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The Spokane Indian Reservation is outside the town of Wellpinit, Washington. That's the eastern part of the state. Its residents don't leave often.

Not even the weird ones.

So that's why when the front door opens and a man -- fairly average-looking, hair long and unbound -- walks in, he blinks. Mostly because there's never been a bar in Thomas Builds-the-Fire's bathroom before, but also because this place is not the Spokane reservation. It is, in fact, white. Very white.

Weird he may be, but Thomas Builds-the-Fire knows better than anybody that weird and stupid don't mean the same thing. Not all the time, anyway.

For the moment he's just standing, and looking, and listening. Because this? This is weird.

Maybe he walked into a story.

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"It's something I heard from my wife once." Wry. "People would plant grenades inside apples during the war and give 'em to the enemy. But she tells it better than I do and doesn't flinch at the gory bits."

Not that he's ever asked her to share that story again after that one time. Ever.

Thomas looks closer at the apple.

Looks back at Wash.

"That ain't very nice," he says, thoughtfully, and takes a bite of the apple.

"One of the eight thousand and twenty-six reasons why I got out when I could."

He snags his own slice of apple and takes a seat.

"So when and where are you from, Thomas?"

"1995. Just outside Wellpinit, Washington. On the Spokane reservation."

Pause.

"People asking when other people are from is kind of strange."

"But important. There's importance there. It's confusion now for less confusion later." He bites into the apple slice and takes a few moments to chew. "For instance," swallow, "if you asked me and I said, 'I'm from the middle of nowhere, 2519,' you would't do the bug-eyed look when I started talking about space flight."

Beat. He reconsiders, wiggling the half-eaten slice between his fingers.

"Or...you would, but it'll be a small bug-eyed look."

Thomas isn't doing the bug-eyed look. Sorry, Wash.

"You mean like astronauts and stuff?"

Thomas, you see, is used to strange stories. Telling them and hearing them. And there's magic, and things that don't fit, and worlds being created and destroyed.

And also being possessed by Crazy Horse, sometimes, in the middle of trials put on by the BIA in order to get him kicked off the reservation.

But that may or may not have been a dream. Thomas isn't quite sure.

"Shi a," he confirms. "Except...I think astronauts were more of a select few, proud, and maybe marginally crazy, right?"

Secretly, he's a little disappointed at the lack of bug-eyed look. Bug-eyed looks over the utterly mundane are fun!

Thomas shrugs. "I dunno. You ever hear of an Indian astronaut?"

Thomas flew, once.

"That's just the thing, there aren't any astronauts." He spreads his hands. "Select few proud and crazy is now the everybody proud and crazy. So there's probably a lot."

Thomas closes his eyes and tells this story:

"Once an Indian boy jumped off the roof of the tribal school and flapped his arms like a crazy eagle. And the thing was, he flew. Just for a second, he flew. He hovered above all the other Indian boys who were too smart or too scared to jump. 'He's flying,' they yelled on the ground. And they couldn't believe it, because whoever heard of an Indian who could fly? But he did. Right up until he lost altitude and crashed, and broke his arm in two places. Another boy started a song. The others picked it up, made it a tribal song. 'He broke his wing, he broke his wing, he broke his wing.' They ran around and flapped their arms. And they hated him from then on, because he did what they did in their dreams."

Thomas opens his eyes and smiles.

"That was me." Pause. "I like the future."

Oh, he's good.

A slow grin spreads across Wash's face as he listens.

"We got the easy way out with the flying," he agrees. "I never tried that. Closest I ever came, well, before I went to flight school, was almost stowing away on a transport by accident." He picks up another apple slice. "I'd go down to the docks and be annoying at all the pilots, right? And one time, one of them finally let me on board to take a look around. All of a sudden her captain's giving the order to start the takeoff sequence and I'm still three floors away from the hatch. Ain't moved that fast in my life."

"But you didn't break anything," says Thomas, finishing off his apple slice. "Right?"

"Right. But to fly? Like that?"

He grins.

"Not to mention knowing that you did it -- I'd take a broken bone. Well. I wouldn't mind it."

Thomas's smile is secret.

"It wasn't that bad. But that's all I'm saying."

And maybe a little conspiratorial.

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