Then Rose fell ill when I was about ten and Momma had to fetch me. So I lived with her for a couple of months or so. That was when you came to call on... Momma. I suppose I must’ve cramped her style while I was with her. After a while, Aunt Rose was better and I went back home to live with her, and care for her as she was never quite as well again.”“So when did you come over here?”“I’m coming to that,” she playfully slapped me on the shoulder, so I used my finger and thumb to show I was zipping up. We were poor. In “Pursuing Andrea” Michael tells Andrea about cutting his hand with an ax while trying to cut wood when it was 14 below because his mother and sister were cold. That really happened. I was 12. I didn’t own gloves and socks don’t do shit when it’s that cold.Andrea was real too. Unlike Michael I didn’t win her heart. I did win her friendship and in the process she reignited my humanity which had been all but extinguished by the time I had met her at 13. I wear a tattoo in her. Xtos was becoming acquainted with human emotions. The armada continued to the next pass and found it sealed too. Xtos felt even more rage and frustration. It could excavate the blockage that filled the passes but it would require many months of work and Xtos had little doubt that heavy defenses by human weapons awaited at the entrances on the other side. Its forces would suffer heavy losses forcing their way through these passes.A scout car returned and informed It/him that they found no more. When the bus finally stopped at the stop near her house after the mostembarrassing trip of her life Marcy practically ran out, paying closeattention not to fall back in her mincing ways. She had to actively thinkabout walking normal only to realise that she had never before thoughtabout how one walked normally. It almost felt awkward even as she triedto walk as normal as possible, after all there were no instructions onhow to do so, and the ingrained mince and plug made her move with a swayin.