"Take it off the coat, take it off."

  What seemed like far below, a shallow valley.  

  Bird killing bird.  

  Four-leggeds packing and proving--lead and follow, follow and lead. 

  Armor from land, land to sky. 

   "How would you protect me?" The woman a wisp in brutal clime.  The tent flap a wall between in or out.  "Did you tell her there was a plan?"  The men fell silent.  "There is a plan, isn't there?" A woman taller than the men asked.  

  "So what we do is, would be 

  "When we get back to the city?"  

  "If...that's where this thing is at now.  I'm sorry.  I can't not tell you."  

  The brown haired woman studied the postcards.  "It's quite honestly hard to tell with the sand dust covering those hills."  Hand dropped to side and postcard fell plumb.  "It's the devil's hair kind of windstorm.  We'll have to wait it out," said a sherpa wrapped head to toe in cloths and leathers.  The wild turkey feather "gift" attached to a belt from time to time seemed to stand on its own accord.

  Barely "a voice" left, "Follow the path through the bit of jungle to the cave." The person passed out cold.  Then days of feverish jibberish.  But when the knights of a different order had appeared through the mists of sandstorm and the message had come, akin to alas, a worthy opponent, the most fit in the pack of us carried the worst wounded to the cave.  We could not stay.  Those who'd been "tethered" ripped patch and piece from was alive when we had to go.  

  Helicopter blades had stirred the pot, the cauldron, the peering at an origami arrangement of "peace".  Orders were such that one had no choice but to.  Follow the reindeer.  Migrate with the cranes.  Bulldoze the yerts.  Do not destroy ANYTHING.  The lilt in her voice competing with the swift-and-suddenly-still mezmorizing of the devil's hair winds.

  It was the same tendrils of octopus ink, pixel'd, streamed that had witnessed tipping points on balance sheets and scales of justice all through the 20th century.  Whooshes of culture colliding and sheering off chance of survival.  Roars ripping into sanity and madness.  Plummets from alofts almost but never quite reaching "heaven".  Minds reel and still frame senses into even while senses dour and dull, atrophy, and split. 

  It had been a terrible year for doll makers.  By the time the last porcelin-faced beauty was crated with some other museum quality archeology remnants there were guerillas aboard "air planes".  Asians the world over were being called.  People of very few words.  Reasons supercomplicated by world travel around the Continents.  

  "From a village, out west," translator and Japanese man spoke as one.  "Put this on," a crouched and kneeling gaggle of women and elderly ordered while digging through boxes of clothing.  The clothing sorted and re-sorted after being dumped on a shut down by chaos highway running in and out of New York.  As the man put a bulky pleather coat over a slim waist coat, a gang of hooligans rushed past the line of people being dressed.  Knocking into Macy's shoppers.  "When you get past that table," talking to eyes brimming with confusion, eyes looking at the ground, eyes being lifted by cold hand on chin, "Listen to me.  You can do it." A wobbly voice and belly-driven throat clear, "I candoit shelly."  The translator given papers.  The papers into pouch.  "We'll only be five feet apart while we get picture taken.  You understand?" Deep head bows as yes.  

  It was then train rail screeching.  Screaming.  A look at the end of the "tunnel to safety" at the juncture of platform.  An Asian priest.  A woman with a baby carriage.  Baby in arms.  Shopping bags.

  The men or people dressed in worn black clothing like a moving sculpture.  One up, one diwn, one behind the back of another.  Pointing saw'd off shotgun and big barrel revolver at anyone who looked.  People gasped and looked away.  One woman pulled at a man's face to make him look away.  Look away, someone rasped and the croak took as advice.  Life suddenly frozen around cardboard boxes and papers.  Actions pantomimed.  Orders followed.  

  Pouch handed over revealing rosary beads on belt.  Forehead of priest ahead dripping blood of barbed wire crown of thorns.  No running, a clown with a bullet through the neck gurgled blood and barely pointed the way down tracks when the lights went out.