This brought in contestants from other villages, since everybody wanted to win a prized crossbow. Enough people from outside the Firm Friends communit... won a crossbow that everybody conceded that the contests had been fair. The contests were a big hit and Doug expected to see even more participants from other villages next year.Doug had taken the opportunity offered by the Gathering to ask if anyone knew of any metal deposits in the neighborhood. Doug hoped to move into a Copper Age if he. Less than a year ago, we'd been talking about having a wedding ceremony to bond her to me just as tightly as Taylor, even if we couldn't make it legal in the U.S. We'd talked about continuing our family, having more children together. And the feelings we'd once had for each other hadn't fully gone away."Johnny..." Ashlyn had followed, rubbing my arm and then raising higher to brush her fingers against Joey's cheek. "You're not happy about this." No, I'm fine," I croaked, not really meaning it.. She bent over the side of my bed and told me to push into her from the back. When I got up behind her, she reached between her legs to get me lined up with her wet hole. Despite what she said, I slid into her easily. Not even her squeezing down as hard as she could, gave no signs the rubber was going to come loose. Since she did not say to stop after a dozen or so full strokes I just kept going. I wanted to experiment with what I had done before in a slightly different way.I turned on the place. I curled up in a semi-fetal position, my arms wrapped around my knees, and stared into the rushing water in front of me.I was crying. I couldn’t face anything. Hobos are strong? Bullshit.I’m weak. So god damned weak. It doesn’t take strength to deal with the problems of others’ creation, really. You can fix it, and laugh at their mistakes or misfortunes.Fixing problems of your own creation, though, that’s a different story entirely.I couldn’t bring myself to clean up a mess I had left myself.