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Olan Chennock sat in a dark corner booth of Aerach's Public House & Inn, and waited.

An unread copy of the Londonderry Sentinel lay before him on the table, folded as it had come from the dispenser outside the pub's heavy oaken doors with their twin brass lionhead knockers. The doors, opened for ventilation, also allowed the heavy North Atlantic fog to creep in over ancient flagstones worn smooth and shiny by centuries of paws and hooves. Founded in 1850 to serve (and service) the sailors and fishermen who called Greencastle home, it now existed like most other things around County Donegal: to wet the whistles of locals and regulars too poor or lazy to make the short drive to Londonderry.

But Olan Chennock liked Aerach's precisely because it wasn't Londonderry. None of the business it did could be considered brisk, even on Friday and Saturday nights. And today, on this fog-chilly Tuesday morning when the few who came in were ordering tea and eggs and potatoes and black pudding, the Galway ram was nursing a whiskey.

Kilbeggan, eighteen years old, straight up, with a single blackberry at the bottom of the glass. Olan stirred slowly with a swizzle stick he'd carved from one of his own horns after he'd lost a brawl in his younger days, outside this very same pub. Between his teeth sat a pipe carved from the same horn, unlit and unpacked. Smoking wasn't allowed inside Aerach's, and he hadn't committed to staying long enough to warrant a smoke streetside.

_Rory was late, but it was foggy. The ferry would be slow. And Olan was a patient man. _

He waited, and drank, and tongued his pipe from one corner of his muzzle to the other. Rearranging his spectacles when they canted too far to one side or the other. Murphy, the stout wolf who owned and operated the pub, absently wiped the bar while just as absently watching a football match on the single television mounted near the ceiling. The Rangers versus some team that wasn't the Rangers. He turned it to BBC2 because they were losing. Swore under his breath, and finished wiping the bar. Glanced in Olan's direction, and Olan shook his head. The ram wouldn't have time for another round.

_Murphy understood. Murphy knew about Rory. And Murphy didn't care. In fact, Murphy had implied interest, in his own very subtle way. But Murphy didn't have the whole picture. _

The ram leant back until the curve of his horns met the wall, only a few finger-breadths away. Took the glass between thumb and forefinger. Tilted a wee draught onto his tongue, savoring the sweet smoke and false warmth. Swallowed as his phone buzzed; Olan was a conscientious man, even when he was alone.

It was Rory. FOG, the message said, because that was all that needed saying. Whether that meant the border collie had run into it on the way from Coleraine to MacMilligan Prison on the coast, or the ferry had encountered it in the narrow straight between the peninsula and Greencastle proper, the outcome did not change. Rory would be late, and that was fine. Considering this revelation, the ram decided to smoke after all.

Prying his bulky self out of the booth, he donned a worn tweed cap, shrugged on a worn tweed jacket, drained the whiskey and chewed up the blackberry. Pips caught here and there in his teeth, bothersome but necessary when imbibing Kilbeggan, at least to Olan Chennock. He paced to the bar and leant a bit, as if requesting privacy or at least the impression of such.

Tapping the bar twice with his right hand, the fat heather-gem ring punctuating the sound, he whispered loudly to Murphy: "Out for a smoke, be round presently." Ended it with a wink but no smile. "Watch me glass," he deadpanned.

"Right," Murphy grinned.

_The R241 outside Aerach's stretched into the murk in either direction, bereft of traffic wheeled or foot. The sounds of the morning, few and far between, were muffled as if after a newly-fallen blanket of thick wet snow. This was September, but the humid chill crept past the ram's jacket and vest, through his plain cotton shirt and down to his skin despite the layer of wool in between. Olan liked it this way, though, because he'd lived on the north coast of Ireland all his life and he would likely die here, on a morning just like this one. _

He heard the plaintive call of the ferry just as he touched his match to the bowl of black Cavendish, drawing humid air to stoke it. Wouldn't be more than ten minutes before Rory's arrival. Til then he settled against the old stonework and puffed away, as much a fixture on the footpath as any of the surrounding buildings. Smoke drifted in tendrils around his head, seeping into his wool and clothes. Since the witch-hunt on smokers, the ram had kept his stock in a special flask, absent those awful stickers that remonstrated against the dreaded dangers. All well and good, but Olan had made it to sixty-one and he'd be damned if he'd give up what was as much a Chennock family tradition as Catholicism.

_In the name of the Stem and the Bowl and the Holy Leaf, Amen. _

A Vauxhall Astra passed by, followed by an ancient diesel Mercedes clattering along, presumably from the ferry. And, a few minutes later, Rory appeared on his bicycle like a wraith, if one could describe a border collie as wraith-like. He rode slowly, and rang his bell twice, the sound weak and foreboding like everything else in the fog. When he came to a stop next to the ram he walked the bike up over the curb, leaned over the handlebars and grinned. His wearing a wool jumper was not lost on Olan, from whose hide said material had come. It was an ironic nod to their unique relationship.