I’m not sure that Glass and Firewing were convinced, but I know I had the others snowed. I doubt any of them have any idea how someone of my size, stature, and as far as Glass is concerned, “mental capabilities”, could tangle themselves up in a bolos by themselves.

Glass was ordered to cut me free, rather gruffly, and I felt bad that I had not only could have killed Phantom, but had cost him a nice set of bolos. I think he could have survived the fall, someone with wings should have, especially if they are as resilient as Phantom seems to be.

At least, I hope he could have survived it.

Looking back, shoving him off the street probably wasn’t the smartest thing I could have done, but it was the quickest and I couldn’t take the chance on him being discovered. I’m a lover, not a thinker.

Back on Avalon, Spyke’s creepy sister, R’jas, had a “pet” of a sort, about two feet tall with a long tail, but otherwise scarecrow features. She called him “Eidolon”, but was also given to call him “Mesmer”. He was physically frail, couldn’t stand for long periods of time and couldn’t walk far before he got tired or tangled his legs in his tail and fell face-first, but that was the object of his design, to be a cute little pet, the way mine was to be a soldier.

His kind are made by inhaling a gas, a combination of science and magic, that warps the body into the form it takes inside. In other words, a sneaky, crafty, deceitful person would take on the form of a snake. This apparently replaced the death penalty in the Astral Plane, but when the slave trade took over the economy, morals went down. I’m none too sure of Eidolon’s family history, but he didn’t seem the type to go on death row, no matter what he could have been like as a Muse.

Anyway, Phantom looks like a taller version of Eidolon, red with yellow hair and straw-like material around the wrists and ankles, easily prone to infection. Phantom seems to be stronger, but that could be because of necessity and could be because the process wasn’t quite completed for some reason, as if the technology is only in a developmental stage.

There’s a little more about Phantom. He smells a bit like Wren, minus the smoky, polluted smell of home sweet home and with the sweet, flowered scent of Carvathia (with a little slummish touch to it, of course), and a bit like Eidolon. A bit like Selkie’s cookies on a Saturday morning, tinged with something like the vegetable fields of Avalon, with a little of the don’t-touch-me-ness all predators have, that warning embedded in the scent that lets you know the thing you smell could have you for dinner, if it wanted it.

His eyes are big, not on Wren’s bush baby caliber, or quite on Eidolon innocent but haunted gaze, but certainly big. Not with the Deathraptor insanity, either. There’s a flame in there, too, like what Wren gets when one of the other gangs tries to pick a fight with him, especially those that are Elven or GenoSoldier and morally and racially opposed to Purple Demons, that I-will-survive-whether-you-like-it-or-not look.

Granted Griffin eyes are predominantly slitted, but Deathraptor eyes can be, too. When their heat sensors open, a white line appears down the middle of their dead, shark eyes and spreads open, like a white, slitted pupil, very freaky and one of the many warning signs that you don’t want to tick them off. Muses have slits, too.

One big coincidence? Am I reading too much into this? I heard Morhi say something about interdimensional doubles, that was the explanation for stubborn, bull-headed Tyger XIII that Wren knew and the gentler, more childlike Tiger XIII knew, as well as Tyger’s Eden and Tiger’s Asha, but a double of two people?

I doubt something like that’s possible. Okay, granted a butterfly landing on my nose could set in forth a chain reaction that could make me a different Am from the Am in the next dimension over to the left that saw a turtle once.

Not that any of that is likely on a world like mine, but there’s another factor for you.

It could be that Phantom has characteristics of both, Wren’s tallness and spirit in a body like Eidolon’s, for example…but I’m not sure that would make him a double. At least not Tyger and Tiger.

I don’t trust Firewing. At all. I don’t think he wants Phantom because he’s a danger to himself and all of Carvathia. There’s an ulterior motive behind this.

Okay, it could be because I spent my life hearing stories about Dr. Gibbons and the stunts he pulled, but I don’t have a good trust for the doctor types, especially if they like live subjects, or have a habit of chasing people down and making up excuses to do so.

Not that I have heard exactly what Firewing wants Phantom for, anyway. I’ve heard he wants him, but not why. It might be my past history and the history of my world, but I’ve pretty much narrowed it down to one of two choices: jail for all eternity or experimentation.

I heard Wren talk about some of the things his sires went through and he was fortunate enough to escape from, but not before they made the decision to freeze him like a bag of peas. They lad Selena of the Moon, The First, rip open a cow and eat it while they watched, while the animal was still alive. They withheld her food for days until she did this. Not to mention they drove her nuts, one way or another, probably to make her more “compliant”.

There have been rumors of other stuff going on, but if Wren knows what they are, he hasn’t told me. In all honesty, after spending my life with Deathraptors and Ultima Dragons…I don’t want to know.

With Phantom “gone” and “presumed dead”, Glass has been quiet and had a lot of paperwork, though with as many automated systems that she has, she doesn’t have much reason to leave the apartment, so neither do I. In fact, I been mostly scanning through their online archives to find out what I can about at least getting me back to Avalon.

See, I don’t have the luxury of a brother or close friend on Avalon that I have a psychic bond with to send an S.O.S to Morhi for her to come and get me, like Eden does. If I want to get home, I have to do that myself.

Mostly all I find is stuff on theoretical multiple dimensions, the analogy about how pieces of an orange are contained inside an orange peel, separate and unaware of each other, yet connected by a system too complex for us to understand. Nothing useful, really, except some scientist who went ‘Lena while working on a machine to view other dimensions.

View, mind you, not visit.

At some point, Glass does find a reason to leave. Firewing wants her paperwork turned in manually, or wants to tell her what a sorry job she did, or needs his feet kissed, or something like that. She told me where she went and that she’d be gone awhile, but it wasn’t like I was listening. She left food for me, steak, which she turned her cute little invisible nose up at, and left, locking the door behind her.

After awhile, my head starts to hurt so I go to watching mindless TV. Explosions, chase scenes, fights, all Griffin-made and mind-numbing. The special effects are brilliant, the plots aren’t always good, but who wants a plot when you have explody-things?

My ears prick up. A knock on the window-wall. I climb off the snow white couch I was given after it collapsed underneath my weight and look at it. Glass covered it with the curtain, so I can’t see who it is, not that I have any idea who’d be visiting. Glass doesn’t seem to be much of a social butterfly (that’s AWESOME!), not to mention logically they’d come to the door instead of a window.

Unless it’s the mail, which they have electronically. Or the milkman…do they have milk?

Mmmm…milk.

I get up and pull the white (WHITE! WHITE! Why is everything white?! I’m going to go blind here!) curtain back, finding myself eye to eye with big, green, slitted eyes, straw-like hair, and a red, worn, conical hat.

A/N:

A bit short for my tastes, but it works. I hope I’ve improved a bit, I haven’t been too happy with the way this story has turned out form-wise, but I think it’s just because Am is a girl-chasing moron and not like my usual brilliant, sweet males.