fort-five for a pillow? Wow that seems steep!” He whistled.

Becca lightly hit him with a pillow, “This pillow took five hours to embroider.”

“Five hours?!” He looked down on it. On it a bunny held a flower. He would not pay over twenty. But he would never tell his mother this. “Then you should be charging at least sixty.”

“I don’t know if people will pay sixty for a pillow, even forty-five feels steep to me.”

Daniel shrugged, “The people in Eddington are a lot richer than you or I am.”

“You have a point.” Becca stared out to the road. Daniel’s father had relocated to Eddington.

Daniel squeezed her hand again, “It’ll be ok mom.” He knew she was scared of running into Judith, Daniel’s father’s new wife.

They were quiet again until they got to the outskirts of Eddington. The outskirts of Burton had abandoned buildings that had crumbled to the point of ruin, way past the point where property flippers in their twenties could strip them to bones to find their potential. And there were junk yards aplenty, and same day cash loan stores.

Eddington had neat houses with lawns cut precisely to the lines of the sidewalk. Houses with no iron gates on the windows and with paint so bright they seemed to glow. Every house seemed to have two cars in front of it, the kind of car that ran and got washed. He had no idea how everyone was not scared their cars would be broken into, showing them off as they did.

As they got closer to the epicenter of town they passed bright rainbow jungle gyms and bikes parked next to coffee shops without locks on them. He had been to Eddington a handful of times before, but each time he was stunned that there existed in this world people who lived like this.

As they neared the farmers market Daniel saw a sea of white tents.

A cop car was in front of the farmers market blocking traffic. As they got closer Becca rolled down her window. “I heard if we got here by eight o’clock as a vendor we would be able to bring our cars in to set up?”

“Of course m’am. You have,” the cop looked down at his watch, “Fifteen more minutes until all the cars need to be out.”

“Thank you!” Becca called and they slowly drove past him into the market.

They drove past a chocolate shop with tiny chocolates displayed in multiple tiers, each ornately hand crafted. The smell that wafted past made Daniel’s mouth water. They passed a honey stand, with dozens of different types of honey. Daniel had no idea there were that many varieties of honey. A cheese shop. A woodworking stand. A stand selling children’s clothes, another with hand-crafted mobiles. Daniel had never seen this much variety. He lived in a world where there was usually one option on the grocery store shelves, or if there were three, the price was all he dared look at. His was a world of things passed through massive corporate testing groups that produced everything to the mean. Here were items that could only be found in one place, and each category had dozens of varieties. The choice here was overwhelming.

Becca stopped the truck. “I think this is our spot.”

A small stick with a piece of paper that said “Becca’s Handmade Embroidery” waved in the wind.

They got out of the car and got out the folding table. Daniel looked around. It seemed they did not get the memo to have a white tent over their table.

He also looked around at all of the signs people had. Some were laminated onto tablecloths. Others had flashy logos on tarps hung behind them.

His mother’s sign was hand-written on poster board. In one place the marker strokes were smudged.

Daniel could see his mother’s aura had turned a dark, murky blue. He could feel that she held back tears. As he looked at her he felt as well as if he was suddenly thrust to the bottom of the ocean. His stomach flipped over at the feeling and he held onto the table.

But he said “This is going to be great. Everyone will love the authenticity of what you’re selling. Your whole heart is in these.”

A little kid rushed past their table and knocked into him. Daniel felt ricocheted up, up! The joy of the kid as he pumped his legs, the laugh that lingered in his lungs. Suddenly Daniel felt like he stood on a very tall building.

He clutched the table harder. The change in sudden emotions was felt very clearly in his stomach and inner ear. He repeated inwardly to himself: he was alright. He was alright. His stomach told him in answer that no, everything was not alright. He felt the egg he ate at breakfast lodged in his throat.

“Are you alright?” Becca asked, “You have gone white as a sheet.”

Daniel nodded and straightened up. “Yep, totally fine. Just um, a leg cramp.”

“Ok,” Becca looked on dubiously, “why don’t you sit down?”

Daniel sat in the folding chair to catch his breath.

He had hoped the farmer’s market would be sparsely attended, but it seemed he was not so lucky. It was a beautiful spring day; by fifteen past eight there were already dozens of people walking along the pedestrianized street. These people wore fluffy vests and leggings painted onto their legs. They walked with bright colored shoes made especially for running and they walked with baby carriages that cost a month’s rent. Their wrists and hands sparkled like Christmas.

His mother should be charging eighty. Hell, even a hundred.

It was hard enough looking at them, but he felt them all too. There was the excited grandmother that came over to look at the pillows with her tired daughter, who had three children in tow. Their auras pitched back and forth between sad and elated. Daniel could feel his stomach pitch back and forth so much that he wanted to scream. There was the arrogant man bedecked in clothes that mirrored his resume, his aura a bland tan. There was the couple with a month’s worth of groceries piled into canvas bags, their auras a deep pink when they looked at each other.

A lull in the people that came over gave Daniel time to close his eyes and breathe in and out the way that Amadeus taught him. He tried to reach back to that empty field, tried to imagine he was alone and there was no one else around. No other emotions in sight.

He opened his eyes to see that his mother tried to get his attention. “Sorry, Daniel…” she said, and cocked her head towards an older man. She was already busy helping another couple.

Daniel took one last breath in and stood. He could do this. He just needed to talk about some pillows. He could do that for an hour or two.

He approached the table. The old man that stood there looked as if he was about to leave.

“Great day we’re having.” Daniel said.

The old man gave the slightest nod.

“Um, we have…,” Daniel looked down at the pillows. “We have red, and blue, and green ones.” He cleared his throat “And blankets that are…red, and blue, and green too.”

He realized he was not great at selling things.

“And these have…flowers,” he continued lamely.

Daniel caught sight of the man’s aura. It was a deep grey, full of sadness and despair. He could not feel the specifics, but he knew this man had suffered a great many losses and felt truly alone in this world.

Daniel told the man quietly, “I think she would have liked this one,” he handed the man a pillow with a robin embroidered on it. He had noticed the man’s aura lightened a bit when he looked at it.

The man nodded absent-mindedly, “Yes, I think she would have.” Then he snapped his head up as he noticed Daniel for the first time. “How did you know?”

Daniel shrugged and smiled, “A lucky guess.”

“Robins were her favorite. She stayed with us until last spring. Sometimes I think she stayed so long just to be to see them hopping among the daffodils again.”

He was never the type to touch anyone he was close to, much less a stranger. But he reached out to this man and touched his hand.

He was immediately thrust into what felt like a freezing bucket of water. The world around him got very quiet, with a black film over everything.

He quickly removed his hand but he now trembled from the cold.

“I’m, uh, just going to get water,” he told his mother and left before she could reply.

There was a wall behind them so the only way he could get out was to go through some of the market.

He tried to gingerly squeeze past people, but he knew he was going to puke at any moment and did not want to do that with so many people around.

There were now throngs of people and he did not know how he could get through quickly without touching anyone.

“Excuse me, excuse me,” Daniel said weakly as he tried to maneuver past people as carefully as he could.

He bumped into a woman who was intensely angry and became even more angry at him. As he touched her it felt as if she rammed a red hot poker into his side.

“Ahhh…” he meant to say sorry, but he was in so much pain he could not form words. He looked down at his side, surprised there was no burn.

“Some people,” the woman looked at him and shook her head, “have no courtesy.”

He did not have time to apologize because the sudden move from cold to hot had made his whole body intensely itchy and his ears ring. His whole side burned.

Daniel pushed on ahead. He could almost make out the edge of the farmers market where there were sparser people. He hoped that he could breath there without as much energy around him.

He grazed his arm against a woman carrying a stone bird bath by herself. The bird bath teetered in her hands.

He reached out and caught it.

“I’m so sorry— -,” Daniel began to say but he could not finish the sentence. It was at this moment he realized he had not been running towards the relative calm of the outskirts of the farmers market. No, he had been running towards the comfort in this woman’s aura, even before he had seen her.

But the sudden shift from the deep anger the woman he had bumped into earlier to the relative warmth of the woman who stood before him was too much for his stomach.

He let go of the bird bath and fell to his knees. His ears rang. The eggs in a basket he had eaten at breakfast leapt from his throat and splattered out onto the cement in huge orange splashes. His throat burned and his eyes stung. His world narrowed down to the inches between his face and the road.

From far away he could hear people had begun to cluster around him. He could not bring his head up to look.

He drew in big, large gulps. He needed fewer people around, not more. Drawing attention to himself was the last thing that he wanted to do. All of the auras around him were different, and he felt like each different part of his body was at a different height and at a different temperature.

“Get out of the way, give him some room,” he heard Amadeus’s stern voice boom out. People listened to him and drew back. He felt the slightest amount of relief.

“Daniel,” he felt Amadeus’s hand on his shoulder. Immediately he felt as if he wore a thicker puffer jacket that dampened the feelings of the people around him. “We’ll get you out of here.”

“I can’t leave,” Daniel said, drawing air in sharply “I promised my mother I would help her sell her pillows.”

“Don’t worry,” Daniel heard Avron’s voice, “I’ll stay.”

Amadeus got his arm under Daniel’s shoulder and lifted him up. Daniel was surprised that someone as old as he was could lift his weight.

“Try to walk.” Amadeus said.

With his feet on the ground Daniel felt wobbly, but he could stand. He took a shaky step forward. Then another.

The crowd seemed to lose interest when they could tell that Daniel was alright.

Daniel looked around to try to catch a glimpse of the woman he had seen but the world around him had dissolved into a mass of shifting colors. She was nowhere in sight.

Amadeus walked him a block away and they sat on a low stone wall.

“Now, I am going to remove my hand slowly from your shoulder, and instead of fixating on people’s auras, you are going to need to move your concentration upwards. Imagine that you are a bird, and you can fly closer to the emotion or further away. You just need to rotate your frame of reference. Ready?”

Daniel nodded weakly.

Amadeus slowly removed his hand. The emotions of the people around him came rushing back.

“Rotate your frame of reference.”

Daniel tried to rotate his frame of reference but all that happened was that he immediately leaned over and puked more.

Amadeus touched his shoulder. Again Daniel felt the emotions around him dulled.

“Let’s get you further away.”

Amadeus grasped Daniel’s arm again and helped him to walk another block away. They sat now on a bench in a park.

“I am really sorry to make you try again, but knowing the emotions of the people around you can help you better understand your own emotions. And knowing your own feelings is vitally important to know your own heart when doing magic. Doing magic in anger can have disastrous results, for you and the people around you.” Quietly he added, “People you may love. You need to get this before you meet the spirits, for they have no human mercy.”

They sat in silence. Daniel listed to the hubbub of the farmers market as the human voices mixed with the drone of crickets, each playing an accompanying tune to the other. He stared at the courtyard across the street. A fountain splashed with water where a family of birds washed themselves. Bumblebees danced along flowerbeds of daffodils, now blooming at their full.

He breathed in and out, slow. In one….two….three….out one…two…..three…

He felt centered. “I think I’m ready.”

Amadeus nodded, and slowly took his hand off of Daniel’s arm. He was prepared this time. The emotions hit him in a huge surge. He could feel the nausea rise back up.

“Now take your frame of reference, and rotate up and out. Think of your current perspective as one of many potential views of the world around you.”

Daniel closed his eyes and like he did with the door to his mind, he yanked. Instead of open, up. He felt his mind rise up, so that he looked over the farmers market from the perspective of a bird. Now he could see the emotions of every person, but he did not have to touch them. He could move closer to feel them more intensely, or back away. He could sort of coast over all of the emotions, as if they were rolling, moving tides. As he did so, all of the emotions coalesced into a color that hung across the whole market. It was a bright yellow, with threads of green. He could feel that this was a place of hopefulness, joy, and pride to the community.

“When you are ready, imagine a door that leads to your mind’s room, the room you imagined yesterday. This door is open. Walk through it.”

Daniel imagined that wooden room, with its nest of blankets and pillows and its wall with the living plan for the garden.

He walked through the door, and sank into the pillow nest. He had never felt more mentally tired in his life. And emotionally tired. He had lived that day a dozen people’s lives, even if only for a few moments. His heart was tired from feeling.

“Now, open your eyes once more.”

Daniel’s eyes fluttered open. Amadeus was beaming.

“Great job, really great job Daniel.”

Daniel smiled, “So, am I a Gardener now?”

Amadeus laughed. “Not quite yet. You need to stand before the gods of water, earth, and animal. Then you need to plant your own tree. But we’ll get to that. For now, I think what we need is a cold beer.”

“Maybe we can chase some beers down with breakfast.”

“Deal.” Amadeus struck out his hand, and Daniel grabbed it. Amadeus tugged and helped him up.

They sat on the porch drinking when his mother came back. There was not a pillow in sight.

She rushed over to him and out her hand on his forehead. “You rushed out of there so quickly I wondered if you were sick. Your friend Avron said you were feeling under the weather. You don’t seem to be running a temperature though.”

“I’m feeling fine now. Just maybe ate breakfast too quickly.”

His mother seemed unconvinced, but he steered the conversation to a new topic.

“Where’d all the pillows go?”

“Gone! They’re all gone!” Becca said, beaming. It seemed he may be able to get out of talking more about himself.

“It started off slow, but then Avron knew just how to sell to people.”

Avron, who was unloading the folding table from the truck, smiled and winked at Daniel and Amadeus. Daniel remembered back to the old man he had met; he had felt his sadness over losing his spouse. When he knew how the man felt towards the pillow it made it easier to sell to him.

“We’ll have to celebrate. Tonight I’ll make hamburgers. And I never got to thank you Amadeus for giving Daniel such a great job. You really need to have a meal with us.” But as she said this, she looked at Avron expectantly.

Daniel felt extremely awkward. He had never seen his mother flirt before.