As big as it is, Powis Castle is becoming intimate once more. All that's left are a couple of cousins, and your husbands two and children three.

     They helped him finish what he started. They helped him kill Mithras completely, each one of them, with Blois giving the hardest blow and with Plantagenet giving last rites. Without the Queens, Davydd wouldn't have survived the battle with Mithras. Without the Kings, Davydd wouldn't have survived the battle with himself.

     His body is streaked with comets and galaxies. It is a startling sight.

     You made me order it, watch it, regret it. You made me kill you. And I can't forgive you.

     In the quiet space of one's soul, there is no place for hammering. Though the London nightscape glitters past the windows and walls of a small apartment, and an Indian kitchen cooks up delights whose flavors permeate even concrete, in this small bedroom, in this quiet space of his soul, Davydd lingers with only one.

     The earth is in a constant state of reincarnation. Everything but me is changing. The bud becomes the flower becomes the leaf. I am the same width, the same weight, the same density as I was eight-hundred and twenty-eight years ago. Even an English Oak would have grown, would have changed in all that time.

     "Ask me again," Iowerth says quietly. "This time, ask me without your hands in my pants."

     He stands there, waiting for you to move to the sofa as instructed. Who's the servant here anyway? "Would you like anything to eat while I work?"

     There is something on the air that runs from him to you. Without calling you by name, it invites you. Charisma backed with something else, indefinable.

     "If only we poor human creatures could be guided by the Logic and Reason we crave. Your solutions are not new, they are simply not acted upon. Not so quickly. They say things are changing, more children heard playing in Venice these days. I hope it is so. At night, late," that mouth of his spreads in a smile as he lights up his cigarette, "...you can almost hear the collective breath of the city being held..."

     "No no, Gwi, you're working too hard," Iowerth drolls low and wry, "...you should slow down, brawd, before you pull something."

     "When the time has come for me to empty myself of all of my tales, I swear to you, good gentlemen, that your stories shall not remain untold."

     "Thank you for showing me," he whispers. But now that we have both seen ourselves in the clear light, what shall evening have to offer us. Foolish mistake, Alire. Foolish, and you know better, prince.

     "I wonder what is going to happen now," he says, dreams in his cadence. "To all of us. I am not worried about myself," Galadriel says suddenly, softly. "I will answer Dominic's questions, but this time I will not be afraid."

     But he expects it shall cause no ripple whatsoever, this night at the De Ville, his appearance in the sumptuous halls of his own Clan. Why should it? Would they not have to care first, in order for there to be such a thing? And when have they, exactly. He came in a Plantagenet to a Capet party. This he knows. And as long as he is a Plantagenet, it shall be so.

     "Well," he exhales, pausing to remove the jacket after a moment later, losing nothing by the shedding of a layer. "I think it is a meaningless challenge."

     I love him, says the look. Yes, this was a Caravaggio that was meant for William to repair. No one could bear more longing for a golden youth than he does his own.

     And soon the Toreador are on what talents one may or may not have. Guild, artistes, or poseurs. The world's so drawn along such lines.

     "When I saw him, he promised me pay in exchange for trumpeting the end of his Exile. The Oak King's exile is at an end, Your Majesty, Your Highness; three years in Cymru, and at the end, he has emerged."

     His words are sing-song power, and here that power is everywhere. As the myths say: the land is the king, the king is the land. Red-blushed and golden apples grow, dip delicately from blossom and fruit-heavy branches as you sail by.

     One fingertip taps on the table absently, the lone drummer of a vanished army. "If Il Dignitaro will permit, I will examine - however, some materials for initial examination will be required."

     He crowned you and you crown him, a mutual coronation, and two kingdoms fall to a hush for it, like a awed crowd.

     Karoly's gaze is hidden - perhaps she glares daggers, but she does not weep; no tears become visible at the veil's edge.

     Girault looks between the two of you for a moment and then he exhales, "I will apologize for my tone. I do not wish it to seem that I am some Svengali, keeping Ms. Whitethorne in a gilded cage, not allowing her the freedom to move, or to visit friends..."

     Pastoral delights, indeed. Why, sir, do you mean 'country matters'? Why now, all of the sudden, Shakespeare? You are too much like the Dane, perhaps. Yes, sad over the loss of a father. That's it. And no uncle, not even Villon, can pull you from your mourning.

     Little is known about her other than her association with the earlier owner of the castle, her profession as a psychiatrist, that she has only visited the chateaux briefly this fall for a few hours in the span of her ownership, and that she is (unfortunately) American.

     Abbey, hospital, college, tomb and prison -- it moved through its ages like a man or woman, with glorious beginnings, difficult adolescence, opulant maturity and aged ruination.

     Your nights are spoken for. You are risen gently just past sunset. You are led into a great hall and made to sing scale after rising scale, stretching your vocal chords, working your vocal chords. Sometimes with Girault there correcting you.

     For the past few years, I've looked at restoration from a purely selfish angle. The paintings, my hands, my work, my life...

     I clasp my hands behind my back as I walk in silence, the Caravaggio in the vault, resting for the night. But all around me, amours, is the evidence of restoration.

     The Archangel's own Dream spread across the cosmos. A dream of a return of one is a dream of restoration and victory for all.

     Soldekai's eyes drop to the stone upon which he sits. He had not thought of things as you say. That there are others who wish a new home. Who would want to be with him and his Word.

     I plan for the inevitable... hoping to subvert it. No different from Prince Theseus...

     "I have to submit to domination. To have the knowledge of my working on it stripped..." Whatever it is, it is huge.

     "Actually, I should tell the whole truth. Davydd came home one night, found Vincent coupling with Rose on Davydd's favorite chair. A few week's later, Vincent is involved in a vandalism of Sandrine Jorgensen's flower shop... Sandrine, by this time, Davydd's new lady..." A black eyebrow lifts. "I threw the melting painting in as a bonus."

     At least...did you enjoy it...Your Majesty? Somewhere in all of that, Ian felt the king find his crown.

     You can teach an Old Plantagenet new tricks. Perhaps you thought he might never understand. He might never get it. That all of that information was wasted. That those heated conversations in Seattle and later in New Port were just exercises in releasing consonants and vowels to the atmosphere.

     "Incroyable," William says, voice carrying as he appears, he grins. Incredible, he says. Unbelievable, he means. "It is good to see you," he says suddenly, warmly in English.

     It's like a breeze, when change comes. The doors fly open, the windows lift, and a wind barrels through that takes the stale, stolid air away. When it's a hurricane, all you can do is hold on. Ian just held on for a few years, not knowing what would happen when the winds died.

     Girault must steal a look, still it comes with the air of Platonic, See I Am Only Looking, William -- I Have Eyes. There is nothing outwardly lascivious about it. Are you beautiful? Yes, one of the world's most beautiful.

      "What is that like?" he asks. "Being in love with your favorite subject? To love a canvas and the person?" A not so simple question, though simply asked.

     "Holy shit," Davydd thinks to say, and his hand comes up and rubs his unbearded chin. "I see what you mean. Not saying you look bad, you're just very..... puckish. Huh."

     Goddess! You're going to consider this?

     Restoration is a strange process. Often, it is so subtle as to go largely unnoticed. But with the passing several nights, from last year to the next in a single sunrise and sunset, it lies everywhere, obvious.

     Another point of truth, laid down in a solitaire of them. She's no idea what she's in the middle of...

     "I feel like the Caravaggio must feel, oui?" just a moment of French, when he speaks of something utterly Him. And maybe the Boy with the Basket of Fruit is behind it. But... there is not one thing, not one inspiration, but for all of them altogether.

     Have I won? After a thousand years? I think so, but it is hard to tell. We have such a long way to go.

     "Your rights to Poitou actually come through my mother... and my grandmother's name was also Aenor. Eleanor's mother..." And suddenly the universe makes sense. It is right to tell this story. It is right that this becomes Truth. Known. Tasted. Swallowed.

     Do you know I shall show you every room of this castle when I proclaim it jointly yours? Do you know that I shall scrawl it out for all to witness? When I present it to you, no man after shall doubt it... but that it should be so. Vicomte du Poitou...

     The other? The experience rests in the replay of one's own helplessness. A hunter whose connection rests in self-identification and sympathy, and thus, each hunt is a hope to restore something tarnished to himself. Perhaps, this time, the one hunted will have another ending...and perhaps ease of heart will come.

     The past cannot be written again, Ian -- but the future can be conceived and born, forged and created...