Dizzy, again, dizzy. The sun danced in his corneas as a blaring haze. He groaned as he laid there, disoriented, hot, and unable to shake the unwavering lightheadded feeling he felt.

Sitting up in the sun-bleached sand and dusting himself off again, Leroy surveyed the area. The ocean breathing in and out shone far too bright to look at in the midday sun, and the trees glared with their waxy, shiny leaves.

Under them, sat Andrew, alone, upon a rock eaten away by the sea before either of their recollection. Against such a bright background, He appeared black to it, so dark against the summer's unrelenting light.

Through the brush he once forged through, too, there were sparkling patches of sunlight that told of a sea behind the mess of dense, mad, and uncontrolled greenery.

Over whispering green and gold tallgrasses and crashing waves who approached softly from the ocean's horizon, there came a voice over the melody of midsummer's bliss- a voice that did not belong to Leroy.

"Leroy? Are you there?"

Immediately, Leroy felt as if he was small under His shadow, however far away from Him, by how his voice traveled. He hadn't seen Him yet, sitting alone in that dense shade, His features were blotted out from existence.

Leroy's eyes were narrowing now, and focusing upon the blotted shade, the indistinct shape of That man, and the shining sea behind Him obscured by patches of leaves. It wasn't only the world that got darker.

Focus spiraled from Leroy's own feelings of confusion, all poured into the blind silhouette sitting in front of him, waiting for some movement to occur to give motivation to action. The outer edges of his vision darkened and ultimately narrowed around themselves, and as Leroy tried to squint, it became more futile to look around at all.

Senses shot in the sunlight, the yellow-green and black space Leroy was suspended in wouldn't let him go. He couldn't think, he couldn't see, save for squinting out of his functionless eyes, and air seemed thick to breathe like water.

He asked then, from the depths of the shadows from which He swam, "Leroy? Isn't that you?"

Wind shook the dry tallgrass around in response. Leroy didn't move, his body wouldn't. His fingers twitched, they tried, but failed. Movement fell short of anything but a plea. A voice like honey came again, softer this time.

"Are you okay?"

Leroy gave no answer, but his breathing seemed less like drowning, for a moment.

"I'm not here to- where are you?"

The water in which he bathed began to thicken, and with it, the air between his lips. His arms were heavy, he could not move them. His head was spinning, it did not focus on any one sensation at once, but instead flooded him with all of them at once.

Desperately searching for words, but having them caught in his burning throat, Leroy barely caught one slumped step forward. No sound escaped, no sense made it out to actualize into reasonable action.

"Leroy, I can't see you. I need you to work with me. We're not on the best of terms, I know. But I've been waiting here for you all day now. I know you're there, even if I can't see you."

Leory's home basin was bright like staring into the sun, and blinding sound accompanying it. This is what death was like, tired eyes told him; not the comfort of the sea, but a burning world he couldn't leave.

From his arms down, like grass brushing up against it, or holes poked in a thick rag, he felt static dripping off his fingers. Numbness in doubt of reality, this world was separate from what sureness he could have had beforehand, However spread thin. That memory was fading, now.

And, If he blinked, it stung. The darkness hurt like the light hurt, neither good nor bad being alone in this bright life, but still alone. Sound registered one second, then forgotten the next as the burnt light faded from his recognition, all in place for more and more after that.

Damnit, where was this, bright enough to blind the stars? A blight in which he was caught. A vague idea of trust that had no weight in the meadow, drowning in sunlight.

"Leroy? Oh god, Leroy?"

He put his palms up to his eyes where they fit best to block out the ambient radiation that overwhelmed his senses. And unknowingly, his forearms as well as his shins in the soft dirt and grass under him dipped. Suddenly, he was left in shadow, casting his own under the weight of what he himself conjured of the dread.

Sinew that turned to stone on his neck in pain and all cramps of his torso, not of dread, however, but a hollow grief of something not lost yet. And he cried, like the other man did, a fuzzy noise he could recall through the waves after amnesia came.

He made loud noises beside quiet ones in between gasps for air, tightening his chest more with each heave in and out. And so too the air congealed, but now with the aid of his tears and his labored stirring;

Nothing came to him.

That undertow of memory took his remnants of dread away, without removing the pain. Here came, he thought, the end. Rustling grass, louder than the wind could muster, and distinct from it. Here, rode in death.

Around his eyes, tears had made his hands wet and slippery, and Leroy took it away from his face. Staring down at it, his eyes stung, and although the world didn't seem so painfully luminous as it was one moment ago, it still hurt so much to open his eyes.

Not so quietly as a distant rustling of a droplet in the mighty ocean, came one, final plea from the assimilated shadow that had awoken him:

"Are you alright?"

Nothing was assimilated about that shadow, however, He stood in the full brightness, providing shade like merciful water in the torrent of sunlight Leroy was caught unto. He had caught a break in the waves, he was steady, for a moment, and he found his throat wasn't so dry as a desert any longer. So Leroy spoke.

"Why are you here?"

Leroy asked his question, crumpled upon the ground, barely looking up to greet this greater presence before him. He was grasping onto this bastion of saving shadow, and repaying Him with malice in his voice.

For a brief, brief second, he felt a very small feeling of guilt for being so cold, especially when this was mercy being shown. Then the feeling of guilt- worthless and null in practice, left him. Leroy had reason to be skeptical. Was this not a trick, he thought?

"I mean no harm, I'm here to try to help."

He knelt down, and felt around on the ground for the mound of man. His touch made Leroy finch in defense, unexpecting of the movement. Still the doubt of trickery made itself prevalent in place of gratefulness, what had this man to expect of him?

Trying to help him after seasons of horrid torment? And only now he grows a spine and apologizes? No, no, Leroy thought, among other thoughts, panic making up the majority of them. Trickery, deceit indeed.

"Get up, here, get up."

"Get away from me!"

Leroy shot up. A flash of bright white, like the past panic Leroy felt, then his eyes adjusted. The wind that once pelted his skin with particles of sand picked up by the breeze, now didn't feel so hot and harsh.

And up, up so that wetted skin and eyes faced the blue, there was a face with nye but a shirt tied over His eyes. Leroy's hands in the sand wiped away the droplets of water around his face, and left granules in their wake, but blurred and clear, the bizarre image stayed put.

"I have an idea, and I think it's working. Here, get up, and we'll figure this out together."

Andrew extended his hand out to him, but Leroy didn't move. In fact, he leaned back a little, so that His hand was further away, so that He couldn't lean in and grab him.

"Do not touch me!"

The other man's fingers recoiled, and He took a small step backwards because of such malice-filled words.

"Leroy-"

"Don't. I don't want to hear it. I want to go back to my home."

Between them, their tone was rising, and especially so in Leroy's expression, who didn't only show anger, but distrust and desperation.

"And do what? Rebuild the ashes?!"

Andrew withdrew his hand, and was still a moment. Leroy's face fell once he realized exactly what that meant. His facial expression shifted from anger to a lesser state of sorrow, then, and his furrowed brow loosened somewhat. His head hung in a state of dim shame, recognition of what he couldn't control, of what he couldn't fix.

"..I didn't mean to say that."

And nothing and nobody moved, but the grass around the two rustled in place of their unwillingness. Leroy took on this bewildered look, and Andrew, this muzzle of guilt for what insult he didn't mean to spew at Leroy.

He continued, "Listen. I know you have the journal, I want to know whether you read it or not."

"I did, what do you care?" spoken in an indistinct tone under his breath. His feeling of hurt was left in Leroy's voice. Andrew breathed a sigh of relief, though, then extended out his arm again, and Leroy stared at it.

"I don't trust you."

"I need you to, just for a while, until we can talk like civilized men again."

His relentless coaxing was not useless. Leroy found, when he tried to step up, he could not so easily, and that his legs had fallen asleep in the sandy grass underneath him. He shifted from side to side, but couldn't move his legs out from under him much with the weight of his torso over him.

"Just come with me"

And Leroy's muscles tensed up under him, and his throat filled with water again, and once more the world shone brightly, but now it wasn't just around him. He grabbed his hand, and held on tightly as he felt the ground recede from under his body, and balance attempt to return back to him.

"Are you steady on your feet?"

Leroy nods, but silently realizes that this other man cannot see his nod. He speaks a soft "yes," then lets go of Andrew's hand again.

"Hey, I don't know where I'm going. I need help getting back into that shade over there. I have something for you there, but I can't see, so I need some help."

Leroy looks to his right, and sees sparse trees and more ocean behind it. To the left, he noticed a new footpath in between the blindfolded man and the thicket. The way led into a thicket of dark forest, and Leroy's eyes shot between Andrew and the grove, unsure of his next few steps. Andrew brushed himself off, and turned that way, intent to start walking.

"Why don't you take that off, and walk on your own? I don't think I want to help you."

"You said you read my journal? What? Did you forget what you read, now? I'm done doing this. I'm done pretending we don't know each other."

Leroy suddenly was perplexed as he stared at this Andrew, acting that they did know each other. For as long as he could remember, forever and ever, as well as he knew, they were alone under the confines of this bright isle, together, alone.

"There's something I don't know, right?"

In Leroy's voice, there was trembling, and uncertainty. There, thus far, were two dominant forces that kept the island in check, his good and His evil. The doubt of the self is powerful, and here Leroy was, facing it, facing the evil once cowered before.

And in the sentinel who stood upright before him, Leroy saw a little change of face; suddenly the bitterness in drawn lips and eyebrows gave way, and so too did a small uplift in the cheeks.

Relief somewhat, he spoke softer now, in a tone Leroy couldn't recall hearing before, and he said:

"Let's go."

The blindfolded man sighed, and started in the general way that he thought the dark shade was. He was a few degrees off, and so Leroy sighed in response.

"There's a rock right in front of you."

"Which side?" Andrew asked, confusion in his voice. Leroy noticed yet another new voice- this time, a twinge of curiosity that resonated, superseding any other. Again, there was that smile, now made into his voice.

Leroy couldn't tell whether or not a little smile in response was justified.