Daniel emptied the clip into his target, jettisoned the spent magazine from the pistol, slammed another full one in, and emptied that one out as well. He let his pain and fury do his targeting and all of his rounds found center mass of the black target at the far end of the pistol range. Lately, working hard and training even harder helped him get by from day to day; Fencing, Kendo, Karate, SCA, anything and everything to hone his fighting skills in order to keep busy. It helped him keep his mind off of other things. It helped him keep his mind off of her. Two years to the day had passed since Lily graced him with her presence. He didn’t see Lily any more that winter when he met her. At the beginning of winter last year he was out every time the snow came in hopes that he’d see her again, but each time it was to no avail. When winter had formally come and gone he became depressed and so he’d thrown himself into his work to try to keep too busy to care. Last year was a bust and he wasn’t holding out too much hope for this year. He tried to tell himself that he didn’t care and that there were others out there. It didn’t work. Nothing worked. The hurt in his heart was still aching. With a resigned sigh, he packed up his equipment and headed back to his car. The forecasters were calling for another cold night ahead of them with freezing conditions probable and he wanted to get in early. The last thing he wanted to do was get stuck all the way out at the end of the road when he had to drive all the way back into downtown to get to his apartment. As he drove back into town, his phone started ringing once he got within range of the cell towers. He thumbed the button on his steering wheel to take the call so that he could drive and talk at the same time. “Butler,” he said with a raised voice so that the microphone would pick him up.”What is the meaning of this message that you left for me this morning?” the angry voice demanded. It was his boss from the security office. “Is this some kind of joke or something? Have you been drinking again?””No, not recently…” Daniel admitted. He then shook his head as it sunk in to what his boss was actually calling about. “Wait, what message are you talking about?””The message where you turned in your resignation!””Whoa, wait, what resignation?” Daniel was totally confused now. He’d had a weird dream last night when he dreamt about telling his boss where to shove it, but when he woke up this morning it was business as usual on his first day off of a weekend; breakfast, workout, lunch, karate in the afternoon, dinner, and then the firing range before it got too dark out. “I didn’t send in any message!””Well it sounds a hell of a lot like you! If this is your idea of a prank I am not laughing, not with how short staffed we are. You know that you have to give two weeks and buddy I will hold you to that!””Will you stop yelling at me like you’re some damn police captain in the movies? I didn’t send in my resignation!” Daniel closed his eyes briefly and took a deep breath before resuming his concentration on the road. “Look, I still got two more days off.” Three day weekends; it was the beauty of working a schedule that consisted of four ten hour days. “I’ll be in first thing Tuesday and we can get it straightened out then, okay?””You better be here, Butler, or I will hunt your ass down and drag you to work if I have to.” The line then went dead as his boss slammed the phone down on his end. Daniel sighed again and thumbed the cell phone off. Yeah, there’d be hell to pay if one of his friends decided to pull a gag on their boss and use him as the scapegoat. He found it funny, though, that anywhere else in the United States an employer might just have let him go and be done with it. But here in Alaska, some employers fought tooth and nail to keep people in the doors even if it killed them. It was one of the advantages of living in a state with a really low unemployment rate. The downside is that rent and mortgages were a bitch. He pulled into his parking spot at his apartment building and headed upstairs, opting for the stairwell in lieu of the elevators. Going up and down the stairs was part of his exercise routine. As he got into his apartment he tossed his bag onto the couch, shucked off his clothes, and collapsed into bed hoping that he’d dream about her again tonight. She plagued his dreams nearly every day since he’d met her. Daniel never did look at another woman after Lily. No other could compare to her. Intellectually, he knew that it was stupid. Their short time together was pretty much the equivalent of a supernatural one night stand. He shouldn’t expect to ever see her again, and probably wouldn’t, if it weren’t for the one piece of evidence that he possessed that proved Lily’s existence. Daniel turned over in his bed as he did every night and opened the drawer on his night stand. He took out the delicate snow lily that was as fresh and perfect as the day Lily had left it on his window sill underneath of his badge. The fragrance was hers and he could never get enough of it. Even after all this time it was still as fresh as it was when Lily had left it under his badge. He closed his eyes and inhaled its sweet aroma once before gently placing it back into its drawer. With another resigned sigh, Daniel rolled over and attempted to go to sleep.*In his dream Daniel found himself in the city of ice the same as all of the other dreams that he’d been having. He was lying on the floor in the middle of a bright circle of sunlight that shone down from above. His head then felt light as it was lifted and then propped up by the softest pair of legs that he’d ever known. He blinked once and looked upwards to see Lily smiling down at him in the nude, looking as beautiful as she always did in this dream state. “Hello, my protector,” she said with a sweet smile as she soothingly ran her fingers along either side of his head. “Today is a special day for you,”It was the two year anniversary of when he’d been with her. “Yeah, yeah it is,” he said, his voice raw from the emotion that suddenly welled up to the surface. “I waited for you,” Daniel said, “why didn’t you come back last year?””But I did come back,” Lily said, concern and confusion now in her voice. It had not been that long, had it? Human conception of time was difficult for her sometimes. “We’ve been together nearly every night since then. It has only been a single season.”Yeah, Daniel thought, plaguing my dreams off and on every couple of months. There was one long stretch of five months where she didn’t come to him like this at all. “I meant in person; face to face. I want to be with you, in person. But you never came back.”