To Walk Through a Dream Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven With Wavering Footsteps Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Stone Song Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three A Tale of Winter Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Destiny Inescapable Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Epilogue The Cycle's Continuing Beginnings Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Two Spirits Akin

Beginnings (III) Chapter Nine She acknowledged him with a slow nod and the whispering of his name. "Kheperu." He arranged his cloak about him as he sat down beside the low bed and sent his voice into her mind. "It has been a long time." Again the slow nod. He could sense the pain in her through the link of their minds. "You have found me. For whom is this quest? What task do you seek now?" She studied his face silently, sending the essence of her thoughts without words. She was aware he already knew the answer to this question, and she resented that he was asking it just to force her to put it into words. Kheperu's expression remained unchanged even as he felt her anger, and he formed his reply calmly into words in her mind. "I know, yes, and I do not know. We *both* need to hear the answer." The anger died down slowly and she relaxed into the bed again, fighting her own pride just to make her answer conscious, let alone in words. "No task. No one is asking anything of me. This one quest does not belong to anyone else. It is mine." He urged her silently on, then saw she needed to gather strength just to ask the question. They waited together in silence as she gathered her thoughts, and he was surprised to see a look of mixed pain, sadness, and fear distort her usual expression. "A year ago......there was ....." She stopped, feeling the words out, calming herself. A few scattered thoughts accompanied with a sense of horror racing through her mind caught his attention. I killed her....how could I....?! ....no...! He felt her mind push away from the memory's intensity, trying to reshape it into something comprehensible. Her words came again at last, this time hoarsely aloud. "You remember...some years ago I was hunting .... A creature..." he felt the sense of horror flash through her again "I finally caught it, here. But it was.....I don't know. I can't..." She stopped, unable to continue. Realization slowly crept in on him as he connected her words to the images and fear he could see in her mind. "You *do* know. You knew what it was the instant you saw it. But you can't stand to face the knowledge....." He looked to the floor, feeling helpless. "Can't stand to face the knowledge...." He looked up as she repeated his words in a whisper, then carried on, trembling slightly. "Couldn't stand to face her eyes......I can't....it can't be.....I killed her. How could I kill her?!" Her voice was emerging from a whisper to a pained sob. "I looked into her eyes and saw....!" She turned to him with the look of a frightened animal. "But it was. I know what I saw. How could I have killed her?!? Knowing......knowing who she was.....knowing who I could have been....." Her voice died away as she sank into the bed again. Kheperu's eyes glowed faintly gold in the darkness. "But you're *not* her. You never were. She was only a might-have-been, a reflection. She was not you." Rayven sighed faintly, whether from relief or exhaustion he could not tell. Kheperu rose and placed his hand on her forehead. "It's over now. She was not you, is not you, and never will be. What you see in your reflection is not always the truth of here and now. You are not linked to her, you are free." He watched her eyes close and her breathing slow, and gathering his cloak about him he left the tent. On the night of the Feast of Fools, swirling colours and lights and dancing through Paris above her, the calm of Marya's stone pulsing below her, the DreamWalker slept. ~*~ The End...Has Only Yet to Begin... ~*~ [A/N: Translations: I hope my Egyptian has been accurate. I don't really know Egyptian, but the what little I've used here is from a good translation of the Book of the Dead. Kheperu (Xeperu)= the transformation, derived from the god Xepera, deity of the rising sun, reincarnation, death into life, passage, and transformation. Represented by the scarab. Ba-en-neseni= soul-of-storms in the sky Sebaut= the door Khut (Xut)= the horizon]