After all, every girl has trouble letting go of her first love, even if she has class to get to.

     "The road to Hell is always paved with good intentions, little brother. You should realize that by now," Tanira answers you lightly. She draws the cloth down a little. "Close your eyes."

     "I have been in the shadow of a star all my life," he smiles a little. "And I have made choices, being your younger brother, being the one to come behind you, to avoid competing directly with you. You are... an incredibly difficult act to follow..."

     No sooner do I think I have myself together when something happens, and I am thrown into confusion. Now, mind you, I am easily confused so... take it as you like it.

     "...I am very sorry if I made you anxious by blowing up my own room. I'm also sorry that you are going to have to bear the burden of your guise with me. I cannot pretend to dislike you. Without truth, Preston, I am nothing."

     You have peered into the ball of fire at the center of the sun's storm to the heart of the matter. "I can't marry or be a father or a king or even be the brother of a high king..."

     He is not yet Present. He is still in the Future Tense, which is to say, he will have been here, had he made it early, but as he is still in the Future Tense, he will be here shortly. Nobody's pluperfect.

     "Yes, there is another way out, Preston. You can take a flying leap off the balcony," Balthazar calls out. Strike one for Mister Nice Guy.

     He realizes that you would rather do almost anything than to be around him, let alone to ask for assistance, and so Balthazar does not belabor the point. His openness remains -- it is his nature -- even as it is yours to refuse it. "I am happy to help," he murmurs, "... of course. What can I do for you... or the Wests in general?"

     "...I have to find a replacement - sommat else, to fill the gap, before anybody takes too much notice. I have to do it yesterday. If you spot someone before I do - send word that nobody else can hear or see."

     "The Birth of Venus," Gruffydd says suddenly, grand peacock wings making themselves known, spreading with relaxation. "You remind me of the Botticelli painting." He shimmers in his own exotic grandeur, made more so by merely being in your shimmering presence.

     "Hmm..." for a moment that is all Balthazar says: a musical hmm, a symphonic sigh. He is not distracted, as he turns toward the voice. What he is, is intoxicated. But it is beyond drunk; it is past drugged. He is his own opiate, a walking aphrodisiac.

     Heavy, pendulous fruit, glistening with ripe nectar, release their perfumes around you. Bees, butterflies and hummingbirds sip at brandied sugar. Vines of honeysuckle and jasmine tangle overhead and spread over the sand and into the sea.

     She stares at the open box with disbelief and almost with dismay. This makes it all real, it makes it serious. She cannot pretend otherwise; she cannot deny it or disregard it. And, despite herself, she has to admit - she is intrigued...

     "Are you ready? Do you mind if we take a slight detour? There's something I'd like to show you. I will warn you," Balthazar says with a bit of a lopsided smile, "... it is fantastic."

     "What would I do without your wisdom and love. I should wander more than forty years in the desert complaining of the heat..."

     "You don't behave well enough to be a trained monkey," Davydd notes, "...now...shush... listen to your mother. She's onto something. Besides which, even if it's utter rubbish, you'll not get a word in edgewise against it so you might as well relax and pay attention."

     You're so good to know that there's always a Story.

     The air is alive and alight with his energy, but he is taking it in as much as he is expressing it. He feels it, for himself, and through music attempts to find his center. He is dazzling, in his appearance, in his motions. There is an open yearning there. The world longs for love; and the embodiment of Love yearns for the world.

     There is connective tissue between you, the meter of music like a heartbeat you share. He moves with you, supporting, dashing ahead to circle back to you again. The voices of the violins sing in counterpart. Yours, the steady melody. His, the wandering, circling flourish. The raven that circles your path...

     Love and hope and sex and dreams
     Are still surviving on the street
     Look at me, I'm in tatters!
     I'm shattered...
     Shadoobie...

     He looks between brothers and eyes them with the internal weariness of a man who's never had kids. "Time out." Gwilym does the internationally recognized signal for it of the tee of hands.

     Somewhere, houses rain from the skies falling on witches with expensive red shoes, giants trip over golden harps and hurtle out of the sky, and somewhere, somewhere a red-faced queen is hopping down (and a cat hops up and down behind her in mimicry), shouting: Off with her head! Off with her head! You heard what the queen said!

     Every new beginning comes from some other beginning's end. He doesn't try to put it into words out loud. All he does is reflect a tiny portion of that affection back in your direction, in a small assurance of a friend.

     "But... and I don't know, by the way... we haven't actually discussed it but... what if I become king and... she doesn't want to become a queen? What if it's more than she's bargained for? I don't want to force anything on her, Nainie..."

     "Soon, I'll be calling you Your Majesty. I'm not sure I'm ready for that, to be honest. To me, you will always be the little boy who crept in our bed every time it thundered."

     It is the morning prayer, you with the water in your hair. And in each droplet's bouncing, the water turns to sunlight, turns to honey, turns to pure gold to his senses.

     "Thank you for the welcome, sir. It's very kind of you to open your home to all of us. We'll try not to get in your hair too much. Right, Maddie?" He lightly pokes his baby sister in the shoulder. "We've been touring family reunions this month, it feels like. Next week: the Hatfields and the McCoys."

     "I have an impending sense of doom myself at the moment. Maybe it's contagious. So... what's yours? Maybe we can trade..."

     "Dear God," Iowerth says, turning to you, "...how will we contain our son, the Burning Inferno come Midsummer? This ... is going to be interesting..." But interesting in the way that makes him suddenly tired.

     My god... it's full of stars...

     Balthazar comes up behind you, "I won't drop you, I promise," he says quietly. "It'll just be the best way for you to see." His arms wind around your waist, a hand lifting to brace against your chest. He pulls you to him; the grasp is firm but not squeezing. And you are lifted as he vaults upward.

     It fills you, surrounds you. Is it that feeling or his arms or both? There is the feeling of sudden motion, lifting. Like a rocket, you zoom straight up. Or rather, it feels like up to your brain. But all you see, if you do crack your eyes open, is golden light and Balthazar's face. Are you standing still? Or are you dreaming?

     He is a narcotic, an aphrodisiac, and a stimulant all in one rather delightful package. Balthazar kicks back on the sofa, sitting in the opposite corner to face you, allowing him to stretch out like a languorous sultan.

     "I don't want to be the Man Who Knew Too Much," Balthazar smiles warmly. "Not that I would ever be mistaken for that." He chuckles briefly, lifting the cup of coffee for a sip. He twists in his chair and waves down the waitress. Another refill requested.

     He leans back just slightly, his fingers glancing across the rubies of the orchid. Balthazar lifts his gaze from it to your face. "You write me, and I sing you," he says, his voice soft and deep.

     Maddie shoots Balthazar a look that wavers somewhere between you didn't tell me! and you're a WHAT?. She blushes as the applause and murmur both move around the room with their rhubarbing rumble, and she hastily - very hastily - takes a drink. A large one.

     He is stripped emotionally as well as physically. It is there for you to feel, to see, to hear, to taste. It is in the salt of his sweat. The honey sweet fire of his kiss. Inspiration. Love. Sex. Divinity. What you create between you, where you meet and extending beyond you is nothing short of magic.

     Loki grabs his glass on the way. "A few hours of breathing space. I think. I may be on California time." His phone gets one cursory examination before it's disposed of in a pocket in much the same manner. "Boston time will just have to do."

     Balthazar smirks as he sips. "I suppose it has to be good for something..."

     "How can I assume they will understand any of this?"

     "Well, it's not about people telling you what to do, Loki. You cannot be a passive observer now. You've... made the deal."

     "...It is very strange. It is ...like you are a wave and you wash away all the sand from my skin, you polish me... like a shell."

     He parts the kiss with a tugging upon your bottom lip with his teeth, a light squeeze, the last sting of lighting before being smoothed by the suckling of his lips. Honey and fire; the buzz of the bee in the song of it, and the sting of the bee, however covered in nectar.

     Are you putting on a show for him or me...
     Or is it actually about Loki...

     It is spiritual, it is uplifting. There's herself and the board and the ocean, and if she isn't singing, it's only because her lungs have a different job to do right now. It is sex and philosophy, religion and nature, all rolled up into one package

     "You're used to the sun," he notes easily, without a trace of teasing. "You know how to protect yourself from sun-burn."

     "We'll try to tone it down for the newcomer nonetheless," Pres answers Balthazar with a slight grin to Loki. "I'm the dull one, I'm afraid. My sisters got all the glamour in this family."

     Talk to me. You all invite me to speak but I don't really know what to say...

     Every seat is filled in Shepherd's Bush Empire, apart from those taking a quick break between shows -- ten minutes -- to get refills on beer and visit the necessaries. The old BBC theater is packed and the murmur of the crowd, the babbling Babel of nearly three-thousand, puts on its own kind of show.

     "...You could have been Adonis and Casanova rolled into one, Balthazar, and if it wasn't what she wanted, she'd still have run. I know because I've done exactly that, in the past."

     She smiles at you, in quiet sympathy and affection, her hand lifting from your knee to cradle the top of your head. "You need to let her go," Tanira says gently.

     I really just don't need this. The West Girls should come with warning labels affixed to them...

     "Actually, it seems like I was having a perfectly good picnic in the middle of a city park, with a nice girl, and then all of the sudden it was fucking Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. That's what it feels like, uncle. And the girl's chosen the birds over me. So at this point, I really just don't care."

     When he exhales, it's like the wind has blown through and taken his breath away. He says nothing for a moment. He sits there.

     "Tss," Davydd whispers, "..you're going to burn a hole in my fancy rugs with that temper. Go get some air. Fetch Ani," Davydd pats him on the shoulder. "Tell him it's time for supper."

     "Oes, I'm alright. I'm in love... so there's no hope really, but... I'm not the only one suffering that. You... asked me to call you when it got serious so... here is your phone call..."

     He knows your street so well. He has walked it twenty times or more by now, leaving you gifts in your mailbox and the occasional drawing on the sidewalk. When he approaches it, Balthazar slows the Rover. His fingers lightly brush the palm of your hand as turn signals flash and he pulls over to the sidewalk.

     "I'm not anticipating this show selling out fast," Loki says, and out comes the phone again for another quick note. "It doesn't conflict with any scheduled shows for the band, either. Greek gods interacting with Celtic characters almost sounds interesting now. Not enough that I'd get between the two of you and some Shakespearean bonding."

     "...I think we can ...work around one another. I will be sensitive to what you need with Loki. And... I will just... work around it. Whatever it may be or mean." Balthazar smirks, his hands returning to his pockets. "It's just rock and roll, uncle."

     "Once upon a time..."

     And his eyes go from cinnamon to amber, like the embers of resin popping in a brazier.

     He sets the empty glass aside. "And you still have not said who this person is, this project and this catalyst. Does our... intersection have a name?"

     "Then, by the power vested in me," Balthazar rolls out with a grin as he rises, "I pronounce us band and drummer..."

     In the envelope is a simple note. The revolution begins at eight. Sharply.

     Another day, another dollar - or another ten or twelve books thoroughly researched and discarded as not having what she's looking for, anyway.

     For a week or more, as time in the empire is kept, Balthazar had been in a constant state of Behind and constantly running. A band on the run, he fancied himself, slipping from realm to realm in between gigs and rehearsals, phone calls to a girl, thinking about the girl, and at some point trying to find time to eat and to sleep.

     It was a fantastic night. When the set was done, the last encore given, Balthazar Davies returned to his table to find a boot left behind and a drawing. A glance at the clock confirmed the hour. It's midnight, cinderella.

     Balthazar and Reggie share a look as the woman at the nearby table -- she's not British, Australian perhaps? -- proceeds to unpack her bag at the table. Cell phone, notebook. Who does work in a pub...?

     I'll be expecting you at my location in not more than ten minutes, please. Finish whatever you're doing.