Desreal: find myself stupefied, coming back again; ETHEREAL

Kurai’s reality is reality on steroids. It’s a sort of hypersensitive, hyperaccurate representation of the world at large, seen through those piercing pale eyes which assess everything, calculate, know. His is an ancient and inexorable wisdom, and he sees the world as it is, beyond the glossy layers of what should be and what isn’t.

But the powers of Nachtmere, while leaving him superequine, immortal, take their toll as well. Sometimes, things distort. Lines become fuzzier, and the shapes around him become terrifying and menacing and draw his Lightning to them. Now, though, he is thoroughly free of this distortion; he walks in silence alongside her, now so large and majestic as her mother. The two of them walk in silence; he alone knows where he is taking her, and he casts a glance sideways at her, his wingtip brushing her side again and then pressing back into his scaly side.

They round a bend and come upon a small glade with a single willow tree to one side, weeping over a patch of soft grass.

He pushes aside the tendrils of the willow tree.

“Do you know where we are?” he asks her.

He wonders if she will remember. It’s hardly likely, he knows – time means different things for her, so young, than it does for him. This is where he witnessed Mab give birth to twins, one of them Ethereal herself. Kurai – then so dark and sinuous, scarcely real – watched over them then, aware of the magnitude of their futures.

Ethereal has not disappointed him.