"Edilio please-"

"Roger!" Edilio turned back around glaring at Roger who was standing inside. Edilio shifted on his feet, standing on the open front porch. He glanced around and, after noticing a few people watching, softened his voice. "I have to do this, to make sure everyone is safe being around the mine. We don't know what's in it, we don't know what's around it, we don't know who is controlling it."

"So someone else can go. Look, you're not the only one in charge."

Edilio laughed. "You know I'm the only one who would do something this dangerous willingly." He ran his fingers against his buzz-cut scalp. "I have to keep everyone safe." He walked back over to Roger, shutting the door to their small house behind him. "I have to keep you safe." Edilio held Rogers face between his hands. "I'll be back soon. I promise."

Roger kissed his boyfriend gently on the forehead, then on the lips. "You better be."

Edilio opened the door and left before Roger could protest again.

Roger walked back into his living room and sat down on the slouchy leather couch that faced the no longer useful television set. This was not really his house, just one that Edilio and he had decided was to be their home for as long as the FAYZ lasted. It was the biggest house on the street, although that wasn't saying much. They had chosen Perdido Beach's poorest development. It was Edilio's idea. The FAYZ council told him he could have first pick, any unoccupied house under the dome, but Edilio had wanted to stay with what he was used to. That was one of the reasons Roger loved him so much. He was humble, understated.

Roger wished he could figure out a way to paint the way he pictured Edilio. The way colors looked different around him, everything in Technicolor. Wished he could somehow paint how safe he felt around him, how loved. Roger wanted a palette with colors on some sort of emotional spectrum. He wanted to paint love, happiness, laughter.

These were, however, just wishes, and Roger had other things he needed to do in the time before Edilio was to return. Roger knew he probably had about 6 hours, assuming, hoping, praying that Edilio was to return at all.

He walked to the back of the house and into the kitchen. The cabinets were a perfect place to hide things. All their food was stored on the kitchen counter, a meager pile of canned goods they had bought with their collection of Bertos. Roger opened the cabinet below the unusable sink and pulled out the canvas he had been working on for the past week. Art supplies were extremely easy to come by, and Roger had used his time in the FAYZ to create anything and everything. Paintings, drawings, clothing, even origami. He would hand out his creations to kids, or hang them in the nursery, earning him the appropriate nickname of "The Artful Roger." They were depictions of forests and cities beyond the FAYZ barrier. Roger made things to make others happy. There were, of course, other paintings he could not take out of the house. These were the paintings that existed not for happiness, but for documentation. He painted war, blood, and sickness. Roger figured the FAYZ walls would fall some day, they had to. And someone had to chronicle all that happened. Roger sketched the Human Crew. He painted Sam with green beams illuminating the dark, night sky. He painted Astrid giving a heated speech, face beet red as she tried to convince, convince, convince. And Roger showed hunger, violence. He painted emaciated children and crying toddlers on street corners holding bats and knives. He depicted a young girls body lying mangled in a grave. Roger tried his best to express everything using the only talent that seemed to flow naturally to him.

Edilio had seen few of his paintings and drawings. Mild doodles of Albert in the Mc Donald's flipping burgers, and some of Caine and Diana standing side by side. He showed Edilio his least threatening paintings of Drake holding his whip arm over a corpse, of coyotes lurking beyond firelight. Edilio told Roger that he often wondered if Roger might be a moof; the way his paintings danced on canvas seemed so impossible without some sort of power.

Roger's latest piece was of Edilio at the Thanksgiving feast, serving out dishes of food to smiling, albeit dirty, children. He mixed colors on a small palette and filled in details with tiny flicks of his brush. The food was so detailed Roger imagined he could pull it out of the painting and have one more meal of hot, fresh food steaming before him.

The sun began its slow crawl to the horizon. Roger, running out of light, began to put away his art equipment and light candles. He wished he could turn on his laptop and play a playlist of gentle, easy music. Maybe something in Spanish.

Creeeeak. The door opened, quietly, unnervingly so. Roger grabbed a small kitchen knife he had out to open cans. It would have to do. He stood ready for who ever, whatever was creeping into his house. Roger began to launch toward the approaching when Edilio's voice called out from the darkness.

"ROGER WAIT!" Edilio yelled, obviously startled. Roger dropped the knife and accidentally tackled Edilio onto the couch in the living room adjacent to the kitchen.

"I didn't know who you were I'm sorry I'm sorry I'm so glad you're okay." Roger rambled on between the kisses he placed across Edilio's face. They lay, half laughing, intertwined on the couch.

Edilio kissed Roger on the forehead. "It's fine honestly. There is definitely something freaky about the mine. You can feel energy radiating from it. We decided to get away from it before dark."

Roger sat up. "So you'll probably have to go back there, huh? It couldn't just be a normal, abandoned mine?"

"And when has anything here been normal?" Edilio laughed as he stood up, stretching his arms over his head. "I'm starving. Can we eat something while we talk?"

"We have beans, beans, or green beans." Roger said.

"Varied choices, huh?" The two moved to the kitchen and talked by candlelight. Edilio told Roger everything he remembered about the mine, every detail. Roger would sketch it the next day and make a bigger painting if it grew to have any importance in the FAYZ. And like all things in their world that hummed power and radiated energy, Roger was sure this would not be the last day he spent worrying about Edilio at the abandoned mine. Roger was sure he would never stop worrying about the humble, strong boy from Honduras.