Melissa made her way toward the Manor, stopping occasionally to speak briefly with some of her clan members, inquiring as to their mental health and telling them to head for the main yard.  She was very pleased indeed to see that Mina and Onyx were right: virtually half the women she spoke to seemed to have kept some of their memories.  That would likely save many lives over the next few days as the clan struggled to replace its many supplies.<br/><br/>It seemed the men, also, had fared better than usual against the mindkillers.  While they remained rather dull-witted as always, two of the three men she'd spoken to had remembered her name when she'd asked it of them.  It was a start... now as long as this half-mind-killing effect wasn't just a fluke, there was finally hope of escaping all of this.  At last...<br/><br/>People were beginning to gather in the area in front of the manor, but there weren't very many yet.  Melissa found herself looking them all over --- a crowd of nude or nearly-nude humans, mostly women but with a smattering of men amongst them, with children standing in small groups at the adults' feet.  Some of these people wore loincloths; here and there one woman wore a ragged-looking animal skin over most of her body.  Probably most of what these humans could have called "clothing" had been destroyed during the insane days... during which their only concerns had been to eat and<span style="font-style: italic">fuck</span>.  Like the animals they had become...<br/><br/>With a sigh, unwilling to face all of them yet, she turned to enter the manor.  The place had been built ages ago, shortly before the cataclysm had struck; large doors gave access to a small antechamber, which then allowed access to a large room with a great staircase that led up to the second floor.  To either side of the steps the hall also gave access to side rooms and a door at the back led out that way as well.  For the most part the ground floor had been the living areas, and the upper floors had been the bedrooms.<br/><br/>The place was a far, far cry from its former splendor.  At one time a great chandelier had hung right over the entrance, but it had been torn away long ago; only a lonely stretch of old wire remained as testament of its existence.  The doors leading into all the other rooms had been torn away long ago also, their wood used for fires or weapons or construction.  The marble of the great staircase was cracked and broken, patched up here and there with plain flat stones and crumbling mortar.  The railing on one side was completely gone.<br/><br/>She walked around aimlessly.  The manor had been a place of splendor... a home built by an important family before the end of mankind had come.  An ancient, faded family portrait, its glass cracked, still hung over the fireplace in the room she now enetered, what had in ancient times been a living room.  The portrait had somehow survived all this time... and in fact, it was revered in a vague way.  The family standing in that picture, their backs to their beautiful, new manor, had unknowingly built a safe haven for her clan to move into later.<br/><br/>As she gazed up at the portrait, a sense of familiarity came to her.  The family was a large one, and with more males than females in it, which was hard to believe these days with the low birth rate of males.  However, the father figure always looked somehow familiar to her... black hair, a slim body, a knowing smile... in another picture, buried in a room and restricted to general access, that man and the woman, his chosen mate it seemed (another strange concept to accept), had been wearing strange white clothing... but his hand had been possessively pressed to her belly...<br/><br/>Melissa's foot caught in the floor as she went to leave, and she looked down.  Hmph, yet another nick in the floor, as though someone had stabbed a hole into it.  It seemed there was one more such hole every time the minkillers passed... though she had never noticed before, since she had never remembered before.  It was something she would have to remember... or then again, probably not.  She had far more important things to deal with...<br/><br/>She headed back to the main entrance and climbed the stairs, and continued straight into one of the rooms there.  The place was bare of all the furniture that had once been there, but furs and pieces of food were scattered all about, as was the lifeless, badly-beaten corpse of a woman.  The room held the stench of rot, death, and sex... apparently one of the men had found refuge in here during the crazed days and his captive hadn't survived his attentions...<br/><br/>Melissa walked passed without a word.  It was nothing new... at all.  Humans died all the time; one more body to feed to the plants or Froglies was nothing to cry about.  So, she stepped out onto the back gallery and looked around.<br/><br/>The land behind the manor had once been divided into many fields, each separated by ditches and treelines.  The trees had long since been cut away for their wood, and the ditches were filling in where they hadn't been kept clean, but the fields remained separated in their original plots.  One large field was the main gathering area for the clan; others served as housing, with makeshift shelters here and there.  Others had been used to build the Frogly enclosure, or for the field for dangerous but useful plants; still more served to grow a supply of harmless vegetables and useful herbs.  Everything had at one time been surrounded by a small fence, but over the years the clan had slowly built up a palisade all around the site to keep the beasts out.  Here and there, a tall tree had been left standing, and nets of old rope stretched out from those trees to the tops of the palisade, as a deterrent to airborne predators.  It didn't always work, but it helped.<br/><br/>Seeing that many people were heading toward the manor, she stepped back inside, passed through the room with the corpse, and crosed over to step through another room and emerge over the manor's main doors.  From here, she could see the wide expanse of cracked, ancient pavement that filled the front yard of the manor.  She could also see the cracked old road that cut through the clansite and disappeared off into the distance to the east and west.  It passed in front of an old stone arch that had once been fitted with steel bars; that had once been the clan site's entrance.<br/><br/>However the clan had crossed the old road and had encompassed a much larger area on the other side, throwing up a palisade to surround a section that, at the time, had been an orchard.  The fruit trees had almost all been destroyed by now, but the land still served for cultivation, survival training, and housing.<br/><br/>A crowd was really gathering in the square below her... almost two hundred by now, and still more were on their way.  She would be able to speak to them soon.  But, for now, she would wait... and stare blankly at the symbol that had been carved into that stone arch, ages ago, to represent the site's owner.  A very large "C."<br/><br/>--- --- --- ---<br/><br/>"Hey, Cad," Mina greeted, her pretty face lighting up as she saw him.  "No way, too calm.  You remember, don't you."  It wasn't a question so much as a statement.  "That means you remember the other night, huh?"  Her gray-blue eyes were twinkling, and she stuck the tip of her tongue out just a bit.  She struck a pose, her small, tanned and bare form both expressing satisfaction and promising it as well.<br/><br/>"Later, you," Onyx said, though her patronizing look at the smaller woman was marred by a smirk.  She turned blue eyes, bluer than Mina's, to Zeref and the smirk became a smile.  "Good to see you remember things, Cad.  So don't you forget that, sure, you had little Mina here all tied up the night before the mindkillers came..." she stuck her tongue out at the Golden Retriever, who playfully returned the gesture, "...but the night before that, it was me, remember?"  She grinned.  "And you didn't have to tie<span style="font-style: italic">me</span>up."<br/><br/>"I<span style="font-style: italic">wanted</span>to be tied up," Mina countered with a sniff, though she looked far too amused for the insulted act to work.  "And Cad was still an amazing... ah... what's the word you use?  Love-her?"  She frowned momentarily.  Her memories weren't<span style="font-style: italic">that</span>clear, after all.<br/><br/>"You<span style="font-style: italic">do</span>remember, right?"  Onyx asked seriously, passing one arm behind her back and gripping her other arm, making her breasts perk outward a bit.  "You aren't just confused?  Say something, boy!"<br/><br/>The waited for him to reply as people around them began heading for the manor.