Free An Evening at Joe's by Dennis Berry Peter Wingfield F. Braun McAsh Valentine Pelka Ken Gord Stan Kirsch Don Anderson Roger Bellon Anthony De Longis Donna Lettow Peter Hudson Laura Brennan Jim Byrnes Bill Panzer Gillian Horvath, Darla Kershner Page A

decided that I was either a god or a demon, both of which were unwanted in their home.
    During a ceremony to honour the next full moon, I was forced to fight their best warrior to the death. That was the second time I died. When the sun rose the next morning and I had revived again, they tied my hands together and I was banished from the oasis. I was transported away by a small party, whose job it was to ensure that I was left far enough from their camp that I could not return. I was sent out into the vast solitude with no weapon and no water, left to die far from the only home that I knew. I watched them fade away in the distance as they made their way back. I was as terrified as they were. I had no way of knowing what I was, any more than they did; there was absolutely no frame of reference for these things that were happening to me. I stumbled upon a pile of bones and used them to rub apart the strands that bound my hands together in front of me so I could continue into the unknown, able at least to defend myself.
    I found my way along a traveled path to a hidden settlement that would later be called Petra, the next place I settled, and began to live with the Nabataeans who camped there. I was so angry with the Bedouins for sending me away, that I swore an oath to return and kill them all for what they had done. That anger took a long time to disappear from my heart. While those years passed, I learned how to carve out caves from the sheer stone walls that protected their camp's location. I lived and grew stronger as I worked each day; I thought about who I was and what I was supposed to do about it. It eventually became apparent to everyone that I was not aging, and I knew that I could not stay there any longer.
    It was in this way that I became aware that I was never going to be able to live among other people for very long. My life had become a journey between the cracks of civilisations in which I did not fit. I had already survived longer than anyone I had ever heard of; lived in many strange places and soon found myself wondering if there was anyone else like me out there. I was alone, confused and angry at a world that I didn't understand, so I resolved to continue searching in the hope of finding a family again, somewhere that I belonged.
    IV
     
     
    As I made my way among Mortals, I noticed that certain people I met gave off a unique feeling; as though I somehow knew them: I could actually sense their presence and assumed that they could feel mine. We never took each other by surprise. At this time I was, by my best estimation, 603 years old, and the world had changed much for me in that time. I began to encounter more of these strangers who recognised me in this new way, one in particular—Elijah—with whom I finally broached the subject of this strange ability. He spoke of a man named Menahem, who told him a tale that attempted to explain much of what I felt. He was the first of those strangers that we eventually came to call the Ancient Ones: Menahem had lived for 750 years. Apparently we were far from alone. He had met many others like us, sprinkled throughout the known world, with some of them speaking languages that he did not recognise. They had each died at least once and returned from that event to the astonishment of their families. Menahem didn't know how to account for this ability, but he was confident that there was a simple answer, if we could just learn how to see it. He said that some of our kind that he discovered had inspired in him an immense feeling of anger, even though they had just met for the first time. He said that he had wanted to kill these ones as soon as he laid eyes upon them, for no reason that he could explain. There had also been a woman he met who made him feel this strange sense of recognition, but he had not wanted to do battle with her. Instead, they had talked of their experiences in an attempt to make sense of them, just as Elijah and I were doing now. Menahem mentioned