Lost Beyond the Cellar Door

I had to admit it: I was nervous.

I was sitting out front of my residence on the stairs leading up to the front doors. I had been sitting there for about an hour, and my hands were frozen blocks of ice that could attest to it, but anything was better than sitting inside, pacing. I had been a nervous wreck in there, constantly finding myself in front of the washroom mirror to check how I looked. But the glimpses of my pale, anxious face made me flee to my room and stare fixedly at the drawer beside my bed as a desperate urge to breathe in some dust and chill the fuck out became overpowering. She was making me feel crazy. But it wasn't a crush of any kind, I knew that much. Just another kind of crazy that I hadn't quite figured out yet but didn't make me nervous so it was okay. But the mere thought of her was sending my stomach into nauseating spirals, and my hands began to sweat each and every time I thought of her hair and eyes glittering next to me.

John's recital the other night had gone well, I thought to myself desperately as I stared at the rows of streetlamps stretching down the road into the darkness. Their orange glitter was the extension of the maddened, beautiful dream of night, and they shone like century-old sentinels in the dark. He had played Brahms how I thought the composer had meant for his music to have been played: caution and control lain as a deceptive veneer over complete mastery and symbiance with the music. He had left the room in utter silence, while the sponsorship professors found themselves staring helplessly at the vacated piano. John's smile had been brief but telling when I rose to meet him after, and the triumphant carefulness of his gait as he walked beside me had pinned a grin on my lips all night. We had managed to walk home in such a way that did not lend itself to awkwardness, him dwelling most of the time on his musings of my so-called `date' with Teryl. His comments had been lewd, my retorts scathing, and when he retired to his bedroom, some of the old mischievousness in his introspective and weary gaze had returned.

What I wouldn't give to be back there, watching my friend and listening to that heart-stopping music again.

I lifted my hands to smooth through my hair; I had brushed and re-brushed it until my scalp had hurt, I had tried putting it into a low-lying ponytail before deciding it made me look too much like a poetry-reading idiot and letting it down again in despair. After an hour of agonizing over what shirt to wear, I had decided on a simple black t-shirt that had buttons up the front and conveyed a toned-down military air that went, I hoped, not too abysmally with my plain black cargoes. A black leather belt completed the ensemble and kept me from the fear that the loose-ish pants might sail down around my ankles in the middle of the night, and it was lined with silver, blunted studs that glittered cold in the night.

The outside was marginally better: the first flakes of snow were falling in tiny, whisking flurries through the parking lot. I watched numbly as they threaded their ways through and under each streetlamp spotlight, the tiny clouds seeming to dance from one sulfuric halo to the next in a calenture of wildest ecstasy. The temporary made eternal through deepest beauty.

That strange thought stayed with me as I stared up into the sky, trying to shake myself of the jitters, and I felt, not for the first time that night, that there was a lot I had been missing out on, but somehow it would soon all be rectified. I felt excited, but also apprehensive. I felt inspiration, but also trepidation. I felt a million things, all of them beyond my capability to name. But most of all, I felt the earth beneath my feet in a way I never had before, and the air in my lungs seemed to be made of starlight as I stared up at the sky. The snow whirled around me in tiny, sparkling eddies as I exhaled shakily, and my breath intermingled with their mindless dance as the night air breathed and swept them both away. I seemed to be watching the world with new eyes, and it kept me silent with its resplendence as it lived itself before me, through me, and for me.

And as those words materialized in my head, a blinding flash of light veered across my eyes. I blinked and lifted a hand to shield them, the sound of a heavy diesel motor rumbling like some sort of mini, localized earthquake at my feet. And as I struggled to see behind the glow, I saw what appeared to be some kind of a pickup truck with the cab interior lit. A glittering mane of copper red hair leaned out of the open driver's side window, and a mist filled the air as a voice hailed me through the night air and beaming headlights.

"Hi! Sorry I'm late! Get in!"

Her voice, Irish and glad, sailed through the air cheerfully, as though it were in the middle of day in a warm, sunny place, and I stood up slowly, still half-blinded by the headlights and the visions of snow and streetlamps. Making my way around to the passenger side of the truck -orange, I saw now, and heavily rusted--, I yanked open the door that screamed in rusted, aged complaint, and slid myself in.

"Cold enough to freeze an egg on the sidewalk, hey?"

Pulling the door closed, I looked over at her and stared. The vision ripped my heart out. She was beautiful. She was sitting on the gray, ribbed seat as though it were a throne, and the rips in the material that exposed the weathered yellow foam beneath were testaments to her rugged, weird beauty as she sat before me. The heater was on full blast, and it was blowing her hair all around her face, her smile as bright as lake water on a quiet spring morning. Her coat lay draped across the space between us - it was all one seat, and the stick shift was on the floor beside her knee - and the only thing covering her was a simple green shirt that looked far too thin in comparison to my frozen, red-raw hands and the snow spinning outside. It had no sleeves, her shirt, and it clung to her like a second skin that I tried unsuccessfully not to notice. The colour was deepest emerald green, and it made her hair all the more resplendent in the light of the cab as it sparkled red and gold.

"I know, I know. That was a little corny."

She must have mistaken my loss of speech for disgust at her wordplay, and I shook my head, finding that laughter had somehow arrived on my lips.

"Just a little. But in a good way."

I grinned at her for a moment longer before dropping my eyes to the heater in front of me.

"Go ahead," she said cheerfully, inclining her head towards the heater and then looking at my hands. "You look freeze dried."

I laughed again, helplessly, and then covered the heater with my hands. As the rusted, dusty vents pounded surprisingly wicked heat onto my tingling fingers, I heard the sound of the shift being moved and the truck lurched as she moved it into reverse. I was glad she hadn't asked why I had chosen to wait outside instead of inside like a warm, sane person, and I glanced at her again as she placed an arm on the back of the seat and turned her head to watch behind her as she backed the truck up. She had on black pants, I could see, and what seemed to be her choice of footwear as the Doc Martens lay on the floor, one foot on the gas pedal.

"So I figure we should get some supper first, before we apply ourselves to the strenuous task of sightseeing. What do you think?"

I shrugged and nodded. The air in the truck smelled like newly harvested Christmas trees, and I breathed it in hungrily as she reached the end of the parking lot and hit the brakes as she wrenched the gearshift into drive, reaching up to turn the cab light off to plunge us into darkness.

"Sure," I said. I wasn't that hungry; not these days, anyway. "Where would you like to go?"

She rested her hands on the wheel and grinned at me, shrugging her shoulders elegantly and winking.

"You're the guide. Where's good?"

"Around here? Nowhere," I said truthfully, and she laughed gaily, sending glitter and merriment into the air.

"So then how about I make you spaghetti at my place?"

I grinned in spite of myself again, and a blush began to fight a battle onto my cheeks, one that I was assuredly going to lose.

"Enchanting," I said, even as a little snake of nausea slithered in my stomach at the thought of food.

But she was laughing and the truck was moving, and I closed my eyes against the sick feeling and concentrated on breathing in the wood smoke and silent forest air...

"It'll be far from enchanting, though it's nice of you to say. It'll be a bit of a drive, though, I hope you don't mind."

I watched as she pushed the gear into second as we pulled out onto the highway that the campus straddled. Her large, expressive hand lay absently on the grip of the shift as the other seemed to effortlessly guide the steering wheel. The sound of the heater was a roar in my ears as we sped down the asphalt; the Don Valley loomed dark and wild below and to our lefts. The highway wound around it like a cement and metal coil, a smattering of glittering head and taillights setting the night aglow before us.

"No, I don't mind," I said softly as I stared out the window, watching the yellow and white markers on the road become soaring things of flight as they whipped like eagles below us and out of sight. I could feel her looking at me but I didn't care; the night was too vast and the sky was a tangle of stars and fog as faceless cars poured past us with muted whispers and gleaming flanks.

"You must live off the campus, then," I said needlessly, and she nodded as the flash of her teeth glittered white in the dark between us.

"Yeah. In the very west part of the city, close to the Old Mill subway station. My brother and I have a place out there."

"Must be nice," I murmured and sunk further into the seat, my hands finally thawed by the heater. I lay them in my lap as I watched her, seeing her eyes flicker as she watched the cars passing by. "I hate res."

"It's not bad. From what I've heard of res though, where I live is a palace. Is your home outside of Toronto?"

I shook my head.

"No, it's in the heart of it. It's just better for me to live on campus."

Better? Not quite the right word. Easier would be nearer the mark. I refrained from mentioning that my house lay on the prestigious Bridal Path, and that if any dwelling resembled a palace, mine was the one. The extravagance of the place was overwhelming, and its dozens of unused rooms filled me with a sense of emptiness so complete that being there was a pain unto itself without any of the other, equally discomforting, extenuating circumstances.

My father being one of those.

He dwelt there like a god in some kind of kingdom, all pale jade eyes and cold expressionless voice that was heavily laden with British upbringing and arrogance, but as empty as the air that moved like forgotten memory through the house. He had the long black hair that he had bestowed, it seemed rather begrudgingly, on both his sons, and it was as soft as a raven's wing and just as dangerous as it poured like black ice down his back. He wore clothes of subtle expense; the richest fabrics in only cream or gray tones, and the scent he trailed on the air was high-powered and luxurious, fabrications of a personality he maybe thought he possessed.

I had never seen it, anyway. Ever since her death, my beautiful golden-haired green-eyed mother, his presence had been a completely obligatory one. He had watched me through a thin veil of contempt as I utterly failed to be worthy of him time and time again throughout my childhood years, and the disgust had deepened in the short years before I left for university. Her death had not only left him cold, it left him spiritually sterile and bereft of anything that could pass for human emotion in my eyes. The only thing left, and the only thing that burned in those blank, androgynously beautiful jade eyes, was total and perfect detestation.

Jacob, my father's younger, more perfect twin, had been the one to live out my father's visions and clear cut ideas of the `whole boy', and I had been a careless faded shade with my mother's hated emerald eyes and a name that she had saved just for me. It was a gentle name, infused with magic and hopefulness, and she had called me it lovingly until her last, breathing day. But it now only served to fire up deepest dislike in my heart as I heard it uttered on his cold, sneering lips. He used it as a ruse against me, I knew, and it only seemed to fuel his iron-clad belief that I was a thief of oxygen in his rigidly controlled, perfect world.

`The whim of a simple, careless mind,' he spat at me from the door to my bedroom, as I lay stunned against the wall, blood pounding like drums in my ears. He had just bodily thrown me against it after finding me in the washroom with my mother's old eyeliner pencil, applying it inexpertly but determinedly around my pain-filled and tear-laced eyes. He had snapped it like the last promise of angels in the middle of the silently watching washroom, and pulled my by the hair through the hall and into my room where a clump of it lay on the carpet between us like a dead thing, an angry red weal scarring his delicate, slender hand.

`Don't call her that,' I had sputtered as the tears ran down my cheeks, sending kohl and frenzied rage cascading against my skin and onto my chest.

`If I call her that, it's because I speak the truth, and you have only yourself to blame.'

His voice was quiet and almost inaudible, every tone and nuance controlled, and liquid nitrogen dripped off every syllable as he stared at me. Danger shrieked in the softness of his voice, every word the glitters of moonlight off a swinging sword tip while he advanced on me. I hunched up against the wall as he approached, and I knew my first taste of true terror as his impossibly beautiful and sexless features loomed up like a pale ghost in the dark. His hair sparkled like blood-covered stones in the waiting night and I stared into his withering, blistering eyes as he lowered his voice one more time.

I will raise no son that I call my own to be a faggot,' he hissed, his eyes becoming pools of annihilation in the dark. I should have known from the start that only a name like that could create the abomination that you are, but you will not further the insult by WEARING MAKE-UP!'

The last words were screamed so loudly that they seemed to not contain words but instead the deepest and most ancient of fury, and then a hand came flashing out of nowhere to crack across my face. It was a lashing pain that made me cry out in spite of myself, and as I whimpered and tried to scramble away, he knelt on my crotch and pinned me there with his knee as he landed blow after blow on my face.

Girls scream,' he whispered to me malevolently as I cried out from the skull-shaking slaps, his knee twisting mercilessly into my groin. Little-girls-always-fucking-scream. But you're going to have to stay with me through this, Evantine, you're going to have to stay awake so that you'll always remember who you are and why it is all you'll ever be.'

And I did. I stayed awake, through all of it, even when the blood from my nose sprayed up onto his face and he slapped me all the harder for it. I stared into his eyes as he wielded his silent, splitting wrath, and he never took his eyes off mine as each slap landed. When I felt the swollen ridge of my lip burst open in a torrent of pain, that's when he eased off and stood up, surveying my broken face for a long while. I held eye contact with him for as long as I could, but when blood began to seep into my vision, I could no longer see where he was. I must have lain there for hours, but when my eyes finally cleared, he was no longer there and it was only the silence of the walls and black stains of blood on the carpet that gave any proof to his presence.

I never found the eyeliner. And my father never mentioned the incident again, even after Jacob had left the breakfast table the next morning in a heaving fit of nausea after taking one look at my face. We listened wordlessly to the sounds of his retching in the bathroom as my father drank his coffee and I stared unseeingly into my cereal. When Jacob came back, his face pinched and pale, he excused himself from the table and told our father that he was going to stay with a friend for the next couple of days. Our father said nothing, and I didn't look up as the shadow of Jacob's figure slipped off the kitchen tile and out the front door, the door slamming like a car crashing into the confines of its frame. Jacob never came home after that, and one day his room was empty of everything he'd ever owned. Whether he had come to collect it a day I wasn't there or my father had disposed of it on his own, I never asked.

"Evan?"

I blinked. Turning my gaze from my sightless, inward staring, I trained it on Teryl as she looked at me concernedly, her eyebrows raised and a worried half-smile on her lips.

Whoops.

"Are you okay?"

I nodded and struggled back up into a sitting position, fighting the urge to blush maniacally as I fumbled for words that didn't seem to want to come.

"Yeah. I'm fine.. sorry. I guess I'm a little tired."

She watched me for a second longer before turning her eyes back to the road. We were driving through some darkened back streets now, I saw, the houses lining the sidewalks made quiet and inviting via amber light glowing from curtained living room windows and porch verandas. They were all fairly large, and seemed to have a consistent theme of dark brick with heavy, glass-inlaid double doors. The lawns were well tended and green still, but the fallen leaves added a sort of messy randomness to the uniform landscape that smacked of beauty as they swirled around the houses and asphalt. I watched them skip down the sidewalks and up into the air as we slipped past; flashes of amber and crimson darting like airborne fish in and out of the truck headlights.

"Where did you go?" Softly, quietly. I looked back at her again quickly, but her eyes were still on the road, hands resting lightly on the steering wheel as the houses poured past. The words had been so gentle, so full, and so calm; I had seen the light of snowfall in the stillness of wood, and the quiet softness of new grass as she had said them. I heard her question in the words, but felt them in the silence, and I knew again that she had seen me, but never in a way that I would ever understand.

I sat there frozen for a while, staring out of the window as a new emotion reared up out of nowhere and pummeled me in the chest, tattooing dizzying and incomprehensible words on my heart with each beat. My hands shook as they lay in my lap, but I was powerless to stop them as the truck roared like some sort of feral creature on the road and the glow of her hair shimmered like a beacon in the half light. A sick taste rose in the back of my throat as her words tolled weirdly in my head, and then I realized that the tremors in my hands and head were the whispers of words I had never spoken. Words I had left there in the dark all those years ago as the memory of his face etched itself in the blood staining the silence of my bedroom crimson-black.

I wanted to tell her.

I wanted to tell her of the howling in my heart, the glittering trail of disease forged in the name of inability; the thousand empty things that screamed like first knowledge of pain...

The way they all piled up, each and every one of those things, in sparkling lines of white more perfect than snow; reflected on mirrors and cd cases and shaking hands... Each tiny particle of powder a memory of a darkness deeper than God, and that I breathed in more desperately than air but that always breathed me back and slashed me like razors as they slammed into my brain and ripped apart my consciousness.

And the rage was there, on the tip of my tongue, and the hated middle hours of the night facing empty walls and emptier thoughts wrapped around me like a cloud as I stared helplessly at the road winding like the pattern of inevitability itself beneath our feet. A scream was building, in the bitter void of my mouth, and tears as blinding as sunlight boiled across my eyes as I felt her beside me, her impossible understanding of whatever I was leaving me choked, leaving me humiliated. Where did I go, she asked? And how did she know? I had perfected the art of the expressionless stare, so much so that it sometimes sickened me. Everyone else thought that was all that was there. Just me and my nothingness.

No.

My hair fell like daggers into my eyes as I stared without seeing, and the fear that had held me so close to its poison breast for years beyond understanding reached up with teeth of steel and yanked me back down. From where, I didn't know, but then her words were just words and my face was its careful mask again as I shook the hair out of my eyes to look at her once more. I could smell the essence of wild forests and growing things as I watched the profile of her face, and it threatened to make me dizzy as I breathed it in deeply.

"Just tired," I said, my voice almost at a whisper, and the darkness of the cab was a web that spun around us silently, tugging at my senses with gossamer threads as her pale eyes watched me wordlessly. And the words were never just words, and my masks would always be made of glass and wretchedness as the lie-truth slipped out from between my lips. And I was seeing trees again, and meandering memory, the whole world seeming to pour off my shoulders and land at my feet. I almost lost it then, but out of nowhere she reached out in a moment of impossible strangeness, to touch a hand to my knee. It was a gentle touch, and an instantaneous one that only lasted a second but burned itself into my skin and bone with a painful depth that I knew would last a hundred sleepless nights. Would I always burn?

"If you're tired, we can go back," she said after a moment of silence deeper than cracks in cliff-sides, darkness over starlit waters. And I knew she knew the truth without the meaning, and I had to look away as the gentle neutrality of her voice accepted and absorbed my lie without question. Who was this girl? And why wasn't I jumping out of the truck right now, to hell with the consequences? I should have been rolling at eighty miles an hour down some deserted back street, my coat swallowing dirt and leaves, my head measuring out crimson beats on the leaf-filled sidewalk. Her scream should have followed me like a banshee in the dark, but it should have served her right for invading my head and screwing with my heart.

"Don't worry about it," I said, a little rougher than I meant to. I glanced out of the corner of my eye as her silence loomed up at me, and her eyes were wordless and sensual in the dark as I found her watching me. Her face was as implacable as stone, but her hair was afire with the surreal as we locked gazes and I felt another wave of nausea grip my throat. Don't think about it, I screamed furiously to the emptiness of my head as flickering images of white cloaks and glittering sigils threatened to commandeer.

"We're almost there," she said, and her eyes slipped off mine like so much dust off a towering ledge, the pale irises reflecting the gleaming chevrons on the road as the truck lost momentum and I looked up again. The houses had become smaller, less maintained, but the street still seemed to hold a sort of evidenced magic as the truck rumbled down the middle of the road. The street lamps passed like silent sulfuric sentinels, giving new unearthly life to the motionless cars and recycling boxes that gleamed in obsidian driveways leading up to darkened houses. And then the truck began slowing even more, and I caught the name of the street we began turning onto just as the sign passed crookedly past my window. Aldwych Rd., the sign read, as the green and white reflective letters flashed starkly from the glow of the headlights. The sign was on a droop from one of the screws having been lost, and the rust from the absent screw had leaked its way like a corrosive scar across the letters, obscuring them and yet heightening them. The word stayed with me as Teryl drove down the street, and I stared around in confusion as she stopped in front of a wooden bungalow with an unkempt lawn and a single silver maple tree standing tall and stately in front of the single window. She began backing into the narrow driveway without seeming to have to watch behind her, and in another moment she pressed down on the brake and turned to me with a wide, cheerful smile.

"We're here," she said as she tugged the key out of the ignition - on a plain silver key ring holding several keys, one of which being for the truck - and pushed open her door. A swell of cold, misting air poured into the cab as she jumped out, and the sound of her boots thumping onto the pavement coupled with the wrenching slam of the door as she shut it behind her. I slowly opened my door after sitting dumbly by myself for a moment, not really trusting the ground to hold me up as my boots grazed the cement. But it did, and I maneuvered out of the truck carefully, feeling the night air assail me like a sudden splash of ice water as the darkness welled up all around me. With my feet on the ground and the air in my lungs, I turned to find Teryl. She was already up at the front door, a silver key in the lock and her breath misting in the air. I walked up the slender driveway slowly, feeling the tree murmuring above my head, and seeing its deep and gnarled roots snaking like afterthoughts onto the edges of the driveway, their surfaces much worn and weathered.

The house was simple and pleasant in its minimalist design, and I got the feeling of vague disuse as I waited for Teryl to unlock the simple, black panel door. There was no garden to speak of, except a idle collection of rocks gathered around the base of the house that may have been dumped there for a purpose and then forgotten, or may have been a well-intentioned start at a rock garden that never got finished for some unknown reason. I stared at the rocks as the sound of the key clicked in the lock -something about the stones and the careless way they were strewn; the dim light of the street lamp on the road seemed to be casting impossible beams onto the crystals locked in their dusty casings, for they sparkled like jewels in the dark-and Teryl was holding the door open for me with a smile.

"Thanks," I remembered to mutter as I stepped past her, still staring at the stones, and the warmth of the house distracted me as Teryl stepping in behind me, closing the door.

The warmth, and the smell, was what I would remember later as being the first thing that alerted me to the something-else that had perpetuated the evening like some kind of watching specter since I had sat on the steps of my dorm. The warmth had not been sweltering, or overpowering, but it had a fullness to it that I could not readily identify, but both intrigued and disturbed me as it washed water-like over my frozen skin. I could feel my very pores seeming to relax and become complacent as I stood in the dark, listening to Teryl curse as she searched for the light switch. I breathed in carefully as I stared into the dark, and found myself gripping the wall behind me as that scent poured into my senses, and a million kalidescope colours swirled like liquid paint across my vision. My heart began to pound mercilessly as I fought for air, but the scent was inescapable as cedar and pine softness swept around me like a lover in the stillness.

The Angel, I thought without thinking as the scent sent electric knives down my spine. The scent of the Angel.

And then, with a startling click, her fingers connected with the wall switch, and light flooded the room I suddenly found myself in. And I stared. The lighting was soft and dim, coming from several pot lights embedded in the stucco ceiling, flooding the simple living room with an almost studio ambiance. The walls were white and adornment free, except for a gigantic painting of what looked to be a Celtic cross above the wooden mantle; the same blues and whites making up the pattern as those I had seen on the camera case around Teryl's neck. The painting throbbed like a vision of brightest sky and deepest water in the otherwise neutral setting, and it seemed to watch me like a single, electric blue eye as I tried to drag my gaze off it hurriedly. The fireplace seemed unused, and had a simple cast iron grate in front of it that held no sign of smoke or ash on its latticework gate. The carpet that stretched across the floor was the colour of richest cream and looked about that soft, and it ended at my feet where the hallway gave way to matte stone floor in front of the door. The furniture was spare but effective; a long cherry-wood coloured leather couch stretched along the wall beside the fireplace, and another matching sofa reclined against a window that looked westward and deeper into the road named Aldwych. In the center of the room was a low, glass-topped coffee table, the bamboo frame weaving a crisp pattern against the smoothness of the carpet below. In the center of the table was a dark wooden bowl that was filled with what looked to be tiny chips of broken glass, and they glittered like miniscule, brilliant stars as I stared around in wonder. Candles adorned the mantle piece on either side of the painting, and interspersed between them were what looked to be various bowls filled with a substance I couldn't identify but gave the ledge an almost altar-like air that distracted me for a long moment before Teryl spoke.

"Make yourself at home," she said, and I jumped. She grinned as she moved past me, stepping around me to head into the open doorway to the left of the fireplace, disappearing into darkness. Slowly, as if in a daze, I removed my boots one at a time and lay them carefully on the empty mat beside the door. Shrugging out of my coat, I hooked it on the farthest of the hooks that hung in a row opposite the door, and then stepped into the living room slowly, uncertainly. I felt strangely self-conscious as I stood there, unsure of what to do with myself, the scent of the place driving me insane and my eyes being dragged back time and time again to the painting that glowed midnight and sunrise at me from atop the mantle.

"Come have a seat," I heard Teryl call from what I assumed was the kitchen, the sound of dishes clinking across the room. I crossed the carpet and headed into the doorway, which now was alight. Teryl was in what turned out to be the small but painfully clean kitchen, her back to me as she placed a pot of water on the gleaming porcelain stovetop. In the middle of the kitchen was a small island that had two empty plates with a silver glittering knife and fork lying beside each, and I sat down on one of the two barstools that sat beside the island as Teryl flipped on the element.

"You thirsty?"

I shook my head. I wasn't sure if I trusted myself to drink the water without blacking out, so I declined with a smile that I didn't altogether feel.

"No, thanks," I said, and lay the backpack I had brought with me on my lap. "I brought your books."

She stopped to grin at me almost shrewdly, and I had the amazingly uncomfortable feeling that she knew of my uncertainty. But if she did, she said nothing on it, and merely came to stand beside me as I lay the books on the counter.

"Wow," she whistled as she picked each one up in turn. "Bigger than I thought. When is this due?"

"The end of next week. But don't worry about it. I know everything there is to know about the stories, all you have to do is read the chapters I highlighted."

"Okay. Thanks," she said with a quick grin, and suddenly she was watching me with that look that had the tendency to tug uncalled for, unchecked blushes onto my cheeks, and I looked away again hurriedly.

"Do you live here by yourself?" I asked desperately as her eyes kept watching me and my knuckles began to whiten.

"No, my brother lives here on occasion as well."

I raised an eyebrow as she headed back towards the stove. "On occasion?"

Her laughter was soft and pretty in the quiet of the kitchen. "Yes. He sort of lives in both Ireland and Canada at the same time. We were raised with our grandparents in Ireland, and he was attending the university there with me. But then our mother, who lives here, wanted him to visit her, so he was staying here for a while. I transferred because my grandparents needed to move to a smaller house, and my brother already had a place to stay here. He went back to Ireland to help them with the move because I had to start classes here. So sometimes he's here, sometimes he's not. He's coming back for good at the end of the week, though. You'll get to meet him."

I wanted to ask why, if their mother lived here, their grandparents had raised them, but I decided against it. A sort of strange tightness had come into her voice at the mention of her mother, and it had sent a jarring chord into the room that slightly unnerved me. It had sounded a lot like when I spoke of my father to people, and it sounded awful and almost blasphemous to hear that same sound coming out of her mouth.

"Will he be going to school as well?" I asked after a moment, watching her reach into the cupboard above her head and rummage around.

"At the Conservatory of Music, yes. He plays the violin."

And then she was making a derisive sound, and I watched as she reached for a chair. Kicking myself inwardly and cursing my lack of tact, I jumped up and approached the stove.

"I'm sorry," I said, an embarrassed flush making my neck tingle. "I should be helping you. What do you need?"

She laughed and watched me with those pale eyes as I stood beside her, and she was a vision of splendor in the off-white of the kitchen, her emerald shirt and aurora hair a violence of wildest colour. "You don't need to help. You are my guest. But if you could get the pasta for me, that would be great." She pointed to the top shelf, and I being about two inches taller than her, managed to grab the elusive bag on the hidden slab and brought it down. I handed it to her and she took it with another one of those smiles, and I stayed beside her uselessly as she poured some of the penne rigate into the now boiling water. Side-stepping me, she reached around to the fridge humming beside me, and opened it. I caught a glimpse of several bags of vegetables, and some unidentified jars and cans, one of which she grabbed and put on the counter. I opened it for her, the coldness making my hands smart, and inside was a dark and thick spaghetti sauce that filled the tiny space with a mouth-watering aroma that made me blink.

"It's good, isn't it?" she laughed at my expression, and giggled at my surprised nod. I normally didn't like spaghetti of any kind, but this stuff smelled amazing, and I found myself actually really hungry for the first real time in weeks. My stomach began to burn right then and there as I breathed it in, and I felt a weakness surge up my legs as I put the can jar back on the counter.

"My brother's. The last one he made before he left. I can't cook worth shit. I burn everything. He was always the brainiac of the family. He does stuff without even trying, and does it well."

I couldn't help grin as I tried not to sway, thinking of my own brother and his gentle, effortless ways.

"I know what you mean," I murmured as she stuck a wooden spoon into the penne-filled water and began to stir.

"Have a seat," she said, and motioned towards the island. "It'll be ready in a second."

The smell of the sauce was overpowering, and my hands were shaking as I sank gratefully onto the empty stool. I watched her in silence as she stirred the pasta, transferring it after a few moments into a colander I hadn't seen in the sink, shaking out the droplets of hot water. She tipped the noodles back into the stainless steel pot and then dumped out the thick, viscous sauce onto the penne. She stirred vigorously, dropping the jar into the sink, steam rising thick and billowing as she turned and approached the island. With quick, deft movements, she ladled out the confection into the awaiting plates, and placing the pot back on the stove with the heat turned off, she sat down beside me.

"Eat up," she said as she breathed in the steam wafting up over her face, a delighted grin on her rose-coloured lips. "You look like you haven't eaten in a week or two."

And as I looked up quickly at that remark, she just as quickly lowered her eyes and began to spear the penne with her fork, energetically -and somewhat wolfishly-shoveling the pasta into her mouth. I watched as the steam mingled with the shimmering strands of her hair, and the light above us played fire and shadow with the highlights as she ate. I was almost transfixed as I watched her, but the smell of the food in front of me was dizzying, and I lowered my fork to the plate cautiously. I couldn't quite tell if the roiling of my stomach was due to hunger or nausea, but the smell of the sauce was just too good and I decided to try a little. I caught some on my fork and raised it to my lips, letting the noodles rest on my tongue as the steam enveloped my mouth and my stomach roared in hunger.

For the first time in weeks, I was positively starving. The taste was beyond description. It was simple, but amazing; the heartiness of it almost too much, but the fragrant spices not enough. I couldn't tell if it was beef or chicken mingled with the green peppers and onions, but whatever it was tasted like ambrosia as I swallowed. And we ate in silence together in the solidness of the little kitchen, the only sounds being the forks as they touched the plates and Teryl's little sighs of satisfaction as she obviously relished her meal.

"This is really good," I couldn't help but say as I finished my second last mouthful, and Teryl winked at me as she stood up and put her plate in the sink.

"Told you. If it weren't for him I'd be a skeleton. Would you like some more?"

I shook my head. "No. I'm good. But thanks."

She nodded decisively, and then reached up above the fridge to grab one of the plastic containers that lay on top of it. I watched as she began to spoon the rest of what was in the pot into the container, the sides of the plastic going foggy with steam. I finished my plate and then got up to place mine with hers in the sink, turning on the water. Reaching for the sponge beside the faucet, I grabbed the bottle of dish soap on the counter and squeezed some of the yellow liquid onto the sponge. Carefully placing the plates under the stream and wiping them with the sponge, the remainder of the sauce whirled away on a current of hot water and soap suds, and it was only after I finished rising them that I became aware of Teryl's stare.

"What?" I asked, as I placed the dishes in the dish rack beside the sink.

"You didn't have to do that."

"Well, you didn't have to cook me dinner," I said hurriedly; her stare was making me nervous.

"Hmm," she said, and her gaze was as sharp as mirror shards she resumed ladling the pasta into the container in her hand. "But if I hadn't, no-one would have, right?"

I stared at her wordlessly. Confusion warred with frustration as she surveyed me with her unfathomable, impossible eyes. How could she have known that? Did it show that much? I hadn't thought so, but I guessed my perspective was a little biased, perhaps. No one else, with the exception of John, seemed to notice, but that wasn't saying much as I didn't bother to notice anyone else most of the time.

But then her eyes were back on the container and she was snapping the lid into place. Putting the pot into the sink, she filled it with water and took the sponge from my unresisting hand. Placing the sponge on the counter, she handed me a tea towel that had been hanging off the oven handle and I dried my hands bewilderedly as she opened the fridge. Lifting the container, she waved it at me before sliding it onto the top shelf of the fridge and closing the door.

"This is for you to take home when you leave. Don't forget it. And don't bother arguing," she added.

My mouth closed as quickly as it had opened, and the protest died unspoken on my lips. It also seemed she had the ability to shut me up. Interesting.

"Thanks," I muttered instead, a furious bruise of red speeding towards my cheeks. Her grin was as ancient as earth as she flashed it at me, beckoning as she moved out of the kitchen and flicked off the light, leaving me in semi-darkness.

"So come show me these books."

I followed her into the living room, where she sat down on the couch, folding her legs underneath her. I sat down a little away from her, and put the books on the table. Both were fairly slender books with smooth matte covers, and they lay as though on display on the glass counter of the table.

"The chapters you should read I highlighted with pencil in the table of contents. It doesn't matter to me which ones you choose; the thesis is pretty consistent throughout. It might even help that you haven't read the books. It'll make creating a new story even easier."

The bowl in the middle of the table was indeed filled with chips of broken glass, and I looked at it curiously for a moment while she leafed through the books. They were inordinately bright in the dimness of the room; they seemed, like the rocks outside, to absorb all the light around them and reflect it back at three times the strength. They were beautiful, but strange, and I found myself not being surprised at their presence in the company of the otherworldly, unexplainable girl beside me.

"And you said we should keep in mind that he wants us to show that an author's work reflects his life?"

I dragged my eyes off the pieces of glass to look at her.

"Well, it'll just make sure we get better marks. That'll be the point of the whole thing, I guarantee it. He's big on fatalism."

She frowned slightly, and put the book back on the table.

"How is that being fatalistic?"

I laughed a little and shrugged, leaning back and running my hands through my hair.

"You'll see. He's got this whole thing where he thinks that reading and writing is one of the most anguished things that a human can do. Most people say that to read or write is escapist, well, he says that it's the exact opposite. He says nothing drives home faster or better the fact that we can never escape the human condition than the written word. We strive and strive to find a world better and brighter than our own, but no matter how wonderful the worlds are that we create and delve into, they are ultimately imaginary. We're locked in our heads for eternity. No amount of daydreaming ever gets anyone anywhere."

She looked a little sick as I finished that, and I couldn't help but laugh as she nodded slowly, a disbelieving expression on her visage.

"I see," she said, a little flatly, a helpless smile touching her lips. "And what's he doing teaching that to a bunch of English Lit grad-hopefuls?"

I grinned and pulled my knees up to my chest and wrapping my arms around, resting my cheek on them and watching her quietly.

"Well, he's a little subtler about it than that. I've never actually heard him come right out and say that, but it's pretty easy to figure out. Plus, I figure no one else would take the job."

She laughed then, and it was a sound of gladness in the quiet that resounded like churchbells on a winter's day. She was watching me with sparkling eyes, and aware that mine were probably sparkling right back, I lowered my gaze to the couch cushion between us.

"But you seem to be doing alright in spite of it," she said after a moment, and I lifted one shoulder in a languid shrug.

"It's an easy course."

"Not for me," she said ruefully. "All I know how to do is take pictures. And not even that, some of the time."

I watched her through the strands of hair that had fallen over my eyes. "Then I'll help you," I said softly, as the scents of pine and cedar teased me through the slowly moving air. "With the English, I mean. I'm awful at photography. I always take pictures of my thumb."

She snorted, and I grinned in spite of myself.

"We'll do a trade, then. You teach me Lit, I'll teach you thumb-free technique. If you want, of course."

"I'd like that," I said, surprised, as I realized that I actually would like it.

"Good," she said, with a gentle smile, and the pieces of glass on the table glittered like diamonds as she sat beside me, their razor sharp edges made beautiful by the very light that rendered them dangerous. We sat in silence for a while, and it wasn't as harrowing as I thought it might be. It was a quiet, comfortable silence, and I watched as she ran her fingers through her hair absently, the strands glittering like copper piano wire in the overhead of the pot lights.

"Thanks for deciding to work with me on this," I said impulsively, unsure of why I said it even as she looked over at me with a meditative smile.

"Thanks for not telling me to piss off," she said succinctly, and I ducked my head as a grin skipped onto my lips.

"I wouldn't do that," I said truthfully, and her intake of breath was a tiny hitch of laughter as she shook her head.

"That's not what I hear," she said, a smile crooking one side of her mouth in a lazy dip, her eyes bright and unreadable in the shadows. Ah, I thought. So we come to it. It was bound to happen eventually, however I hadn't been counting on the sudden nervous tension bouncing in my stomach as I readied myself for whatever she was going to say next.

I nodded a little, a weary, flat half-smile tingeing my lips as she watched me.

"My reputation precedes me already."

It was more of a guarded statement than a question, and she nodded her agreement in an amicable, cheerful way.

"I've had a few people come up to me and tell me to watch myself with you," she said baldly, and my eyebrows raised in spite of themselves.

"Really," I said, trying not to sound interested as she skewered me with her unwavering gaze. "And what is it that they think I'm going to do to you?"

It was her turn to shrug as she rolled her eyes. "I'm not exactly sure. They didn't seem to know either. One guy said that I would have better luck working with a lobotomized ape with an anger-management problem, though."

I sat there stunned for a moment, and she was looking at me silently, her expression unfathomable, slowly leaning towards worry, as I remained motionless. And then when I began to laugh and laugh and kept laughing, her eyebrows began to rise, and a helpless, unbidden smile began to surface on her lips. Tears began to leak out of the corner of my eyes as I watched her stare at me in bewilderment, and it was some time before I managed to get my giggles under control, my stomach aching. I groaned as I held it, and I raised one hand to my forehead as I stared at her, still shaking with laughter and watching her laugh wonderingly.

"What's so funny?" she asked, and I snorted.

"I don't know," I said, my breath coming in gasps. "But I think...that's the most accurate description of myself that I've ever heard."

And then she began laughing, and I was laughing all over again, and it all began pouring off me like so much water to a bottomless floor. I felt the muscles in my chest begin to relax as her laughter the colour of light reflecting off beautiful golden things began to fill the room like a memory of summer afternoons. It seemed to grab me, right in the center of my ribs, and it began to radiate out as her wild, aqueous eyes gathered me in and held me close. I couldn't stop the laughter as it rose to my lips, and it fell from my mouth in peals of helplessness and suddenly the couch beneath me was an invisible thing as the walls and ceiling fell away. All I could see was her face, mirroring mine, and the golden glow of her living room lights setting the space between us on softly blinding fire. My hands were shaking again, but this time from something stranger than fear, and more wild and vast than anything I could remember feeling for a very long time. The tears in my eyes were not altogether of mirth, I realized, as their glittering blur flooded my vision, and the gasps in my chest had become dangerously akin to whimpers as I swore she moved closer. The copper resplendence of her hair swam fluidly through the tears filming my eyes, and I felt the surface of the couch tip me slightly towards her as she knelt beside me.

"I don't think you're that much of a prick," she said softly, her voice sounding oddly distorted as I fought to gain control.

I shook the tears from my gaze as she came to rest, and my hand was a shaking thing that rose to grab the droplets from the skin of my cheeks, whisking them away in a movement that was both embarrassed and nervous. But then her hand was moving through the air and I watched it approach through the semi-darkness, her skin lit as though the light had been waiting all its life to shine upon it; the tiny golden hairs seeming to come alive and aware as the light rippled like silk across their backs. It caressed her arm like a lover confidant of its territory, and it was an extension of grace hitherto unknown to me as it wrenched itself across my mind and left me breathless. My hand had stopped a few inches from my face, and I watched, outside of myself and a million miles away, as she slipped her fingers slowly, tentatively into the crook of my palm.

Her fingers were blazing things of warmth that slipped like cream over ice as she surrendered her hand against mine, and they wrapped around my unresisting digits with an eloquence that made something in my chest twist viciously. I snapped my head to look up at her as my fingers twitched, but her eyes were on my hand alone as she tightened her grip a little. Anyone else, I would have yanked my hand away before they could have gotten near, but I seemed incapable of any sort reaction as she touched me. I watched the light glow off the twin fringes of her eyelashes in complete silence as she slowly lifted her eyes to find mine. The movement of her gaze was slow and languid, almost erotic in its laziness, and the blueness of the irises was a heart attack of connection under the fans of the eyelashes that spoke of gypsy flame under midnight sky.

This is the end I heard, as her gaze slammed into mine. But from where, I didn't know, and as her gaze pushed me even further, I couldn't even bring myself to care as the hairs rose on the back of my neck. You have known I heard, as she brought my hand to rest between us, my tears still lying on the back of it, their touch cold and harsh in the silence of the moment. And then they began to burn as a roar began to build from the inside of nowhere, and my blood became a drumbeat in my ears as the thought of the Angel came pouring back. It closed in on me from all sides, and for one reeling, annihilating moment, I saw the white cloak rippling down from shoulders that were almost painful in their beauty and the hair the colour of all of my nightmares and dreams throb through the night. My body shivered as the dream seemed to press me close, and a cry shook my fingers that was deafening in its silence, pain streaking like water down a broken window through my mind. And as the vision cleared and her eyes were as large as the skies before me, the dream wrenched me closer and I felt the Angel's hair on my lips, the mind-bending touch of glass and mithril wings against my desperate fingers.

"Take it, Evan," Teryl's voice floated up to me, and I jolted as the sound crashed into my senses.

I looked down, and I saw a tissue in her other hand. She had wiped off the tears, I saw, and was now trying to get me to take it. And when I extended barely controllable fingers out to do so, she gently released my other hand without another word and stood up. If she had realized what had just happened to me, she made no sign of it as she patted my shoulder and crossed the room, disappearing into a doorway left of the sofa. I sat staring dumbly at the damp tissue in my hand for a moment, my mind reeling, my motionless body a complete contradiction to the vortexes opening and closing in my head. What the fuck?! I wanted to scream, as the words sat like burning coals on my leaden tongue. My eyes felt on fire as I stared unseeingly, and I could practically feel the pieces of glass glittering on the table, catching every nuance of this strange, beautiful place and throwing it back to me ten-fold.

"Sorry, the box ran out."

I must have looked confused as I looked up at her, for she laughed and pointed to what I then saw was an empty box of tissue on the little table beside the couch. She had in her hand a wad of toilet paper, and she pressed it to her eyes as she sat down again. I felt the couch shift as her gentle weight sunk into it, and then her eyes were one me again as the room pressed in on me once more.

"Thanks," I muttered stupidly, and waggled the tissue a little.

She smiled and balled up her paper in her hand, tucking it into the tiny, slender pocket of her pants where it made a small bulge on the side of her hip.

"No problem. I'm always crying or laughing, so I keep a million miles of the stuff around. My brother says it's an abomination to the boreal population, and tries to get me to use a handkerchief, but I think that's just downright gross."

Her light, conversational tone managed to pull me away from the tears drying on the tissue in my hand, and I looked up at her dazedly.

"Your brother sounds like a nice guy," I said, and grinned a little. "Concerned about trees."

She made an amused sound in the back of her throat and rolled her eyes.

"And every other little thing. When he was little, my grandmother said he had a funeral for every ant he ever realized he had stepped on."

I smiled helplessly at that image. "He must have been pretty busy, then."

She nodded and giggled. "Little ant burial mounds everywhere. My grandmother used to step on them without realizing it and he'd never let her hear the end of it."

I shook my head a little, and smiled ruefully. "And to think I used to set them on fire."

Her laughter rung out again just as the sudden, startling sound of a telephone ringing shot through the silence. I jumped a little, and so did she, but then she stood up and was running across the room before I even located where the sound was coming from.

"I'll just be a sec; sorry about this. It's probably long distance!"

She merged with the darkness of the hallway beside the sofa, and then I saw a flashing of muted blue light that indicated a portable phone attached to the wall in the corridor. Her shadow reached out to grab it, and the soft click of the phone lifting off the hooks halted the electronic ring with an abruptness that left ghostly echoes in my ears.

"Hello?" I heard her say, and the light for the hallway flashed on. She was standing beside the phone with her back against the wall, a black receiver in her hand as she held it to her ear. I saw that the hallway connected the living room to two other rooms, the end one of which I could just see into and seemed to house a washroom with gleaming white tiles and a sliver of mirror on the wall.

And then a strange sound filled the air, and I stared in wonder as Teryl began to speak. It took me a moment to realize that she was not speaking in English, and nor was she singing. For as the words fell from her lips, interjected with them was the unmistakable rise and fall of laughter that only could come from a two-sided conversation with someone. It was a language entirely foreign to me, and I understood nothing at all of the unearthly syllables she spoke, but it was melodic and beautiful in a way I had never heard before. Her voice suddenly found itself becoming impossible to me; if it had been beautiful before with the Gaelic overtones, then it was positively perilous when it spoke the language itself. And as I listened, dumbstruck and overcome, the pieces of glass on the table took on a jeweled glow and her voice was a sister-daughter to their radiance and each was the extension of each other as I looked at them and listened to her.

It was music itself, and with it came the sounds of castles made of stone, standing ancient and powerful on midnight shores that spoke deepest secrets to the waves that whispered like lovers over their banks. I heard swords clashing in a distance not altogether my own, and saw the sparks flying off their blades in a firework of glory and defeat as one man's will bent under another's. I saw horses running full tilt through trees as straight and tall as pillars, and the starlight itself seemed to descend and dance in their silver manes as I swore I could catch the impossible glimpse of translucent, radiant horns in the center of their foreheads. As she spoke, the words were the chantings of a time that knew the meaning of Stonehenge, and a million intricate patterns of power wove through the decibels like knotwork.

Again I saw the tree flash before my mind, and the medallion cross within a circle glittered at me across a space and time impossible to bridge. So I sat there, motionless, unable to reach but still able to see, as she slowly walked back in the room again, laughter trailing behind her like starlit smoke. I watched as she looked towards me, and then she said:

"Hold on."

She placed the tips of her fingers over the mouthpiece of the phone in her hand and smiled apologetically at me.

"It's my grandmother calling from Eire. Apparently my brother left already and should be here sometime tomorrow. She doesn't get the chance to call very often, though, so if it's alright... I know it's rude and I'm so sorry..."

I jumped up, shaking my head quickly.

"No! Don't worry about it! I can grab a bus or something."

And as I moved to head towards the front door, she frowned and raised her eyebrows, an incredulous smile touching her lips.

"What? No! I'm going to drive you back. Please. This shouldn't take very long. I was just going to ask that you excuse me. She's kind of deaf and I have to pretty well scream to make myself heard so I have to go into another room so I don't make you as bad as her. Don't be ridiculous. Make yourself at home. We don't have a television, but my brother has a bunch of books in his room that you can check out if you like!"

And with that, she winked at me and turned on her heel, floating down the hallway and into the door on the right. I heard the door creak a little as she moved through it, and the sound of her voice became muted as the door shut closed behind her. I stood gaping at the empty hallway for a minute as her laughter bounced fuzzily through the wall, and the room seemed to present itself a lot larger than I had remembered. Running my hands nervously through my hair, I shook my head as a mounting hilarity rose in my chest.

"This is ridiculous," I whispered to myself as I looked around helplessly. What the hell was I supposed to do with myself? I never found myself in situations like this one if I could avoid it; being alone in someone else's house wasn't something I liked very much. I always felt like an intruder, especially when they told me to make myself at home. The quietness of the room was a little intimidating, and the glass on the table was unnerving me with its silent, twinkling ways. So after a moment, I decided to find those books. I looked down the hallway, and didn't see another door, other than the one to the washroom and the other to what I assumed had to of been hers. Frowning, I looked around again, and as I was about to step towards the kitchen doubtfully, I caught sight of a hallway that had been almost directly behind me, on the other side of the couch.

Stopping, I stared and saw that this one was shorter than the other, with only one door at its end. The door itself was heavy and wooden; it looked somehow older and incongruous with the rest of the house with its worn, grooved panels and what looked to be cast iron door handle. It was slightly ajar, and I could see only darkness within. But the darkness had a suddenly inviting, appealing look, and as though on strings propelled by a force not my own, I found myself moving towards it slowly. As I moved I was conscious of the faint smell that permeated the entire house, the one of cedar and pine trees and earth and rain, was growing noticeably stronger. An unbidden shudder danced down my spine as the scent filled my lungs, and then my hand was on the handle and the door was fully open.

Her brother's room.

The light from the living room slipped like a cat into room from behind me, and my shadow cast an elongated shape across the floor that I could see was bare of carpet but bore a woven rug beside a bed that ran flush with the opposing wall. I stood in the silence as still as a stone, fighting for breath as the cedar and pine and earth and rain all poured on me from all sides; the hairs on my arms and the back of my neck raised as though magnetized and I was unbalanced again. The air was as soft and beautiful to breathe as I imagined breathing underwater must have felt for a fish. It swept into my lungs like incense, and I held it in desperately as though there wouldn't be enough and I would run out even though the power of its immensity was making me feel faint.

I reached beside me for a light switch, and found none. Straining my eyes, I made out what looked to be a small lamp at the top of the bed, clipped to the headboard and overlooking the pillows below. Taking the five or so steps towards the bed, I reached over slowly and found without looking the switch at the back of the head, my fingers turning the tiny button to the left as it clicked on. The light, soft and golden-orange, appeared with a gentleness that did not hurt my eyes after the quiet of the dark, and threw everything in the room into a shadowy, muted tableau.

I should have felt like an intruder, I remembered thinking later, when I got home again. It should have felt wrong, to stand there in his room, gawking at all his things and laying waste to the privacy of his life. I should have felt like a thief as I stood on the softness of the rug beside the bed, my eyes trailing over all the personal belongings of someone I didn't even know as though I had been close with them all my life and longed to get a little closer. I didn't know why I stood so long without moving, just watching and staring; I didn't even know if I breathed once the entire time, but I must have because the smell of the room became a ghost that haunted me for days after. All I knew was that I felt an overwhelming sense of completion as I stood in the middle of that room, and that the very air and the touch of the floorboards themselves were a healing balm on places I didn't even know were sore. But even that was a summarization I only arrived at much later; just standing there at the time, all I could think was that I should get out, and all I could do was obey my insane desire to stay and breathe and maybe never leave. It had a feeling of rest and introspection I had never before felt, and even as unimpressionable as I was, I couldn't shake the strange and dizzying feeling that there was a goodness there that spoke of laughter without layers, and sleep free of nightmares. But most of all, there was a childlike innocence that was not innocence because of ignorance, but because of a deep, humbling acceptance and calmness that only the holiest of places could know.

Across from me was the door, which had managed to swing itself almost completely shut. Hanging on the back of the archaic, preserved wood was a single hook that looked like something from a barn rafter. Nothing was hanging on the hook except for an empty coat hanger that was swinging slowly, measuring the silence. Beside the door on the facing wall, were the closed double doors of a closet, painted the same cream colour as the walls and carpet outside. There was a dresser that stood beside the closet, tall and mahogany and Victorian-looking, with what appeared to be a music instrument case on its top. I looked closer, and I saw that it was for a violin, and that it looked well-worn and loved, with failing silver clasps and faded velvet upholstering.

I stared at the case for a long while, resisting with every ounce of strength I had the insane desire to reach out and open it. I could almost hear the sound of the instrument in the quiet shadows of the room, and could taste the melodies it could make on the top of my tongue as I opened my lips and breathed in through my mouth. The light from the lamp threw the thing into stark relief, and it beckoned me like a treasure in the quiet museum of the room. I tore my eyes off it slowly, keeping it in the back of my mind as I kept looking around. Next to the dresser there was a small table that had what looked to be a white, simple cloth draped around it. It was bare of any ornament excepting a single tapered candle, coloured the same tint as the cloth and held upright in a silver holder that had a loop on the side for carrying. The wick was blackened at the tip, and I could see evidence of use in the single, frozen drip of wax extending about half way down its length.

Extending from the front of the table and running flush alongside the wall opposite the door, the single, slender bed rested on the wooden floorboards with feet carved from the same wood as the dresser. It was a simple affair, draped over with a dark blue duvet that just brushed the floor, and white pillows that lay against a simple paneled headboard. The sheets had the stretched neatness of being a long while out of use, a settled look about them that reminded me of a snowfall made into a frozen plateau after many days in the wilderness without disturbance. The pillows looked crisp and somehow cool to the touch even though the room was warm, and I felt the warmth of my skin grow almost uncomfortable and hindering as I helplessly imagined what it would be like to sink into that cool, welcoming depth. I resisted the urge to reach out and touch the pillows; to run my hands over them in a barely discernable caress as I would a lover's sleeping face. And even though as these emotions cascaded through me and I had the vague impression that they were not normal and by all rights I should have been fleeing the room in terror, I kept staring desperately at the pillows, feeling my body beginning to shake and my heart to jump.

It smelled like the vision I had seen, there, in that room. Every wild thought I had ever had, every strange way that Teryl had made me feel, and the dream I had had, it all seemed to culminate in that room, right before me. At my feet and in my head. The scent of magic, I heard myself think distantly as I breathed it in, smelling forests and long-ago whispers as the lamp light cast a softly sunset glow on the world around me. I heard my breaths, coming deep and ragged, and my fingers were taut as I dragged every last particle I could into my lungs, trying not to look for the thing I suddenly thought I had come to find. The thing I longed with every inch of depravation to see.

The Angel, I chanted over and over in my head as I stared dizzily around me, taking in the curtained window above the bed. Like the duvet, they were a dark midnight blue, made of simple cotton bare of any pattern. They wafted slowly in a breeze that I did not seem to feel, and I caught sight of a moving kaleidoscope of dark tree branches waving slowly beyond the glass.

It smelled like the Angel.

Beside the headboard and standing against the next wall, was a bookshelf. Like the rest of the furniture, it too was made of a discreet, stately mahogany, and it towered up to brush a kiss against the smoothness of the ceiling above. And on each shimmering shelf stood tall, leather-bound books, and as a devout reader, they made my heart leap. Without hesitation, I stood in front of it and began automatically to search the titles, watching the lamplight reflect off their gold gilded edges and spine lettering, feeling my breath arrest in my chest. These were books the like of which I had never seen! These were the grandfathers of books; they were how books were meant to have been. They were tall, impeccably made, and I knew that if I had the balls to look, I would find their pages crisp and clear, the scent of decades long past rising up at me like a mist to be touched. They were made to be perused by kingly men, and my mind grappled with the impossibility of their beauty. My eyes hungrily scanned the titles as the pillows whispered and the violin watched, and I knew without comprehension that I had an erection more powerful than any I had ever had since I was sixteen. It throbbed against the zipper of my pants with mercilessness that made me gasp, making my heart race and my fingers sweat.

The first one I had noticed, and the one that gave me the biggest flood of sensation running down my back was The Lord of the Rings, a single tomb that contained all six of the books in one. Its spine looked creased and cracked, and I saw the dull strip of red ribbon bookmark poised at about three-quarters of the way through. I longed to touch it but instead looked to the next books, skimming over all of them with my heart pounding and my groin burning. The Fionavar Tapestry, I saw with a thrill of delight, and Jonathan Livingston Seagull. A Prayer for Owen Meany looked just about as worn as the rest of the Tolkien works at it side, and I vowed that if I only ever came back to this house for one thing, it would be to sit and read at least one of the books. Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel was there too, although not leather-bound but still hardcover. It struck me as strange, and yet oddly wonderful, that he owned all the books I had ever read and loved, and as I was about to reach out to touch a finger to The Lord of the Rings, I heard a sound from out in the living room.

"Evan?"

Shit. I jumped and took a step back as though burned and just as Teryl's shadow came rippling across the hallway floor, I realized that my pants weren't in any way going to conceal what was an obvious bulge in their front. Frantically searching around, and just as her head came into view, I sank onto the bed and yanked a pillow onto my lap, my heart racing and my face burning a deep, betraying red. Where the hell had it come from? Sure, books were great, but not really enough to get a hard-on over, were they? But how long had it been there, though? This whole fucked up situation was having a weird effect on me anyway, was it so strange now to be getting an erection in a complete stranger's -not to mention a guy- room? Fuck fuck fuck fuck. Never mind why, just figure out how to stop it...

She stepped into the room with a questioning look on her face, and then smiled as she lighted her gaze on me.

"Hi. Sorry about that," she said, another apologetic smile touching her face. "She's old and she lives by herself; she doesn't have many people to talk to. Plus, my brother called."

"That's okay," I said, a little more quickly than I had intended, my face a burning wall of fire. I held the pillow firmly on my lap, my hands resting in what I hoped was a casual manner on top of it, my erection still pushing at the back of it with no sign of reprieve. I could feel that my eyes were wider than normal, and the air felt electric. The green of her shirt looked black in the softness of the light beside me, but her hair was as red as apples as she slowly dropped her gaze to the pillow in my lap. I felt the blush sink deeper and deeper, and my fingers twitched.

"Um..." I said wretchedly, desperately searching for something logical to say, either about it or away from it, but then she was smiling at me and pointing to the window.

"I see you're a step ahead of me."

I just stared. What? A step ahead of her? What the hell did that mean? Did she come into her brother's room and sit there with his pillows on her lap too? No, wait. Erase that thought. That was disgusting, however innocent. I felt a shudder trickle down my arms as I blinked at her, and then slowly getting with it, I followed her pointing finger to look out the window.

The presence of a glittering, numbing whiteness confused me for a moment as I stared out of the window, my fingers reaching out to lift aside the curtain. And as I stared out at the sparkling expanse of a small but spacious backyard, I saw that snow had come out of nowhere and dumped itself on the world around us, turning everything white and ghostly. It wafted through the air in thick clumps that drifted down to the ground nonchalantly, and I stared up at the starry sky in confusion, trying to ignore the ache between my legs.

"Snow," I said moronically.

"Yeah, and it's coming down fast. My truck doesn't have snow tires on it yet, and I really don't trust the piece of shit without them. And especially since it's the first snowfall; people are bound to act like imbeciles on the road."

I nodded without understanding, and then looked at her.

"How long have I been in here? It wasn't snowing when I got here..."

She looked at me quizzically, and then glanced out of the window slowly again as I dropped my gaze.

"Well, I was on the phone for about an hour... you didn't notice? It's about eleven."

Frowning slightly, I was amazed. An hour? I had been standing there for an hour? It had felt like two minutes. I still hadn't seen all the books on the shelf yet.

"I guess not," I said carefully, and then as she arched a crimson and gold brow, I spoke again, trying to ignore the softness of the bed below me and the gentle weight of the pillow in my lap.

"So how am I a step ahead of you?"

She was quiet for a moment as I tried not to burn my face off, blood rushing to my cheeks in a surge of anxiety. I could tell she was watching me; the air between us as heavy as stone as her silent gaze read the mortification in the tightness of my hands. When she spoke again, it was quiet and measured, and I thanked whatever goodness it was in her that made her refrain from asking me about my lapse in coherent observation.

"You're going to stay here tonight, if that's alright with you. I know you were supposed to show me around, but from what I hear on the radio, the roads are going to be at a stand-still. I'll drive you back first thing, when they'll have had the roads plowed. But it's going on eleven o'clock, and I don't think you should take a bus that late."

I slowly arched an eyebrow as she said this, and then after a moment of staring at me, she began to laugh.

"Not that I don't think you couldn't take care of yourself!" she said hurriedly, patting my shoulder. "You seem pretty able. It's just that its hellishly cold and you'll not get home until one o'clock or so."

"I really don't mind," I said, my brain awash with the prospect of having to stay there for an entire night. I didn't know if I'd be able to handle it, and the possibility both intrigued and frightened me.

"Well, when is your first class?"

"Seven," I said slowly, trying to say ten and to avoid her gaze as she watched me. God, I couldn't even lie! She made it impossible to even think about lying to her!

"No, that's silly. You should stay here. You can stay in Ashen's room."

My hands went as taut as piano wire on the pillow.

My eyes instantly snapped over to find hers, and I struggled to remain upright and coherent as the name slammed into my head. The floor seemed to plummet away from me at a million miles an hour and the air became as thick as blood as I dug my fingernails into the pillowcase. For one terrible, disorienting moment I thought I saw a forest of trees step out from the walls of the room; I thought I heard the sound of footsteps through the silence and music more fair than anything called beauty in the world. Again the whispers of a million sexless voices, again the flash of white among the green. And over top of it all was the rich redness of her hair sparkling at me through the haze of the hallucination, the lamplight making it as dark as blood and as rich as wine.

Ashen. His name was Ashen.

And it was the most beautiful name I had ever heard.

"What did you say?" I heard myself gasp, and her head tilted slightly as she looked at me, the pale blue of her eyes a thousand scorching summer skies burning right into my retina. She watched me for a moment, and then looked down at my hands. It was a quick movement, and if I hadn't been watching her like a hawk, I wouldn't have seen it. My hands were white and bloodless as they gripped the pillow, and as she looked at them, her eyes seemed to do the equivalent of what I had done when I heard the name. If it were possible, it had seemed, crazily, that all of the colour had drained out of them, just for a half moment. But then she was looking back up at me again, her gaze as calm and steady as ever, and her smile was inquiring.

"You can stay in Ashen's room, I said. Ashen is my brother. This is his room."

The name was the sound of mist and wind on a mountainside; the prayers of a forest still green and growing in a land not yet laid to waste by the ravages of man. It was the name of a power that had touched me only in my dreams, one I knew the depth of extensively but had never touched its surface. It was the maddened power of light in the gaze of an angel; the whispered word where before there had only been the wanderings of nothing. It was the force behind the movement of the sun across the sky, and the meaning of the starlight that still shone impossible and beautiful upon the sleeping face of a child.

It was the end and the beginning to a kingdom I could never name. It was the answer to all the tears ever fallen; the hand that cupped them with fingers made of rain. It was the shape of the endless dream and the last beat in a heart wrought of God. It was the phoenix rising, and the final sorrowing; it was the bearer of my heart and the caller of my name.

I felt like I was falling as I listened to the name repeat itself like a chant in the echoing of my mind. The bed was no longer there as I breathed in the scent burning like glory all around me, and my fingers were wild things on the pillow in their grasp. I tasted tears on the tip of my tongue as I mouthed the impossibility of his name, never daring to speak it and sully it with my imperfect hope. I knew then, in the middle of that blinding second, that I had been given the true name of an angel, and never would I be able to deny my wretched existence and all of its foolishness again. It was like a manacle that had slammed itself around my wrist, slashing the skin and offering my life's blood to the chalice of the world, offering it forth with songs of glory and hands of light.

And as I looked through this knowledge at the girl sitting across from me, her ice blue eyes seemed to become mirrors of my thoughts, reflecting them back at me edged with silver-blue light and annihilating intimacy. The gossamer beauty of her hair had become a blazing curtain of fire around her face, and it was this and this only that brought the next words to my lips, because in the shadows of the light I saw, for the briefest moment, her face tantalizingly change. Her strong, angular features had softened for a half-moment, and superimposed over them was a visage of such startling and obliterating beauty that it seemed to reach out a hand to the center of my chest. The jawbone had eased itself up slightly, becoming more gentle and elegant, trailing beauty in its wake and the way it disappeared like silk into the awaiting embrace of the hair. The nose had dissolved into a straighter, more slender apparition, and the eyebrows refined themselves into lines of sensual lines of elegance over eyes that were hidden in shadow but spoke riddles to me in the silence. I almost knew the shape of them as my heart cried out in wonder, and their colour was a mystery that lurked like a mindless thing on the edges of my memory, one that I knew I could grab onto and hold if I but dared to let myself try. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid my eyes on, and my fingers ached as though ice was knifing its way through the skin and into the bone.

I held onto the sight of the strange, unearthly beautiful visage as I spoke to her, my heart raging in my chest as the riddles came close enough to breathe, close enough to touch with my fingers and call them agony.

"His name is... Ashen?"

And the word was like liquid perfection to say; it slipped off my tongue like coffee with cream, it was the embodiment of beauty itself as my husky voice ravaged it with yearning, ripped it asunder and left it glinting on the floor.

And then the features touching her face were gone in a glittering of light as she turned her head, but her hair was as luminous as trusting promise as she offered me a gentle smile, her eyes still holding mine in thrall and as vast as the cosmos as she spoke.

"Yes. We were both blessed with rather unusual names, I suppose. Our father was a romantic at heart, it would seem."

I nodded thickly and then began to slowly move the pillow off my lap as I realized my previous problem had somehow righted itself when I hadn't been paying attention.

"They are very beautiful names," I managed to say without betraying too much fervency, managing to even impress myself with the casual way I placed the pillow back in its place and how I got myself to stand up without trembling. And then she was standing too, and her eyes were quiet and watchful again.

"So do you mind staying the night?"

I almost laughed out loud as I stood there before her, her innocent question becoming as loaded a one as I had ever heard. But I shook my head lightly all the same, and shoved my hands in my pockets as the violin lay on the dresser beside us, its silver clasps glittering and calling in the dark.

"No, of course not. It is very kind of you," I said, knowing it was probably not worth arguing with her. And there was, despite my trepidation, a certain inescapable attraction at the thought of spending the night there. I knew I wouldn't sleep for a second, and I certainly wasn't going to stay in his room, but it might be better than being at home in the silence of the dorm and in the presence of the oblivion sitting in the drawer beside my bed.

She smiled then, a bright and glad smile as she headed to the door, holding it for me as I slipped past her, feeling the room waiting behind me with its yearning shadows and golden light. We walked into the living room, and I watched as she stifled a yawn behind a gracefully raised hand.

"Just wait here, and I'll put fresh sheets on the bed for you."

And as she was about to turn on her heel and go down the opposing hallway, I reached out a hand to touch her on the arm, halting her in her tracks.

"I'd rather sleep on the couch, if it's all the same to you," I said apologetically, and watched as her brows knitted together in a frown at my words. Visions of the bed and the soft, dream-filled pillows filled my mind, and I shook my head slightly to clear it as she stared at me.

"Why? It wouldn't be a problem, you know. I told him you were here."

"I know," I said hurriedly, trying to think of some excuse that she might halfway believe. "It's just that I don't sleep well in beds other than my own. So I'd rather sleep on the couch; all couches are pretty much the same."

It was lame, it was ridiculous, and I knew she knew that even as she stared at me for a long moment and then nodded, shrugging her shoulders. Her eyes were calculating as they drilled into mine, and again I felt the raging desire to blush as her eyes told me of my lies and the uselessness of their meanings.

"As you like," she said then, her lilting voice smooth in the half-light. And then the calm smile was back on her lips, and she was heading back into the hallway, leaving me alone in the living room. "I'll just get you a pillow and a blanket then."

Then she was gone, and I was falling onto the couch, my breath coming in waves and my heart slamming against my ribs with bruising force. I gripped the armrest as a dizzying wave of exhaustion gripped my limbs, not even bothering to wonder anymore as I sank against the back of the couch, my hair falling into my eyes and hiding my vision. It was beyond belief, what I had felt in that room, but even as I struggled to find a meaning for it in the middle of the pyre of my heart, a fatigue that I had not hitherto felt seemed to envelop my body like a thicket of smoke. It seemed to rise like a fog out of the depths of the couch, numbing my thoughts and slowing my breathing. The glass on the table became diamond stars held in a bowl wrought of crystal as I sat there, and I stared at them unwaveringly as they overtook my thoughts.

They were beautiful and impossible as they lay there on the table, seeming to contain the very thoughts of the house as they shimmered and glittered in the soft light. They had the same beauty of the room I had just witnessed: whole, clean, and good. Free from arrogance, absent of explanation, holding no other countenance excepting that of being completely and supremely themselves. It was a spiritual perfection that was caught in their glow, and I tasted the workings of angels in their simple, strange splendor.

"Here you go."

I looked up. Teryl was standing before me with a white pillow in one hand, and a folded woolen quilt made of a jumbling of cheerful colours in the other. I stood and took them from her quickly, and she smiled at me tiredly as she offered me a rueful gesture with an outstretching of her hands.

"I'm sorry about all this. But I'll have you at your class bright and early."

"Thanks," I murmured as I watched her, placing the pillow and quilt on the couch behind me. "You don't have to, though. I can take a bus."

She shook her head at me with a disbelieving frown, the smile on her lips sardonic and almost tender as she ran her fingers through her hair.

"I have to get up anyway. Don't worry about it. But you should get some sleep now, if your class is at seven. It's a bit of a drive. But I should get to bed now, if that's all right. I got up early today."

And then her hand was on my arm, squeezing it a little, and I felt the exhaustion grab hold of me again, making my vision swim a bit. Blinking, I nodded, and then she was stepping away, her smile luminous in the light.

"Have a good sleep, Evan," she said softly, and we held each other's gazes for a moment as she watched me from across the room.

"You too. Thanks," I said, and with another shimmering smile, she disappeared into the hallway, moving into her room and closing the door with a quiet click. If her exit had seemed rushed, I didn't notice it at the time as I sank back onto the couch again.

What a weird night. And here I was, in her house, by myself in the living room and having to try and ignore the magnetic pull of the room behind me. As if in a daze I slowly rose and moved towards the front door, turning the lights off one by one until the room was soaked in darkness. Even in the haze of my fatigue, I still had the capability to wonder at the fact that the glass on the table still managed to collect and reflect some sort of hidden light. The pieces shone as soft as the farthest stars on the table before me as I lay the pillow against the arm of the couch and stretched out. Pulling the heavy, clinging material of the woolen quilt over me, I felt the silver-gray world of sleep heave up through the floor below and before I could even fully pull the blanket over my shoulders, my eyelids became impossible to keep open.

And the last thing I registered, as the comforting embrace of the darkness pulled me under its control, was the scent of the air as it settled around me: the whisper of pine and cedar and crimson hair in a wood not so far from imagining, and the name of an Angel sitting like silver on the tip of my tongue.

Ashen Rowan.

I was on the path again. The forest was an explosion of trees all around me, their greenness tempered by shadow as the night poured like darkest ink from a sky measureless and vast above their leaves. The earthen trail below my feet was rich and deep as I stood without motion, and I scanned its length as it disappeared before me into a darkness that was unknown to me but not altogether unfamiliar. The anticipation was unleashed again, and it was burning through me like some kind of electric current with a purpose as it stormed down my arms and chest. My heart had become a machine to measure total longing with as it throbbed in my ribcage, and I knew desire as it rose like a choking cry in my throat and an incandescent thing in my groin.

The tears on my face were as silver as the stars piercing the shadows all around me, but this time I knew their cause as I burned before the trees and their hidden destination. On my lips was the name of the Angel, the one I knew belonged to him and utterly to him, and I knew if I could only get to the clearing ahead of me, I could speak it. It would summon him like a spell of old, and I would again see the movement of radiance between the trees, and I could taste the power of God on the air as the vision of the blood red brightness that was his hair made itself known. I could kneel before him as he had knelt before the ancient, makeshift altar, and I could speak the one word etched on my heart that would bind him to me as he had weft himself to me the night I had seen him lay the sigil on the altar. I could kneel before him and be known, I could let myself burn to dust in the face of his majesty, the affirmation of his holy perfection.

`Ashen,' I whispered desperately to the invisible bindings that were holding me to my spot, and was rewarded only with a throbbing of the woods and a breath of the earth below. The world rolled as I whispered his name, and a force that was almost orgasmic shuddered through me, making my fingers clench and my body to twist. It slammed into me like a wall of stone, shattering my defenses and leaving me mindless, having only my body left to scorch like so much meaninglessness on the face of creation. It raged through me with a completeness that rendered me insane, connecting my feet to the ground in a single, soldering moment, and making the air adhere itself to my skin with a force that seemed to leave crackling energy jumping off the contact. I knew a desire so desperate, and so deep, that even the screaming magma of the erection between my legs was nothing in comparison to the cry that escaped my lips, making the world go white in a flash that scorched purple across my eyes.

And then I was whimpering as the shackles held me tighter, and the desire took form as I wept on the path, my destination so close that I could taste it: perfect frustration bitter in my mouth. It poured down my body like a fire made from retribution itself as I struggled to break away, and it became a thousand hands touching and raping, my whimpers becoming moans as I whispered his name over and over again. But then I was moving, even though the shackles were burning, and his name was breathless freedom as I staggered down the path, my eyes bleeding but focused on the end, where I knew was the clearing and the answer to my yearning.

And I was flying it seemed, the shackles falling and slipping, and I was approaching the bend with a glorious joy in my throat, my hand outstretched to the darkness between the trees. I could see the emerald grass of the clearing as I flew like thought itself down the path, and far off I thought I could discern the impossible but oh so glorious shimmer of white in the shadows of the trees.

His name was on my lips again and in the woods all around me as I sped forth; the stars seeming to fall like snowflakes and the endless grace of the world. Just one more time, I knew, as the earth below me prepared to heave, and the word was a siren scream on my tongue as-

A sharp, staccato sound ripped through the air like a bolt of lightning, and I jolted awake as its echoes sunk into my brain, ripping the woods apart and leaving me gasping wretchedly. Flying upward, I stared around the unfamiliar room crazily as my brain spun and whirled, confusion rising like a monster out of the dark and turning the softly lit room into a tableau of perplexity. I couldn't understand where I was, when I had been in the woods and so fucking close just a second ago, but I had no time to wonder at it as a second loud knocking sound shattered through the silence and I jumped again.

Knocking. Wait. Blinking, I raised wild eyes to the doorway. And there, by the sunlight streaming in under the crack under the door, I saw what was the unmistakable shadow of someone standing on the other side. Raking my fingers through my hair, I stared desperately at the hallway that led to Teryl's room. But even as the knocking sounded again, I knew I couldn't just let whoever it was stand out there, and I moved towards the door warily, my heart hammering. Who the hell was it? I was certainly no person to be answering the door of this place, but I didn't hear any sounds of Teryl stirring, nor was I going to wake her up just to do something I could have done. So heading to the door and wincing as the cold of the tile seared the bottoms of my bare feet -had I taken my socks off last night?- I placed a hand on the door handle. As my fingers tightened around it, I realized with some shock that not only were my socks missing, so were my pants. I was standing there in my boxers with my t-shirt on, and about to open the door to a house I didn't even live in. When the hell had I taken off my clothes? Fuck, I hated waking up.

But no time to lose, as the knocking came again, and I was wrenching open the heavy door as a cold blast of air hit me in the knees and chest. Gasping, I pulled it wide, and winced as the bright sunrise light hit me full in the eyeballs. The whiteness of the snow and the fresh luminosity of the sun were a lethal combination as I stood there in the doorway, fighting to see. Blinking rapidly, I struggled to clear my vision as I raised a hand to shield my eyes, staring into the light.

And then it began to clear.

And my hand dropped from my eyes, the light forgotten completely.

Standing in front of me, wearing an expression that seemed to be vying between shock, amusement, and apology, was a guy bundled up in a bright orange jacket, hands hidden in the bulk of the pockets. He was wearing washed-out blue jeans that had a wide leg taper over a pair of black boots, and I could see the snow lying clear and pristine over their tops. I could see the steps he had taken by the prints in the snow behind him, and his breath rose like glittering mist on the frigid air as I stared at him wordlessly.

As I traveled up the bulky jacket and over the gentle, trim slope of his shoulders, I saw with a screaming lurch the edges of deep, red hair. They lay like tendrils of the most vivid and wine-kissed blood on the brightness of his jacket: the colour of richest apples and dying rays of a scarlet sun. They shone with the brightness of steel and still water, and their highlights threatened to blind me as I moved up the impossible lengths. It was a redness I had never before seen, one that was arresting in the cold quiet of the morning. It almost stopped my heart as I stared helplessly at it: it was the knowledge of wine and songs sung in the dark after a day of trial and burden. It was made to have been streaming in a wind of a meadow, it held the glory of the medieval in its ruby strands.

But as I soaked it in desperately and moved up the locks, I was ripped in twain as I found the face they framed with a grace I had never before seen manifest. It was watching me with a quiet serenity that grasped me by the chest and broke every bone therein. What I had seen on Teryl's face the last night had been nothing in comparison to that which stood before me then. Perhaps it had been a sort of preparation, I heard myself distantly thinking, as I stared without understanding at the visage watching me. It was beauty as I had never before seen, nor that I would ever find in the world again. His skin shone with a radiance that I could not altogether attribute to the brightness of the day enveloping him, and it spoke of starlight and candle-flame as it blinded me in the doorway. It was as smooth and flawless as porcelain, and it lent the surreal features an almost Elven reverence that was far from lost on me as I stared.

A rosy touch of pink had touched his fair, elegant cheekbones in response to the cold, and it rested in his cheeks as they tapered down to a jaw line that was impossible in its delicacy. It was dangerously close to being completely feminine, but it had a strength to its slenderness that was wholly and completely male as it disappeared behind the soft curves of his ears, making the paradox both dangerous and insane. The lips were full and as supple as cherries as they rested in a tiny half-smile, their beauty become poetry in the stillness of the light. They looked like warm silk to the touch, and I found myself half crazily wanting to reach out and caress them as a strange emotion rode through my heart. His nose was as I had seen last night: a perfect testament to the creation of androgyny with its slim countenance and noble cast. It led straight upwards to a pair of slender eyebrows that were as red as the hair whispering around them, a bit darker but no less startling as they lifted slightly. They arched slowly, becoming two perfect, sensual lines of hypnotism and I fell without hesitation into the eyes awaiting beneath.

My heart seemed to explode as I locked gazes with the apparition in front of me, and my hands became shaking things of terror and surrender at once as I plunged, spiraling, into the insanity of his eyes. Oh Christ, they were beautiful. They were what God had meant, I was sure, as I drank them in desperately, when he had conceived the idea of the human eye. And as I stared without breathing or even really thinking, they stared at me back unwaveringly, as calm as the silence all around us and just as encompassing. Their blueness wasn't even something I could force myself to comprehend, as the sunlight glowed from behind him and set his hair aglow with a fire that seemed to alight from within. It glowed like a crimson halo, and I was imprisoned by his gaze as he held me completely captive in the middle of the doorway on the road hailed Aldwych.

His eyes were more than the sky on any sort of morning, more even than the godly blueness it could hold just after the sun had fallen below the horizon at the end of the day. They were deeper than any ocean I had ever seen, real or imaginary, and I knew the workings of eternity as I probed their depths and had them calmly accept my desperation. They were not like any eyes I had ever seen, for they seemed to hold no secrets as they held me close and without fear. I saw no shadows in their silence: only an honesty that made me want to crumble. It shone like holy light spilling from a chalice set on a pedestal I could never, ever touch. They were the eyes of someone that had seen a million things more than anyone else ever would, and were open yet a million more. They were eyes that took the failings of the one they looked at and called them perfection; they took less than nothing and offered everything in return.

My chest was a ruin as I stared at the angelic grace of the one before me, his golden eyelashes glittering as mercilessly and gladly as the name of holiness itself as he inclined his head slightly. It made the rippling waves of reddest hair gather closer around his face and shoulders, framing it with an androgynous perfection that was the sweet thief of my oxygen in a moment where I couldn't have done anything to stop it.

"Hi," he said, and the word was the sweet life of the air in between us, and the touch of sunlight on the leaves of the tree behind him. Already I could hear the chord of Celtic wondering in the single syllable, and it echoed deep and clear within me.

"Hi," I croaked, feeling my chest constrict as the tiny smile on his lips deepened and the blueness of his eyes flashed golden and shameless. They were undeniably erotic in their magnetic intensity, and the effeminate seduction of their graceful shaping was a knife in the heart as I clung to the door.

A moment's more staring, and then,

"You must be Evan."

And you must be an Angel.

He knew my name! How did he know my name? And as a whirling incredulity began to flood my chest, I remembered Teryl's voice as we had stood in his room the previous evening. She had told him I was there, I remembered belatedly, and this was somehow accompanied by a sense of disappointment that was so acute that it made my head ache. But his voice was gentle and quiet, the inflection of the Eire accent weaving like golden thread through the sensory tones. It had the strength of stones standing beyond time accountable, and the seamlessness of a river that knew the edges of a promised land in its sparkling hold. In the androgynous purity of his face, the unmistakable masculinity of his voice was an offering of the highest perfection to the gods of paradox, and both were an element of invocation that unhinged me in the miracle of the morning.

"Yes," I breathed, knowing what I should say next but unable to make myself say it for fear of being wrong, the hopefulness of his name sitting like a star in the desperation of my mind.

He gazed at me for a moment longer as I stood dumbly on the floor, and the brightness of his eyes seemed to hold the secrets of diamonds as they surveyed me calmly and without assumption. They assumed nothing because they already knew, I realized with a quiver, as he began to speak again. There was nothing those eyes didn't know, nothing they hadn't seen. It seemed as though they already knew me even as they sought me, and their radiance was a fire that both burned and healed me as I trembled in their gaze.

"I'm Teryl's brother," he said exquisitely, his voice as clear as a bell through a meadow made of magic. "Ashen."

Ashen.

Ashen.

To hear the name being spoken by Teryl was one thing; to have he himself speak it was entirely of another mould. It became a thing of insurmountable beauty as it hung in the air between us, turning the bright sunlight into shadow and the air into nothingness. It had sounded like a chord being struck far below the earth, and I saw the leaves on the tree behind him tremble silver on a breeze I didn't feel as it faded into silence.

I stared without comprehension into his eyes, unaware of my stare but completely conscious of his every perfect move. The light from the day seemed to pour itself upon him as though it had been waiting from the moment of its creation to do so; the orange of his jacket was a brighter shade than I had ever seen, the faded blue of his jeans were a colour-play of light that shone denim and soft. His hair was an animal thing of magic as he stood there before me, and his eyes were shattering in their deepest sky blue and kingly gaze.

"Can I come in? It's pretty cold out here," he asked suddenly, with a smile so wide and radiant that it dwarfed the light pouring in around him like a tidal wave.

"Oh, Christ, of course," I jumped, embarrassment at once taking hold and making me take a step back. Jesus, Evan, I thought in chagrin as he grinned even deeper and began to step past me. Don't even let the guy into his own house... smooth. Staring like an idiot, too. "I'm sorry," I muttered dazedly, as he was brushing past me, the air of his passing crisp and clean on my skin.

"Don't be," he said softly, coming to stop next to me. I shivered as he stood beside me, and even though the air around us was freezing cold, I felt an unexplainable and burgeoning warmth as he leaned past me to close the door. It brushed across my skin like a whisper against my ears, and it felt like silk flowing underwater as his hand outstretched to push it closed. I stared, helpless, as his hand moved through the air, for it was a thing of Victorian grace as it lilted on the brass of the handle. It spoke of paintings hanging high on noble granite walls, it held the meaning of music in the way it graced the air. The fingers were long and lean though not without flesh, and the nails were trim and clean as they seemed to caress the fixture. The tapering of the back of the hand into the strong sturdiness of the wrist was something that sent John Rzeznik songs exploding into my head, and the sheer reality of his presence was like a drug as the door slowly moved closed.

And I kept staring, stricken wordless and thoughtless, as he began to remove his jacket, the sound of the zipper descending like a tear in the fabric of the air itself as I stood in breathless silence. The jacket shimmered golden and tangerine in the softness of the light as it slid off his shoulders, and I watched with a pounding in my chest as the hair on his shoulders leapt and fell again. The movement of the jacket displaced the strands and offered their vermilion glory to the light in one mind-bending motion that left me stripped of any coherent thought other than disbelief as he turned to look at me again.

Holding the heavy jacket in his hands with an effortlessness that should have been criminal, I was unable to blink as he stood before me, a glowing thing in the center of my vision that gave me the secrets of temples and the taste of all perfection on my tongue. With the jacket removed, I saw that it had revealed a simple gray sweater that hung on his slender frame as loosely as smoke. Its softly shimmering material lay like a mantle upon shoulders that were borne of a masculine beauty so simple and clear that it made my mouth run dry and my fingers twitch. The neckline was a concise v-dip that gave evidence to the smooth faultlessness of his throat, the skin as soft-looking as the most unattainable desire, the unadulterated presentment of his collarbone creating shadowy pockets of caramel that the light bled like liquid spice into.

"Is my sister awake?"

Again, his voice, the last golden rays of a sun setting on a world that was beyond the scope of human imagining. And yet, I was seeing it, as I listened to the tones fall like the sparks from a candle's flame.

I raised my eyes from the perilous vision of his throat to find his face, and the shocking blueness of his eyes were like twin daggers of deepest sapphire as we touched gazes once again. Again I fell victim to the blazing metaphysics of the irises calmly holding mine, and their overwhelmingly sensual lines shone realmless sky and starlight as I struggled wretchedly to look away.

"I don't think so," I managed, as he reached out to hang his jacket on the hook right next to mine, the soft pliancy of the tangerine sleeves falling soft and yielding against the obsidian ink of my own heavy coat. I was lost in the way that looked as he took a step into the living room, and it was a moment before I could drag my eyes off our twinned garments to find him again.

"I'm sorry I had to wake you," he said apologetically, as he gestured towards the remains of the bed I had fashioned for myself on the couch. I noticed my discarded clothes bunched up in the corner of the armrest and frowned slightly. "I left the only key for Teryl to use. I thought she would have been up by now."

"It's no problem," I said quickly, flushing as I moved towards the couch, hurriedly picking up the fallen quilt and folding it, trying to ignore the scorching feeling of his eyes watching me as I clumsily attempted to maneuver the material into some kind of tidy heap. My heart was clawing at my throat, I realized, as my hands shook in their movements, and it was something so confusing and strange that I suddenly desired to be out of there, away from the gaze of this impossible being and this strange, unearthly house. His beauty wasn't something I could contest, I knew, and even under normal circumstances I would have been forced to admit something of his attractiveness regardless of his gender or the things I would have had to then admit to my own self after the fact. I had been conscious of the capability of male beauty before, but never had I been presented with such an annihilating and incontrovertible force as that which poured like song made golden from the erotic magic of his eyes, the richest blood of his hair.

"Here, let me take those," he said suddenly, as he gestured to the quilt and pillow in my arms. They were quite effectively hiding the betraying tremors of my hands, and I didn't want to relinquish them until he was at least out of the room, but he was advancing towards me with hands outstretched. He moved across the room with a swiftness that shouldn't have been possible, and I was helpless to do anything except stare as his midnight sapphire gaze approached me. A smile was on his gentle lips and the lights were rippling in his hair, and it was then that I caught scent of it and the things in my hands almost fell away from my wilting grasp.

It was the sweet purfume of the room I had been in last night, except magnified ten-fold to the point of collapse. It poured off him in abundance as he came to a halt in front of me, and I was blinded to everything except the sheer inescapability of the fragrance, the feeling of leaves and hidden grass filling the air with the memory of green. He was there, and he was beautiful, and the offering of his hands were so much unshakeable magnitude to me as I weakly deposited the heavy, cumbersome pillow and quilt into them. The weight dropped from my grasp into his, and when he held them, I felt their weight ease as though they weighed nothing at all, even though I still had them. Our eyes locked again for a single burning moment, and it was I who had to look away as the brightness of their tourmaline became too much to bear. I could feel the warm energy of his touch coursing through the fabric in our hands, and it jolted me like an electric shock as it sunk into my palms and crackled down my arms.

"Thanks," he said with a sparkling smile, his hair shifting as he hefted the bedding, the deep auburn strands slipping to further frame his face; curving gently around the line of his chin and brushing the supple skin of his throat. And with a tiny deepening of his smile that left me vaguely wondering if I had been smiling wrong all my life, he turned and headed down the hallway towards the room I had been in last night, his voice and my astounded gaze trailing after him.

"Are you hungry? Would you like some breakfast?"

I watched as he pushed open the door to his bedroom, watched as the familiar sight of the bedroom procured another dangerous, heart-stopping feeling in my chest. He moved from the door to the bed in a single step, and the gentle caress of the half-light emanating from the curtains seemed to move and make way for him as unquestioningly as water for a shaft of light. He put the pillow and quilt down on the bed and then looked up questioningly at me, his shoulders arching as he lifted his hands to push the hair out of his eyes. The strands slipped through his slender fingers like a rain made from the distilled light of winter sunset, and I knew a moment of terrible constricting delight as they lifted off his face and made its flawless perfection be known all the clearer.

"No, thank you," I replied dry-mouthed as I dropped my gaze like a burning thing to the floor, feeling desperate agitation fill me as I searched for some way of getting out of there fast. The staggering kindness of the offering to give me breakfast was an impossibility I didn't think I could stand in the face of his beauty. "I'm still good from last night. Teryl made me some spaghetti with... that sauce I think you made. It was really awesome."

And how I came out with that so smoothly, I had no idea, but he was stepping out into the living room with another impossible grin on his face and I forgot how to think as he moved towards the couch and sat down on it. The soft gray of his shirt seemed to meld with the matte cream of the couch as he sunk into its depth and it spelled an impending disaster for me if I didn't get the hell out of there, right then. Something about the way the straightness of his back touched the cushion... as languid as a cat but without anything that could be remotely called feral. I saw the way his perfectly proportioned hips commanded the ribbed bottom of his shirt as they settled into the couch, and I certainly couldn't ever let myself think about that as I dragged my eyes back up to his face again, mind whirling in agony.

"I'm glad you liked it," he said simply, the melodic softness of his voice a thing of gold and far-away mountains as it danced shameless and pure in the air. He smiled at me again, slowly this time, and it was a scorching thing as it basked in the cobalt fire of his eyes, the lashes lowering in a symphony of flaxen elegance as he looked down at the table in front of him. I watched as they bent to kiss the rose-dusted cheeks below them, and in a moment so insane and unfamiliar that it came as a total shattering to my mind, I felt a raging, exploding jealousy as I registered the intimacy of those lashes against that skin.

It coursed through me like the aftermath of a grenade explosion; all dust and debris and bleeding wounds, and I stood there in shock as he reached out a hand to the books that were still on the table and picked up the one closest to him. I dazedly realized it was A Home At The End Of The World as he looked up at me again.

"Are these yours?"

I nodded through the haze dumbly as he looked down at them again. I watched as his fingers hefted their rectangular shapes, I watched as the pages bent to caress his skin. He held them carefully, gently, as though they were things spun from alchemist's gold, and I forced myself to say something as the gentle slipping of a lock of hair from behind his left shoulder falling against his intent face threatened to wrench a helpless, mind-blowing moan from my lips.

"Teryl and I are doing an assignment together involving them," I again managed to say perfectly, if a little woodenly. I could feel everything spiraling out of control as I stood there staring at him, unable to register and much less comprehend the alien kaleidoscope of emotions that had just somehow assailed me from the moment I had opened the door. My brain began to kick on its auto-pilot as the acknowledgement of the realization began to make itself known, and a bottomless abyss reared up in the bottom of my chest. My fingers had grown icy and taut, and they began to shake as my vision started to go strange.

I had never had a reaction like this to anyone I had ever met before. Jealousy? Total and utter inability to stop staring? My heart raging as though it were about to stop beating and never start again? Jealousy? My hands shaking? My ability to reason thrown right out the proverbial window at the sight of his impossible, beyond beautiful face? Fucking jealousy?!? This was insane. Purely complete fucking madness, and a thousand words were chanting themselves in the back of my head as I fought to deny them utterly, only to be thrown right back into them as his voice sounded again.

"I've only ever read this one. Is The Hours any good? I've kind of avoided reading it since it became a film. I know it won the Pulitzer, but..."

And then his voice trailed off and he was looking at me, calmness and gladness becoming a slow, shrieking something else striding like the footfall of angels from his gaze. Our gazes met and locked there, in the middle of the room, with me standing in front of the table and he reclining on the couch. The force of their connection was something that seemed to make the room shake, and I felt my knees grow weak at the starlight confession of his eyes and the way that his face suddenly became more still than a statue in that penetrating, annihilating moment. And all it once it was in the air around me, and I was as helpless as a pebble in a whirlwind as he caught me in his gaze and immobilized me there.

The crazy radiance of his eyes became manifested in an azure potency that seemed to shred every cell in my body. I felt the slamming blueness sink like lightning shock into my skin, I felt it stab into the very deepest, most center darkness of my heart and rip like steel down my body and out through my feet. If Teryl had made me feel like glass with her sharp glances, I had become more transparent than nothingness itself in the frighteningly calm and clairvoyant light that was his eyes. I felt my memories slipping by in front of me with a swiftness that I couldn't control as he pinned me there with his glamour; I felt my life drift by in a second that seemed to last all of eternity as his eyes swallowed and held it all. I became acutely aware of my hands trembling as his still soundlessness scalded me, and the thousand tracks of tears that had ever worked their way on to my cheeks seemed to burn as he lay to waste all my hidden masks and exposed the screaming within.

I saw every single silent, empty night I had ever spent in the room that had become akin to a prison in my mind. I saw the door closing a thousand times, I heard the sound of it echoing into silence a thousand more. I saw all the careful, hated lines of cocaine powder lined up on all the surfaces I had ever dared sully with its awful, pristine presence. I screamed a million times as I breathed in a million more, and I saw the tiny blood-red lines of razor-dance on the tender insides of my wrists as the scarlet brightness dripped down skin too empty and faded to care. And over top of all of this, layered over like some kind of impossible, omnipotent superimposition, was the knowledge of the angelic eyes still holding me upright, taking all of it in as it rose like burning acid to the forefront of my mind. The holy blueness of his gaze was a pair of hands on the backs of my shoulders as I trembled before him, holding me up and not letting me fall as every awful, sordid secret became his territory and absolute possession. But even as I quaked at this, even as my soul shrunk in fear, the unwavering silence of his eyes forgave and absolved me as a shrieking sob exploded in my heart.

"Ashen?"

I jumped, and ripped my eyes off his to look behind me as the sound of Teryl's voice exploded like a firework into the insane, mind-bending silence between us. I found her standing almost directly behind me, and the expression on her face was both tired and questioning as she looked past me to her brother. Her hair was slightly disheveled from sleep and she was clad in a pair of simple light blue pyjamas that looked to be made of thin cotton. Her lips were curved in a surprised smile, and she deepened her smile as she looked at me and nodded. I stared at her uncomprehendingly as I heard Ashen stand up, and then I was backing up as she moved towards him, my head a black vortex of confusion and pain.

"Hi!" I heard him exclaim as I turned back to watch them embrace. They moved towards each other with a quickness that betrayed a deep, trusting love, and then their arms were around each other in a hug that made me feel instantly awkward, despite the raging of collapse threatening in my head. I stared crazily at the way he gathered her close, saw the gracefulness of his hand as it lifted to brush aside her hair. I watched as his face began to near hers, and even as the swooping, merciless jealousy again began to burn, I watched as his poet's lips touched a kiss to her supple cheek. She laughed a silvery, glittering laugh as she turned her face to touch a similar ministration to his, and the touch of her fingers through his hair would have been almost indecent in its intimacy if it weren't for the glowing, joyous light in her eyes and the helplessness of the smile printing itself even deeper on his lips. They separated after a moment, but even so I noted the permanent touch of her hand on his arm as they spoke to each other. It would have been strange to watch this with anyone else that was brother and sister, but with them it seemed somehow natural, somehow expected and right.

And yet, it burned me.

I felt a nausea burning in my stomach as I realized this, and I edged around them to grab my clothes on the couch, desperately searching for any way to at least leave the room and contain my thoughts before I became so much blood, skin and bone all over their living room.

"I didn't know you'd be here so soon," Teryl was saying as I grabbed my jeans and socks.

"Yeah, she had to be at work early so I left at the same time. I took the bus down," he replied in a voice made of stars and the light shining off the uppermost spire in a city wrought of crystal and glass.

I swallowed a strangled cry and headed down the hallway that Teryl had just emerged from, following it to the end and closing myself in the room there before I could hear her next words. Slumping against the back of the door, my hand sought for the light switch as the muted sound of their voices slipped out of the shadows behind me. Finding it after a moment, I flicked it on and stood there in the gleaming, alabaster quiet as my breath shook my entire frame. I hardly even registered the small, terminally clean space as I tremblingly stepped into my jeans, dropping the socks to the tiled floor.

What the fuck just happened? What the hell had that been? Who was he? Why couldn't I stop staring? Visions of his eyes pummeled me as I fought to raise the zipper, and I whimpered. What had that horrible, insane jealousy been about? And why did it scare me down to a core I didn't even want to admit I knew existed? But I knew the answer before I even completed the thought, and it echoed in my mind louder and more insistent than my ability to ignore. My heart gave a frightened, dizzy lurch as I thought it, and I yanked on my socks wildly, desperate to be out of there. Glancing once into the mirror and raking my hands through my hair, I saw that my face had drained completely of blood. Dark circles had leapt up around my eyes, and my lips were the colour of chalk. Raising a hand to touch them wonderingly, numbly, I leaned against the opposing wall and slumped against it, fighting to breathe.

The brightness of his hair and the radiating completeness of his eyes rose up at me out of the throbbing darkness of my mind, and I knew the taste of his name on my tongue as my hand involuntarily raised to clutch at my chest. My fingers gripped and twisted the fabric of my shirt as the unmistakable sound of his voice filtered unintelligibly through the wall behind me, and it was only the sudden interjection of a soft knock at the door that made me stop.

"Evan?"

It was Teryl's voice on the other side, and I struggled to find my voice as the silence loomed.

"Yeah?" Thin and wan and stupid. Great.

"Are you ready to leave? It's half past six and it takes twenty minutes to get there."

An imperfect, thudding relief flooded my chest as I heard that, and I lowered my hand from my shirt.

"I'll be right out," I heard myself say, and I listened as she moved away from the door. Looking to the mirror once more, I winced at my awful countenance and tried not to breathe in the still very evident scent of Ashen as I attempted to shut my head down. Just stop thinking; try to relax. Just concentrate on getting out of here, deal with the other... shit... later. Tearing my eyes away again, I opened the door and turned off the light, pausing once to catch my breath before I stepped out into the hallway again.

I walked down the corridor and emerged into the living room to find Teryl at the door, somehow already changed into a pair of thread-bare faded black jeans that still managed to look wonderful as hell and a simple navy blue t-shirt that looked too large for her. I tried not to think about who it might fit as she shrugged into the burgundy leather trenchcoat in her hands, and I crossed the room. Ashen was leaning up against the wall between the hooks and the door, and I saw with a lurch that he had my coat draped over his folded arms. I could feel the sapphire brilliance of his eyes lancing me as I came up in front of him to grab my boots. If I looked up into those eyes, would I see the evidence of what had just happened those few short moments ago? Would I see the annihilating endlessness that had both shattered and remade me in the silence of the living room behind us? Or would I simply see the gaze of a more than earthly angel scouring me with the unspoken promises of my failures; the sparkling mirror of the angelic held up to the blasphemous face of a demon?

I stared without ability to stop at the sureness of his sock-covered feet on the floor, I saw the way the cuffs of his jeans trailed their slightly frayed edges like tattered silk against the tile. Ramming my feet into my boots, I didn't bother to tie them as I straightened up, my eyes falling off his legs like weights to the floor.

"I'll be back in a bit," Teryl said to him as she pulled her hair out from the trappings of her coat and let it fall with a swish onto her leather-covered shoulders. I was incapable of not noticing his placid nod as she smiled at him and moved towards the door.

"You'll fall on your face if you leave those like that," Ashen observed mildly as he looked down at my bootlaces, and a sudden, unexplainable furious blush began to threaten the much abused territory of my cheeks. I fought it down as I shrugged, attempting a pathetic smile as he raised his eyes to find mine in an explosion of sensual cerulean. And in their depths I read only the infinite calmness I had seen before, no hint of any knowledge gained or for that matter refused as he looked at me. They were the same as I had seen in the middle of the doorway mere minutes ago, but even as I thought that it also occurred to me not to trust it, simply because I really didn't even know for certain what it meant. All I knew for certain was the blueness of his eyes: as perfect as the limitless sky above and just as cerebral.

"I'll take my chances," I replied softly, not trusting myself to speak any louder as he watched me with his achingly beautiful arched eyebrows and magnetic half-smile. And even as my heart began to hack itself into pieces with the raw, desperate need to get out of the house and into the faceless air, I felt a sudden, keening painfulness at the thought of stepping away from him. It was almost a physical wound opening on my skin as he deepened his smile and held out my coat. But I swallowed it hard and reached out to take it, dropping my eyes from his quickly as the coat landed in my hands. Pulling it on, I watched as he pushed himself off the wall and moved with us to the door, while I tried without success to shrink away from the strangely warm parts of the coat that his hands had touched. They seared me like a piece of iron pulled from the fire, and I shuddered.

"Drive safely," he directed towards Teryl who was already opening the door. A flash of sharp blue flew her way as he pinned her with his gaze, but she shook it off like it was nothing, rolling her eyes.

"Yes, mum," she muttered, and then with a mirthful wink in my direction, she was out the door and I heard her crunching through the snow as I slowly moved my gaze to find him again.

"I'll make sure she does," I said after an uncomfortable moment of withstanding his unearthly attention.

He laughed liltingly at that and I watched with a complete twisting of my heart the way that his eyes lit up even farther and his delicate, too-beautiful face held a fairness to it that spoke of long-ago legend and a time when man wasn't a simply creature of degradation and foolishness.

"Thank you," he smiled, and then before I could start trying to figure a way of attempting to say good-bye, his eyes widened in what looked to be a sudden remembrance and he was moving away from the door hurriedly.

"Wait here just a second!" he called after himself as I watched him merge into the house. Frowning, I stood there in the doorway as the cold air poured in all around me, and I heard the sound of the truck behind me start up with an ear-splitting roar. Its rumbling coughing split the silence and into the middle of it Ashen came back running, something clutched in his hands. He came to a stop just in front of me, and was thrusting the thing into my hands with a charismatic grin that seemed to make the brilliant white light all around us dull in comparison.

"You almost forgot this," he said as I looked down. It was the container of spaghetti Teryl had made last night. I looked up at him wordlessly as he grinned, wondering with a slow, creeping feeling how he had known that I was supposed to have taken it with me. Had she told him? She must have. It was the only explanation, I thought slowly as I looked into his smiling, unfathomable eyes.

"Thank you," I remembered to say as my fingers wrapped tightly around it in wonder. And then:

"It was... really great to have met you," I heard myself say clumsily as his smile deepened even further, and then his hand was moving through the air like a pale, golden bird and it landed on my shoulder with a suddenness that shook me to my core.

Even though there was enough fabric in the way for the touch to be generalized and very uniform, I got the strange and completely unnerving feeling that I could discern where each of his fingers ended and began. An instant undeniable burning made itself known against my skin as he held my shoulder for the briefest moment, a warmth that continued even after he dropped his hand away. The removal of his hand was as sudden as the arrival and it made my hand twitch in fright as an actual and incredible pain lanced down my arm at the severing of contact. I lifted my gaze to stare at him full in the face as this happened, and the bright crimson of his hair was the most painful of beauty as the sunlight fell upon its knees before him. And in a moment of mind-bending fear or heart-expanding glory, I couldn't tell which, I felt myself longing to do so too with a full completeness that would render me beyond redemption.

"And it was wonderful to have met you. I'll see you again?"

And it was actually a question! As if this incredible, all-knowing being in front of me could ever have a single thing to ask of me that he didn't already know! And as I stared into his eyes I was shocked to see something there that I had not expected to ever see, even though the time I had known him was tiny and my knowledge of him was beyond miniscule. In the heart-stopping perfection of his face and the calm gentleness of his eyes, there was an apprehension that I did not completely comprehend at first. And then when I did, my smile was rare and explosive, eradicating any feelings of fear or confusion in that one perfect moment, and the container in my hands became a talisman as I understood the cast of his eyes. It was shyness, and it was more than I could ever hope to understand as his angelic radiance beheld me. It was gone again before I could take a second, closer look, but my smile was infectious and spreading downwards into the center of my chest.

"I'd love that," I heard myself murmur out of a nowhere that I never even knew I had, and it would have been the perfect, damning set-up for having walked away and never looking back if it hadn't been for his answering, impossible smile. It careened across his face like the human map of the stars that fell like silver showers across the mystery of the midnight sky, and it knifed its way into my heart with claws of adamant that left my hands shaking. In that single second, he became closer to me than my own skin, and an insane, desperate part of me craved to step a little closer, bridge the gap between us with whispers and timeless craving. My fingers burned as they found the end of their desires rooted in the auburn glory of his hair, longing to sink their ragged and cracked filth into those glittering locks and touch the throne of all perfection on earth.

But then a sharp blast of the truck's horn exploded into the silence and Teryl's voice floated up.

"You're going to be late, Evan!"

And then Ashen's face was colouring, a rush of pink to cheeks already sister-son to fairness, and his smile was abashed as he took a step back. In the shadowed recesses of the door, I watched with a incredulity not altogether my own as his eyes seemed to melt into a harrowing, glowing violet. They watched me as I too took a step back, and I was struck voiceless as he offered me another careless smile.

"I'm sorry... you should go. Take care!"

And then I was smiling again without honestly knowing why, and I made the few steps back to the side of the truck. Labouring to breathe, and trying to ignore the feeling of ripping, twisting pain in between my ribs, I pulled open the door. Sliding myself into the warm blast of the interior, I yanked the door shut behind me. Placing the container of spaghetti in the space between us, I snapped the seatbelt into place and felt the truck lurch as she rammed it into reverse. And all I had eyes for, as she exclaimed at the container by my side and waved at her brother in thanks, was the piercing, inescapable gaze of the one who stood like the image of princes and glory in the doorway before me. It burned joyous and whole as the truck began to inch away, and he raised a hand in farewell as it eased itself onto the street. And as I raised my hand back and held it there helplessly, I saw the vivid blueness follow me unwaveringly as his smile shone from the hall. It seemed like it never strayed to find his sister or anything else as I kept him in my gaze for as long as I could, and even though my heart lurched and roiled all the drive back, the burning of my shoulder where his hand had graced me kept a helpless smile on my lips.

And somehow I managed to play my side of meaningless chatter with Teryl as we drove. As I paused to wonder how, I caught again the scent of pine and cedar in my lungs and couldn't help but shake. I was blind to everything but the glorious, vivid memory of Ashen Rowan, and I clutched the container of spaghetti in my lap like a child as we drove. My fingers roved over its cool surface restlessly, as if seeking out the remnants of his touch there; covering every inch and knowing a helpless delight as our fingerprints merged. The sunlight was gold in my eyes and the sky was azure magic that seemed to fall around us like the decent of all godliness as I fought to breathe.

...This is the end that you have known...

[To anyone who reads this story, I wish you a happiest of holidays. Thank you for taking the time to read this, and I hope that the season brings you its fairest and brightest offerings. I shall be posting another chapter sometime between Christmas and New Years. Blessed be!]