a patron of the great art of wonder.

Rafael

Fuck is very nearly the last word out of wolf's mouth for some time. Now, pulling up to that gingerbread-y house out in the affluent burbs, it's the first word as well:

"Fuck."

Fuck, because nothing looks terribly amiss. Fuck, because it's not like the skies are falling and his girlfriend is actively getting drained of her magic by some sort of magic faerie vampire. Fuck, because now that he's here he feels insane, and possessive, and stupid.

Still gets out of the car. Squeezes his fist open and shut a few times, then strides up to the front door and knocks. Loudly.

enchantment

Kenneth grabs the questing stone off the rearview while Rafael is getting out. He digs a few things out of his backpack and puts them in his pockets before shouldering the pack again, coming alongside the Ahroun. He's not that much younger -- a few years -- and he's not any shorter than Rafael, but he cuts a very different path through the air. Right now, as two Cliaths, Rafael is unquestionably the stronger, the more powerful. Kenneth knows the basic rites, a few more specific ones, and some neat Gifts. He's young, but old enough to know that his job in a real fight is to stay back, keep his head down, and heal wolves like Rafael, because these days the chances of him summoning something helpful and convincing it to give that help are a bit of a coin flip.

Both of them know, however, that Kenneth's life expectancy far exceeds Rafael's. That one day he could become very powerful indeed. That if he does what he's supposed to -- if he stays back, keeps his head down, and heals stronger wolves -- then one day he will be the one teaching their cubs to make a questing stone, to dedicate a talisman, to cross from this side of the gauntlet to the other. Kenneth thinks about that often, ever since he got his name: wolves like Rafael probably won't live to see all their friends and packmates die before them.

He thinks about it now, standing next to Rafael as the Ahroun knocks heavily on the front door. It takes him a minute, but when he steps back from his thoughts about full moons and crescent moons, warriors and healers, he wonders why he's thinking about fights and death and all that.

When he realizes what it is, he takes a breath and mutters to Rafael: "I have a really bad feeling about this place, man."

So at least one person doesn't think Rafael is being a psycho possessive idiot.

There is music playing inside. Heavy bass. Fast paced. Something trancey. It doesn't abate, but the door does finally open. Kenneth sucks in a breath. The person at the door is slender young woman, beautiful: thick red hair, tawny hazel eyes, mouth as red as a strawberry in a bowl of cream. She is naked, wrapped in a towel that only barely covers her from tits to tail. And she's smiling, unblushing, saying:

"Sorry," says the half-naked woman who opened the door to two strange men like that isn't weird at all, "I was just about to hop in the shower." She smirks, a glint in her eye, the music loud and heavy behind her. "You two don't look like missionaries. Though I suppose we could fix that," she adds, terribly self-amused.

Rafael

Might be a big strong Ahroun. Might be the sort to slam out of trailers and bulldoze to doors. Might be feeling like a psycho possessive idiot and still be ready to knock that cocky rich bastard into the next county. Might be all these things, but the reception he gets still throws him for a loop.

Wolf has no idea where to look when the door opens and that steps out. His ears are red. He grunts and averts his eyes and clears his throat and scowls.

"Devon here?"

enchantment

The redhead cocks her head to the side, looking baffled. She even bats her eyelashes.

"Who's Devon?"

"You're lying," snaps Kenneth, still holding a stone in his hand, which is wiggling and bouncing against his palm, trying to get to the owner of that long black hair.

Rafael

"Either help or get out of the way," wolf mutters. Pulls his eyes away from the doorframe long enough to give the barely-covered woman a single, singular stare: "I'm not asking."

enchantment

The redhead puts up one hand -- the other keeping her towel on her body -- and holds it palm out, a peacemaking gesture. Her nails are long and filed to little stiletto points, painted black. "Okay, okay," she says, taking a step back and to the side, out of the way.

"Just don't go in the basement," she cautions, as they walk inside.

Rafael

"What's in the basement?" -- instantaneous, growled.

enchantment

She grins, as they both tromp in, Kenneth wary and nerves jangling, Rafael... growling, and nerves jangling. She has her back against the foyer hall, clutching her towel around her, letting the door close behind them. The foyer dims with the decrease in sunlight. It becomes clear that the music is not coming from one place, but from the speakers in every room.

"Absolutely nothing!" she says, beaming at him. "You should go to the attic instead. I can show you!"

There's a groan from the kitchen, down the hall and to the left. The smell of -- chocolate?

Rafael

In the dimness the wolf's eyes flash and gleam. He looks at the ceiling, the floor. Then that sound, a voice -- he looks that way immediately and, without a beat of hesitation, heads for the kitchen.

enchantment

Kenneth follows, hot on Rafael's heels. The theurge does keep looking at the redhead for a while, both unsettled and gobsmacked.

When he and the Ahroun turn the corner into the spacious kitchen, they find Ursula sitting there, perched on a barstool at the kitchen island. Her hair is a blonde cloud of tangles and dirt, with leaves and even some flower petals stuck in the strands. She's hunched over a plate of brownies, groaning aloud with each apparently blissful bite.

She stops when they come in. Her mouth is full, her lips -- which are chapped -- pursed. Her eyes are sparkling. She stares at them.

Speaks with her mouth full: "Rahhaeh?"

Rafael

Wolf just stares. For a long second.

Then, to Kenneth: "Get her out of here. I'm going down to the basement."

enchantment

The theurge frowns. "I don't think it's a good idea for you to go alone," he says, and glances at Ursula. "She looks fine."

Ursula swallows. "I am fine," she says. "What are you doing here? You should have a brownie. They're amazing."

Rafael

"Fine?" Wolf wheels on the Theurge, bristling. "That looks fine to you? You eat brownies like they're the nectar of the gods every day? Get her out to the car. Then come back if you want. I'm going down to the basement."

enchantment

To his credit, or perhaps only as evidence of foolishness, Kenneth doesn't back down. His brow furrows more deeply, a flicker of his own rage -- a candleflame compared to Rafael's, though the two of them in the room right now are enough to make Ursula stop giggling.

"Yes," he says, answering Rafael's questions, stepping on the Ahroun's repetition of his order. "When I'm fucking stoned, which she looks to be. She's not in immediate danger. Your girlfriend might be, so I'm going with you."

He holds up the questing stone, lets it drop from its string, and

it tugs, then... floats. Upward.

Rafael

Wolf snarls, showing his teeth, human-shape or not.

Pauses, though. His attention snags on the stone. As it tugs. As it rises. As it floats.

"What the fuck?"

enchantment

Kenneth snaps his head around, looking for the redhead,

but there's just a towel on the ground. And Ursula, reaching for another brownie, watching them with glassy but twinkling eyes.

He looks back at Rafael. "I don't know. Attic?"

Rafael

Lightning-quick, he grabs the brownie pan away from Ursula. Jabs a finger at the door. Falcon's presence is in his veins, a gift. He doesn't use it often. He uses it now:

"Car's outside. Go wait there. Don't come back inside." He tosses her the keys. "If they try to make you come back, drive away and keep your phone on."

Then, to Kenneth: "Let's go."

enchantment

"Hey," Ursula says, more of a complaint than a protest, when he takes her brownies away. She pouts briefly, looking up at him, and then she stares at him. There's that sparkling in her eyes again, a wash of it. He's not imagining it. It's not a trick of the light. Every so often, the irises of her eyes twinkle and glint as though she were seeing the world through a mist of diamonds.

He may or may not know it to look at her, though it isn't hard to guess: her will is sapped. There are dark circles under her eyes, and of course the leaves and twigs and crushed flowers in her hair. Right now the only thing protecting her from crumpling completely in the face of his rage is that strange light in her eyes, that childlike joy at brownies, at people she knows, at whatever else. Somehow it seems to shield her, and she can look up at him.

Rafael, in an act so rare for him it isn't even muscle memory, takes on the mantle of kings that is his birthright. And Ursula, a witch as true as Devon is, looks at him for a moment and murmurs:

"What... are you?"

It's so quiet that he wouldn't have heard her if he were not standing right beside her. And he doesn't answer her anyway. He tells her, and not without a trace of warning, to go out to the car. She has no reason to trust him, but at the moment, trust is not as important as obedience.

Any chance Ursula had at catching the keys was lost one or two brownies ago. She watches them slide a few inches across the kitchen island with a sort of serene delight, forgetting her question as easily as a child forgets literally anything a parent just told them to do. But she reaches for them, picking them up, compelled beyond the need for reason. In fact, at the moment, her lack of reasoning skills only makes Rafael's Gift come to bear more strongly against her.

Ursula tips off the barstool, wobbling a little from one wall to the other as she heads down the foyer, out the front door

which was closed, but is now open.

The music playing throughout the house is still pounding away.

Kenneth says nothing. He gives a sharp nod and then starts for the stairs. "Guessing the attic hatch is on the second floor," he says, chasing the questing stone.

And he's right, though it was one of his more obvious contributions. There's the hatch, the string, the loop, and the stone still floating upward. It isn't tugging now so much as just wafting around like a balloon. He puts it away, though, freeing his hands for the talens in his pockets. Nods at the hatch.

"After you."

Rafael

What is he?

Wolf has a feeling she's not the only one wondering. Or maybe the others in this house -- that bizarre half-naked woman who is now apparently fully naked, whoever it is that put on the music, and maybe, possibly, likely, that rich bastard of a boyfriend -- maybe they already know. Or suspect. He considers abandoning all pretense, lunging up through that hatch in his warform. Decides -- barely -- to hold onto some semblance of a Veil.

Runs his nails over the wall though. Rage gathers around his hands, crackling like unseen electricity. Halfway through, his nails begin to leave gouges. He gives his hands a flex, and then

effortlessly, lightly, even gracefully leaps straight up, grasps the hatch-handle, yanks it down and open even as he pulls himself up by the one arm. Grasps the edge of the attic floor with the other hand. Levers himself up, like a swimmer at the side of a pool.

enchantment

The hatch opens up and music comes pouring out: it may not be centered there, but the volume on the speakers up there is certainly louder. It's a surprise they can't hear it down the street, it's so loud.

Rafael pulls himself up, his nails digging into the floorboards of the attic as he does so. The Theurge behind him doesn't mind taking the slower way: reaching up after Rafael, unhooking the ladder, pulling it down, climbing up. But several seconds before his head pops up through the floor, Rafael is already there. Rafael has already seen.

The attic is finished, of course. Wood flooring, painted walls, everything you'd expect from any other room in a house like this. Light streams in from large, circular windows. There are couches and chairs and cushions and a big, soft chaise; there are rugs and at least two visible hookahs. The room is filled with incense, so thick that the smell is almost overpowering, so thick that the entire room is hazy, and the sunlight cuts visible paths through it. There are windchimes and lightcatchers hanging from the rafters. There is a fucking hawk sitting quietly in its hood, tied lightly to a perch beside the chaise.

That is, of course, Conrad's hawk. And the chaise is, of course, the current spot that Conrad is occupying. He is dressed in a silk robe, silk pajama pants, looking like he is in something of a trance, and he is staring upward.

Which, of course, is more than likely the first place Rafael looked anyway.

Because that is where his girlfriend is currently floating.

--

It is impossible not to smell the incense, not to breathe it in. It is everywhere; it is the air. And at first, strangely, it smelled like nothing some base resin burning away in censers. But with every single exhalation, no matter how shallow, the scent of it, the scents of it, the sense of it, it fills Rafael's lungs and mind to equal measure. The first thing he recognizes is leather, though he can't see any in the room. First rough, raw leather, freshly cut, then an older leather, oiled and supple.

When he can smell the ocean on another breath, realizing the smell of leather is completely gone, he knows something is strange about the incense.

When on another exhale, and inhale, he smells nothing at all but the air around him crackles and the hairs on his arms raise on end, he knows he's in the presence of magic. He is, at the moment, breathing in magic.

And that magic is -- as magic is wont to do -- changing things around him.

There is still the incense, the light, the rugs, the everything. But the colors are more vivid, more intense, and they won't stay still. There's something swirling and airy to the room he's in now, something very different from walking in the penumbra. There, everything reflects the real world: the more solid something is in reality, the longer it's been around, the more it matters to people, the more presence it has in the shadow realm. This is something else: everything around him seems to be trying desperately to escape its own solidity, as though it wants to dance around the room.

One of the fucking hookahs is, in fact, dancing around the room a bit... as it were. Its tubes are moving of their own accord, swaying in time to the music, tooting little puffs of vapor on the downbeats.

The hawk is still a hawk, sort of: it is twice as large, with a beak that glints like gold, with longer feathers. It is pure white, which is -- as far as Rafael knows -- not a color hawks come in. But hawks also don't have gold beaks or wear gold rings on their talons that bear shimmering rubies.

Conrad is still Conrad, but Conrad is... more. He is significantly taller, and more slender. His ears are elongated into elfin points, his eyes turned up at the edges, and though one is still emerald green, the other eye is tawny gold. He is also beautiful. No, not beautiful, not angelic, not ethereal: regal. One can imagine, easily, the very trees bending to bow to him were he to walk through the forest.

Resting along his thigh, held loosely in his hand, is a sword that was not there a few moments ago, but a few moments ago he didn't have elf ears. The sword gleams in a way that marks it as something other than steel. Something far more dangerous, especially with the heft the blade has, the razor-sharp edge. Conrad is holding a silver sword.

And Devon, still in her shorts and t-shirt that he last saw her in,

is still floating.

Rafael

Decided to preserve the Veil, see. That's why he didn't rocket through that hatch in a shower of drywall fragments, fiberglass insulation, fur and fangs. That's why he keeps his cool even when he sees the fucking hawk, sees the fucking chaises and hookahs, sees the fucking incense wafting in the air, sees that fucking rich bastard in that fucking silk robe, silk pajamas. Because of course he'd lounge around in that.

But then,

then he sees her. Girl with the eyes. His girl with the eyes, floating in midair like some sort of living chandelier. And that is the end of his thoughts about the Veil and what he should or should not do. Absolute fury rips through his veins. His eyes widen, and that's where the change begins: first the pupils flaring open, the irises around them flashing from green to luminescent yellow. Black limbal rings widening. Eyelids tightening, fur sprouting, hands becoming handpaws that leave great scars in the floor as he catapults into the air. By the time his knees pass through the hatch there's no room for them anymore -- floor buckles upwards, wooddust joins incense.

He leaps. He fills the air with fury and violence, a hyperreal scar in an oversaturated dream-world. He snatches girl out of the air, has her under one enormous arm, tucked against one massive side like a football. Lands hard enough to shake the entire house on its foundation. One hindpaw punches right through the ceiling. The others manage to find footing.

By then the world has changed. That scent of leather, and ocean, and enchantment itself: the colors brightening, everything changing. He is starkly out of place now, too harsh, too actualized, too concrete. He sees silver. He smells magic, alien and wild. He slams a handpaw against the floor and roars in sheer outrage.

enchantment

It would not matter if Devon looked perfectly happy up there, but happiness isn't quite what he sees on her face. Her eyes are open, and sparkling somewhat like Ursula's were, but she doesn't seem to see what is in the room with her. The look is faraway: familiar, at its essence, to the way she grows more distant when she's doing a reading, but intensified now by an order of magnitude. Her face is serene to the point of being aloof. Her lips are moving slightly, as though she is murmuring something, but even he cannot hear what. It might be that only Devon can hear whatever is is that her lips are trying to echo.

None of this is comforting. She is still floating in midair, closer to the rafters than the floor. Her hair is hanging down, moving with every slight shift in the ever-changing air. And though he's seen her do some surprising things, he has never seen anything like this before.

The change follows his rage as it courses through his body, over his skin, lighting up his nerves. It makes the Theurge behind him move faster, climbing up into the attic, taking on the near-man shape as he follows, if only because he's more cautious -- and has less rage to burn. Rafael, however, does not hear Kenneth swear under his breath as he sees the room, and Devon, and as the incense begins to work its strange magic on him, too.

Even as tall as the ceiling is, it is no effort at all for Rafael to jump, wrap Devon in his arms, and hold her fast as he hits the floor again. Wood cracks and splinters. Devon gasps, gasped as soon as he touched her, and her eyes widened. They refocused, but did not lose their strange sparkle. She looks at him, instinctively pulling away at first, a moment before she recognizes him. The world changes around him; he roars in defiance of it, in fury at it.

In his arms, she reaches for him. She is hesitant at first, in case he isn't in his right mind. But then her hand, seeming so small in contrast, comes to rest on the side of his muzzle. The saliva on his fur that attended his roar does not seem to bother her. Devon just touches him, breathing heavy, singular breathes through her nose. In. Out. He can tell from that, and from the feel of her body against his side, how fast her heart is beating.

Her lips move, like she's trying to say his name or call him Babe the way she does, but her mouth is dry. And then there is the way her heart is pounding, like a rabbit in flight. And then

her eyes swim. And roll back.

And she's out.

Kenneth jerks forward, but then stays himself; maybe now isn't the time to try and wrest Rafael's girlfriend out of his arms, even if he wants to help her. He likes his face intact.

Across the room, Conrad clears his throat.

He hasn't gotten up. He's sitting up a bit, though still lounging. He no longer looks like he's in his own trance. His hand has shifted, ever so slightly, on the grip of his sword. He looks like a rich, lazy fuck, somewhat bored, especially when he raises one eyebrow.

"You know... you are trespassing."

Rafael

The wolf, who is now a monster, crouches on all fours. Tense and furious, his fur stands on end, his hackles lift, his lips wrinkle to show teeth. His eyes glare so ferociously they are glassy, staring. He does not break his gaze even when he is touched

but his eyelids do twitch. Ever so slightly, a beat of tension.

And then she's out. And he's roaring again, a sound so deep and resonant and guttural it cannot properly be called a bark. The young Theurge jerks forward and he snaps in that direction, instinctively, even as somewhere in the depths of his mind he registers it: ally. friend.

Still without taking his eyes from the rich-lazy-fuck, he unwinds his arm, lifts that precious cargo away from himself. Holds her out to Kenneth. Take her out of here, he growls, the language of wolves. Take her somewhere safe.

Then Conrad speaks.

Wolf reacts poorly. Seizes that upflung, half-splintered trapdoor; tears it off its hinges and throws it at the smug bastard. The words are forced out, very loud, barely intelligible:

"WHAT DID YOU DO TO HER?"

enchantment

Kenneth keeps his distance. He keeps his eyes on Conrad. And then he flicks his gaze away, at Rafael's movements. The Silver Fang is holding the limp Fianna kinfolk out to him, and what else would he do but take her? This isn't some girl getting smashed on doped brownies or whatever was happening to Ursula. This is Rafael's mate, and right now -- however temporarily or tensely -- Rafael is sort of his packmate. Beyond that: this girlfriend is kin to his tribe. She is blood of his blood, even if it's distant as all hell. He puts his arms under her, taking her carefully.

And then, a moment later, curling his upper half around her, shifting into crinos to facilitate that coverage, when Rafael rips the attic hatch off its hinges and throws it across the room.

Conrad, for his part, seems to somehow sidestep the hatch door. Nevermind that he was sitting down, lounging about. He is up from the chaise and sliding just out of the way, moving as fast as rain in a storm.

Meanwhile, a few splinters hit Kenneth's fur, and he is bristled, chestnut fur on edge, bright green eyes gleaming. There is no doubt that he can see what Rafael sees: his eyes twinkle like Ursula's did, like Devon's did. He can see the dancing hookah and the silver sword and the elf, standing there in imperious annoyance.

He pauses a moment. And then he goes to the hatch, drops through it, and the upper floor shakes slightly when he lands in the hallway, tucked around his cargo.

Now it is only Rafael and Conrad in the attic. Conrad, his eyes following the Theurge for a moment, his brow furrowing in momentary frustration. Then his gaze returns to the literal wolf at his door.

"You insult my honor, sir. She did everything herself."

There's a beat of a pause. A faint smirk, an acknowledging tilt of his head: "Well, I did enchant her, but as you can see, it's quite lovely being enchanted," he adds, waving a hand around the room, full of its swirling colors and dancing hookahs and ruby-bedecked hawks.

Though, truth be told, the hookah is not dancing anymore, but skittered away to hide behind the chaise. And the hawk is shifting slightly on its perch, dancing from foot to foot.

Rafael

Kenneth is not stopped. His way is not barred. Truth be told, wolf expected that it would be. Expected that it wouldn't be so easy. Expected a fight.

There is no fight. Theurge drops out of sight, and then -- only then -- wolf allows himself a split-instant where he looks away from Conrad. Eyes flash toward the open hole in the floor where the hatch used to be. Sees Kenneth's rust-red tail disappearing.

Then he's glaring at that too-graceful ... what? Elf? His mind shies from the term; it's just too ridiculous. Yet there seems to be no other fitting term. And hell: everything about this is ridiculous. Including that goddamn hookah.

A single snarling word: "Why?"

enchantment

Conrad looks troubled. He frowns, shaking his head slightly at Rafael. "Because she's special, Rafael. Can you even comprehend how rare it is, these days, to find even one such mortal? Not to mention two!"

He laughs. It's incongruent, and sudden, and while he laughs, he wiggles his sword around a bit.

"See, they stop doubting themselves so much when they're enchanted. Stop telling themselves all the things they can't do, mustn't do." He laughs again. "And your girlfriend, sir! When she stopped all that nonsense, whoop! She floated right up!"

He waves his sword at the rafters. Cheers, triumphant. He looks, for a moment, like a knight who has found the grail, whose quest has been completed, whose devotion has been -- at long last -- rewarded.

He also looks, in the same moment, like a madman.

Rafael

He hasn't decided yet if he believes a word Conrad is saying. But as with any dream, his logic -- or lack thereof -- is self-consistent. A leads to B leads to C. It fits together.

Wolf's hackles aren't quite so bristled. Ears flatten a little as that menacing sword flashes toward the rafters, but blood has yet to spill. Even that goddamn hookah is hiding, doesn't seem like it's preparing to choke him to death with its tubes. Still snarling, wolf shrinks slowly down into his near-man shape. Kingsblood in his veins, but looks like a hulking proto-man in this shape. Crouches like one too, knuckles of one hand against the splintered floor.

"Why?" he asks again. Words are a little easier like this. "What do you get out of all this?"

enchantment

It is like a dream. Ever since he and Kenneth got out here. The winding road. This quaint but modernized house. The fox. The half-naked woman. Ursula, with flowers and twigs in her hair, moaning over brownies. The music that still won't stop.

And all of that before he saw his girlfriend floating eight feet in the air.

--

For a moment, even after Rafael has changed his shape and spoken again, Conrad retains that pose, sword held heavenward, arm flung out, looking all the world like he should be wearing shining armor and painted in oils. He looks lost, rapt in some other moment, some forgotten feeling, and then

he blinks. He slowly lowers the sword again, and his eyes. His brow furrows in a tight flicker that almost looks like pain. And then he blinks again. He looks at Rafael like he's just noticing he's there all over again.

He processes the question. His bright green eyes darken, his expression turning stormy. He looks offended.

"I am a patron of the great art of Wonder, sir," he says, his tone grand and sweeping... but turning a bit snappish when he gets to the honorific. "And as any true lover of such art, it behooves me to facilitate ever greater and more transcendent expressions thereof!"

He is so offended.

He is also hiding something.

Rafael

"Bullshit," the wolf snarls. "It's not just that. It's more than that."

Beat. He stops beating around the bush:

"What are you stealing?"

enchantment

Conrad is very still, then. He stares at Rafael, backed up a step, sword held tight in his grasp.

"I am not a thief," he says, his voice very low, darker than before, quivering with something riding the line between denial and rage. "You insult me. In my own home."

His voice quivers at the last, but not from fear. From a cut perhaps deeper than he can bear. "I am not a thief!" he says again, shouting it this time in a hoarse cry. "I am a knight of the Queen of Thistles! I am a knight!" he says, his voice becoming shrill at the end, almost panicked.

Or grieved.

Rafael

"You're a lunatic in a silk bathrobe," wolf says flatly.

Maybe he's supposed to care. Maybe he's supposed to feel bad. Maybe he should care and feel bad -- it's the guy his girlfriend's friend is apparently in love with. Or enamored of, at least. But that's just too many orders of separation for him, and all that he cares about has already left the building.

He's leaving too. Rises up off that half-ruined floor, never taking his eyes off the so-called Knight of Thistles. Knight of the Queen of Thistles. Whatever. He has one more admonition:

"Give back what you've taken. And don't come near us again."

enchantment

You'd think he would argue again. But 'lunatic in a silk bathrobe' seems like something he can ignore, or else: the cut from being called a thief was so deep that all else makes no difference.

He does not look pitiful. Looking at him, it seems impossible that he would ever com across as pitiful, or undignified. There is some part of him that simply isn't real enough to be pitied.

He does look diminished, though, somehow. Some of the luminosity of his eyes and the glow in his cheeks has dimmed. There's a greyness to him, a somber shade to the room around him, as if it is reacting to him.

When Rafael tells him to give it back, he lifts his eyes from some faraway point they had fixed on a moment ago. His brow wrinkles in a grimace.

"I cannot give it back," he says quietly, in admission. "But it will come back to her. She will recover. I would never... I would never break a mortal that way. Not like that."

Rafael has no real idea of what he means. Rafael has no concern for what he means. But even so, he can see the flicker of doubt in Conrad's eyes: the part of him that is not so sure of himself, or his own memory, or what he may have done in some half-forgotten past.

"They won't remember much," he confesses, too, as he shrinks back towards his chaise. "Mortals never do."

Rafael

He's a heartbeat from stepping through that hole in the floor that used to be a hatch. A breath away from dropping down, landing nine feet below, stalking out of there.

Pauses, though.

"What will?" he presses. "What will come back?"

enchantment

Conrad looks up at him. There's something longing in his eyes, not just lost: you ask a man forgotten in the desert what he remembers about the taste of water. That is the look.

"...wonder," he says, the word quiet and reverent. And truly reverent, not tinged with the madness that has gleamed in his eyes. He moves his hand, as though to try and trace what he means out of the air.

And he does, in fact: the colors of the room brighten for a moment around his hand. The air itself swirls into flickering colors, shimmering like the rainbow of an oil slick. They form themselves around his fingers, produce the shape of a butterfly for a half-second, then dissipate.

"The way they look at the world. The way it makes them feel. The ability to... create, the way they do. Things you would never imagine a creature such as a human could envision, much less achieve."

He sounds very sad. And in his own way, almost awed.

"Faith," he goes on, trying to find another word for what he means. "Belief, worth dying for, in things that have no shape, no purpose, no value, even according to their own rules for how they've made the world. Like magic. Like love. They cannot seem to live without it.

"And my people do not even exist without it. Without their Dreams."

Conrad looks at Rafael. Somehow he looks older than he did before. There is grey in his hair, peppering through the auburn, winging over his ears. There are stark lines that speak of dignity and wisdom in his face, which did not seem to be there before. Some of the shine has left him: the glamour fades, and his true face reveals itself.

Perhaps.

"There are few humans left who can still rightly be called Dreamers," he tells Rafael, "and fewer still who have true gifts of wonder, such as Ursula. Such as Devon. And... her Dreams will come back. Only the most depraved or reckless of my kind extinguish that light in a Dreamer permanently.

"She will be all right. They both will be. If they are not, then the next time I see you, I will not stop you from what you come to do to me."

Rafael

Now, for the first time, the wolf is filled with something more than revulsion and disgust, violence and hate. For the first time, he looks at this ... creature, this fucking weirdo in a silk bathrobe, this rich bastard in his glass tower -- looks at him and sees something more.

Well. Not more. Doesn't quite see it, anyway: but the promise of it. Something that might have been, like a memory or an echo. A dream. He thinks of what Kenneth said: faeries, that sheer and wild magic, beyond the law and ken of humans. Or even wolves.

He's not quite enchanted. But in some small way, he gets it. A little.

Then it passes. It's that last sentence, those last few lines, that give him pause. That narrow his glinting, feral eyes. His anger rises again:

"You don't really know what you have and haven't done, do you."

It's not truly a question. It's something closer to an accusation. "You don't really know if you can stop yourself from ... whatever it is you might do. To extinguish that light permanently. You're not sure you haven't already done it."

enchantment

Conrad lifts his eyes to meet Rafael's. He says nothing for a moment. Then, steadily:

"No, wolf. I do not remember every terrible thing I may have done, in my worst moments. And I do not know if I will always be able to stop myself from harming an innocent in such a way. Even someone I love."

That rests in the air for a moment.

"I do know that I have not done it to them."

Rafael

The very air around him shrinks and expands with every breath. Rage bears down on him, heavy as lead. Burns out from within, scorching the very marrow of his bones. Narrowing his entire world to a circle of white-hot focus, a point, a target.

Stark silence.

"I should tear you to pieces," he says at last, softly. "That silver sword of yours wouldn't save you from me."

He takes a breath. Lets it out, slow. It was not a threat after all but a decision of sorts. An uneasy truce.

"Who is this Queen of Thistles?"

enchantment

Conrad only tips his head to one side. There's a sense he has heard this before, that Rafael is not the first wolf to say such a thing to him.

The question surprises him somewhat. He expected Rafael to leave, then. Conrad does not want to fight him, though not out of fear; he knows, somewhere inside of himself, that his side of the fight would not be any more honorable than Rafael's.

He shakes his head. "I should not have spoken of her," he says, wincing briefly at the floor. "I am... temporarily banished from her court."

Rafael

"Temporarily." The word is sheer scorn. "Of course."

He's had enough. Drops down through that jagged hole in the floor. Makes his way downstairs and out, where he looks for girl. And girl's friend. And Theurge.

enchantment

Conrad looks at him, scowling. Shakes his head. He does not reply.

He does not stop Rafael, either. A moment after Rafael drops through the broken hatch, the music stops. The house is suddenly, eerily silent. A moment later, it clicks on again: something more somber, something mournful.

The strangeness of his surroundings don't stop when he leaves the attic and the incense behind. The walls shift and move according to the music. They tint themselves more blue than yellow. As he descends to the first floor, the floor has a watery quality to it, like a current is moving away from him at each step. The brownies he yanked away from Ursula are still on the counter, but now they seem to sparkle, and now they look almost irresistible.

It is likely that Rafael resists them anyway.

The world outside is explosive in its color. He can see faces and forms in the trees themselves, as if they are true dryads, nymphs talking in the rustling of leaves. The grass is tall, thigh-high, and a rich green that is tinged with gold. Across the yard a head pokes up: the redhead from before, but she has perked triangular ears with white tufts at the ends, a black button nose with whiskers, and behind her... the tip of a twitchy, fluffy fox tail.

She doesn't approach him. When he looks away again there's a rustle, and the next thing he sees: a real fox again, scampering into the house he has just left.

Devon's car looks different, too: shinier, newer even than the day he got it for her. Happier, in a weird way. It does look like the headlamp winks at him as he approaches, but that could just be a trick of the light.

Kenneth is standing there beside the car, looking... more or less like he always did, but anxious. Rafael wasn't in there long enough to make him rush back in, and now Rafael is here, and Kenneth looks worried, but not panicked.

Ursula is in the front seat, picking flower petals out of her hair.

Devon is in the back seat, buckled in. Unconscious.

Her hair is floating.

So are her feet.

That is why she is buckled in.

Kenneth takes one look at Rafael, then gets into the driver's seat and turns on the car.