Cabin In The Woods [Endgame. Attn: Many]

[Joey]

Jim is a man like many other men. Even his quirks, even their many cogged assemblage of an engine that propels him through every day, doesn't take him far enough to make him unique from many other men. He gets between points, eats, breathes, cares, sleeps, sometimes cuts his finger while cooking and bleeds or burns his hand while around things that are hot and curses.

Sometimes when Jim's hand is touched by another it squeezes out of instinct. One of the things that still make us all infants in a way. An echo through the years.

There are the moments that make Jim not like other men, but they run few and far between at times. Leah has been made privy to them. Some might wonder what they do on those hikes. In the morning before breakfast. In the evenings before dinner. Every day she will allow it. Those who wonder aren't discouraged from accompanying the girl with the Avatar that kills and the man with the soul that yearns for ascension and enlightenment.

That same man with the soul that yearns to share ascension and enlightenment.

They sit. Never for too long. On stones that are flat, stones that look comfortable enough for it, or sometimes patches of ground that look the same. They sit and they find her mantra. They seek it and he assures her it will not be easy to find, but when she does find it, it will be impossible to lose. They search for balance. They try to find calm. They try to find understanding and forgiveness. They try to find all of these things in the mind, and he assures that all that can be is there, even if it hasn't been discovered yet. He speaks in freeing uncertainties and truths that cannot be bound into a moment's child or parent. And when she grows frustrated, which she will, he gets up and walks away, but before he is too far, turns around and looks to her.

“Aren't you coming?”

And if she is not, he returns to her. And if she does, they walk until they find a new spot to sit. A new spot to close their eyes.

He tells her stories. Of empty cups. Of thieves. Of men who carry women across streams. Of drops of water. Some might make her laugh. Some might make her angry or upset. Some she doesn't understand, and he admits that he doesn't either. Yet. And that is okay.

He tells her stories. They are about people who stood and died and still triumphed, of people who stood and lived but lost, and many combinations of these results. Of people who changed minds through both action and word. He reads and if she asks, lends her books. If she speaks, discusses them.

In these many ways he shows her magic, and how he does not make it, but becomes it.

And one afternoon they come upon a fallen tree that is rotten through. He falls silent and walks right up to it. Waves her closer. Shows her beneath that fallen tree.

All the life that has sprung up in its place. All the things that live from its death.

"Look how much these trees do, standing," pointing to its brethren that stand around it, animals living in them, offering shade, growing taller in the sun. "Look how much this tree does, fallen," he continues.

When she sleeps he often doesn't. He often spends late nights by the fire speaking of time and telling its secrets, saying he will not be there, but he will. He will watch and he will do what he can. All that he can. The last part is a promise.

And whatever trees fall, he will try to make a life for Leah, for himself, and for those that stand after.