Blood-Born

Chapter XIX - Aftershock

"The meek shall inherit the Earth, but not its mineral rights."

- J. Paul Getty

Goblin's Toe, Wyoming

By the time the somber caravan had managed to make its way back through to the real world and rolled into his town, Poe's decision to part ways with them at his office rather than accompany them on through to the burial plots had been accepted and honored by the others.

He had also begun to suspect that he would have felt somewhat out of place during the actual interment services anyway and could use a distraction or two of his own while the immediate families dealt with things in their own way.

Wounds both physical and otherwise were just too fresh to have dealt with properly in public under the circumstances.

He knew Deer would not have minded, nor he if their roles had been reversed.

Abby climbed up to replace him at the reigns once he had climbed down and walked off without a word into the quiet office that now seemed as foreign to him as it had once been familiar before all of this other nonsense had begun.

It clearly was just another part of the grieving process that would take time to get over but it still hit him harder than he might have otherwise expected.

Rose being Rose, there was little doubt in his mind that she would have ignored most if not all of the paperwork that undoubtedly had piled up other than to keep things neat and orderly for him when he returned.

And he was not to be disappointed, although it would be good to keep busy while he waited for the others to finish.

He found the bottle of whiskey that had been left in his desk appeared untouched along with a nearly clean glass that once he had blown it clear of any dust or cobwebs still managed to hold enough liquid to slack his thirst by the third liberal two fingered pour while he dug in and began to separate the various pieces of correspondence from important to trash and everywhere else in between.

It was as he flipped through the calendar while he compared several notes where he began to notice that he was also missing a few more days than he had originally been led to have thought.

Almost an entire week, if he could still calculate time correctly.

Clearly yet something else that he would have to take up with Abby when it was next convenient.

The other was the occasional sensation that he was able to watch himself work while still seated at his desk which he managed to shake off as he pondered it with growing concern.

Much later, not long after he had finally managed to address the last of the paperwork, Orson Dewitt's soft knock at the office door had let him know that they were ready for him.

Oddly enough he had somehow sensed that Dewitt had been there for some time even before he had looked up from the last of the paperwork.

Almost as if he had patiently lain in wait; which he undoubtedly had out of courtesy if Poe knew anything about the man.

Even the town undertaker had managed to take a shine to Deer while she had been part of the town and perhaps would miss her as much as anyone, perhaps more.

She had proven to be one of the man's few friends, given what he had done for a living and how most people tended to avoid his presence until such time that they could not.

Something that brought some much needed amusement as Poe made his way down the main street and toward the other side of town as he was able to ignore the strange tingles that he occasionally felt in passing.