Of Sleeping Dolls, Old Houses, and Runaway Soldiers

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"I still have my own gun, but thank you." The man pushed the gun back carefully. "I'll get things ready." The money was enough, and much as he wanted to try to find out more about the front, he could see why it was important for the soldier to move on—him and his family, as well.

It took little time at all to gather what he'd offered the man into a small bag, then place it on the table. "Stay safe, Sergeant."

He didn't have anything else to say, not really.

Apparently, one of his children did, though. "Don't forget to take your doggy!" It was the youngest, and there wasn't much cheer to his reminder as he hurried off to another room.
 
Realizing that there wasn't anything more to say himself, Tolliver nodded and tucked the revolver back into his belt before gathering up the small bag and tying it to the baldric of his cartridge box. There simply was no room left in the haversack. He could only stare after the young boy as the lad called out his reminder, hoping that the child wouldn't see whatever it was that was trailing him ever again. Wrapping the doll back up in his coat and tucking her close against his chest like a baby, Tolliver shouldered his rifle and gave one more nod to the farmer before striding out into the evening air.

It was cooler than the burning heat of the day, and Tolliver took a deep breath in to strengthen his resolve before setting out upon the road again. He didn't look back as he set out into the night. The sight of the farmhouse with its lights in the window would look far too homey for him to deal with. The love and care they showed to each other and to a stranger on the road… it was a sharp reminder again of all that he had never had. As much as he dreaded the Black Hound (as he had come to think of it) following him, he feared it staying behind to haunt that family even more.

He was a good ways down the lane before he felt the need to talk again. Using the small lantern this early would have been waste, for there was still just enough light to see by and the road was wide and well-marked. Yet surrounded by nothing but fields with no further sign of human habitation, Tolliver wanted at least the notion that he had company with him.

"You and me again, eh, Miss Pretty?" he chuckled under his breath. "Starting to get the feeling that that's all it'll ever be, just you and me and this here road. They'll tell tales about the madman who wandered along the road for eternity, talking to his doll."

A sudden notion popped into his head, and Tolliver couldn't help but laugh. "Maybe we should get married, eh? Wouldn't we be just the sight then?" Tolliver then remembered his resolve to better examine the doll come the morning, and the laughter died in his throat.

"I'm going to keep you, Miss Pretty," he suddenly announced. There was a prickling sensation at the corners of his eyes, and Tolliver raised a sleeve to wipe at them. "Going to keep you, and going to give you to my own daughter, I will. I'll have one some day. A fine, bright lass with shining eyes, and a strong, fit son, too. You'll have a chair of your own by the fire, and on cold nights when my family's gathered around, I'll tell them the tale of how you and me braved the road on our lonesome, so we did, tricking that… that damned Black Hound back into hell before we settled down to a life of our own."

The moon began to rise up. Tolliver didn't remember ever seeing it hang so large and glowing in the sky before, casting silvery shapes upon the ground between the shadows. He continued to stare directly ahead as he marched on into the darkness.
 
The moon illuminated the road well enough to see protruding stones and ruts, and the way was easy, straight with few turns and uniquely desolate, despite fields on either side.

Silent in his company, the doll remained where he held her, though her weight shifted in his arm occasionally. For hours, the trip was quiet and uneventful, even dull, and the moon traveled at a crawl across the sky, barely moving at all.

Around midnight, a breeze began to tickle at Tolliver's hair and brush against his exposed hands and neck. In the hot night, it dried some of his sweat and offered some relief to the man's travel-dusty skin. It was easy to imagine he was, as he imagined, walking forever with his doll, and easier still to assume the night would last forever. The light breeze waned and grew in turn, occasionally offering relief, and occasionally painfully still in the humid heat.

And then the still air cooled slowly around Tolliver. It was easy to miss for at least an hour in his heavy uniform before it began to make his fingers numb.
 
The moon was starting it descent by the time Tolliver noticed the change in temperature. He had to flex his fingers against the stiffening chill, and the hairs on the back of his neck were no longer so much tickled as they were standing on end. It was impossible that it should be this cold in summer. Were this mid- or late winter, he wouldn't have given it a second thought! In fact, he'd have been expecting it to snow at any moment. But with the green and yellows of the harvest fields and grasses all about him, and the cloudless sky shining with its plethora of stars overhead, there was no reason such a stifling cold should exist.

"Not again," he muttered. Terrified as Tolliver was, he was also getting sick of it. Panicked and scared, he was starting to feel belligerent. "Not like I've got enough to worry about dodging around and keeping the damned provosts from my heels. Now I've got a damned doggie straight from Deus' hells on my tail!"

Still, it comforted him. If the Hound was following him, then it wasn't with the farmer and his family.

"Fat lot of good that does me, though," the soldier grumbled. "But if this thing is after my hide, Miss Pretty, then I'll be damned if I let it catch me in the middle of the night! If it's going to kill me, then it'll have to do it while I'm still standing!"

He forced himself to march on into the night, trying to ignore the heavy cold that weighed him down more than any of his weapons or loot.

"Come morning," Tolliver grunted reluctantly, "I need to find out why that thing's following us, Miss Pretty. And I sure as hell hope you've got some answers."
 
The pair's travels continued quiet and cold as the night wore on, taking longer and longer for the moon to make even the slightest movement. Sweat froze to Tolliver's skin, and the cold stung at his nose as it grew more and more chill. It became hard to move, and harder to keep his eyes open and keep going, despite his training and his efforts.

The cold suddenly left as the barest haze of light began to seep into the world, only to be replaced by the thunder of an impossibly large army of horse-mounted cavalry rushing from a good distance behind, though there was no sign of a dust cloud along the road behind him.

The sound rose in volume slowly, then all at once as it reached him, surrounded him with deafening sound and dizzying closeness, and remained until the sun's light formed a silver streak across the horizon. Then, all at once, the quiet was more deafening than the sound, and it rang out in Tolliver's ears as though that quiet, accented by birds and frogs, was impossibly loud, and should not, could not exist in the world.

A quiet voice nearby, a child's, suddenly whispered from somewhere close to Tolliver. "Run! It's here!"

The doll had nearly slipped from his grip in the chaos of night's end, and something pinched at the arm that held her.
 
It was mid-summer. It shouldn't have been this cold. Tolliver began to stumble and stagger a bit against the mind- and body numbing chill that seeped through his muscles to freeze his bones and turn his tendons into ice. Several times his eyes drooped shut as he shuffled along, only to have him pop them open again by force of a rapidly draining will. The soldier had slept standing up before. He had slept on parade! But he knew that should he fall asleep now, his body would fold over and collapse like a tower of crumbling sand into the ocean. His eyelids fell shut more often as the eternal hours past. In his fatigue, Tolliver began to wonder if he was walking onwards more with his eyes shut than open.

Bu that sound woke him. It was a sound that brought a more natural terror to his soul, a sound that he knew well enough - cavalry charge! A hundred different memories of facing charging horses, their riders bearing gleaming lances and shining sabers, all combined into one horrendous din of a nightmare for the deserter, and Tolliver began to drop to his knees from the pain of it. The heel of his one palm was dug in hard against his ear while he tried in vain to shelter the other lobe against his shoulder. Any instant, his fears told him, the rushing onslaught of horseflesh and death was going to come around the bend in the road and run him right down. He could already feel the steel-shod hooves churning him into a greasy smear upon the mud the of the road.

Then came silence.

Tolliver panted hard, his throat rasping dryly. He was wide awake now, and every cheep and chirp of the wildlife was thunder against that silence, the labored breathing sounding un-natural even though he knew it came from his own lungs.

"OW! Rutting hell!"

The pinch hurt! It was like iron pliers had nipped at his arm right through the fabric of his clothing! But it served to banish just enough of the bubbling terror to allow him to find his feet and stumble into a run again.

Tolliver unconsciously shifted the doll back into the crock of his arm. Onwards he pressed, the sun rising all too slowly into the sky behind him as his shadow vaguely began to stand out against the darkness. Without thinking, Tolliver yanked the first of the revolvers out from his belt and fired the last five shots wildly over his shoulder. He didn't even bother to aim. So long as the bullets went behind him, towards that thing, that was good enough. Once spent, the revolver went spinning behind him as well. There was no point in keeping it once its cylinder was empty; he had no means to reload it, and he still had the second one anyway.

Onwards he ran. "I can't let it catch us, can I Miss Pretty?" Tolliver's voice was cracked with hysteria and weariness from fleeing. "Bad things are going to happen, aren't they?" He leapt over a fallen branch without missing a beat, sprinting forwards while not looking back. It still hadn't registered on Tolliver where the child's voice had come from; he might have thought it some hallucination brought on by the eldritch aspects of the night or a warning from his own subconscious. It didn't matter to him then. The voice had urged him to run, and he knew it was the right decision.

As the sun finally crested, Tolliver spied a wooden bridge ahead. It ran over a narrow but swiftly moving stream, and some ancient instinct told him to cross it. There was safety the other side of that bridge. A temporary safety, but safety all the same. The rushing water was a boundary, a border of sorts, and if he could just get to the other side of it….

"We get out of this, you and me are gonna have some words, Miss Pretty," Tolliver hissed deliriously.
 
By the time Tolliver was over the bridge, the morning became... normal. Everything became normal, save a sound right behind Tolliver.

"Free..." The voice was again more like a wind through leaves than a true word spoken.

The bundle in Tolliver's arms remained still.

Behind Tolliver, he could hear creaking and claws on wood that slowly crossed the bridge back to the other side.

During the day, at least, the thing didn't seem as intent on taking Tolliver to the soldier's own personal hell.

On the new side of the river, there were forests on either side, though they opened up before too long, to reveal... a scorched field and two dozen men, women, and children in tattered clothing, holding various farm tools and weapons. There was a pair of twins with pots strapped to their heads idling not far from the forest, presumably keeping watch.

"I don't care who burned the field, we're going into the farm house and making sure the family isn't left to rot if they're alive!" A woman's voice shouted.

"We don't have time for this. One army or the other is on its way!" A man shouted back. "We move forward and hope to beat whoever did this to the next farm!"

"And stop them with what troops of our own?"

"Maybe not stop them, but get the family the hell out of there!"

There was quiet between the pair for a bit, and then they spoke to each other more quietly as they tried to find some sort of understanding.

The twins, meanwhile, were falling asleep at their post.
 
Tolliver had fallen to his knees on the other side of that bridge, unable to move any further for the pounding of his heart and the fear in his gut. Cradling the doll as though protecting his own child, he had watched that bridge with wide eyes as though expecting all the hounds of hell to come charging over it any moment. When he heard the wind-whispered voice and the retreating groan of the bridge as some sudden weight reversed back towards the other side, he had sagged. Folded up against his knees, chest heaving, the soldier knew he had against escaped.

But for how much longer? How long could he run? How long had the child and her father run in the story? Tolliver couldn't remember. A certain sense of despair filled him at the notion that he might have to run every night for the rest of his life.

A fury burst in his heart. The deserted snatched a stone from off the road and hurled it with vicious force across the bridge in the direction of his ever pursing nightmare. "You're free, dammit! Free as the damned birds! So go chase them! Leave me be, damn you! Damn you to all of Deus' Hells!"

How long he knelt there in the road he didn't know. Eventually he levered himself upright and began to head up the road. He should have moved off into the woods either side of the road and taken shelter, making a little daytime nest for himself so that he might rest, hidden, until the sun set once more. Instead, he simply continued on his way. Tolliver wasn't even hungry. The terror had stolen away his appetite.

The sight of the mob and the burned fields caught him by surprise. Had one army or the other already come this far west?? It didn't seem likely, but the solider couldn't account for any plausible reason for the devastation. There had been no thunderstorms and lightning the night before, and the crops were still green enough that a random fire was unlikely. The fire had to have been set deliberately to ruin the fields as systematically as they had. The words of the mob weren't any more reassuring, especially since he was wearing a uniform and totting a rifle.

And a doll, but Tolliver didn't think that she would be all that much protection should things turn ugly.

He debated on how to handle matters, not wanting to be slowed but at the same time fearing both for his own hide and for whomever might still be in the wreck of the farm house. It didn't take long. Tolliver decided to rely on a sergeant's bluster.

He fairly marched up to the twins, bellowing orders long before he was in range of anything they might call a weapon. "You two!" he snarled, "Look sharp! Whoever did this might still be able, and if you're asleep on your feet you'll be dead on your back before you know!"

Right up to them Tolliver went, roughly shoving the one twin with one hand to force him about. "You! Look THAT way. You? That way! And watch the damned trees in case anyone is sneaking about! Give a shout if you see anything, the pair of you!"

That was the trick. Never give them the chance to think much less to question orders, and half the time they would be grateful for a bit of direction. Tolliver's voice brooked no argument as he quick-marched past them and towards the rest.

Doll still nestled in the crook of his arm, Tolliver randomly pointed out a few of the peasants standing about. "You, you, and you. Check the barn and the other buildings for survivors. The rest of you? With me. If anyone is injured we need to see to them." Sensing hesitation among them at the appearance of a solider barking orders, Tolliver glowered and barked a little louder. "MOVE IT. If that was your family in there, would YOU just be standing about?!"
 
The twins stood up straight and hurriedly looked away from each other, eyes wide. Neither spoke, but both glanced in unison at Tolliver a few times, before they looked back at each other, each with one brow quirked.

Those peasants he pointed and ordered rushed off, leaving behind the 'leaders', who had been arguing. One had the tattered remains of a 30 year old version of the current Ruvan soldier's uniform. There were a few signs of rank on it, but they were so worn, they looked ready to fall off. The woman was a thin creature with skin hanging off her face and hands, and as she looked at Tolliver, she raised an eyebrow. "Deserter?" She asked, then shook her head. "Don't answer. If I don't know, I can't tell." She waved a hand. "Good job getting them off their asses. What's it look like way you come from?" She squinted at him with eyes partly clouded.

Behind Tolliver, a few men and women followed behind lamely, until they heard the old woman and moved away from him hurriedly. He wasn't one of them.

"Where are you planning on taking my boys?" She shook her head. "No, never mind. You take them to search the house." She pointed behind herself at the two-story structure. "You've a strong back, get it open."

Just as quickly, the peasants he called to him began to head to the house. A few muttered to others, wondering who Tolliver was.
 
"You don't want to know," Tolliver grunted to the woman who had asked about things back where he had come from. It wasn't just that the Ruvan army was on the brink of losing. That was bad enough by itself since it also meant the enemy would be free to force to their way further into the country; the fall back position was the river to the north and west, still several miles from where this farmhouse with its burnt fields lay. There was also the matter of whatever demon that followed him. Even if anyone among the peasants believed him, there was little they would be able to do about it.

Bending down by a fence post, Tolliver laid out the doll carefully. "There you go, Miss Pretty," he whispered quickly. "Back in a wink. Watch the rest of our stuff, eh?" He piled all of his spare gear besides her, taking only his rifle and the last revolver. Not that he thought that any of these folks would touch it. They were too busy with everything else going on around them.

The folks who were with him followed close as he half-ran to the door. It was stuck fast, either locked or warped into place. The notion that it might be barricaded came to mind, too, but Tolliver didn't relish the idea of trying to climb through any of the head-height windows and getting cut to ribbons by glass shards. So instead, he began to use the butt of the rifle to smash at the doorknob and lock. It took several blows before the weathered bronze gave way beneath the thick brass of the rifle's butt plate, but it did the job in short enough order. The door remained shut, however, and he summoned the two burliest of people who had joined him.

"Right, with our shoulders, on three." They would batter down the door together. Tolliver glanced over at the doll where she sat some yards away by the fence, and he grimaced. "If there's no one inside," he muttered to himself as he caught a glance of her ever-changing eyes, "I'm gonna feel like a right fool."

"One… Two… THREE!"
 
Slam! Three bodies hit the door, and it flew open. The wood slammed against the inside wall with a loud crack.

The home was furnished with greens and blues, and accented with goldenrod. It wasn't plush, but it was clean and smelled like a meal. Butter, wine, cheese, ham, preserves, and bread all teased at Tolliver's nose, but the faint scents quickly faded into the familiar stench of blood. A quiet sobbing came from somewhere out of sight, and one of the burly men hurried forward. The other followed, and both spent several minutes running through the house before the first returned.

"Ain't seein' anyone." He scowled as more sobs came from somewhere that was hard to pinpoint, and the man looked around.

By then, the second man returned, scratching his head. "Ain't right. Everywhere I go, cryin' doesn't get closer 't all unless I'm in this room." He looked around the comfortable-seeming den, then took off his hat and slapped it against his leg. "Well, pushy man? Any ideas?" He challenged. His expression of worry had no room for aggression.
 
The deserter's lips twitched in frustrated annoyance. Someone was in the house, that much was clear! But wherever they had hidden themselves was nearly perfect, only the sounds of their muffled sobs giving any clue as to their presence. Tolliver scanned the low rafters of the ceiling in thought.

"Hold on," he replied to the second man's demand. 'Muffled…' "You said its closer in this room than any other? Then is has to be this room."

It was a simple farmhouse, not all that different than the one he had grown up with in his youth if a bit more colorful. And while it had been a while, Tolliver could remember…

"Check the floor's flag stones," he abruptly ordered. "There might be a hidden root cellar or cistern or something, a place cool and protected from any fires! I'll check the fireplace. These older houses sometimes had a space that went behind the chimney for smoking meats and the like, or maybe someone went up the chimney."

"Wait!" An idea came to him. "Get that old woman in here, have her start calling to whoever it is that's hiding! They might be more likely to come out of her than a bunch of men banging all around the place!"

"Fuck, Miss Pretty" Tolliver swore under his breath as he hurried to examine all about the fireplace and chimney. "Times like this, I wish you were just a tad more useful." He didn't say it loud enough for anyone else to hear, but a guilty conscience made him pause to look back through the doorway where the doll sat peacefully.

Tolliver was certain that she somehow had heard him… and that it somehow mattered.

"Sorry," he grumbled ashamedly.
 
One of the others who followed him, a skinny kid barely into manhood, darted back toward the old woman, while the two big guys began to check the small manor's floor, knocking as they went about on hands and knees.

The crying slowed, and then stopped as they continued. The old woman entered and looked around. "What's going on? The boy you sent doesn't talk." She scowled as she watched the three men as they searched about, one white, bushy brow raised just slightly above the other.

From the door, if Tolliver thought to look, the doll's expression was almost contemptuous, though she hadn't moved at all.
 
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Not finding anything to his satisfaction, Tolliver turned to the old woman with a glare of annoyance. "We heard someone crying just before you came in. It was coming from this room, without question, but we can't find anyone. There's not a soul but us in the whole of the house."

Frustrated, he leaned on his rifle with its butt on the ground. It had been a long night's march… run… and it hadn't left him in too pleasant a mood. Tolliver knew he was going to have to get some sleep soon, because he doubted that the next night was going to be any less unpleasant and terrifying.

"Some of you must live around here," Tolliver argued, "Who lives here? Who's supposed to be here that ain't? You have to be know your neighbors, don't you?"

There naturally were a slew of questions that would follow that. Who lived there and where had they gone, and why? How did the fields catch fire and why? Why wasn't there any evidence of livestock or animals in the yard? Had the door been locked from the inside or the outside? Tolliver refrained from asking any of them, however, until the first one had been dealt with.

'And how long was the door to that mansion house back in the forest locked until its wood rotted away enough for me to just wander on in?'

Tolliver tried not to think of that, but his glance went against outside to the doll at the notion.

"If they left," Tolliver continued speaking to the old woman, "then why isn't there any sign of it? Wouldn't they have taken at least some stuff with them?"
 
"We're all from further North." The woman frowned at him. "Did you check around the back of the house or the kitchen? There might be a cellar entrance there." She looked around, trying to see anything. "Did you boys check under the furniture?"

"I did." One of the large men said. "Him too." He pointed at the other big man. "He checked the chimney." It was almost an accusation, as though it was a stupid place to look.

The woman listened quietly, then sighed. "I'm not sure, boy. We arrived and found the place like you see it. We were going South." She looked out of the house, to see what Tolliver was looking at, and her eyebrows raised at the sight of the doll, but she said nothing about it. There were more important things to worry at.
 
It was hard to resist the urge to stick his tongue out childishly at the fellow who dismissed him as an idiot for checking around the chimney. Tolliver knew from experience that the stone of the hearth and the bricks of the stack could conceal any number of things; it had been where his father had hid the family money back in the day.

But the old woman's words made Toliver blink in surprise. "Hold on, now. You folks are going South?" He looked them over as he tried to discern what form of madness had inflicted them. "You do know that the Hildi army is in that direction? Our army is by now in the middle of a rout. I'm probably just the first of hundreds that'll be coming in this direction, you know. Any survivors are supposed to regroup on the northern side of the Panner's River."

Not sure what to make of the declaration, the deserter heaved a sigh. He hooked a stool with one foot and dragged it towards him so that he could sit down. The hard wooden bottom of it still felt better than sitting on the rocky ground. "Might as well tell me what's happening in the North, then. Beats looking for a crying person who won't come out, although I've seen a lot stranger on the road the past few days, I tell you!"
 
"Priorities! We can talk on it after we find the hidden person." The woman waved a hand. "Come with me to check for a cellar." She walked toward the kitchen, a slight limp apparent in her pace.

The kitchen was large, and though it lacked the modern-looking stove of the previous farm house he'd been in, this one far outpaced it in luxuries, though still the mansion where he found Miss Pretty would have outshone it in its day. It had a stone counter, plenty of cupboards, and a beautifully-crafted wood-burning oven and stove made of smooth stone.. The stove's door hung open to reveal a wire rack in the middle. A few still-orange embers glowed inside at the slightest breeze caused by Tolliver and the woman moving through, looking for doors.

When no door could be found, the woman sighed. "Outside it is." She walked back out, then looked to the three men still checking the floor. "Check the other rooms for any doors you can't account for. Also, any furniture that looks like it's shoved too hard against the walls."

The men gave salutes and darted off to check as the woman went to the back door to continue the search, almost ignoring Tolliver entirely.
 
Tolliver closed his eyes tightly to gather his strength before rising and following. The stool had been more comfortable than he'd realized, and getting back on his feet reminded him that he had been walking (and running) the whole night long. It was also a pointed reminder as to why it was a bad idea to sit down after a long march. Once down, it was so much harder to get back up and continue. He gave another what he hoped was discreet glance at Miss Pretty before heading after the old woman.

The kitchen set up was different than any he'd seen before, but that wasn't overly surprising. Tolliver couldn't exactly claim to know much about architectural styles or decor, his primary concern in life until recently being that of sticking the bastard in front of him before he got stuck himself. Rifle in hand, he trailed after the matronly woman. He did think that it was interesting how the men had given her salutes before carrying out her orders…

Along the back of the house they found it. A pair of doors set close to the ground looked as though they led down to a hurricane cellar, a natural place to retreat to in case of bad weather. Tolliver did not think it the greatest of places to turn to in case of fire or intruders though; having only one way in and one way out did not make for a good escape strategy.

No time was wasted though, and Tolliver quickly used the but of his rifle stock to smash through the lock and handles of the cellar door before the old woman even asked.
 
The woman watched him, then pulled the door open despite the jagged wood and hurried down. Her aged body was still spry enough to dart down. "Boy, bring the others and a light!" She called up from the bottom before she went into the dark cellar.

A wail of alarm rose from the cellar, and it wasn't the old woman's. It sounded like a young boy, his voice crackling.

The wail was enough to bring the others who'd been inside the house, and one of the large men pushed past Tolliver and skipped several steps going down the dark stairs. "What's wrong?" He called.

"Get a light!" The old woman shouted.

The mute from earlier darted off to try to find something that could be used to shed light.
 
The hairs on the back of Tolliver's neck started to rise. Maybe it was just the lack of sleep or the long night's march or the knowledge that some creature from the deepest pit of Deus' Hells was following after him, but regardless he knew that something was terribly wrong in the cellar. He had hurried down after the crone, rifle in hand, prepared to offer any aid that he might be able to provide.

But the storm cellar was too dark, too still for all that keening wailing. Young boy? Demon? Ghost? Trap? Tolliver was starting to lose track of where the horrors of reality in his harsh life ended and where the terrible dangers of the mind and spirit began.

He crept forward, however. If the muzzles of cannon and the gleam of bayonets hadn't deterred him before, then darkness was not going to rob him of his courage now. He half-hoped it was some aspect of the demon dog that hounded him! There in the darkness he could confront it head on, find some throat to clench his hands about, some belly to stab! The soldier didn't believe he could truly kill such a beast, but he was determined to make it hurt…

Coming abreast of the old woman he was about to pass her, moving further into the darkness, when the sound of the others could be heard coming down behind them. A lantern, pulled from the house, began to shine its lights into all the corners of the cellar. It chased the darkness into stark, sharp shadows as though concentrating the blackness into select spots.
 
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