“Angus, have you seen my shoes?” Summer called out from across the small apartment she shared with her husband. She was looking for a pair of dress shoes, size seven, black. It was a plain pair of shoes, but it was her favorite.

“Why would I have seen your shoes, love? I’ve been asleep until about ten seconds– oh. Here they are!” Angus rubbed his eyes as he got out of bed. Summer’s panic over her shoes meant he had about thirty minutes to shower, shave, brush, dress, and eat: perfect timing. He walked barefoot into the bathroom. “Say, Summer, do you think he’ll be alright? I mean, this was sort of his last connection to Drake and Sara.”

Summer looked up from the shoes she had just scampered across the apartment to grab. “Well, of course he’ll be alright. He’s got Nora. He’s got the children. He doesn’t need a best mate anymore.” She put on the shoes and sped to the powder room to tidy her makeup. “Besides, he’s retiring today. It’s a good thing, and it’s something he’s choosing to do. I think it’s a good sign that he’s starting to move on already.”

Angus started up the shower as he flushed the toilet from the other side of the door. “I know, but he’ll still miss them horribly, won’t he?” His footsteps could be heard through the bathroom door as he stepped in and began to jump around from the cold water. Angus hated cold water, but it always did the job. The body wash bottle cap snapped open.

“Yeah, I suppose he will, but that’s what happens when you grow up. You miss things. Drake and Sara were a part of our youths. Nobody’s seen Sara since Drake’s plane crashed off the Chinese coast.” It was true, she thought as she put on her mascara, leaning toward the peeling mirror. There was no getting past the facts that Drake was dead, and Sara was gone. Sara’s life was all about Drake. With him gone, whatever she had left other than a few of her father’s relatives was back in Thorlinthia. And she wasn’t coming back anymore than he was.

“I just wish she had said goodbye, though, you know?” Angus could be heard as the shower turned off and the sound of a towel became apparent through the door. “I mean, we are family. I spent my entire adolescence growing up with that cousin of mine, and she just disappeared as soon as Drake was dead. I know she was traumatized, but come on. Not even a goodbye?”

“Well, you know what Larry says,” Summer said as she scurried over to the kitchen now she was done with make-up. “He doesn’t seem to think Drake died at all. He says Sara just took him with when she left.” That would be a nice surprise, but Larry had always had a bit more faith in Drake than she ever did, no matter how much she tried to believe in the man. Her brother-in-law had grown to think of that man as his own brother, and when Drake would come home with an idea, Larry had always been the first to volunteer for the dangerous part. Maybe Summer was just never close enough to him.

“Yeah, that’d be nice,” Angus said from the closet where he was now looking for the outfit Summer had laid out on the bed before he woke up. “But it’s not like he just dropped to the sea with a damaged wing and a fully operational eject. Three missiles hit his plane from three separate directions. The seat wouldn’t even have been able to eject him that fast. So unless he really did have those super powers he never seemed to use, he died that night.” The thought made his eyes dart ever so quickly to the box of Thorlinthian equipment Sara had left behind for them. They quickly made their way back to center, though, as Angus recalled the outfit on his bed and swooped out of the closet.

“Well, he did make all those flowers float around for their wedding. That was cool,” she said over the sizzling eggs on the frypan. She reached out with the spatula to split the whites of the two separate eggs as she grabbed the salt and pepper. From the other room, a faint banging could be heard as Angus slammed the whites drawer shut. They both hated that drawer. It stuck too often, but Angus’s colorblindness called for a lot of drawers. “Don’t forget to wear black socks,” she called out. There were a few more successive bangs, and she smiled. He had grabbed white socks, as always. Color matching didn’t make as much sense when everything was gray, she supposed.

“Well, yeah, but that was just floating flowers. For this, he’d have had to isolate himself from an ongoing explosion. I mean, his plane was blown to bits with the cockpit still sealed. There’s not a whole lot more you can do to confirm a pilot’s death.” There was some shuffling and a clatter as Angus got his shoes on and started working on his jacket and tie as he walked into the kitchen, giving Summer’s cheek a kiss from behind as he hurried about, pulling out the butter for the toast that would pop in five, four, three, two, one… A nice, metallic kathunk was heard as the toast popped out of the toaster. Angus pulled them out and put them on the plates, two to a plate, buttering as he went, the butter quickly melting into the toast.

“Still,” Summer said, “Larry’s convinced. And when Larry’s convinced of something, there’s only one thing that’ll convince him to stop being convinced, and that’s Drake Kendrick. So this time, we’re sheer out of luck. She slipped the eggs onto their plates next to the toast and shutting off the stove as she took the pan to the sink and cleaned it while the grease was still not stuck to the pan.

“True,” Angus replied as he pulled open the oven to remove the little foil wraps cooking their sausages, “but it’d be nice for his kids if he’d stop telling them that Drake was coming back one day. It’s just sad to watch, and Nora does it right with him.” His sister almost seemed to condone it, Angus thought as he shut off the oven and pulled the sausages out of the foil and onto their plates. He washed off the foil as Summer took the plates to the table, then grabbed the drinks, followed her, and sat down. They still had a good fifteen minutes for breakfast before brushing their teeth and heading out.

The next few minutes were a bit quieter, the married couple focusing on enjoying their meal together, their idle hands gently squeezing one another. As they finished, Angus took a final swig of his orange juice and stood, taking their dishes to the sink as Summer headed to the bathroom to brush first. He washed the dishes and set them in the strainer, turning on the spot and heading to the bathroom, giving his wife a quick peck as they passed each other. Summer dried off and put away all the dishes as Angus brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth.

“Alright, let’s go,” she said as she grabbed her purse and overcoat, her husband right behind her. The door swung open and closed again, and the two were out. Back in their closet, a box full of Thorlinthian equipment started coming online as the cruisers and ultracarriers began to enter  broadcasting range. Phoenix Day was tomorrow, and the only people who knew were the two who never put away their wireless. Several miles away, Larry Denton smiled at the wireless view unit in his hand as it displayed the presence of other communication arrays in range for the first time since Valkyr 53 hyped away.