Starfire dreamed that she was travelling down a long, dark tunnel, towards a distant light.

There was no sound, but she could see by the dim light of occasional torches that the walls were hung with tapestries and oil paintings. Starfire peered at the pictures as she passed. They were powerfully and skilfully rendered, but all were ghastly and sad beyond expression. One showed a woman standing at night on the shore of a raging sea, holding up a torch and staring in desperate anguish at the small figure of a drowning man illuminated by deathly moonlight. Another depicted a mouldering crypt in which lay the contorted bodies of a boy and a girl no more than Starfire's age, freshly dead: beside the boy lay a phial of poison, while the girl's hands still clutched the hilt of the dagger in her heart. In a third picture, on a bleak hilltop beside the corpse of a huge dragon, a man was shown casting himself upon the blade of a dark sword, while in the background, tiny and far away, the body of a golden-haired girl could be seen half-submerged in a foaming river.

As she proceeded along the dark tunnel, Starfire began to feel unnerved by the macabre images. She hurried on into the light.

Now she was in the forest again. There was an eerie stillness among the fruit-laden trees, and from somewhere she could hear the sound of heavy breathing. She began to walk, stepping as quietly as she could. She followed the sound until she found its source: a large bulk of scaled flesh with webbed wings folded over it, which rose and fell raggedly as it breathed. It was a dragon. Starfire's heart panged with pity as she saw the creature's eyes had both been pierced by arrows.

"You poor thing," she said, and was about to approach it when a new sound brought her up short: a rumbling and crashing, not like machinery but like a heavy animal racing through the forest, sweeping aside foliage as it came. Starfire turned around...

Coming towards her was an enormous lion, several times the size of a natural creature, reined and bridled by a strange figure. The rider was large in form, but with the pudgy body of an infant. Stubby wings protruded from his back, and between them a quiver full of arrows was strapped. He was blindfolded, but somehow Starfire had the impression that his eyes were fixed upon her.

In terror of the monstrous lion, she tried to fly, but realised she had forgotten how. She was reduced to backing away from the beast and its rider, trying pathetically to shield herself with her arms, until her back collided with a tree, and there was nowhere left to retreat to.

"Go away!" she cried desperately. "Leave me alone!"

The winged child laughed, a horrible, sickening sound, heavy with false sweetness. He drew an arrow, and fitted it to his bow.

"This shaft will make you mine," he said to her, mockery in his voice. "Forever."

He raised the bow, drew it back, and took a second to enjoy Starfire's terror before firing.

Starfire gasped in agony as the arrow impaled her, slicing into her just below the belt of her skirt and pinning her against the tree. Even through a terrible pain the like of which she had never felt before, her mind swam with mingled disbelief and horror at the sight of the arrow sticking out of her. It looked wrong, obscene; she wanted to remove the alien thing from her body even more than she wanted the pain to stop. Reflexively she clutched at the shaft, and pulled. But it was too slippery to grasp.

Dazed, she looked up at the lion-rider, and saw that he had unwrapped the bandage covering his eyes, and was writhing with pleasure at the sight of her suffering.

"Why do you wish to hurt me?" she managed to say, with difficulty.

"Because you are good, and beautiful, and you deserve to spend the rest of your life weeping," he hissed, and, though her vision was blurred by tears, she thought she saw that the child's eyes were hooded like a serpent's, and a thin, forked tongue flickered between his lips.

Her vision blurred completely into bright nothingness...

# # # #

... and then, as it cleared, a golden-skinned figure swam into view. With a chill, she saw it was the same figure: a blindfolded, winged child wielding a bow and arrows. But this one was larger and deathly still: it was a golden statue, standing before an altar whereon tapers burned. Around the statue's feet, a carven, gilded dragon circled, biting its own tail. Light streamed in from a high portal. The air was cool and clean.

Starfire was kneeling on a marble floor, hugging herself tightly around the middle. The arrow was no longer protruding from her body, and the deep, stabbing pain it brought had eased somewhat. But still she ached terribly.

A tall woman wearing a veil over her face was standing silently by. She was holding a copper goblet, and seemed to be regarding Starfire closely. Starfire looked up at her, wondering if she would speak, but for the moment she was silent.

"Where am I now?" Starfire asked her, somewhat tremulously.

"You are in the Temple of Cupid, but the god is abroad tonight. Allow me to welcome you instead."

The woman's voice was clear and melodious; not loud, but commanding.

"Is that Cupid?" Starfire said, looking at the statue. The woman nodded. "Then I do not wish to be in his temple. He..." Starfire stopped, unsure what to say.

"There is more than one kind of Cupid. Wise men have even claimed that there is more than one type of Venus – although for my part I think all are reconciled in the nature of the One. Drink this; it will heal your wound."

She handed Starfire the copper goblet. It was full of clear, bright water, from which a delicate perfume wafted. Starfire looked at it doubtfully, but the ache in the core of her being was too deep to ignore. She raised the goblet to her lips and drained it.

As she drank deeply of the scented water, somewhere far-distant a heavenly voice began singing: "Iam redit et virgo, redeunt Saturnia Regna...". The words made new and different tears brim in Starfire's eyes, though she did not know what they meant.

"I do not understand," she said plaintively. "What do the words mean, please?"

"They are a promise, star-maiden; a promise that wounds shall heal, and tears be wiped away. It is the promise you made long ago, and keep every day of your life."

Starfire wiped the tears from her eyes, feeling her strength returning and the pain in her body fading. As she became aware of the feeling, she found herself floating off the ground again. The statue of Cupid, and the dragon around its feet, seemed to smile at her.

"Thank you," said Starfire. "I feel very much better."

"You are whole again," replied the woman. "Now rise up with me into the darkness, where you shine brightest."

There was a sensation of rising; the temple passed away, and they were standing in the vacuum of space. Starfire could taste its comforting, insulating cold around her; see the stream of infinitesimal star-cast photons gently bursting greenly in her eyes; feel the breeze of the solar winds flowing, and the tiny stabs of gamma rays, quasar-born, prickling on her skin. Ultraviolet radiation suffused her, crackling through her body, imbuing her with the familiar strength she had known since childhood.

"The most hostile environment known to mortals, star-maiden," said the woman, "yet to you, a place of life unconquered. With you, the darkness shineth as the day; the night is light around you."

"I know I am dreaming," said Starfire. "Yet all this seems real. Is it more than a dream?"

"Yes."

"Then who are you?"

"There is a force which reconciles all things that are. That is who I am, star-maiden. Your journey among these stars has brought you to the place where I dwell in mortal earth: the forest where you now lie sleeping. There is providence in this."

"What do you mean?"

"The forest is dying: there is a worm at its heart. You shall crush his head beneath your heel, and fulfil the oldest prophecy: all things shall die – the serpent, too, shall die – yet all things shall live again through love. Look."

She gestured, and as she did so the darkness around them became newly visible, illuminated by bright new stars that bloomed freshly in every region of the sky, their beams intermingling and suffusing all space with a joyous, blazing aether that was somehow beyond vision.

"Do not fear the darkness, for it lives – yes, and loves. That is what I have come to say to you, princess of starlight: fear nothing, and embrace the darkness. In time, you will see my face and understand."

# # # #

Abruptly the dream-vision vanished. Starfire woke among the forest grass, and found the dawn of a new day rising.