XLIV: Coffee

“Do you want me to do something about it?” Michael murmured, pushing her mug closer to her, encouraging her to drink.

“What? About Karl?”

He nodded.

“Don’t be silly,” she told him, although she was quietly warmed by his protectiveness.

When she looked at him again for a moment she saw him different, as though he was glowing. It was different from the normal visions the Sight had given her, it was never real. This scared her.

“Jazz?”

She shook her head and smiled. Michael had been her boyfriend for nearly a year now. They talked, about everything, and about nothing. She had never felt this strong a connection with anyone before. Sometimes she could feel it in the way their hands touched. There was a connection, physical and emotional and sometimes she wondered if maybe she should take it further…

“It’s nothing,” she said.

“You Seeing things again?”

Yes, she had told him, but how now to tell him that Morgan was going to die and that she was going to start Seeing in a way that she had never seen anything before. That it scared her. That she did not really want it.

“Did you know…” she started shyly, “..when I see you with the Sight, you’re surrounded by this light.”

Michael’s eyes narrowed in mirth.

“Maybe it’s telling you you’re safe with me then,” he said, chuckling.

She stuck her tongue out at him.

“Either that or you’re too good to be true.”

“Nothing, anywhere, is too good to be truth,” he replied and moved to get up.

She caught his hand and kept him there.

“Did you know…Dreamers can see the past, Diviners can see the future,” she told him, “Morgan says that Dreamers sacrifice their hold on reality sometimes…”

“And Diviners sacrifice sight, I know.”

XLIII: Trivial

Jessica Mirkhill had had the Sight since she was a child, but, like her mother and grandmother bhefore her, she could not see much beyond the small glimmers of trivial events: how many eggs would the chickens lay today? Would there be rain or shine tomorrow? Useless little things in the greater scheme of things. Not like what Morgan was capable of: to see through the many streams of the future into the actual ocean of time and then make sense of it.

Jessica shuddered. Secretly she had always hoped that Morgan would outlive her, that way she would not, as the youngest Cassandrian, inherit the TrueSight. Of course, her actual eyesight would fade. That was not what scared her, however, it was the vastness of the ocean. 

“Guess there’s no use worrying about it now,” she murmured to herself.

“Penny for your thoughts?” 

The voice came out of nowhere and suddenly Jessica found herself corned, two burly arms pinned to either side of her head. She swore silently.

“Karl, don’t you ever give up?” she asked him, crossing her arms. 

“I’m a slow learner.”

“Please let me go.”

“Will you go out with me?”

“No.”

“You’re way too good for Michael, Jessica. You should be with me.”

Jessica really wished she could tell him that tomorrow she was going to turn into a freak because her great-grandmother was going to be dead. That would have put him off. 

“Picking on my girlfriend again?” 

Karl stepped away from her, turning to face Michael, who was casually leaning against the stairwell.

“What’s it to you, St.Claire?”

“Well, she is my girlfriend,” Michael replied, holding out his hand for Jessica, “let’s go, Jazzy.” 

Jessica darted down the stairs ahead of Michael, shooting an impish smile at Karl.

“Karl...stay away from her.”

XLII: Foresight

“Listen closely, Jazzy,” Morgan Mirkhill told her great-great-grandaughter.

Jessica stared into blind eyes.

“Alright, Morgan,” Jessica replied, setting herself.

“Tomorrow I’m going to die.”

“Wh- ”

Morgan raised a hand, commanding silence.

“When I am dead, you will start to See things, not the way you have been seeing them up until now, but to See things.”

Jessica could hear the capital letters while her foremother spoke. She had known that this day would come of course, but it would have helped if Morgan had given her some more time. More time to prepare, more time to read, more time to prepare before she took up the mantle of Seer within the Coven.

“You won’t be joining the Coven.” 

Jessica blinked at the empty eyes.

“But I thought…all these years of training,” she said, spreading her hands on the lunch table. 

Around them the school cafeteria was emptying, Jessica glanced at the violin case next to her. She was going to be late to music. Morgan appeared to follow her gaze.

“Your teacher is detained, you will arrive before him.”

Jessica nodded, taking it for granted in a way that any Mirkhill child would. Morgan knew.

“So…I won’t be joining the Coven?”

“Maye has broken the Coven and gone missing,” Morgan told her, “Alyxa is also missing, but I know where she is.”

Jessica waited for the ‘she can be found here’ that she was expecting, but there was nothing.

“Morgan – ”

“You will help her and Morpheus and Bast find their way out,” the blind Seer interrupted.

“How?”

“Seeing is what we do, Jazzy. You, your mother, your grandmother, myself. We are the Cassandrian line. By Apollo’s Gift we See, and by his Curse they have do not believe us. You will guide them out of Lucifer’s gilded cages.”

End of Part I, Beginning of Part II

How do you end parts of stories that you’d never intended to have parts in the first place? That’s asking a helluva dramatic question. Let’s be clear on one thing! I never intended for there to be more than one part. In fact there weren’t meant to be parts at all, there was just meant to be a continual narrative telling a story that went whichever which way. As usual, however, the story has a way of finding its own route through its own plot twists.

When I first started writing Valerian Night it was my intent to explore a story in which dead deities incorporated themselves into our world, linking themselves vampirically to a particular human. We can’t forget that I started this as a project for my creative writing course at the University of Canberra. Thus the interactive polls, which gave me a direction to go in, if the story was less charitable.

Which brings me to the end of Part 1 and the beginning of Part 2.

Part 1 has been, on the whole, largely unplanned, direction taking shape all by itself (with a helpful hand from those of you who polled in). So we’ve been on a round trip. We’ve met, directly or indirectly, a host of characters who will be taking the stage throughout the rest of the story. We’ve mixed pantheons, learned about ends of worlds, and washing machines that do the laundry by themselves.

It’s been a gentle ride.

Let’s up the stakes then.

Those of you who read my story Cascades when it was going, you might just encounter some familiar faces.

So enter the Morning Star with suitable theatricality, with flocks of angels on the horizon.

And of course we still have an imprisoned God of Light waiting in the wings…

XLI: Caged

The bars of the two cages were golden, shimmering in the light of the room.


“And how’re my beautiful goddesses today?” the Prince exclaimed as he danced into the room, running his fingers over the bars as he passed on his way to the amber throne.

The strange-furred panther on the left hissed at him and clawed at him.

“Awww, Bast, don’t you like your accommodations? You know I’d have let you stay in a normal room, if only you’d leave the drapes alone, silly kitty.”

-Save your words, Lucifer, I will not hear them!- Bast snarled at him, pacing back and forth in her cell.

Lucifer laughed, falling back into his chair, turning his attention to the cage on the right.

“And how about you, my dearest one?” he practically purred, he glanced at Bast, “do you know, Venus was once frightfully jealous of this one!”

Bast ignored him. The other inhabitant merely shrugged, her true-black hair fell around her kneeling form in supernatural waves, snapping around her angrily, the only betrayal of emotion. Even her ice-blue eyes said nothing.

“Well, Destroyer?” the Morning Star asked her.

She reached out and touched the bars of her prison, the gold shook and trembled beneath her fingers. Lucifer sat back and watched her, a spark of interest lighting in his eyes.

“Always pushing, treasure, always testing me, cheeky goddess,” he murmured, and then laughed again, “but not today, Kali, I have more guests for you to meet!”

Kali dropped her hand and turned her head.

-Morpheus!- Bast hissed as the Dream-King entered, his arm wrapped tightly around Alyxa’s shoulders, -let them go, Dark Prince, they are of no use to you!-

“Au contraire, they are going to be very useful.”

-With what?-

“With giving humanity back what is theirs: imagination….and faith.”

XL: Daystar

There was a stale quality to the air, as though it had been breathed before. Her head hurt; Alyxa opened her eyes slowly, letting them adjust to the soft glow that lit up the room in which she lay. To her surprise rather than lying on a hard stone floor she was resting on a mattress.

“Awake then at last, Dreamer?”

Not even Morpheus was that beautiful, this creature was spellbinding. His hair was nearly white, falling over his shoulders in almost effeminate flows. It was his cheekbones that shocked her; on any other man they might have been too delicate. The eyes were brilliantly blue, the purest cut sapphires had nothing on them.

“It’s been forever since I’ve had guests, especially little Dreaming treasures,” he went on, and all Alyxa could do was watch his lips move.

A perfect mouth. Kissable, and tasteable –

“Alyxa!”

She turned at the sound of her name and saw Morpheus storming in.

“Ah, the Dream-King awakened, undreaming! Rested after your sleep, darling?” the stranger asked, half spinning half hovering out of the way as Morpheus swept by him to wrap his arms around Alyxa protectively.

“Morph- ” she murmured.

“What have you done with us? Why do you hold us here?” the Dream-King demanded.

“I have done nothing, honey,” the stranger told him laughingly.

“Morpheus, what’s going on, who is this guy?” Alyxa asked, alarmed by the panic in Morpheus’ eyes and voice.

“I believe we are prisoners,” he said softly.

“In a way you are guests and I am your keeper.”

“Who are you?”

The stranger laughed and hovered upwards, arms spread in an expression of delight.

“Alyxa…” Morpheus said, his eyes never leaving their ‘host’, “I present to you the Prince of Hell, the Morning Star, the Great Enemy…Alyxa, this is Lucifer.”