Newsgroups: alt.pub.dragons-inn
From: li@Data-IO.COM (Phyllis Rostykus)
Subject: [MG]  Moonlight and Shadows
Date: Tue, 20 Apr 1993 19:27:53 GMT


	Sandra was standing on the dark shore of the Ceru, the dying moon
lighting the clouds into molten silver all along the horizon.  She looked
away and saw a woman.  A beautiful woman with white skin, black clothing
and wild hair.  The black eyes were kind and they were completely and
soley focussed on Sandra.  The woman smiled at her.  It was a smile that
crinkled the corners of her eyes.  The moonlight glinted off the metal
figure in the hollow of her throat, a loop over a cross.

	"I... I don't hurt..." Sandra said with wonder.  "Are you some
kinda magician or something?  Someone'd snatch me outta the air?"

	The black eyes narrowed just a touch, the woman's face grew
serious.  She shook her head and sighed, "No."

	"Oh." said Sandra, the realization tightened her throat.  Then she
slowly nodded in understanding.  "O.K.  So, I'm dead?"

	The woman nodded and watched her. 

	Sandra thought for a long moment.  The woman waited quietly,
patiently, and somehow Sandra knew that she was waiting for Sandra to be
ready.  Sandra took a look at the silvered beauty around her, remembered
the pain, the desperation and despair that had driven her here.  She had
already said her good-byes.  So, with a whole heart, she grinned at the
woman and said, "O.K.  Where to now?"

	The woman smiled at the question.  It was a smile that warmed
Sandra.  "Here... take my hand."  The woman's hold was gentle and firm, and
as much as Sandra hated to admit it, the hold was comforting.

         There was the sound of wings...


                     *               *               *


        A slender figure hopped down from the railing where Sandra had
jumped from, savoring the power it had gotten from the death.  If there had
been anyone to see it, they would have seen a parody in smoke and shadow of
the girl that had just jumped.  The broken, swollen hand, the bruises, the
crookedness in the walk that cradled one tender side, one of the two steel
grey eyes with one pupil dialated to pure black.  It... she... also had the
strong, slender build of the young girl, the long, thick, slightly curled
black hair, the heart shaped face, and the smooth skin that only the young
have.  Beauty, true beauty was in that figure as well.  The beauty made the
brokeness that much more terrible.

        Slender fingers, whiter than blind eyes, bleached bones, or frost,
picked up five coins.  It's first material offering.

        The little god of despair walked down the Arcade, being very quiet,
as quiet as a once mildly successful thief had been.  She had learned from
the harsher lessons her brothers had died by.

	She had been there for the other three deaths.  The fact of her
being what she was had filled the events with a sweetness that she had
sipped of like a black hummingbird at a blood red flower.  She had
witnessed the mob scene the first, impatient one had incited and the
forcing of it back into the boring otherwhen of the gods by the firecat.
The young boy's despair had tasted as young trust and love broken against
rock and blows.  The dismemberment of the one who had tried to take the
white-winged one on straight on had been a shock.  She had not known their
enemy could rend as they did.  The last, in the jewelled glen, had been the
sweetest.  The despair of the god of devastation and endless misery as it
died had been such a surge to her that she had found herself with more form
than any of the others who had only eaten of his energies instead of having
them offered to them.

	She mused as she walked.  That brother had given her much, though
that had not been its intent.  Without doing anything, she'd been fed vast
amounts of emotional energy from all over the city.

	The mother with the fevered child.  The hundreds in Low Town with
little more than a few boards over their heads.  The crowd before the
filled to overflowing temples.  The mage in the Inn when he'd learned of
his friend's death.  The blonde boy in Low Town faced by a ghost.  The
thousands in their holes in the earth as the storm had screamed its threats
as it blew the houses down like so much tissue.  Not all despaired, but
enough.  Not all died, either, but that hadn't stopped the flow from the
breaking of hopes and dreams.  Those caught dying in the ruins of their
homes had been the most intriguing.  She had sat, watching many of them go
their slow way, and had only grown stronger.

	She hadn't had to raise a single finger, risk a single
manifestation of her powers.  It had all simply come to her.

	Until this girl.

	So easy to slip the vision of the river into that ready mind at
just the right moment.  Just as the unseen and unknown extent of the
slavers was a threat that was so simple to magnify beyond all hope.  Such
tiny expendatures and such amazing results.  

	She couldn't wait to try it again.


---------
[ADMIN: Thanks to all who offered Sandra a saviour, and thanks to the one
who said that not all stories need happy endings.  So.  And thanks to
Bernie for finding a home line for Sandra, along with encouraging me with
that particular little godling.  If anyone is keeping track, make Sandra's
oneshot a part of the Mage Guild line, and she's definitely dead and
gone.  Also I want to acknowledge Neil Gaiman as the creator of Death, a
character I have attempted to render a poor likeness of here. ]
-- 
Liralen Li             |  "What you feel can make it real
aka Phyllis Rostykus   |   real as anything you've seen..."
li@Data-IO.com         |        - Peter Gabriel, _So_