<html> <body> --------- Metamor Keep: Divine Travails of Rats by Charles Matthias and Ryx Pars II: Denuncio (r) Friday, May 11, 708 CR Malger walked the halls of the Temple quietly, his hands clasped at the small of his back and his thoughts purposely emptied. He could hear the plaintive cries of the dreams around him, as well the soft sighs of pleasure and laughter of glee, but it was the need and fear that cut through his hearing the most keenly. At his side walked a tall, willowy female gazelle dressed in a flowing gown of the thinnest gossamer silk. Nothing was truly hidden by the gauzy, voluminous material but nothing was forthrightly visible, either. Her hooves clicked softly in time with the muted clicks of his claws upon the smooth stone floor. “You are pensive, Malger,” the gazelle observed quietly at his side, her gaze forward but, somehow, her attention focused solely upon him. “I am troubled.” Malger nodded slowly. At his side, brushing his leg, silver glistened brightly as the sole color in an otherwise colorless realm. Yet it shone with no true hue but the suggestion thereof, as if a single trill from its gleaming length could illuminate the twilight shadows like a new risen sun. “Someone asked something of you,” she continued in the same voice, but the scrutiny of her regard sharpened. The click and clop of claw and hoof did not change their pace. “Aye, and that is what troubles me.” “I told you one would.” At last Malger came to a stop and turned his head to gaze up at the taller woman's limpid regard. “You... you did, aye. Long ago.” He frowned with a drop of his whiskers and ears. “As you always do.” He sighed and shook his head. “I cannot do as they asked.” “You must.” “Mosha, love, you asked too much of me when I asked before!” He protested. “I ask nothing of you, my love, but to bring the petitioner before me, as he asked.” Raising her hand she rested delicate fingers against his musteline lips. Malger noted, with some inward surprise somewhere else in his tumultuous thoughts, that she had not shown herself as a fox since Misanthe came into his house, and dreams. “As I foretold.” Her smile was warm, completely bereft of the doomful presence others felt when they happened to come before presence in any aspect. Only Malger, and Misanthe, saw her thus – as a living, vulnerable soul alone in the vastness of a haunted realm. “Before, you came for yourself. Now, another comes for themselves. You are their messenger, and guide. It is they who will bargain, and a needful bargain it must be.” “Needful?” “For many, my love. Another will ask, in time, a question you know well. Why.” “Whom?” Malger asked heavily. Sometimes her portents were as frightening as her ominous aspect. “How will I know when that question is the 'Why' I am listening for?” “You will, love, worry not. But such is for, as ever, the future and not the contemplations of the Now.” “Matthias.” “Yes. He must come to me. You must bring him. The fate of more than his soul is in the balance.” “Then I shall.” “Good, good.” The gazelle, whom Malger called by one name but others knew by another, smiled and bobbed her head. Nocturna, mistress of dreams, smiled down upon the mortal salve for her eons long anguish and made a request of him that he knew well. “Have you music for me, love? Have you a dance?” “I have both, as ever.” Malger stepped back to proffer a deep genuflection with a flourish of both arms and tail as he grasped his flute. ---------- May He bless you and keep you in His grace and love, Charles Matthias </body> </html>