The final Friday of July was hot and hazy, just like many of the previous days had been that summer in northern New Mexico.

There wasn't much going on in the tiny town of Felson's Hell, an occasional dance at the schoolhouse just to let off steam seemed to be about the extent of things here. It sure was different from the busyness of Raleigh that comprised many of my more vivid memories.

Barton and I were both seeing the town's only doctor, one Elisabeth Shenderas. Her tall, lean, well tanned body belied her age, the only visible sign of such being her hair which was shot through with silvered strands. She was a decent doctor, well respected, if a bit taciturn.

We dropped in at her office on the last Friday in July for another session with her, Barton first, then myself. Mom, Chantel and I were sitting in the doctor's waiting area, a large, fairly open room with a variety of furniture. Apparently, one of the folks either in town or living somewhere in the area was a furniture maker, as there were half a dozen single person leather chairs plus two sofas made from the same material. High quality wooden end tables were placed between sets of two or three chairs and a matching coffee table sat in front of each of the sofas.

I guess Barton had been in with Dr. Shenderas for about forty minutes when the doctor's receptionist and assistant called mom into the treatment room. I was idly flipping through a magazine, too worried about Barton to even notice that the magazine was an old copy of Vogue.

I completely missed the odd looks that Chantel threw at me while I was flipping the pages of that magazine.

Eventually, mom and Barton walked out of the inner room and the doctor called my name. I rose from my seat and followed her into the office.

It wasn't easy talking to this woman about my feelings of jealousy of Chantel and how she was able to be feminine when I couldn't. This was only my second visit with the doctor about this situation, and I still didn't feel like I could truly open up to her about how I was feeling.

I guess I got enough across to her that she made a decision and buzzed the receptionist, asking her to send mom in again.

I spent the last half hour of this visit squirming in my seat and stuttering and stammering under the steely eyes of both women.

It all came out, though, and I was stunned to see that mom wasn't surprised by it at all. She sat there, smiling calmly at me, offering her love. When she opened her arms, I darn near jumped off the seat, launched myself at her and cried on her shoulder while she rocked me gently.

The doctor buzzed the receptionist again and asked to have Barton sent back in to join us. I was sorely puzzled by this and quite curious.

It didn't take long for the reason to be discovered. Remember those looks I said that I saw Barton sending Chantel's way before?

Yup, Barton and I were both simmering over with jealousy of Chantel. Before Chantel came along, I had not realized that I had any yearnings toward femininity at all, but I've been feeling those yearnings since then. With Barton, from what he was able to tell us as the four of us sat in that room talking, he had first felt like a girl somewhere around the age of five or six. His girly interests were the reason for the beatings.

Once my mom and I were able to put two and two together and come up with four, we became rather upset, no, furious. Just because Barton's mother had run off when he was three and the boy wanted to be a girl was no reason for his father to nearly beat him to death.

Mom and I wrapped Barton up in a tight hug for several minutes while tears flowed down all of our cheeks.

Dr. Shenderas looked on, nodding in approval and waited for us to take our seats again.

"Well, if the two of you truly wish to be girls, you'll need to pick names for yourselves. Just know you'll have the support of the town."

Mom looked up in surprise when the doctor said that, asking, "You mean they won't be harassed or mistreated here?"

Dr. Shenderas sighed, "Mrs. deSalveris, not by the folks of the town or those on the nearby ranches. You also don't have to worry about the Native Americans in the area, as they, for the most part, support those who are transgender and/or those with two spirits."

"Well, that's good to know. I just wonder how Chantel is going to take this, it's going to be a very big change for all of us," mom replied.

Dr. Shenderas chuckled for a moment, then hit her buzzer again and asked for Chantel to join us.

It only took a moment for Chantel to be brought up to speed. What surprised Barton and I the most, though, was her reaction to being told, which was that she burst into a fit of giggles that lasted for nearly five minutes before saying, "Well, DUH, I've seen you both looking at me!"

Barton and I both turned quite red at that point, then realized that she meant no harm by it and we soon joined her in the giggle fest.

Before we left Dr. Shenderas' office, I asked to be called Annette from now on and Barton spoke up, saying to call her Barbara. Mom asked why I decided on Annette and I replied that it would be a bit confusing if there were two people named Angel at the ranch all the time.

That spawned the decision to go into Farmington and hit the Walmart Supercentre there for some simple clothing for us.

We piled into the Ford Taurus and made our way into the city and found a parking space fairly close to the entrance of the store.

We made our first stop at the bakery in the store, where we had a light meal, something to keep us going for the next few hours.

That turned out to be a good thing, as we didn't leave the store until after 4:30 PM, all four of us carrying three or four large bags. We managed to stuff everything into the trunk, although it was a bit of a tight squeeze, then headed back to the ranch for a well-deserved supper.

Mom had called Phil at some point while we were in the store, so they were aware that we wouldn't be home until late afternoon at least.

When we arrived at the ranch and entered the house, carrying the bags, we were greeting by the smell of a fantastic chili dinner. Mom dropped the bags in her hands by the bottom of the stairs and marched over to the big stove, leaned down and sniffed appreciatively.

Angel wandered in through the back entrance, giggled at mom sniffing the chili, then said we'd have to wait until 6:30 to eat like always. Mom grumbled for a moment while hiding a grin behind her hand, and our stomachs all chose that moment to growl in protest.

That had Angel giggling even harder, but we were all settled around the table a few minutes later with a thick slice of apple pie.

The chili tasted as good as it had smelled and Barb and I spent the evening putting on a little fashion show for mom and Chantel.

The ranch hands just shrugged when Barb and I showed up the next morning wearing what was obviously female clothing. It made no difference to them at all, they had jobs to do which included spending some time in showing us how to do things around the ranch itself.

We learned a lot that summer. We found out that hand milking cows can be rather messy and laughed when Frank used the milking machine. There were half a dozen large pigs in a pen to one side of the big cow barn, five sows and an older boar with a dozen or more piglets. There were days where we helped with the midsummer harvest, having been told it was common to have two warm season harvests here.

We also helped with tending the horses, learning how to feed them, groom them, and how to muck out the stalls. I have to admit I didn't like shovelling up the horse shit very much, but I honestly didn't mind being around the horses. Some of them were even friendly to us.

The best part of most days on the ranch, though, was when we were trotting, then cantering and galloping in the horse paddocks. I have no idea why, but whenever I was on a horse's back and running across those wide open fields, I felt like I could almost fly, I was that happy.

July turned to August and August slowly faded into September, the temperatures often climbing into the low 100s, sometimes 110s.

It wasn't easy living under the brutal New Mexico sun, but at least here, I knew I had the love of my mom and two sisters.

I have to admit it felt a bit odd the first little while that Barb and I presented as girls, but with no one making a fuss, that feeling faded fast.

School would be starting next Tuesday, the first time that Barb and I would be going to school as girls. It scared me a bit, I guess.

Mr. Randall, the town banker, dropped in one afternoon in late August to talk with mom and Phil.

We found out that evening, over supper, that odd things were happening in and around Felson's Hell.

The first had been the discovery of a disembowelled German Shepherd dog on the side of the road leading into town on August 2nd. The remains had been left there, a rather gruesome sight to be sure, and had been found by the owner of a house at the edge of the town.

The second incident was the torching and bombing of a veteran's 68 Mustang which destroyed the car. What made this even worse was that the body of the veteran, one Thomas Schilling, was found beside the car, darn near cooked. He'd apparently tried to save his car but failed.

It didn't come out until three days later that Schilling had been shot by what was assumed to be a high calibre rifle, killing him instantly.

The third incident was the digging up of several graves on private property, the remains having been scattered all over the area. Even with several knowledgeable people trying to help, it was extremely difficult to sort out which bones belonged in which grave. It was a difficult enough task that a highly renowned "bones" man was called in to help with the entire process, which took nearly a week to finish.

The fourth incident was a nasty one, involving the rather valuable herd of a rancher well known for training and breeding high quality horses. Someone entered one of his paddocks one night and lit a fire in the field, which drove the herd in the field toward and then over a cliff. The cliff itself wasn't especially high, perhaps thirty-five or forty feet, but it was a very steep slope and the terrified horses were unable to stop.

Most of the twenty-seven horses that had been in that field had to be put down, only five were saved from that and only because their injuries were not severe, possibly because their fall had been broken by other horses that had fallen over the cliff side just before them.

The rancher was a broken man after that. Within a week, he had put his ranch up for sale and left the area, never to return.

On the last night before the school year would officially begin, Lilith stood unseen in the darkness north of the town of Felson's Hell.

She smiled as she noticed the for sale sign at the end of the laneway leading to the former horse breeder's ranch.

Everything was happening just as it should. This town would die under her hand, but the time was not quite right. Soon, it would come.