The city peels off the backdrop of green earth. I stand in the center of London, where the pigeons congregate around the statue of Admiral Nelson, they fly, but they never quite land. Their little wings move against rippling air...
     And it begins to rain...
     The Old City and the New City exist at once here. Half Londinium, with its Roman structures and still pristine earth. Half London, with its skyscrapers of glass, their reflections liquid. Cars fly by, blurs that move in slow motion, and in the center of this, its vortex...
     Me...
     I wear a jeweled key around my neck. I am drenched in rain, but only my clothes are wet. Black t-shirt. Leather. Steel-toed Docs. A gun, my gun from WWII slung across my back. My cigarette burns, its smoke becomes the city's fog, and not even all this rain can put it out...
     Cobalt and royal blue, the dragons visible at his wrists and biceps curl and curve, writhe and slither. Alive. And suddenly nine 'trees' spring up in Trafalgar Square...
     Oak
     Hazel
     Elder
     Rowan
     Heather
     Mistletoe
     Holly
     Willow
     Alder
     I turn, pivoting in place as they make themselves known. The rain turns to mist. Softening, but never ceasing.

     Hoofbeats ring out over grassy ground, moving closer, ever closer, until their sound becomes the sharp staccatto of hoof against stone. These hooves have never known a blacksmith's hand, after all.
     The mist parts between elder and rowan, and suddenly the hooves are silent - the cause of the hooves, however, appears, stepping daintily between the trees, and into the Square.
     A white horse, not the pure white of fairy tales but a muddier shade of white, Riding sidesaddle, dressed in snow-white linens, a maiden, visage purer than mountain rivers, her pale blonde hair flows in a tumbling fall of locks down over one shoulder as she fixes her eyes on you. Changing eyes, never quite the same colour or shade twice : the gift she's given her progeny. And she parts her lips to speak, and the language she greets you in is one you feel you've always known but forgotten for so long, yet the meaning is so clear.
     "Hello, Davydd. I told you that we'd meet once more, though I'd hoped to be able to come to you on more solid ground."
     Isabel remains seated on the horse's back for the moment, not choosing to dismount, one delicate hand lifting to push her long tresses back from the points of her ears.

     I turn at the sound of hoofbeats, and I turn, a spiral that catches me, until I see you, riding between elder and rowan. The world stops spinning there, and locks in, like the tumbler of a padlock falling into place. You, I see you, and as you ride up, I walk to meet you, blue dragons slithering against my skin. "I was wondering if you had forgotten," he says, the Welsh old, sounding even more primal and archaic than even the modern strain. "And then... I was hoping you had. For I am remembered of what you said. And I take no pleasure in it..."
     The curse...
     The impending death...
     How shall there be a world without you in it... and how is it I yet remain?
     "It is just as well here... in the City that Is and Was. In the waking world, I am not half so free." The sidhe champion with a vampire's curse. The fae-blessed Oddity that he is. With revelation comes death. The world is not as open as it once was, despite being more modern.
     I reach out with my hand. No gloves. No sleeves to hide the dragons you placed there. Holly berries and heather flowers blossom and move against his skin. Healing and Destructions. Right hand and left hand.

     There is no pause nor rebuff, just the faint, half-open smile that is never so open as her eyes. "My mind wanders, of late, but this, I would not forget, Davydd. What I told you was not promise, but prophecy, and neither you nor I can help but serve at that altar - it may be skewed, or bent, but never avoided in entirety. That is the way of magic."
     She dismounts, with your aid, and here at least, her power is still controlled enough that there isn't more than a brief flare of new life as her energy sheds off from her into her creations. She stands, looking around herself, and it is evident, the strain that standing takes.
     "It is best, this way," Isabel agrees, "to end things the way they began, in half-states and twilights and dawns. I always was of the old world, Davy-bach, and never of the new. Fiona will have the new where I leave off. I haven't much longer, I know..."
     She shakes her head, the long tresses rippling, for a moment like water, then fire, before returning to ribboning strands of flaxen silk.

     Prophecy...
      "They say the Wheel is spun by Her hands," My fingers clasp and release yours. Here, though neither of us are solid, we are solid to one another. As real as we are Wherever We Spend Our Time. What is real -- what we decide it is, perhaps. "It is hard for me not to put out my own hands, and try to stop it. After eight centuries, I have become vain. I think myself a God?" I laugh, roll my eyes and shake my head at myself, but exhale all the while...
     I shall be a spectator to my own dream. A voyeur upon my own destiny and fate...
     It is hard for him to see you thus. "Oes," he speaks his Welsh to you again, eyes narrowing in emotion, "...it is better this way, cari, for it suits us as no other -- a place between the folds of Existence. That's where you and I belong. Twilight creatures, we are." Grey. Neither good nor bad. Neither wrong nor right. Neither real nor figments. He does not let loose of your hand, he becomes like a balance for you then. "What will happen to her," he asks quietly of Fiona.

     "My mantle shall fall upon her shoulders, for good or for ill. I do not know what transformation it may bring about," Isabel admits, voice as steady as her hands are not. She accepts your strength without drinking from it, using it as a brace - one thing more which must be borne. "I do not know of any others like her, though it may be that they have existed. I cannot tell : from my tower, my sight is limited."
     She turns her head, eyes a cool blue for a moment, and says quietly, "It will be difficult for you, I imagine, Davydd. At least before, if you wished, you had the option... answers which you could buy and sell, a place to retreat to from your worlds. I do not know what will happen, when - I am gone."
     She pauses, then, a breeze rushing by, and she lifts one hand, letting the air currents stream between her fingers, almost seeming to go through her. "As for Fiona? She's proven adaptable, and so the choice was finally made. I have Seen that much - she will be the next one. Already, Summer and Winter vie, in the hopes of gaining her powers, as a future Queen or as a pawn or a bit of both, or merely to drink from her deeply as your own current companions might. Yet she is in the solid world, and ... I cannot say what will happen to her."
     It is easier for her, speaking of Fiona, than of herself, eyes shading to violet and fixed upon the birds wheeling above stone Nelson's tricornered head. "What would you know, Prince of nine trees?"

     "There are no questions to ask," Davydd says, "only answers to wait for. Whatever happens," he almost shrugs, "what can I do but to move through it, adapt to it, change it, or become it. The only option is existence, in one form, or in a thousand. I am resourceful, the rest... is not up to me." He looks to the joined hands. "What will become of you..."
     For in truth, there is no dying. There is merely becoming something else...
     A raindrop. A shimmer of sunlight against a mirror. Where will you go?
     Davydd shakes his head finally. No, don't answer. "I will find you when I need to. It has always been this way. It always will be." And the dragons he bears, and the trees he commands and is commanded by -- you are in all of these. You always will be, though Mithras changed the destiny.
     That is why Rome is here...
     Dark green eyes lift from you, looking out to the Old City, the Roman edifices upon the verdant hills. There is a standard out there, a square, Roman standard. Stuck in the ground. Even as He is. Davydd looks quickly back to you. "Only one thing do I need," he says, lyrical, earthy voice moving in a lilt, "... to know from you... is there anything I can do..."

     "You always were able to adapt well," she agrees, with a smile. "It is why you were my choice. I do not think I chose badly, Davydd... even now, you have weathered well."
     She never dwelled in cities half so much as you, not cities of Man. "Do?" Isabel lifts her gaze, now as green as the hills, and laughs. "What is there to do? If you wish ... find someone who may assist Fiona through her changes. I know that the Hunter taught her things which she will find invaluable in the days to come, though he had no way of knowing... but it will not be enough. It is never enough."
     Her gaze turns back to the standing stones, and she bends, kneeling on the flagstones. "Look," she commands, one elegant hand angled downwards at the cracks between the slates, She makes a soft, coaxing sound, at green grass and tiny bluebells pushing their way up. "This is my power, and Fiona's, in truth, though you may not have recognized it. It is that which creeps in, almost unnoticed and certainly unbidden, and grows and grows until it cannot be ignored. Someday, these tiny bluebells may yet be gigantic oaks."
     Rising, she turns back, reaching out to steady herself. "What would you do, Davydd? My enemy's jealousy has won out over me, but it did not gain her that which she desired. My death ... every story has an ending. The book must close, the author place down his or her pen, and the words, become no more. That is the price."

     He knew it as soon as he asked it. He was looking at you with a kind of helpless humor as you laughed. No, no there is nothing you can do, Davydd ap Owain of Gwynedd. Stop trying to use the Great Wheel like a steering wheel. He only nods, then as you command, he looks.
     "Your enemy's jealousy has done much, but it has not won," the old veteran notes. You have two 'tricks' left. If nothing else, you'll live in us, and by that may your own vengeance be found. "The book may close. But... it will be opened again, and different hands may pick up a different pen, but the story, lady, does not have an ending." Nothing does.
     Davydd exhales, eyes to the bluebells, then back to your hands, lifting finally... after a while...to your face. "Then we are caught in the Wheel, we three: you and she and me." Fingers are given a squeeze. "The poet said: I've lived through many varied shapes before I came this form. Raindrop, swordblade, shining star, the thunder of a storm..."
     So this is goodbye, then. And hello. And all I may do is wait... wait and see... I thought my destiny was done eight hundred years ago. Thwarted by the Roman, I thought. But maybe that was all just a long preparation...
     Metaphysical foreplay...
     Figures...
     Davydd inclines his head and whistles for your horse. It comes to him, and he lifts you up, easily -- so easily -- to sit back upon it. And he swings up afterwards, arms going around you. "No more talk of prophecy," he says, "It will come soon enough for us all.."

     The smile she responds with is a silent one, though none the less real for its quietude, or for it being a dreamed-of smile. She leans forward from horseback, lips brushing coolly against your temples.
     "A part of me, most certainly," Isabel agrees, "lives on in you, and in Fiona. The mantle will be hers, and may she bear it more usefully than did I - I had my moments, Davydd, oh, I did!" Her laughter comes, like the chiming of bells. "But I was never a warrior, only a witch, and my steel was velvet, and this mantle will require more than softness, I think, to be borne best."
     Resting her forearms on your shoulders, she murmurs, "I have much to apologize for still, and I suspect that whatever happens, that will be part of - but the loose ends I leave must be tidied away by others. There will be riders coming, once I am gone, to bestow my gifts upon those whom I have wronged - or righted," she adds, with a briefly bright smile, "and ... well. Perhaps my memory, at least, will linger." No talk of prophecy, just of fact and pasts. She lifts a hand, touching your cheek with delicate grace.
     "You will not forget me, I know, so for once I will forego coyness... though not so much as to fail to ask if you will miss me. The time draws near, and I am afraid, but I must go, Davydd."

     "I have missed you for hundreds of years," he says, for even though you were around he never saw you, worlds rarely collided. "And for hundreds of years, shall I be lucky to have them, I shall miss you more." One kiss is left behind, warmth for your coolness, dream or no. Left upon your mouth. The parting of a former lover.
     It is a simple kiss. A simple goodbye. But meaning isn't lost on the simplicity. The kiss ends in whispered words of Welsh.
     I will see you, he said.
     For in the end, whatever the end may be or whenever the end may come, he is certain he shall see you then.
     Davydd slides off the horse, forgoing the idea of a ride. You must be off. And he must let you go. He stands, arms folded against the broad chest, a mountain of Wales to be sure. Looking most modern, and suited to it. The chainmail falls to the ground with the ringing of bells, and in its place, a new cropping of heather flowers. Purple. Radiant.
     He doesn't say anything else. He simply stands there, stalwart, to watch you go. Trafalgar and Rome in attendance. Nine trees of nine powers at his back.

     Another smile, lingering in changing eyes, and Isabel turns, almost kneeling on the horse. If there are tears to be shed, she will not let them show. She bends forward, over the horse's neck, whispering in one of its flickering ears, and with a snort and a nod, it shifts into movement, the uneven animal gait that the modern world has by and large forgotten.
     It turns, and begins to move out through the trees, out from the city, mane and tail flowing like water, a dark thunderstorm flickering its electricity far off on the horizon. Head held up, fingers trailing against the horse's flanks, Isabel moves with it - without any outward sign or indication of fear. Soon, she is lost from view entirely...
     A crescent shape has been dug in the stone by one firmly prodding hoof, water welling up pure and clear. Yet, when the storm breaks on the far-off point of horizon's edge, it changes, tinged to red, thickened to blood, that slowly turns black, and then silver, hardening to mirror-like sheen.

Posted by rowan at June 20, 2003 05:42 PM