I caught a bus yesterday evening to a protected forest called Olympia. It was nice out there, I spent a whole night just walking and thinking. Ten and a half hours I spent without weeping from sorrow, ten and a half hours I spent without experiencing the sickening knot of hatred in the pit of my stomach. Ten and a half hours I got to follow butterflies, marvel at the activity when a stone gets overturned. Ten and a half hours I got to remember what it was to be a child again.

No sooner than I stepped off of the bus back in Seattle, I saw a homeless man get chased out of the station by a uniformed man weilding a truncheon. Almost immediately I noticed all of the colors washing out to a dull grey. The painfull knot in the pit of my stomach returned as the colors faded. A dull painfull ache settled down over me, one that I had not noticed because of it's formerly continuous presence.

I don't want to stop caring, I don't want to be turned into one of these dull lifeless persons I see all around me.

I need help in leaving this place, and I do not trust the tatooed men from my homeland for whom I run errands.

Master Li.

Its me Ben Holister. I know what your feeling right now. Its the same reason I left Bangor.

I know that this may seem direct, but I have a bunkhouse at my ranch in Wyoming you can stay at. All the privacy you want and some real beautiful country out there.

I just hope you don't mind horses,

You're more than welcome to stay there if you want. I wouldn't mind at all.

Just let me know, and Ill see to it that you get there.

Mr. Holister, I would be honored to visit with you while my mind and spirit peice themselves back together.

Miss Hannah, I do see beautifull things in the city, but always overshadowed by the pain around me, no matter how hard I try I, I just cant keep the memories of other cities, other times, from filling my mind - sometimes they are so vivid I become unaware of my actual surroundings.

So you are the Master Li Benny is always talking about. You know because of you he now drinks tea? TEA?

THANK YOU!!!

Ms. Kelly, I did not make him change, nor did I ask him to. The thanks you have offered to me would more correctly go to Mr. Hollister.

Ghostspider, could I trouble you for some swift transportation? I would like if possible to speak with Master Long, and then retreat away from the troubles of the world untill such a time as I am myself enough to handle the weight of them.

Mr. Holister, since you are attempting to get away from the supernatural I would like to ask about a friend of mine, since he re-introduced himself to me he has asked about "the little girl who patted me when I had no form". I hope he is as welcome as I am, as he has a gift of showing me the way that I need to see.

Sure, yo. Just come down to Chi-Town.

There are much worse things to be Ghost.

I am truely sorry to impose, Mr. Ghostspider, it is just that the normal methods of transportation want me to have some form of "guardian" in order for me to travel.

City life has changed me a lot as well... In many ways, not for the better...but in some manners, I've undergone some very positive changes. It was here that I met Lex, and now help raise the family...

Good luck, Li-sensei.

I will return to the cities of man, the need is just to great for me not to. I just can't help them right now, I do not have a way to make the funds to help in that way, and it is difficult in the extreme to try to help those who you cannot approach closely without being reduced to curling up into a ball and sobbing. Their pain and sorrow, I would deal with, for the trueness of their joy when you bring them a smile is well worth it. What stops me is the anger, the resentment, the hate. in the past I was good at reading a persons emotions by their actions, the way they moved, the expression on their faces, and I understood those emotions. Now, I feel them, and they awaken in me memories that strengthen them, and I fear what I would become if I loose myself to this darkness.