<span style="font-family: 'Georgia'">The cooler breeze of autumn came too quickly, and it seemed to arrive sooner each year. During the monstrously frigid winters, he all but counted the days until spring, when at last he could break free of his ancestral home, the decaying, oppressive structure that haunted him as well as any spectre. He traveled for as long and as far as foot, boat, and train could take him, in any direction where he could wake to warmth on the breeze and the sun on his face.<br/>
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For that, the Isle of Crete had been a glorious escape. He had spent weeks traveling the length of the island, exploring the ruins of Knossos, the beaches of Gramvousa, the Koules Fortress of Heraklion. Somehow, in all his years of traveling, he had never made it to Crete, and so he considered it a season well spent. Not to mention, the island served as an ideal jumping-off point to return north via the Adriatic Sea, with a final stop toward the northern coast of Italy. He could certainly have booked a flight in the interest of saving time, but for a man who had nothing but time, airfare was a wasted expense. He greatly preferred the slower pace of a ship on the waves, or the gentle clatter of a train on the rails.<br/>
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Naturally, such methods of travel took longer, but Quinlan hardly minded. For him, a prolonged summer holiday was less about the destination he chose. It was the sheer act of escapism, new surroundings, going somewhere, anywhere, that wasn't the bloody English countryside. He had seen enough of it and would continue to see enough of it for years to come, and so it mattered very little how long it took to reach the next train station or the next hotel. Just as long as it was somewhere new, or at least somewhere more interesting than the dilapidated old Marlowe estate from which he had fled.<br/>
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The ship he had boarded in southern Italy let off in Trieste in the second day of September. This far south, the breeze had not yet chilled to a degree that heralded the coming of autumn, but it no longer carried the same warm embrace of summer. His travels would take some weeks yet before again he saw the inside of an English train station, but not until he had taken his final few weeks in Italy. Trieste was lovely, of course, with lavish accommodations and no shortage of cafes to sate his appetite for <i>sfogliatelle</i>, but he had little care to visit such a large port city at what was still a busy season for tourists. He had made far more subdued arrangements to stay in a small villa in one of Trieste's neighboring town; a quieter place to collect himself before summer's end. <br/>
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Having already devoured the reading material he had brought to Greece, Quinlan wasted precious little time finding a local bookstore. Most offerings were in Italian, of course, but it was of little consequence. He had retained enough in the way of conversational Italian to get through the occasional novella, though when his eyes caught a dusty book of poetry, he decided that a better fit for the upcoming morning's excursion to the beach. The black-haired, fair-skinned Englishman had little chance of developing any semblance of a proper tan, but he did enjoy walking along the coastline and finding a bench to read amid the cacaphony of gulls and crashing waves.<br/>
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The shop was quiet enough. In a town that size, retail crowds were slim to none, which suited him just fine. It appeared to be just him and another man, an abnormally tall one at that. Quinlan had always thought himself fairly tall at 6'1, but the man standing at the far end of the shelf easily surpassed him in height. Had they stood toe to toe, he might have reached the stranger's collarbone. Might have, but only just. Staring at the nameless fellow felt odd and so Quinlan looked away, skimming through the collection of poetry to determine the number of pages.<br/>
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The Englishman moved through the shop at a leisurely pace, carefully selecting one more book of poems and a collection of short novels. From the corner of his eye, he saw the man still, his long hands clutching a book, the title of which remained just out of Quinlan's view. Much as he tried, it was difficult not to notice the stranger; someone of his height and pallid complexion stood out like a weed in a rose garden. Which said nothing of his attire, dark and gloomy - not unlike Quinlan's - set apart only by an out of place head scarf and a pair of white gloves. And... was that a patch of <i>green </i>on his skin? A trick of the light, he told himself, and moved on to another row of shelves.<br/>
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It took a good bit of convincing himself that travel had made him delirious to forget what he had seen. For the most part, he had succeeded, until as he paid for his selections, he caught sight of the stranger again. This time, the accidental glimpse showed the stranger without one of his gloves, and of all things, he turned the pages with webbed fingers. The shopkeeper broke his moment of shock and concentration with the total price for the books, and when Quinlan looked back again, the man had turned a corner, presumably to find something else. Trick of the light, he reminded himself. Delirious from travel. <i>Trick of the light</i>.<br/>
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By evening, Quinlan had all but put the strangeness of the afternoon in the back of his mind. In hindsight, what he thought he had seen was utterly ridiculous. Green skin, webbed hands. When he had agonized over the matter during a solitary lunch in the garden of his rented villa, he had attributed the whole thing to paranoia and left the matter alone, if only so he could better enjoy his first walk along the local beach. At that hour, with the sun halfway descended behind the line of seawater, all of the beachgoers had vacated to their homes. The town wasn't much for tourists, and locals had no reason to stay late. All the better, he mused. He had no desire to fight his way through throngs of swimmers and the like.<br/>
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It seemed he had the beach to himself. At least until he came closer to the pier when, quite by chance, he saw the stranger again. The same tall, lanky figure from the bookshop. With the sensation of deja vu weighing heavily in his gut, Quinlan thought it better to take his leave. Having seen the man more than once, with his possibly green skin and possibly webbed hands, left him with an eerie feeling he didn't care to entertain any longer. He turned, fully prepared to make an early night of it, giving pause only when from the corner of his eye, the stranger removed the scarf from around his head to reveal not hair, but a subtly writhing mass of what from a distance looked like thick vines. A light squint, eyes coming into focus, showed them to be <i>tentacles</i>. Long, green things of varying length, each moving independently of the other, twisting and reaching for nothing in particular.<br/>
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Quinlan should have been horrified. Perhaps somewhere, in the pit of his stomach, he was. But more than horrified, he was curious, and after seeing the man pop up in his vicinity not once but twice, he was also highly suspicious. He knew the texture of the webbing connecting his digits, the green tinge to patches of his skin, the pattern of movement behind those tentacles, but to see it in Italy of all places? Right where he had chosen to spend the last weeks of his holiday? This level of coincidence was unheard of and so, emboldened by his suspicions, the Englishman wasted little time closing the gap between them, kicking up sand in his haste. The stranger didn't seem to have seen him coming and Quinlan was better for it; he feared the figure might have taken off otherwise.<br/>
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"You," he called when he stood near enough, a mere few paces away. "I have seen your face before, first in town and now here. Is it a safe assumption that you've followed me? All the way here to the Gulf of Venice?" Of all things he might have mentioned as odd, however, the man's borderline-alien features were not among them.</span>