But as soon as Heaven was tasted, that sweetness just on the tip of the tongue, so promising... and I, like a child with a wet finger coated in sugar set to suckle it clean... it withdrew from my senses, the hand of it moved away from my eyes and I saw the world again.
     The dreams of places, do they not also dream? Each universe is a multitude of parallels and What Ifs. What if -- two magic words to me. What if I had looked within myself just once instead of foisting all my cares on those around me? What if I had just once asked a question outloud without already having five answers on my tongue? I created my own noise tunnel, and it blocked out that which I should have heard.
     I lied to myself, and in my self-delusion, I lied to them. Those who only ever spoke the truth to me. My boys. Those I should have loved and protected as my sons, but for whom I was only some mad, drunken uncle knocking over the buffet.
     I felt a strange sensation in my hands, but it was one I recognized -- a sword in the hand. Strange, because it had been so long -- who but William fights with swords anymore? I wasn't much of a swordsman to begin with. Not much of a horseman either. It never stopped me from being king. I was crafty, quick-minded, able to move men and mountains. How could I have forgotten that? Glorious in mud and blood, in sand or sea or satin sheets.
     And I then recalled who gifted this to me. Though its construction was roughly Roman in nature, this was a sword that never knew the earth of the Romans -- only the dreams of empires never to be and the one that almost was. A flick of my wrist, and it transformed into an umbrella.
     I had just enough time to smile at her cleverness, just enough time to fancy myself as a new John Steed, with my girl dressed up as the famously glorious Emma Peel, the Mrs. indeed. Huh... I should talk to her about that when I get back... when a great wind pushed against me and I took a greater notice of my surroundings...
     Does it ever rain in the dreams of places? It must, for trees surely dream of rain. The sky above me turned black, a black previously unexperienced even in all my time in the dark. The rain was a foul-smelling thickness that was not rain at all.
     No... it wasn't rain or even the nightmares of rain falling to die on the ground or live again and again in the unfolding of blossoms and leaves.
     I lifted my eyes slowly, peering up from beneath my brow to see the darkness hovering over me in the body of a great beast.