...Rest assured that I have not forgotten you...

     "My mind is... somewhat spinning," he'll admit that to you, if to no one else, "... from all she has told me. I feel like Mohammed or the Buddha, only without the foresight of taking notes."

     Though my head is bowed, I look to my son. I find his eyes are already on me, those strange periwinkle eyes. I smile at him, and it takes everything in me not to scoop the new king in my arms and hold him till he chokes.

     "I think it is because the memories of the evening feed the fumbling fingers at dawn. Just as the evening's clasping is inspired by how the day began. It's a vicious cycle," Iowerth intones lightly.

     The alley's darkness surrounds him until he dissolves in it, a glance given in the direction he believes you to be. And he slips away with a taunting chuckle. You want me? Catch me. Kill me. Thrill me. Iovis Macarelli steps into the Void.

     He moves faster than any human. So fast, that human eyes would catch only one motion in five -- and this is all without breaking into a run. He is simply walking but at the speed of shadow...

     It is rightly thought that this is the last winter of my youth. The last season that can pass lazily by as uncomplicated as a child.

I received your request with some amount of surprise. It is not often that I receive such commissions ~ or, rather, I receive them nightly, but never from the one for whom so much has been made over the years. Is Eros arming himself? That my concoctions should be his arrows both delights and honors me.

     "...I broke a friendship of lifetimes because I thought someone else was going to do some... thing. When... yeah, yeah... I'm a regular Dorothy. I had the power all along."

     Rhodri does not hear him, not from where he lies upon the bed, stretched out and equally glorious now in nothing, his changed tattoos a wonder against his skin. Opposite to his father again, he is nothing but energy. It hums around him, buzzing like bees around nectar.

     "...Hell, half the time I expect they're going to stop me at the door and question me like some impostor. But I seem to be the only one asking the questions."

     "I think that I am bored," Ian laments, filling the air. His eyes look up above, gazing there. A careless rest, filled with his usual thinking. "Well," Ian exhales, somewhere deprecating his inaccuracy, "...I find myself, not really looking to do much of anything. Very odd," he says to himself. In truth, he's probably talking to himself more generally.

     You know, it isn't you, amours. I do not need to impress you. I am not trying to impress you. It is worse even than this. I want a ghost to be proud of me. And it is something I shall never feel. A validation I am doomed never to receive.

     His weeks of counseling have not gone unnoticed. A quiet has settled in the lowest levels of Notre Dame, seeing that St. Etienne - a joke amongst the Malakim and Cherubim who walk the halls - has withstood the drama flamed by the latest arrival.

There are but three events that have meaning, and when I think of them, I am moved. All three of them are in this house.

     "I am not interested in chandeliers, I am not interested in business. I am interested in you. That is what I asked about and that is what I am interested in."

     You may think that I am not paying attention to him. I am, really. You might not believe it, but it's when we are like this, that he has my full attention and I often have the best epiphanies. What is more important than now?

     "I...don't understand," Julian suddenly cries out, arms around the girl he's come to love. "I don't...understand...what happened?"

     "I want to apologize," Davydd's voice, quick in its intonation of your Gaelic with his Welsh phrasing, lingers upon that word. Yes... you heard it. "I... owe you an apology, and... I want to make good on it..."

     "Oh!" Marta's finger lifts, "That's it...in yer time, men dinna love men," she's quivering with the sarcasm, "...that's it. That ne'er happen'd! So, yeah, lads," those accusing eyes, "...childer ne'er been with sires before, men ne'er touch'd men before, Will's oft daft an' confus'd..."