Findings

Rope the Weather pushed through, branches catching on her black trousers tucked into sturdy scuffed high boots. White cuffs and collar, hems, flashed out from the edges of a slim fitting boiled wool jacket, long coattails flowing behind, the stylishness belying the practicality of the tuxedo-like garments, with unexpected pockets and little to snag. She betrayed her own annoyance every time she shouted out.

"Fool mule! Sal, where are you? If you're headed home, you better have all that gear when you get there, Sal the Mule! Leave me out here three days walk from Abby!" Followed by snarls and yips of pain as brambles scratched and whipped at her face. Until she stopped, and sniffed, and her countenance changed, and silence engulfed her. She took a moment to tie back her dreadlocks, listening with her whole body, scanning. Then she saw the cinderblock, and walked toward it. She pulled a handkerchief from a sleeve, and covered her nose and mouth, and silently crept forward to what became a wall, then along it to a narrow opening, obscured with dead branches.

She shoved through, to crouch, to stare at her long repeated dream, a score of bodies with purple mouths and hands, mostly young boys, two men, a few ancient women -only they had their hair in elaborate upswept puffs, all like she'd envisioned. but the child in the old dream missing.

She dutifully pulled out her pewter, recorded her position, took photographs, finally noticed a large, decrepit building at the end of the filthy walled compound. The stench she analyzed in self defense seemed fresh-ish. Not more than a day old, less probably, given the warm sun. Her mind shut out further details, but the protocols moved her hands, and she pulled out the DNA swabs, and tested one woman - rictus pulling her lips away, a boy of perhaps thirteen but covered in bruises and scars, and she hesitated, with only one swab left, between the scrawny and pale white haired skeleton, and the face down slab of a powerful man.

She resisted the urge to laziness by the voice of her own dad, exhorting her to "always take the hard path, it'll wind up easier in the end, dear little one" followed by his infectious chuckle. She steeled herself and laid her boot, with an imaginary reverence, to the dead man's iliac crest, and shoved.

Beneath lay a pile of rags, and a small, nearly glowing, white arm.

Rope drew back, then leaned forward, and the tiny hand... moved.

Pushing the rags away with frantic hands, she uncovered a child, perhaps six years old, barely breathing, nearly skeletal, but terribly familiar. The child in Rope's nightmares, from her own childhood visions. She gingerly lifted the small body into her arms.

The swab still in her fist, she cocked her head to one side, and swabbed the cheek of the dead man, awkwardly around the stinking bundle of near life on her shoulder, secured the dropped pewter into a tail pocket, and, after a last look to memorize the scene for the forensics team and a potential source of salvage later, backed out of the wall opening, to begin the long trudge to the Abby, assistance, and expertise.

"C'mon little one, we'll figure all this out after we get you safe and warm and fed. Sal, you better be there when we get back. With all our gear. Mules, who ever thought mules were a good idea?"