Hola, Salve, and Ho  Reader:

This is my second piece, second chapter.  I think, the second of five, but we shall see about that.  My first bit was written in a spirit of humor, but the second?  Well, you shall see. 

I must say, after my first reviews I was practically bouncing off the walls with giddiness, happiness, and even, if I may say it, pride.  While this is my first fanfic, I write a lot.  As things stand, however, I share very little of it.  To get such a positive response, even from a few people, is very…what?  Nice? Encouraging? Thanks, anyway.  If in the course of reading, any person has a question, email me.   I'll email back and try to answer it the best I can.  *Laugh* Why ever do I paint myself this way?

Please review.

The nameless are mine, the rest are not

~KYRE

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II.  A Lesson in Time

Here I am again. 

Another chapter

In the story

But

To whom do I belong?

I am merely a part,

I know

But part of what?

Am I the disappointing ending?

Like the flesh of the dead, the wind wrapped around the skeletal trees.

It was now November, and the world had just finished dying.  As such, it was only cold enough to be a new corpse. 

It was darker earlier now, which Risika liked.  As of late, the daylight was becoming more difficult to stomach; a disadvantage of age and a cost of power.  In this era  she had found herself falling into deeper and deeper sleep, devoid not only dreams, but now memories as well. 

It was so cold.

Not the chill of the skin or bone that touched the living but a consuming winter of the soul.

The passion of her once sharp and vengeful spirit was embittered in it, buried, like her body wasn't.

She was quite the cynic these days.

It was a Saturday night, and the Full Beaver Moon was managing to slip through the tinted windows of Las Noches.  Who know how it could do what sunlight could never accomplish.  It was merely a shadow of power, after all, a weak, gray note in the symphony of the cosmos. 

Yet

Somehow it was capable of cutting as a knife, sharp as silver in her eyes. 

Risika looked away.

The crowd was thin, the people empty, the room half full. 

She was sitting at the bar, spinning a bottle of dark glass slowly when he entered.  Dark haired, swaggering, as if drunk, silhouetted by a dry aura, he came.  He had not the grace of her people, but he was of her kin. 

A stranger here. 

He took a black bottle and sat himself beside the Ageless.  He did not open it. 

Risika turned herself away from him and the window.  As the moon whispered to her of pain, so did he:

"What does the future hold?"  He asked her hoarsely. 

Time stopped to embrace the two of them.  The rest, the rest of everything, didn't matter; Not then, not to them

"Nothing.  She has no arms."  The words came out curt, a warning.  She would not suffer herself to speak with ones like him.  It was as if she knew what he was before he himself could find the name.

"We cannot continue as we are. We are our own Fenris."  His words should have been impassioned, yet they were strained, as if overused; tense, like his shoulders.  He was like so many of so few.

She whipped around to face him, his tired and demanding eyes. 

"There will never be another way," she said, dismissing the moment, the man, the matter, and the moon.

There was a pause.

Then.

He slammed his bottle straight down on the counter;

One quick motion.

It condensed.

Glass sprayed.

The bottle was empty.

Time resumed, but the people did not.

He faced their eyes and their silence as he left, shadowed coat trailing behind.

And words:

"Sic transit gloria mundi."

He was gone.

Enough of deaf ears, dear reader.  The quest is hopeless, yet the dream is real.  Who are the dreamers?