Compton Building Solarium
Manchester, NH
February 6, 2009

Night, in the solarium of the Compton Building. With the drapes thrown open over each and every long-paned window, the windows themselves open to allow the chill night air to swirl into the silent chamber, the thin walls between interior and exterior seem almost non-existant, ephemeral. The drapes dance on the breeze, the only motion in the star-lit room. Nothing else stirs save for the quiet, even breath of a single woman, asleep on a pallet upon the floor.

Her breath quickens a pace as she falls further into her dreams. Perhaps even a touch of a smile brushs her lips at the image which greets her mind's eye. An intense gaze meets her own, one eye green and the other brown, set into a youth's face, framed by silken black hair. She knows this young man... hears faintly his voice in a recitation of half-remembered debates that kept them both well up past dusk or dawn. The figure is distant upon the forest path, draped in druidic robes, but still she can see his face as clearly as if he were no more then inchs away.

A certain emotion catchs at her throat. A longing, a stir of hope renewed, love, desire, and a memory of loss. The dreamer is heard to utter a lowly whispered "Corwin...", but in that instant, her tableau changes, morphing from forest into a familiar garden, ecletic in its design with a magnificant oak spanning up towards the sky, its pond of koi, and patchs of herbs. Butterflies flit about the ever-present blooms. The druidic man has as well been transformed, as if the very act of naming him banished his existance. Both eyes, now, are as green as the leaves upon the oak, hair lightened to a sandy brown, and clothing such that would do the 60's proud adorns the man. A pack over his shoulder, a guitar in hand, and he turns to leave, walking out of existance. The door slams in the dreamer's face as she rushs to pursue him, to stop his exit.

She sinks down the door, wracked with silent sobs when a shadow falls across her, hands reach to lift her up... and shake her, a masculine voice admonishingly her harshly "You are -mine-! Mine alone... no one else shall have you."

She looks up with a certain horror at this, a panicked-no-this-isn't-him thought... and finds herself half-proven right as she looks upon the face of both her father... and her once-husband. Split down the middle, they share one form, her father's lower voice growing out "You have been very disobedient, Little Witch!"

Roughly she is turned to look back out upon the garden... only it is not there. Scorching sand spans for what seems like miles, and within the expanse, small protubances mar the surface... small protubances of a lighter, bleached shade. Bones. The masculine voice shifts again, whispering into her ear "I have killed them... killed them all..."

She shakes her head, but there is no denial. Pulling out of her captor's grasp, she desperately begins to dig in the sand, dig up the bones, wild with heartache and grief as her father/husband bursts into laughter behind her.

"Dig, dig up the bones, beloved... they are useless to you now!"

Perhaps it is something she hits in the sand, perhaps some other trap she has triggered, but she finds herself falling, falling, falling though total darkness, the taunting laughter following her down...

...until she wakes up suddenly, sitting stick-straight upright on the small pallet in the solarium, gasping for breath.