As summer bled into fall, Newport cooled and dimmed, hot afternoons waning quicker into the evening tide as the fog rolled up on the shore. The tourist population, having slowly lost intrigue and finding attraction in warmer destinations, began to depart. The docks prepared for winter's coming cool; they hauled in the whiskey and wine as the tall ships took to the ocean for more inviting beaches. The people of Newport slowly exhaled and let out their guts again -- the magic was gone, idle until another warm season.


The park in the center of Thames and Broadway whispered in the shell of Ambrose's ear. He was not a creature of summer; he was a musty and antiquated thing, more suited for colder, harsher seasons. Here, in the shadow of the great oaks where the witches of Newport were hung, he was better placed; here, in the shadow of Diabholtz's blood.


Myth and history blended together and spoke to im as he sat on the old bench, regaled him in tales of old which he had not only heard before, but seen so long ago. Experienced. He was a man within death, after all, entranced and encompassed by it --


All at once, Ambrose was no longer alone.


A plain man sat beside him on the bench, undisturbed by Ambrose's pensive nature. The Elder cut a sharp look aside with cobalt eyed, looking toward him; the other smiled quietly, more thoughtful than friendly. "You look like a man lost in his own head," he suggested mildly, but not innocently.


"Not lost," Ambrose reassured, offering a smile that nearly bridged polite; he briefly reflected upon how much more believable that smile once was.


The other man chuckled, looking past his new companion toward the old oak. "Are you certain? This place -- it has a tendency of losing people."


"Does it?" He sounded bored by the concept of being treated with a tale of what he already knew: witches and heretics.


"Oh yes," the other said. "Before you or me there was the witches of Newport; before that, savages and the heretics that slayed them. That's not where it all began though." When Ambrose didn't reply, the man was inclined to continue, even if it was not reassuring.


"Before the Europeans came with their guns and horses and acted as mortal gods over the lands, the Native Americans breathed life into this soil. They spoke to the earth and she was kind; she birthed corn and root and berry. They were her children, just like the foxes, birds, and plants -- they were her people.


"There was one native among them by the name of Quehotep. He used to sit by this very shore and watch the ocean roll in and out again, in and out. He dreamed of strange things. He wished to leap past the ocean and explore the lands beyond it; he daydreamed of seeing the great mother, flying the backs of seagulls. He would talk with the fox and coyote, but they would say nothing; he would speak with the rabbit and raven but they, too, had no reply.


"But one day the great mother heard him and saw him out on the shore. She said to her children: 'Bring Quehotep to see me.' And so the fox spoke to him and said: 'Come, Quehotep, the great mother wishes to see you.' And the Raven said: 'Come, Quehotep, the great mother wishes to see you.' So the Fox and the Raven took him to the shore where the seagull's gathered around him and he flew to the great mother.


"'Quehotep,' she said to him. 'Why do you stare at the sea? Why do you lose your way in your thoughts? Have I not provided everything you desire?'


"'I wish to see as you do. I wish to speak to the trees and beasts. I wish to help and watch as you do.'


"The great mother thought on this. Quehotep has always been a good child, mischievous and troublesome from time to time, but still with great good in his heart. And so she sent him back here, to the shore, as Trickster -- the first of the Native American spirits."


The man looked at Ambrose again. "I'd like to think that's why people lose themselves here. Everything starts somewhere. Doesn't it, Lucien?"


Lucien.


It was a shock to Ambrose system he couldn't ignore, like cold hands reaching inside him, strangling whatever life was left in him. Changed. He gagged on nothing, hunching over and retching air; he shook as if the greatest sickness held him. Lucien. A name he had not remembered. The name of a man who had died over eight hundred years ago...


The other man stood quietly. "Well," he breathed. "This is a story we'll have to talk of some other time. Just remember: when you lose yourself, be prepared for who finds you." With a last glance at Ambrose, he turned to depart. The Elder could do nothing but struggle in the weight of that name -- the name which haunted him and burned him to the point where he could no longer watch the man walk away.


His name: the chains which bound his soul tight, unable to release.

(Taken from live play with permission from the author. Events occur September 13th, 2007.)

Autumn was coming, just as her son had said. There was a creeping feel of it in the air. Temperatures at night cooling, forcing people to don coats in the evening hours. Silencing the crickets in the fields -- no more chirping. And under all that, beneath the layers of life that stirred above, something more. Something older. A preternatural song, a haunting premonition, of the inevitable. A road that lead to the end of all things. Where she waited.


And where she waited, he came. The Elder did not change with the seasons; he was a creature of antiquity, one well versed in the matters of time.. and how those matters did not 'matter' at all. As Ambrose had promised, he took another visitation to the fae-mother. But today, his mind was distracted and his walk was without aim. His mind was muddled with tails of old which repeated over and over again -- looking for answers that were not there. Like turning the pages of an ancient book with faded ink.


For once, she was the first to speak. "Our visits are becoming more frequent as of late." Her voice, as always, was without tone. A hollow and distant chime underlining her words. Old and rusted copper that had withstood centuries of neglect. Had become forgotten by most. Her ways were old ways, but some remembered them. Some: like Ambrose. There she sat in regal pose, atop her boulder throne with her legs tucked beneath her. Posture rigid and too dark eyes staring out into the nothing beyond her grove.


"Do you protest?" Though he knew she didn't; it could explain the ghost of a smile that came and went again so quickly. "Autumn comes soon. It will be your time again -- and when the trees are bare and the cold is at its zenith.. it will be mine." The cold, dark winters. Ambrose's true domain and when he felt the most at peace. But why did he feel as if he would not see those dark months this time.


It was a question, and though she was bound to answer them, she could taste the truth of the rhetorical. The Linewalker tipped her head slowly, tore her gaze away from the nothing beyond, and turned her dark eyes to regard the Elder with certain stoicism. "You are troubled," she said. A statement of the obvious. Another truth she could taste, and one she responded to in much the same way she did her own true son on several past occasions. "You seek comfort where you will find none."


"No," he murmured. "I do not expect comfort; that is unrealistic." He paused some distance from her bone throne, glancing out to the expanse of the dead. "Though perhaps you have seen his true face more than I -- a man who speaks riddles and knows more about me than myself. Who knows things.. that no man should." There was power in a name, after all, as She knew -- a power which Ambrose did not treat lightly.


Oh indeed. This was a testimony that set her head to tilting just that much further to the one side. She expressed a slow blink, and stared for a long moment, as she was prone to do. She listened to the truth whisper to her through a chill and uncertain breeze. This is what came to her: "You speak not ... of a man."


"No. He could not be a man," he agreed quietly. "But who and what.. I do not know. He speaks my name and binds me; that is land no man would dare to tread." No. It would have to be something -- someone -- much greater. He turned his cold blue eyes back on Faye. "But whom?"


There again was a lingering silence. A pause to consider her words through another slow blink. But this time she righted the posture of her head and turned it aside. To once again look out into the nothing beyond. "The question is not so much whom," she said, "as it is what." Think outside the box, Ambrose.


He frowned quietly, looking down upon the bones which he tread. "He speaks.. of gods and those in between. Tricksters. Every mythology has them. Between gods and mortal men -- Puck, in Greek mythology. Kitsune in Eastern mythology. The Trickster cycle.." He trailed off, looking at her again. "He is either a god, or one of those in between."


Unusual for the face of one eternal to express anything at all, but there was cut the deep, sharp edge of a disapproving scowl. She rose up from her kneeling pose and stood flat on her bare feet atop her decorated stone. Still she looked out into the nothing beyond, but her eyes now were flooded with silver. "Why now?" she asked the air, not him. It was as if for a moment she had forgotten Ambrose was even there. "They crawl and they slither ... up and out of the dust they buried themselves in long ago." Hiss. That noise ended her spoken wonder. Clearly, and perhaps ominously, she was unsettled by ... something.


He continued on, as if her outburst had inspired him. "One of the only mythologies without a trickster.. is the Egyptian mythologies. They are argue, they fight, and they love -- but there is no in-between. No gap between gods and men.." He glanced back at her knowingly.


"In Egypt ... men are made gods," she said, turning her fierce silver eyes with her head to look at the Elder directly. The frown lingered. Carved into the bared edges of her teeth. "There is an in between. There was. Never spoken of, no, but it was there. They ... were there." She tilted her head in pause, blinked slowly. False eyelids clouding the swirl of silver for a small moment in time. "Do you know what they were?"


"No." He met her gaze directly; he found himself drawn, pulled closer toward her as he continued to speak. "Speak to me of them," he whispered, intrigued beyond compare.


The Linewalker lowered into a predator's crouch, touched her fingertips to rock and bared her teeth all the more while she hissed this single word: "Avatar." The wind picked up that single word and howled it to the trees. It whipped about as a forbidden thing and tore leaves from limbs.


"Avatars of gods -- yes. Yes," he murmured, apparently unalarmed by the fae who was crouched there before him, prepared to strike him down, it seemed. The wheels in his mind were turning -- he could see the dots connecting, see the path slowly illuminating before himself.. and he smiled.


Sss. She did not approve of his smile. So the felinoid hiss expressed. For a flickering flash of an instant, her glamour tucked away. A ghostly strobe-vision of a tail lashed, and ears laid back. Her eyes bled silver, and a low growl tumbled dangerously from her throat. Slowly tapering off into an indignant sniff. A haughty lift of her chin, and from there she rolled back to her feet. "Be wary of the gifts you will be offered, Ambrose. It is not an elegant existance, no matter how appealing it may seem."


"There is no gift without sacrifice," he murmured, observing her reactions curiously -- as he might watch an insect under a glass. "Nor an existence that can be claimed as perfect. I will not walk blindly." In fact, the elder refused to. But now.. now he had many, many things to consider.


"Death should not be feared," she said, turning her head again. Calming and soothing the upset breezes as silver fading from her eyes. "It should be embraced. The path you dare consider leads not to salvation, nor damnation. It leads--" She closed her eyes. Quieted. Let a single shimmer trickle out from under her lashes and roll down her cheek. "--to no end." Liquid fell and landed as crystal that rolled down stone.


"I do not fear death, She Who Tends the Dead," he murmured and stepped closer. When he lifted a hand, it was without the leather glove; Ambrose's cool fingers touched her cheek so briefly and so gently that it might not have been there at all-- nor the tear that he had brought from her cheek. "Nor life. My dear friend; I shall promise you not to walk unwisely."


A jewel to shimmer. A jewel to shine. A tear shed solely for him to keep. She tipped her cheek against his hand, cool mist for the imagined moment it might have been there. She turned, then, to return the favor, but to touch her grave-chilled palm to his jaw. To look him in the eye. So close. So softly spoken. "You do good deeds, sweet Father. Let them not speak ill of you when you go. Let them not take your name. Let it not be lost to time ... and the dust of ages ... as mine was."


His smile was quiet, but it was not the strange, insanity-laced thing it normally was; it was thoughtful, and nearly kind. Nearly. "My name is mine and mine alone; no other will take or touch it, fae-mother." Her skin was no colder than his own; dead to dead, ashes to ashes. He curled his fingers around the tear as he spoke. "I do not know your name but I will cherish what is left of it." Whispered softly.


Hers was wan, faint and lined with sorrow. A smile reserved for the dead and the memories they left behind. "My name ... is gone." Taken from her. Lost to time and the dust of ages, as she had said. She took back her hand and turned aside. Put a short distance back between them in her pause for words. Now that the matter was settled, there were others to consider. "Will you tell him?"


"But your tears are well-kept, dear friend." As it would be; Ambrose would keep it close to him for as long as he was able. "Perhaps. I am.. tempted to let him believe I have passed. Will pass. He does not need me in his life any longer.." The Elder trailed off, glancing into nothing himself.


"That may be ... for the best." And this left her with a dilemma. A complication in her programmed essence, the old ways that bound her. "You know ... I must speak truth." Neither a statement nor an inquiry, but she made it both all at once. "If he seeks it from me... Unless..." Of course, there were always loopholes.


"Do what you think is best," he murmured quietly. "Riddles or truth. All lead to the ending. He is persistent." Ambrose sighed softly and began to move aside. "We shall see.."


She dipped a respectful, and perhaps even obedient, nod. "As you wish." Ambrose stepped away, and she curled back down upon her rock. Tucked her legs up beneath her and turned her eyes out to watch the path of the sun as it crept into the west. "I hope ... this is not our last meeting." Though she sounded apathetic and monotone, she was sincere.


"As do I, She Who Tends the Dead," he whispered quietly as he walked toward the west. "As do I."


She let those be their parting words. Lined perhaps with sorrow, and something more. A deeper respect and admiration that drifted in the air as cold wind on a fading spring-time afternoon.