Some people find thier own relaxation...
It was seven in the evening as the crickets began the chirping, he knew that he couldn't keep the smile from his face. There was a good chance that the property he sat on was the only place for miles, if not hundreds of miles that that noise wouldn't have sounded out of place at this time of the year. It reassured him. It just simply seemed right. With such a crushing spiritual presence to the north, it was good to feel the natural ways on this little stretch of land. Only four hundred feet wide and nearly a mile and a half deep, this land was ALIVE.
He walked to the back of the house and out the back sliding glass door. The doors were never locked. Any who would intrude in this place would regret it for what remained of their existence. The spirits congregated in this place didn’t appreciate intrusion with malice. The court had a singular sense of justice in a most primitive form. The man could appreciate this on his most instinctual level.
After exiting the door and re-closing it to keep the chill air from reaching the baby within, the man slowly stretched his muscles. Each group of weathered tissue slowly pulled from normal patterns of movement until the man could feel blood reaching the smallest bunching of tissue. Precious oxygen, so needed for life slowly built and peaked in each leg, each arm and each lung.
He began a light jog down the property line, getting his legs ready for the torture he would soon inflict upon them. His speed gradually ramped up with each step. What began as a speed barely above a walk became a fast jog in the first third of the distance. By the end of the second third, it became a run and then a swift run as he approached the fence that marked the property of his immediate left and right neighbors. Then his fingertips lightly touched the fence post and he pivoted life a point guard back the way he came.
That is when the speed exploded.
Boomer watched from the window in the kitchen. She was no stranger to the rigors of keeping in shape. Her lifestyle had not only demanded it, but her order made it a part of daily life. She often wondered how normal folks had the time to be alive and also keep fit. Seeing End trotting down the property line, she began to see the fallacy in his stride, the misbalanced step and the unneeded arm pumping of an inexperienced runner. It was fairly obvious that she was going to have to spend a bit of time not only getting him up to date and conversant in his order of choice, but also how to effectively exercise for better health and benefit. Then, with eyes as sharp as any hawk yet only slight compared to most new mothers, she saw his fingertips lightly brush the weathered old wooden fence post.
That’s when the speed exploded.
His arms pumped like engine pistons at his side in perfect rhythm to his every stride. His legs were jackhammers in the earth propelling him even faster down the property line. In the back of his mind which always ran in another thought process, he recalled that the four minute mile hadn’t been broken by men until the 1950s. Indeed, to this day the official record stood at just a second or two below three and three quarters of a minute. That placed it at a near constant speed of between sixteen and seventeen miles an hour. Impressive run. On the other hand, the four hundred meter time was only about forty three seconds. That put it at about twenty one miles an hour but, only for a short sprint. No staying power there. By the time he passed the halfway point down the property line, he was shattering records. Thirty-nine second quarter miles before he leveled of his speed. He was pushing a constant twenty-four miles an hour out of his legs until he reached the last score of feet before he ran into the house. At that point he, leaned back as his feet skidded across the ground and he lightly touched the old caretaker’s quarters. Then he exploded back down the line.
Boomer was awestruck. She didn’t believe at first that what End was doing was possible for that old bent body of his, regardless of how good of shape it seemed in…and that brought unpleasant thoughts that were rapidly filed under the do not think about category. Her eyes shifted into the realm of velocity and inertia, air resistance and wind friction. She opened her eyes to the supernal sight of force and life. She found herself dumbfounded for what was before her. He wasn’t using any kind of magic. She was certain he had spells up if only because she had seen his ritual casting of Big Magic in the past. She still couldn’t pierce his occlusion though. She was certain this speed wasn’t something he could do to her knowledge though. He was simply as fast as anyone she had ever seen…even on television. What’s more, he wasn’t slowing down. Sprinters could do what he was doing, not long distance runners. She had a growing suspicion her healing knack would soon be needed so she continued to watch as End continued hundred yard dash speeds down the property line.
As the clock chimed midnight, Boomer decided she wouldn’t be needed. The endurance that End seemed to have as he continued to run was simply inhuman. Hell, it was something she had never seen done by a mage either, and the stone book was her own tower. Something just wasn’t right about this guy. She had met a number of powerful people so far in central Florida. The flare of thier power difficult not to notice but End had nothing like that. Hell, he seemed as normal as any sleeper she had known most of the time. This wasn’t one of those times. Her sight of life made it all too clear that his heart hadn’t even crested a hundred and forty beats a minute yet. She also had little doubt that the standard one sixty danger zone wouldn’t necessarily apply to him either. The baby was crying for love, feeding and plain attention though so End could keep running. Boomer would be here if he needed help. Something told her she wouldn’t have to teach him how to exercise.
The sun slowly crept over the horizon as the man know to some as End of Days came slowly jogging the last few feet to the old house. There were thirty foot long ruts a foot deep at each end of the property that he would have to fill in later in the day. It had been good to run sprints with the wolves in his court all night. The moon had been full and he had made his oblation. He had felt when the woman and the child had laid down and slept for the night a little before two in the morning. He wasn’t sure what to do about her. That the baby was his was a virtual certainty. That the tyke had been born diseased was also certain and now irrelevant. End had been raised an orphan but he knew a father was suppose to look after his child. Curing Hutchinson-Gilford disease seemed a small enough thing to start with. He did wonder when the conversation was going to come up, but supposed it couldn’t blame Boomer for her hesitance. Hell, while the evidence was incontrovertible, he didn’t even know when it had happened. Then again, they had gotten drunk a few times…dozen times together. Time would tell, but it certainly looked like his roots had been put down for some time to come.