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a paradise.”
    “Sounds too good to be true,” I muttered.
    Darrios smirked. “You’ll see.”
    “If it’s so wonderful, why don’t you live there?”
    He furrowed his brow and his smile faded. “Inland isn’t the kind of place where you want to live alone. It’s the kind of place you want to share with someone. And besides, that’s not my destiny. I’m needed in the Outer Rim.”
    Glancing at him out of the corner of my eye, I could see the pain that suddenly seemed to wash over him. So I let it go.
    ****
    The effects from walking all afternoon started to nag at me. My muscles burned and my stomach rumbled hungrily. Darrios heard it, much to my embarrassment. He assured me it wouldn’t be too much longer.
    “We’ll stay in a safe house tonight,” he said. “They’re located randomly within Midland for travelers like us. The monsters can’t get in. The houses are secure, locked by combination.”
    I asked him how he would get the combination. He smiled again. I couldn’t help but notice he had a really nice smile, friendly and warm. It softened his features and made his blue eyes sparkle. Tapping the side of his head with two fingers, he said, “Photographic memory. It’s a blessing and a curse.”
    I shrugged and shook my head. “I’m lucky if I remember what I’m doing from task to task or why I even walked into a room half the time. A photographic memory is something of a foreign concept to me. As foreign as Celio, I suppose.”
    ****
    About an hour later we came upon a small square building. I didn’t remember passing any others like it. Darrios told me it was a safe house. I wouldn’t have described it as drab, exactly, just plain.
    It didn’t appear to have been neglected, but nobody seemed to have paid much attention to it either. The walls were made up of some sort of concrete-type material and it had a flat, angled roof.
    The barred windows screamed “stay out” and the thick metal door clearly met the demands of safe house protection. There was no lawn to speak of, just dirt dotted with a few patches of overgrown weeds.
    Darrios stepped onto the tiny, stone porch, which was nearly level to the ground. He looked around and then turned the combination on the door. Swinging the door open, he motioned for me to go in first. I smiled, hurrying past him.
    The simple furnishings gave the place less of a stark feeling but didn’t exactly make it seem homey. A small wooden table and two chairs stood next to a counter of sorts, with a sink and a hand pump. Over it, a couple of shelves containing some very unfamiliar canned and packaged goods hung on the wall.
    Across the room sat one double bed. Fabulous. I had no intention of sharing a bed with a stinky caveman, although, after walking through the dusty terrain of the Outer Rim and Midland all day, I probably didn’t smell my best either. I did a quick sniff test, trying not to be obvious.
    Darrios pointed to a narrow door next to the bed. “That’s the bathroom,” he said. “You can take care of...whatever you need to, in there. You can wash up some, but we won’t be able to actually get a shower until we get to Inland.”
    I tried to fight the thought fleeting through my head that it had been awhile since Darrios had been to Inland.
    I went into the washroom, pleased to find it was pretty standard. There was another sink with a hand pump, a warped mirror, and thankfully, a toilet. I discovered the pull chain hanging off it served as a makeshift flush handle. I didn’t need luxury. I needed functional. Apparently, things like modern plumbing and electricity hadn’t been utilized yet in Celio.
    I cleaned up as best I could and gave Darrios his turn. He took off his big fur covering and draped it over one of the chairs. I noticed he had regular clothes on. I don’t know what I’d expected, but seeing him in jeans and a T-shirt without an animal carcass hanging off of him gave me the shred of normalcy I needed.
    When he came out of the