I am asleep, I think.  I can feel my body distantly, as through a 
mist, and it is something I've experienced before through deep 
meditation.  But this is different.  The body I no longer seem to belong 
to is comfortable, its limbs heavy and warm.  Its breathing is slow and 
regular, but it matches the pace of another's, and has nothing to do with 
Druid teachings.  I have left this body sprawled in a bed, rather than 
seated with rigid precision in a grove of trees.  This could be a dream.  
It probably is.  Or else my mind has gotten enough rest with these past 
nights of meditation, and does not wish to sleep with the body.  The 
metaphysics of the situation elude me, frankly.

	Movement is hampered in this form;  I can not draw a sword, and I 
feel vulnerable to what might find me if I stray too far out of my own 
realm.  I have nightmares from time to time that I am attacked while my 
soul is elsewhere;  these nightmares did not get better when Sequence was 
in a knot.  They were quick and horrid little dreams, for I was killed in 
seconds, while I looked on.  Funny, the na siogai usually did the deed, 
unless it was a really bad dream, in which case it was Calamus.  
Archimedes thought to suffer that one to live today.  As well release a 
wildcat into the mountains.  Perhaps it will not come to attack your 
sheep, but you would  be a fool to think so.

	I'm moving it seems.  Not with conscious thought, either.  Out the
bedroom door, past the closed doors to the guest room, Elisabeth's room,
Beauty's room, Calamus' room, Rosemary's, Caitt's, the long-empty
nursery...  Images, even more ghostly than I, appear as I pass these
doors...  Calamus, barely awake, looking sullen and lanky, coming to the
door of his room to sneer faintly as I walk past to an early morning
practice; Elizabeth creeping in with a young man, giving me a wink and 
the sign as if to say "don't tell Mom!";  Beauty standing at the nursery 
door adamantly refusing to take a bath;  Senlin, walking from Rosemary's 
room with her clothes in his arms, dressed in the black of mourning;  
Caitt smiling as we rose one morning in the autumn, crying Happy Birthday 
to us, her children and her changeling child; a more recent image of 
Archimedes half-clothed with an utterly pained look at being woken at 4 
am.  I dispell these wraiths with a few words of na siogai; I have no use 
for glamours of my own making.
	
	Down the stairs, past the dratted second floor.  I call no 
glamours here even unconsciously, for what would I see?  Ulysses in a 
seduction scene with my sister or daughter?  Sandr creeping about in wet 
clothes, or worse, him cowering before me?  Onward, to the first 
floor...  out the music room doors, into the garden.  Moonlight loves me, 
and I love it.  I wonder if I shouldn't have joined the cult of Diana in 
my youth.  I have much to do.  The garden must be prepared for winter.  
I must chose to either lose Foil forever except for some secluded corner 
of it, or else take over the ruling of it and do it as it should be 
done.  I have armies to raise and keep up.  I have a father to talk to, 
and a mother as well, I suppose.  I have cousins to deal with--  Cameron 
must be stopped, Sandr should be-- left alone, I suppose, though I 
couldn't tell you..., and then there is Archimedes, though he is in a 
class by himself.  

	Images of Baisingstoke come to me...  Then the thought that 
Archimedes has done things worthy of a na siogai bandit.  And somehow 
that thought angles around and hits something else like a curved arrow, 
and I just don't *make* this connection, only the voice of my first sword 
master telling me how battle-frenzy can sometimes even itself out into a 
constant state of insanity, and sometimes men come out of it and 
sometimes they don't.  And the memory of the five Wild Hunts I've led and 
enjoyed.  Who knows who or what I killed on those nights.  Elizabeth 
ended by bedding her prisoners, but I know I've never done that, and the 
prisoners are always gone in the morning...  am I to assume I let them 
live, or merely killed them on the way?  I am only slightly comforted to 
remember that any abroad at night on All Hallow's Eve are there for no 
good cause. 
	
	If you follow a general, you should expect no less than death.  
This is where Ulysses and I disagree.  If you never put on armor and draw 
your sword in the name of money or a cause, you deserve to live out your 
days in relative peace.  And no general wants to lead an army to death, 
but neither does a general let king and country fall to the 
unscrupulous through inaction.
	
	So...  I approach the grove where I have eased my restless mind 
these past two nights.  Oak is such a comforting thing.  I don't know if 
I shall go through with my plan anymore.  I feel less and less guilt over 
my behavior.  A little maddened by the thought of betrayal-- I would 
forgive this in any other of my aquaintance.  Why must people be so 
unforgiving of themselves?  When this time is over, I shall decide then.  
At the moment, the moonlight shines off the windows of my bedroom as if 
reminding me of the very comfortable body I left behind.  I wait no 
longer, but allow myself to snap back so suddenly that I disturb my 
slumber.  But not too much.  Real sleep comes soon.