When he woke the next night the fog was gone, and the city lay clear below his lofty perch. The temple was a brilliant beacon only a few blocks away, and the mountains rose up, silent and dark, in the distance. He knew there were many things he ought to do. Find a food source, for one. Find a better hiding place, and see if he could get his hands on some pillows or blankets. But there was something else he had to do first. His very first stop was at a newspaper box. He had no quarters to get a paper out, but he could make out the date through the glass. March 22, 2004. I missed the Olympics then, he thought with a smile. All that fuss, and I never got to see them. But obviously time has run differently, or else it should be 2020 or so. Heh. I guess I look about the age I should be, then... He hesitated a bit longer, looking at the headlines, but there were still people out at this hour, so he couldn't linger long. Soon he was aloft again, soaring above the city lights.

The mountains made it easy to know which way to go. They lay to the east, always, running north and south along the backbone of the whole state. He kept them to his right, heading north high above the city. The trip wasn't too long, a few hours was all, during which he had the sky to himself, except for a distant airplane, level with him and headed the other way, going to the airport that lay a few miles south and west of the city proper. I wonder if anybody is picking me up on radar? I'm obviously too small to be a plane, but I'm also obviously too big to be a bird. I hope they just write me off as a UFO and don't try to chase me down. I really don't want to end up caught and studied by somebody.

The night was still new enough that people were awake when he landed on the residential street in Ogden, forty miles north of the city. He'd seen enough maps that finding the house he wanted from the air had been easy. He looked at it, and he sighed softly. Just looking it was obvious that they were no longer here. There was a garden in the front now, that had obviously been well tended for some time, and his mother had a black thumb, plants she tended never grew this well. In a way it was a relief. He hadn't been able to keep from coming, but he wasn't sure what he would have said to his parents if they'd been here. “Hello, I'm your long-lost son, back from a fantasy world where I've aged twenty years even though I look like I'm eighteen, oh and by the way I'm not even remotely human anymore.”

He stared at the door. The windows were lit, somebody was home. It wouldn't be them, but he could ask... though if he found where his parents had moved to, what would he do? He stepped forward slowly. He stood on the doorstep for a long time, then he finally rang the bell.

A middle-aged woman answered it. He kept his wings folded tightly and hoped that in the darkness she wouldn't notice them. “Hello?” she said, obviously puzzled.

“I'm sorry to bother you,” he said, feeling incredibly nervous, “But I'm trying to find what happened to the people who used to live here. I don't suppose you know where they moved to?”

The woman paused, then shook her head. “Our landlord said something about them moving to England, if that's what you want to know, but I don't have an address. I can give you the landlord's number, if you like, he might have their new address.”

England. I can fly from Salt Lake to Ogden, but I don't think I could fly all the way to England. “Thank you, but that's all right. Goodnight.” Aidan stepped backwards carefully, not wanting to turn and show her his wings. She looked a little puzzled, but let the door close, allowing Aidan to turn and walk back to the street more normally. He sighed. England. Just like Mom always wanted but said she could never afford with us kids. Maybe one kid less was enough that they could save up the money. Maybe I did them a favor by vanishing. Or maybe Dad finally got that better job... No way to know, I guess.

He took to the air again, and headed for the nearby mountains. Here something that at least resembled wilderness wasn't far from the city, and he might be able to hunt his dinner. But he decided that once he had fed he would return to the city. Living alone in a wilderness with Flame and the children was bliss. Being utterly alone in a wilderness would be heartbreak. He would stay near civilization, even if he couldn't take part in it. And he wanted to stay near where he had appeared, in case somebody from Aretha somehow tracked him here.

He'd seen mule deer here often enough, though he'd never been fast enough to touch one before now. As it was catching his dinner proved easy enough once he found it, though it took him nearly until dawn to spot one, deer were not exactly scarce, but they were more wary than the deer he'd hunted in Aretha. Once he had fed he found a hollow among the scrub oak of the lower slopes that showed no sign of recent human presence and curled up to sleep out the day. The next night he returned to the city, and began scouting for everything he would need.

Food was surprisingly easy. Temple Square was a tourist attraction, and there were shaggy draft horses that pulled carriages the tourists could ride around in while the drivers pointed out historic landmarks and told stories about the city's past. The horses were stabled within the city itself, though a bit outside of the down town area. All he had to do was fly above them when they returned to their stables for the night for him to find the food source he needed.

A place to stay wasn't hard either. For someone with wings the city was full of useful nooks and crannies where nobody else could disturb him. Unfortunately furnishings for his hideout were much harder to come by. He eventually ended up filching some from an apartment with a carelessly open window. Getting the screen out from the outside was easy enough, his lockpicks served as prying tools. Locks here were more sophisticated than those common on Aretha, he might be able to open cheap locks, but he didn't trust himself to be able to pick any of the better ones, and people paid less attention to their windows anyway. Nobody in this world could fly.

He put the screen back in place when he was done and retreated to his rooftop lair, where the stolen pillows and blanket were very welcome indeed. He might not feel the cold, but soft padding between himself and the hard concrete made things much more comfortable.