The hooves of the ghost horse rattled beneath me on the asphalt leading into town, and I urged it to greater speed.  Occasionally, I asked, and the veil of time slipped aside by the grace of the Almighty.  I just had to be sure that the cream colored car, its magician driver, and the little kidnapped girl I pursued toward Evansdale had not turned off.

So it was that I saw him get out of the car, and walk a path widdershins to start with and backwards on his heels when he walked with the sun as he formed an infinity symbol in the road behind his car.  A quick flick of a tongue, and a squeezing behind my eyes, and I tasted Reality.  The underlying structure of space-time had been contorted into an infinity loop.  You could walk in, and keep on walking, and until dawn the next morning reset the natural order with its greater Clock That Runneth Right, the Sun in the Heavens, you would be stuck here.  The road would unscroll before your endlessly,  and you would ride the same small bit of road over and over again.

I considered Kainzler’s Greater Disformulation as I sat astride my ghost horse.  It was a spell suited to destroying non-physical structures.  But, like all the spells, in that school, of which I had learned but two, it was not in the least bit subtle.  The Kainzlerite School of Reality Modification started by Chief Magister Harvey Kainzler eschewed subtlety.  When two Grand Mods duelled, they lit up the sky for miles around.  When the Magister waved his hand, continental plates shifted.  He had been a man I had never wanted to anger.  You could feel the power crackling off him as he sat to tea in his ocean side restauraunt while his new students ran about running the place, hoping he’d favor them with a spell.

No, I cast that spell, and my enemy would surely feel it, along with anyone else who was a practitioner or prayer warrior on the North American continent.  I’d be jolting people from the Pacific to the Atlantic.  That was a bad idea when he had a hostage I’d give my life to save.

What was worse is that I could be facing a man like Harvey right now.  I did not know how powerful the other magician was.  Still, the twist in reality was soft.  It did not have hard edges, and rigidity.  It felt tentative.

I whistled up a whirlwind, a small thing that bore me up into the sky, and hopefully over the obstruction.  But it could not go very high, and I found myself trapped at five hundred feet in the air.

"I’m sorry, master." The wind tweeted at me, and I raised my hand in acceptance.

"Set me down. Can you extricate yourself?"

"Yes. I leave for the Halls of the Roaring Winds. Perhaps you could avail yourself of that route, master?"

I shook my head, although with a smile of thanks for the offer.  The wind elemental was not bound to aid me.  The fact that it offered to help meant it liked me.  But such a visit would be noisy, and tricky since my command of gate magic was a trifle slim.

Instead, I mounted my ghost horse again, and whispered to it in Sioux.

"Just how fast can you go? Are we to let this wicked man defeat a brave warrior horse?"

The horse looked back at me with a glint in its eyes that suggested an amused understanding of what I was trying to convince it to do.  So instead, I spoke.

"A child born of this land is in trouble. Can you help me?"

I was near thrown off my saddle by the sudden take-off.  Sparks flew from the roadway as hooves of something immaterial but definitely real struck it in a rattle that was more a hum.  I closed my eyes against the wind tearing my eyes, and felt the magic grab us, and fling us around in space.

"Faster!" I yelled, and the horse redoubled its efforts, and the magic reached for us, and lost its grip, and fell apart like a chewed bubble gum stretched too far. We were through.  I hoped no backlash from the broken spell alerted my foe.  Some magics backlash as a matter of course, but others do not.  Those who tell you all magics do this, or do that, are….well, usually not versers.  Not transients who wander the many different universes out there.

The road fell away beneath the ghost horse’s hooves, and soon we found ourselves in the outskirts of Evansdale.  And from the edge to the solid rectangle of bricks that was the convention center, we screeched to a halt.  Sparks flew up behind us, and meanwhile, I searched in my duffel bag.

Ah. In a small side pocket, only accessible in a world of magic lay a small silver pot a ‘foin mannikin’ with a lilting voice, and a tendency to talk by asking questions had given me in exchange for a story.  He had claimed to have gotten the better end of the deal, and who knows, perhaps he had been right.

Inside, was a white cream, rather like hand cream, which I smeared under my eyelids, and hopefully under the immaterial eyelids of the ghost horse.  It took.  And now, we lay under a glamour of the Fey.  Others would see what they expected, that was acceptable.  They would not see a ghost horse with a rider clad in shadow and fear.  That is, unless they had really odd expectations.

A hundred people still in-gathered as we rode up to the convention center.  It had a brick front wall with small windows with dark brown ’shutters’ and on the second floor more of the same.  Its arched doorway of brick had made it on to the sole pamphlet the town produced for it to serenade the world outside with the glories of Evansdale.  The doorway was a keen thing, and so being a bit suspicious since the cream car was parked so openly in the handicap spot next to the door, I again asked that the veil of time be parted.

It was confusing to say the least with all the comings and goings in just the last hour which was the time I specified.  If I had tried pschyometry, it would have been worse, far worse.  A place like this was filled with emotional resonances, most of them good.  It was the heart of its rather plain and down to earth town.

Oh, its churches were where much of the town’s life occured, but they were also places where lesser groups congregated, and its library was a thing of mild grandeur, but that was an imported grandeur.  Here was where the whole town could come, and gently enjoy the little clever bits of the building, and the nice way it had been kept up.

And then in the midst of girls being kissed, and mothers chasing recalcitrant tots, I saw the cream car pull up.  A man and a dazed, no doubt by magic, Lisa Callen climbed out.  He began to cast a spell, a ward and a warning on the door, but a busybody woman came up, and began to ask him piercing questions about the nature of his relationship with the little girl.  I blessed her as he was forced to invent a story,a nd then retreat before he could magic the front door.

Each of us has a role to play, and without that woman who I might find annoying most times, this would have been a lot harder for me.  Because I could sense that whomever had built that arch for the door had poured his heart and love into it, and it would have made a good power source for a certain type of magic dedicated to taking dreams and turning them into nightmares.

And so, I climbed off my horse, and drop-reined him.

"Brave horse." I murmured.  It seemed he promised to come in as the cavalry if I failed.  I feared for him if he did because he was of another type of magic.  He was of the type that should not be clearly seen by too many people, or he would fade from this reality.  Some magics do not bear the skeptic’s gaze that well.  Others of course, drive the skeptic bat nuts, but thats another story for another day.

I walked up, and then Dale stepped out from the lobby, and barred my path.  Dale had been the boy, a rival, an idol to Josh Callen.  And Dale had benefitted from the rivalry because Dale was a year older, and bigger.  Dale enjoyed competing with someone who was ten percent slower and smaller than him.  Until finally Josh found something, no someone, a beauty named Sarah, worth winning over, and Dale had been willing to kill to keep his accustomed superiority.

"You spoiled everything." He snapped at me, and suddenly everyone who was heading toward the front doors stopped.  Dale smiled.  He had intended this. He wanted an audience.

"Seems to me it was already spoiled. Sarah doesn’t like you, I doubt she ever did…"  I meant to go on, but he interrupted me in his fury which I’m not used too.  Most people have far too good sense to step on my toes.  But, then for the last times in this world, I had been hiding my light under the barrel. Perhaps it was time to trounce this idiot, and show these people….

"I’m better than you. Better than that lamebrain weakling Josh.  You’re just a farmhand.  You don’t even own a car."

I paused. No, it was not time.

"So because you think I’m poorer than you.  Because you think you’re used to being the biggest frog in a small pond, you want to …what?"

He swung. It was a big clumsy roundhouse, and I forced myself to not move.  It was hard.  My body kept trying to leap to defend itself with all the moves I’d learned over the centuries.  I could break his arm, dodge back, dodge under, catch his fist, step inside and gut him with my knife…

The fist landed on my cheekbone, and knocked me sprawling.  Some laughter attended my fall.  I slowly begin to get up, and he raced over, and dove on my stomach with his right knee.

Ow. That hurt.

I rerouted the pain signals as digital information.  I didn’t think this required me to actually experience the pain. And then with him on my chest, he whipsawed me with one punch, and then another.

"Enough, Dale, enough. He’s had it. Let him up." A middle manager type pulled Dale off me, and gave me a concerned glance.  I sat up, and felt my bruised and split lip while Dale smiled in triumph.

"So Dale." I spoke softly, but projected so that everyone of the near fifty people standing in silence nearby could hear me. "I guess you’re right.  I am nobody.  I mean you proved that with your logic, I mean, your fists."  I slowly stood up.  "I mean, you really are the Man.  Feels good to know how strong and powerful you are doesn’t it?"

My eyes bore into his, and the light lilt of mockery in my voice sliced the wound wider.

"Good thing I didn’t beat you up, because then you’d be the Nobody."

"I-I." He stuttered.  And then he turned to flee with his face crumpling into tears.  "I’m sorry, man, I …" And he ran.  I turned about, and spotted Pastor Jorgenson who at one time had been All-state.  Now Pastor Dill who stood near him was a fine fellow, but a bit slight, and right now, Dale needed a man’s man to lead him back into the Light. 

"As you prayed last night, pastor, now go and accomplish the deed."  The pastor stared at me in shock, wondering how I knew his secret prayers, and then he nodded, and pelted after Dale who by now was probably wishing for a way to end it.  Jorgenson would show him redemption and forgiveness, and the way to be a real man instead of the sort who literally climbed over the dead bodies of his supposed friends to the top of a worthless hill.

Once inside, I looked about.  The hall was half-filled, and a play seemed to be about to begin.  And then the old man with the blue eyes stood up from a chair, and caught my eye.  He pointed one age-withered finger up the stairs which led up into darkness from the left corner of the room.

I started up it, and the darkness was such that I reached for a lightswitch on the wall, and fell into a trap.  Around me, around my throat and mouth, and fingers, an ethereral ring of black feathers wove its way.  I resisted, and it gave way, but stretched reality as it did so that I was never any close to where I wanted to get than I had been.  My mouth was filled, and my fingers did not move, and the horrid cursed things wove into my skull so that I could not think.

And where was my angelic protection?

And so from the depths of fear I cried out in my soul to my protectors in Latin for my English was taken from me, and I could only think of words in some few languages the weavery of feathers had not yet taken from me.

"Angeli, deprecor vos, juvate me!"

Which interpreted to English is the following:

"Angels, I beg you, help me!"

Suddenly, there was another flutter of feathers, strong, clean, bright, and the darkness in that stairway fled in great terror as my mind and will flooded back to me.  I looked into the flaming eyes of Gabriel, and suddenly knew.

I had usually depended on them for protection from the grosser forms of attack, but this thing, this weavery of feathers was more than immaterial.  It was real in only certain very limited conditions, and its attack mimicked several natural processes in the body.  Too the angels it had looked as if I had fallen prey to a bit of daydreaming which is a human weakness, and something they did not protect me from.  And from there vantage point, in the Near Heavens, the creature did not exist.  It was only when they had more fully materialized here, that they had seen the weavery.  And even then it had only been a pattern.  Each individual part of it was morally neutral, if frequently unreal.  It was only the even more infrequent pattern that held danger.

The Kainzlerites who adored big magic would not have been impressed, but I was.  This took a mind that thought at odd angles to even use.  I really hoped my prey had not invented it because I’m more of a sledgehammer man.  Someone who could invent that weavery might be able to twist me inside out with trivially powered magics, applied just so.

Wary, I climbed the rest of the stairs, and came to the open doorway.  I checked the Veil and saw no trap being laid, and I prayed for wisdom, and guidance.  And then I followed that guidance, and walked in.

The room was long, a failed beginning of an art museum.  Its white walls held a few paintings which I thought evoked the plain beauty of Evansdale admirably.

I heard a breath, and turned to the right wall.  There lay on a burlap sack, little Lisa Callen.  Tears streaked her face, and she tried to  holler for help, but she croaked out a barely heard noise instead.  She had been collared with a muscle contracting spell.  I was halfway there to her side when I head a small voice on the far side of the room.

"Ahem."  And I tripped over my shoelaces.  Now I could have caught myself, but I didn’t.  Inside I was wondering.  Such a spell is terribly easy.  Untying someone’s shoelaces, well, I knew one spell for it.  I’d been embarrassed to try to learn more.  It had seemed so tacky a use of magic and miracle.

I fell to the ground.

"See, Lisa, all your prayers are of no help.  Your God cannot help you.  This foolish man cannot help you."

I smiled to the ground.  Good, I had met a man who wanted to talk.  The villain who explains all his evil plans happens more often in story than in reality, but it does happen a fair bit in reality too.  People have a need to gloat.

"Are you so sure? God sent me, and as soon as I get up…"

He laughed.

"You truly don’t understand, do you.  I watched you help the Callens.  You know you undid a major bit of my work right there.  I’d been hoping…." I could tell he had been wishing for something nasty, and so I whispered a short phrase under my breath.  Lisa fell asleep with a smile on her lips.  She was convinced that help had arrived, and the fact that I was apparently a klutz did not diminish her faith one bit.  She rested quiet and secure.  It was a side of her I had not seen before, and it brought relief and gladness to me.

"Hoping what?" I snapped out, as I got slowly to my feet.

"Hoping to have the Mom go nuts, do something nasty.  However this will do well.  Its the site of my greatest triumph.  Bob Hall was gifted in a stupid kind of way.  Made people see illusions and think it was reality.  Like little Lisa here."  He hissed to see her asleep.  For a minute, he looked like he wanted to come over and shake her, but looking at my looming form in the dark room, he decided not too.  "Bobby was on his way to being famous, so I got someone to write a nasty letter in the paper about his work.  Good ol’ jealousy.  The writer never did anything on his own, but he was always good at finding something to criticize of those who did things.  That broke Bobby.  Especially after I burned up most of his paintings.  No local art hero for museum, no tourists, no expansion of the mind to new horizions.  Instead, face the grinding reality.  Life stinks."

"Okay, I’m going to take you in now."  I said. " I advise you not to resist."  I took a slow step toward him.

He laughed. 

"You really are a fool.  Dale beat you up.  I saw it.  Too bad I couldn’t hear anything, but it was sweet." He flicked out a Mexican switchblade and snapped it back and forth.  I bit my lip to keep from bellowing in a hurricane of laughter.  It was good that it was very dark in that room, or he would surely have seen my lack of fear.

"Okay, I can call for help."

"Yes, maybe you can.  But no one will hear you.  And let me explain why.  There is a spell on this room.  I put it there a long time ago as I laid the magic for this night over many nights."  He paused.  "Don’t believe me, yell, scream, try your cel phone if you have one."

I did this, and saw the magic with a second sight leap into play.  It caught my voice and strangled it.  At the same time, I saw deep wove webs in the floor.  Tentacles of power reaching from here, and all throughout the town.

"Uh." I gasped and backed away.  The doorway behind me suddenly had a door which slammed shut.  I was pretty sure it was illusion.

"So, I’ll pray…"

"You see how little good that did Lisa.  The problem is you don’t understand reality.  Reality stinks.  You have to climb your way to the top by making deals, and by shearing the sheep on your way."

"Nooo."  I shouted, but with what I hoped was a convincing faintheartedness to it.  I needn’t have worried.  He was so into his own theory that he didn’t notice anything outside of it.

"Reality is that the Shadow is stronger than the Light.  Out of Nothing came Something.  And that Something with go back to its master, the Nothing someday."

"Thats more than a touch illogical." I said dryly, but I couldn’t help myself.

He snarled.  I was supposed to in his internal narrative to be listening to him dumbfounded at the brilliance of his observations.  I was allowed to make occasional feeble rebuttals until I inevitably gave in.

"So whats your plan?" I quickly distracted him even as I silently prayed for Lisa to be bound in a sphere of safety.  After this, I went with my esper sense and checked for oddities.  I pointed them out to my invisible friends, and soon I thought Lisa was unwoven from her obvious traps.  The problem was the mind I was dealing with seemed to favor the really inobvious.  I racked my brains for any other extremely subtle traps that might be laid on her.

It would be heartbreaking if I rescued her only to have a magical boobytrap kill her anyways.  But the problem was, my opponent did not seem to be the sort to master a weave.  I was beginning to wonder how he walked and chewed gum at the same time.

"Ah, well, I’m going to show the town the true nature of reality.  Here in the town’s heart, little Lisa dies.  Under mysterious circumstances that alternately look like any one of several people could be too blame.  But its not clear because clarity would turn down the suspense.  If I do this right, I can take it national, and get benes from some of the major demon princes.  After the sacrifice of innocence, a fire guts the structure, but not enough to knock it down.  Oh no, I want a symbol of failure in their faces.  And when someone says ‘Lets knock it down, and start over’ I’ll be there to fight that, start a petition.  If I do this right, I can keep this a ruined hulk where the little girl who might have been murdered by one of the townsfolk, identity uncertain, for at least five years.  By then, the town will be totally destroyed.  Its heart will have been ripped out; its dreams trashed, and finally its people will see clearly the truth that Reality is a joke played on them by the Light, and they will turn to the Nothing."

"Clever." I said quietly.

"Clever!" He shrieked. "Its brilliant. I thought of it all myself."

"Did you really?" I said advancing toward him.  He flicked out his blade at me.

"Death is stronger than Life." He tried it on me.  "I’ve lifted tables in the air by my magic."

"Ooooh." I said slowly. "Tell me, have you ever created a planet, or have any of your masters?  Because I think they are nothing but degenerate parasites.  Now, I could be wrong…." 

He screamed out a word, and the Terygzygmati appeared.  The demon of corruption raised by some unwise slaves to kill their masters, and which did just that before killing the slaves as well was a beast.  It had five clawed bedecked arms or legs, and a bowl of a mouth filled with rotted teeth, and  a body like that of a wasp blown up to several feet long.

"Tell him, Great One, O Mighty Prince of Hell, tell him."

"Tell him what, you cancer upon the land, you indecipherably stupid beetle?" The demon replied even as I laughed inside.  If this was a Prince of the Nothing, then the Nothing really needed some work-out videos.

"Oooh, um, he said that we, ah, you…."

"Let me help. You are a degenerate parasite.  You lack the ability to create anything, and the very best you can do is to take something and turn it into a pathetic shadow of itself.  Rather like someone taking a nice red Ferrari, and turning it into a demolition derby machine."

"I will…"  I waited for the demon to get within my reach as it began its threat, and then I would gut it so fast it wouldn’t even blink before it hit the Abyss.

"Whats a Ferrari?" Dumb guy asked.

The demon paused, and its thoughts ran quicker than mine.

"Worldwalker. Extradimensional.  There are no Ferrari’s in this universe." It paused, and strove to See.  I’m not entirely sure what it Saw, but its entirely possible that it got an up close and personal glimpse of an enraged Archangel with a flaming sword.  In any case, it shrieked in utter terror, and vanished with a boop.

"Well, don’t I feel stupid." I said with a light smile and a soft menace as I unsheathed my sword, and snapped it about in a blindingly fast figure eight.

"Stay back." He said another word as he backed up himself.  A table flew at me in slow motion, and I ducked it, and flung the thing to the ground.

"You have a misunderstanding of the nature of reality.  You imagine Good is weaker than Evil.  In fact, its just the opposite.  Good is independend and self-sustaining.  Its Evil that is the exploitative and degenerate copy."  I knew they had Lord of the Rings in this world since Tyler Callen had a copy on his shelf. "Consider the Elves and the Orcs.  The Orcs are but fallen, broken elves."

"You lie!" He hissed out a word, and flung it at me.  I made a small gesture and he gasped in pain as it rebounded at him.

"Very well. You require a demonstration."

I dropped the glamour.  And suddenly in the place of an ordinary farmhand who was weirdly good with a sword stood a figure out of the deepest nightmares.  Shadow and fear perched on my shoulders, and my voice could make the brave weep, and wolves cringe before me.  It was the magic a Shaman of the Sioux had showed me.  A cloak of fear he called it, and he had wondered if it was more effective based on the person’s nature who wore it.

My foe ran back into the wall, and banged his head before he realized there was no door to save him.  And then to my surprise, the cornered rat turned to fight.  He spat out another word, and aimed at Lisa.  Here, I threw back my cloak, and the mirrored light of the Shekinah Glory flamed into the room.

Now, unlike most miracles or spells, the Glory can do many things.  It had healed the mind of Mrs. Callen when viewed at a safe remove through the fog.  But it also would kill any mortal who stared at it.  However, I only held the mirrored light, and a rather imperfect mirror was my soul.

Still, it knocked him over, and spoiled his aim.  And then the light like that of a mighty chandelier blazing forth made the use of wicked magic difficult.  His words, given to him by the demon, would stick in his mouth, and he would find himself stuttering when he tried to say them for the Fear was upon him.

I stepped forward and grabbed him.  He tried to gut me, and I shook my head in disbelief.  Some people just don’t want to learn.

So I broke his wrist, and for good measure broke the other wrist.

"Why don’t you call your demon?" I whispered softly into his ear.

"I-I can’t." He blurted out.

"Why?" I spoke as soft and as kind as I could.

"They refuse to come.  They promise to kill me later for leading them into a trap."

"Really. The Mighty Princes of Nothing.  Hmm, it sounds like they are afraid to me.  Course I could be wrong.  It could be some sort of deep laid plot…."

"You’re not wrong." He dried his tears by force of will.  "There is a deep plot.  Inside her, at the molecular level is a binary poison…" He was rushing his words.  "It was held in check by magic.  This magic was so small, and it protected her so ….I’m sorry.   I was wrong.  I just always thought Good was weak, it was little people unable to cope or control their surroundings…."

"Sometimes Good loses, but even then it wins." I shouted that over my shoulder as I ran to check on Lisa.  Yes, he was right.  Down in her cells, two normal ingredients were combining into a virulent poison.  And the worse thing was, each and every poison was shaped in the symbol of the Nothing.  Each and every molecule of that dread poison had its own magical forcefield.  If it hadn’t been so disgusting, it would have been beautiful, it was so cleverly done.  I had seriously understimated the demon.

I took out my pen which held the spell of healing, and spent every drop of its power.  Perhaps ten percent of the poison to be was neutralized, and that the easier part.  I had further spells of healing, but nothing suited to this.

I dropped to my knees and watched helplessly.  I didn’t have the power or the skill to get the required 99% of the toxins out of her for this poison was horribly virulent.

"Those little people might know through faith that it will come to a good end."

"But, I have heard that your God can do anything.  I always thought that a lie."

"Yes, he can." I replied.  "But sometimes he chooses not to for reasons of his own which I trust are good."

"And sometimes he would like too, but the people doing the asking think too small."  I turned to the door, and saw the blue-eyed man.  And suddenly my brain flamed with possibility.  I stood up and grinned.

"Lets go for a ride."  I ran over to get my chalk, and began sketching out lines even as my former foe explained that he had decided to join the winning side.  He seemed a rather slow, but relentlessly logical person once he got past his delusions which most such people have.  He had only joined the side of Nothing since it seemed to be the winner.  Now that he knew better, he had changed sides.  Besides having the Princes of Nothing speculate on the best way to kill him had probably been a deciding factor as well.

So he helped me chalk up the circle and the diagram, and then I stopped.

"Your wrists?"

"Oh. I just asked if it would be okay if they were healed.  Is that okay?"

"Just fine." I said marvelling.  A man who did not limit the presence of miracles in his life by low expectations might find a lot more of them than another man.

And then we finished the circle with its destination engraved, and its codexes of stars to guide us, and the curlicues of gathering power gleamed brighter and brighter.  I ran to get Lisa, and came back to find my old foe, and now my brother waiting with the chalk to close the circle and to write the letters that formed the Words of the Angelic Tongue.  I could not hear them because I was lost, deep in trance, and crying out for aid.

And then we were gone from a material universe.  Instead, we stood on a bridge of glittering fire over a chasm of laughing stars, and a Being with eyes that shown more life, more love, more hate, more nobility than could be fit into a Human, and his wings stretched from one star to another, and he stood there waiting for us.

"Can you heal her?" I asked.

"Can we?" He asked me back, and I felt rage fling itself about in me.  I did wonder sometimes.  I doubted many times an hour.  Why was the universe like it was?  Maybe I was wrong.

I didn’t receive an answer then to those questions, but I felt my elbow joggled by my new brother.  I looked  at him, and knew the answer as I turned back to the Being.

"My apologies. Of course, you can. The correct question is ‘Will you?’"

"Gladly." And Lisa opened her eyes, and smiled at me.  And all I saw within her was life.  "Take her back to her parents, newborn babe."  The angel said, and I sighed as Lisa was given to the former black magician.  And then they were gone.

I looked at the Being whose Glory and Power could have made the Sun dim, and suddenly saw sparkling blue eyes.  Before I could speak in question, he asked.

"Are you ready to stay forever?"  I looked past him to a place where no joy was unknown, and no sorrow touched.  Work was done for happiness, and play was done for happiness, and bizarrely enough one could fully do both at the same time.  It seemed as if Time’s Arrow ran in parrallel here.  Dizzy, I backed off.

"No, I see not."  The Being paused.

"But, but, why…?"

"Evansdale?"

"Yes, is it the site of some great hero to be born, or is it…?"

"I could tell you, I don’t know.  I could tell you that it is just like any other town full of immortal souls of value to the Throne I serve.  And both statements would be true.  Perhaps, some prophet will be born there.  Perhaps Josh and Sarah will have a child who will bless the world with gifts unimagined." And here its wings sagged a bit. "But in truth, Tadeusz, I don’t know.  I am such a small Being.  In the Counsels of those who run the Galaxies and the Universes, I am barely seen.  If it were not for the fact that the King of the Angels knows my name, I might be sore depressed." 

And then his eyes sparkled with amusement at his own playing at being full of self-pity, and with the joy of life shining in them, he spoke in a voice like a jet stream.

"Bye, Tadeusz."

"Wait, I have questions…" I began to protest even as I fell backwards toward another Earth, another universe.