The wretched, blessed days and nights were all I had to look forward to now. I had long since given up hope that the scattering and reassembling of teleportation, I believe that is what it had been called, that I had once known was gone forever now. It was both a wondrous thought and a depressing one. I had never, quite, gotten used to the gift, to losing myself atom by atom and floating in the air to reassemble elsewhere, granted appearing within the confines of an oak tree certainly had not helped matters. Or within a willow, or the Birch that one time oh or the pine, and the spruce!.... I think I have a problem with trees or they have the problem with me. It seems almost all of my memories of using that little talent resulted in me stand half inside a tree and half out among the world... Hm... interesting.

Alas! it had been long enough and I had been without it for all this time before it and after it that I should not mourn the loss, yet nary a day went by where I did not grieve if only for a moment or two. It had been but a temporary mistress and it was gone just like that, before I even had the chance to say goodbye. I did miss it. It had been quite an amusing talent. If ever there could be a place I could once again find myself in possession of it... the apocalypse could crash to the earth and I would refuse to leave if I had that gift again!

Och! Noct, what are you thinking? Get your head together, we are in strange territory!



I sighed, shaking my long mane out as the sun dappled my black back into glowing rings. It was an illusion of the light, unlike the motes of dust swirling in the rays about me, but it was a lovely illusion none the less and I found myself admiring it more than I had enjoyed thinking to myself in the different tones I had once used for peformances. At least I had not lost my accents, or my dialects. My troupe would be proud of me... I am not crazy, I do swear to you I am not. It is just I have spent long years on the road traveling and even when there was the troupe, my adoptive family, there was loneliness. There was also a series of lines to memorize and recite. And then when that had been gone I had been truly alone and left to entertain myself. I blame the troupe. It's the only reason my mind would leak the dribble I once knew.

Or perhaps I just am and that is as it should be and always would be. I stopped, trying to shake an itch off of my brow. Curse my luck! My lion tail whipped back and forth with annoyance as I stretched to press my brow to a nearby tree and rub the itch away. There was a pressure, resistance and then a thunk as my skull hit the trunk of the tree. "My word, what is this?" I jerked back, and did not move. "Oh... oh no! My horn!" Slap me silly, I forgot all about that stupid, stupid horn!.... again.