Long sweeping lashes lift their curtains to you, the lavender eyes sparkling in the spreading of his smile, the sunset of the day, and all its deepening delight.

     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.

The feather you hold is my heart,
Plucked from my skin like the petal from a flower.

Let the light dust you like sugar:
I shall melt it into caramel with my tongue.

     "... I have chained my every dancing atom into a divine seat in the Beloved's Tavern. What I have learned... I am so eager to share..."

     You are feeling her... aren't you... her memories, the things she felt and saw. He looks to the plaque, to his words there. To the woman who is truly only memory now. He expects only the jewelry he buried with her remains. Perhaps, even those diamonds have let go of this earth...

     "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."

     You feel her lips spell your name, for there's no sound behind it. It is like the sign language of the deaf and blind, spelling it out from one touch to another. And the small hands clutch, fingers tightening, and she sighs. I surrender...

     The white fringe lowers as she looks down to begin picking loose the plastic seal on the bottle. "Open it and find out. Or maybe Miss White," her, "will kill Captain Crimson," you, "with a bottle in the living room..."

     "This is sounding suspiciously like a goodbye," he murmurs, humor lacing the serious tone of his voice.

     "How could Davydd trust me - even if he wants me still? How could I trust myself?"

     Paolo looks to the passengers in glances timed with the stroke of the oar, in rhythm of the motions that make the gondola sail forward. "Ah... so you, too, are bound by a destiny, a fata," Paolo says.

     Falcon straightens, rubbing your shoulder. "The heart is like that," he whispers, "...blessed and ruined once it has known Divine beauty. Then, it becomes a restless sky hunter."

     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.

     Little poet, so sticking out among the fetished and freaky crowd, a brilliant beacon of purity in a most impure world, you are irresistible.

     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.

     "Goddammit," Edward says, sitting up from the bench near the Sforza fountain by his room. "Does this place ever shut up?" He glances at his watch, then shoots a look over where the end of prayer is being sung, far across buildings and walls.

     .... When I came to stop below a hill that marked one end of the valley that had pierced my heart with terror, I looked up toward the crest and saw its shoulders already mantled in rays of that bright planet that shows the road to everyone, whatever our journey...

     "You must make this happen, Edward of Blois. He listens to you. You request a meeting, one will be called. The rest of us do not always have this luxury. I have spoken with Girault. I have met with Lorenzo."

     I am heading into the Caliph's Land. Or to quote the Unnamed Poet of the tome at my feet, that sun-kissed land, rich in dark-eyed girls, and water that springs silver from the golden ground. I have never been to this part of Espana. Only the vineyards of Castile, the exclusive villas of Madrid, the discos of Barcelona.

     "Have you," he grins, looking down between you, "...wondered of my own instruction and whether you...could take lessons from the Old Ones?"

     Ian grins even brighter. "A true traveler," he chimes, delighted with the prospect and serendipity of it all. "And you have ended up in our little part of the universe."

     There is something... a sound... like wind in the leaves. Perhaps the hissing of a serpent. Laughter? "Joy and sadness..." The consonants linger. "Well, musician, if you can bring true pleasure to Misfortune Himself, then I will grant you the wish of one secret's revelation..."

     Kit lifts his cup in a little salute to you. "Purity... that is something we can aspire toward, hmm? Some choose purity, others truth, others honor. We all have an ideal that we chase, like birds chasing after a comet. But it is the effort, I think, that is rewarded. Not the capture..."

     We all have our sorrow. We all have our joys. We have our reasons to smile and our reasons for tears. The Song of Solomon still rings so true. I was once a poet, too. I wrote psalms. But in the ash and in the fire of the birth and death of stars, I have not had a moment to do so since. Not since the time of David of Israel. Strange. Why did I let that go? To whom did I surrender it...

     "A poet voyeur," William chuckles, and he lifts the glass to his lips, another sip of Bordeaux. "Tell me, would you be sitting in the corner singing my praises as I sinned, or would you, like some poets, have to experience the ...inspiration as a participant?"