Dream.
 

So she's going to paint the dream.  A dusty place, browns and reds.  Dead leaves blowing in the wind.  Herself on a marble bench.  Dressed in a brown robe.  Her hair pulled back.  Her left arm is missing its hand.  And the hand curled and pale lying on her lap,  and she's looking down at it, regarding it.

And once she's done, she'll try to use the trump.

The trump is warm as you put the final touches on it, perhaps a little too warm.  It fairly glows with an internal heat, a resonance of energy that you find startling, at odds with the serene scene depicted on the trump.

You try to use it.

The sensation is akin to bathing in the warmth of the sun on a clear day.  It washes over you, through you.  The pulses of heat beat on you in successive waves, drawing you in deeper, deeper...

Deeper.

You sense you are being drawn into
drawn into
drawn

drawn

"I wondered how long it would take to get through to you," mutters a very shabby-looking young man holding a battered bamboo lawn rake. He pushes his long red hair back from where it had fallen over his eyes, his head tilted slightly to one side.  He wears the shapeless dungarees of a gardener that might once have been white but which now seemed a uniform grey, mottled with oil or dirt or refuse throughout.
 

Maegwin, dressed in a brown monk's robe, looks around wonderingly. "Get through to me?  Is that what the vision was?  I wasn't sure..."  She focuses on the man.  "Are you... Constantine?"

"Constantine. . .Constantine. . .yes, that was a name I used, a long time ago," the shabby young man nods, slowly.  He shifts his grip on  the old bamboo rake.  "You may call me Constantine, if you like."

At your feet you see brown leaves blowing over a stone path.  Little piles of them gather at the foot of the bench, then blow away again.

Your severed hand seems as one of these leaves, withered and curled.
Fragile.

Behind the man a maelstrom of leaves swirls and turns, impossibly huge, impenetrable, extending from the brown ground
up, up, up.

A trick of the light makes each leaf appear to be a withered hand.  Millions upon millions of hands, tossed aimlessly by an unrelenting, unfelt wind.

"It must be almost time," he continues, looking down at you.  There is a note of sadness in his voice, or just perhaps resignation.  "Are you well?"

Maegwin, seemingly entranced by the illusion, starts when he speaks again.  "oh... time.  Yes.  It is almost time."  She holds up her swollen left hand, examining it with almost bemusement.  "For what, I'm not quite sure.  Do you know what time it is?"

"What time is it?  It is now.  It is always. . .now."

The leaves behind him continue to spin and turn, a shifting wall of faded brown and yellow.

Maegwin looks around, gives herself a small shake.  "Dream scape.  We're on the dream scape.  Yes..."

Constantine looks aout at the wall of leaves.

"If you would like to believe that, then yes.  Please do."

"Right now. . .you are moving forward to your past.  A possible past.  It all depends on how we deal with the now."

A leaf blows by his face, brushing it; reaching up he captures is in his hand and rubs it between his fingers.  It crumbles, slowly, to fragments and dust.

"There's no real reason for it happening, you know, other than to show someone that he can," he says, watching the shattered leaf fall from his fingers.  "He's more dangerous now than he's ever been, Mae.  I tried to stop them. . .but I only managed to hold on to what I loved, not what I hated."

Maegwin takes a deep breath and releases it, looking up at the sad young man.  "Constantine.  Focus on my voice," she says slowly and clearly.  "Talk to me.  What happened?  What and who did you try to stop?"

"I tried to stop them from taking my father from me," he replies, speaking slowly and methodically.   "But they were too strong.  The Kolvirii were too strong."

He sits down next to you; the smells of stale sweat and mouldering leaves cling to him.

"It's all about revenge now. . .you need to let go and just let it happen.  Vengeance's flavor is enjoyed only with its subject suffers, and continues to suffer.  Let go.  Resist it and it will never end."

Constantine stares out at the wall of leaves with eyes suddenly filled with tears.

"It never ends."

Maegwin swallows.  "Constantine, why does your father want revenge on me?  Can you..."

He turns to look at you. . .

Then the cold comes. . .

She starts when she feels the cold.  "he's coming, isn't he?"
she whispers.

. . .and as he looks at you, his eyes change.

From a pale blue. . .

. . .to a solid black.

The cold pierces you as a pin would fix a butterfly to a specimen board.

Maegwin goes white, unable to breathe.  She tries to hide her fear, but she starts to tremble.

"Why, bellissima?  Because it amuses me," comes a brittle voice that slips in and out of phase.  "It amuses me how fragile you Kornelii truly are."

There is a rush of dry wind, a warm slivver of air, and the eyes of Constantine change back to blue.

She gasps raggedly, convulsively shivering.

"He will draw others unto himself, Mae," Constantine continues, his voice unchanged from before, his expression identical.  "First Harlan, then Seth.  Then others. . .until there are none left."

"none left..." she says, breathing hard.  "Constantine, that was Paolo?  How..  how can he do that to you?!" she demands, looking up into his face.  "You're a creator.  How can he have a hold on you like that?"
 

"Why?  Because, Mae, he made me from himself and shards of Oberon.  I was never truly. . .truly real.  A haemonculous, a golem, never a real boy, never a real. . .a real son.  Like Akiro, or Uriel, or Faelan. Or Miranda.  Or Lucian, or Madeline, or Octavian.  Or Marie Therese, no, not even like Marie Therese."

He turns the bamboo rake in his hands, rubbing the wooden handle.

"I'm real now, more than ever.  It's. . .a sad feeling.  Impermanent."

Constantine sounds like he's rambling a little, strolling down avenues of memory.

She looks at Constantine for a moment, disbelief on her features.  Then she sighs.  "Constantine.  You have a soul.  That makes you as real as anyone.  Trust me on this one, ok?" she says gently.  "I know whereof I speak.  And it doesn't matter what your father thinks or feels about you.  I barely exist to my parents.  They gave me away at birth.  I've only met them once.   My brother?  I've talked to him maybe a dozen times.  Ches, my grandfather?  He cares for me, but in some ways I'm more someone who needs to be protected because I'm Rebman than a granddaughter.  An asset.  Sound familiar?" she asks with a half smile.

"You don't understand," he replies, softly.  "They trapped me here, then Dworkin cut me off from my Pattern, then the Kolvirii came for father. . came to take him away from me. . .leaving me with. . ."

Maegwin looks up into his face.  "With what?" she asks gently.  "With some part of Paolo?"

"With the part of Paolo that. . ."

The cold comes again, this time more insistently.

 "Bellissima. . ."

The oil-black eyes seethe with a malevolence that makes you gasp.  The voice is more firm, less fractured, the dissapative resonance diminishing into a unison of tone and intent.

"You will leave mi figlio alone, or I will take more than your hand, capiche?"

Maegwin turns white, but this time glares at Paolo.

He glares back. . .and the pain of cold racing through your veins strikes your heart like a fist of frost.

"Bene.  Make my work easier, fragile one.  Bene."

The image of Constantine begins to fade, even as an even more powerful surge of warm wind sweeps the cold away again.

"Don't. . .don't go. . ."

He reaches out a hand to you, letting the bamboo rake drop.  Behind him the wall of leaves

She tries to grab his hand with both of her own. but when her left hand comes in contact with his, she flinches back involuntarily and cries out in pain, letting go.

The pain does not come from cold, but rather from heat - his hand is burning hot, an electric, stabbing heat that causes you
to break out in a clammy sweat almost instantly.

explodes

surging out toward you, obscuring Constantine, the bench, the rake, rustling around you with an urgency that nearly overcomes you.

But then the wind blows warm again.

And the leaves blow past.

Leaving you seated, staring at a blank canvas.

It is the canvas you originally used to paint the picture, but seems to have been wiped clear, the paint flaked off and powdered from the intermittent application of extreme cold and tremendous heat.

Surrounded by the smell of old leaves.

Maegwin regards the blank canvas.