"This is an interesting victory, love," he began, as his eyes slid over the disarrayed room. "I never thought I’d find you sitting here of all places, doing this of all things."

"You never were good at imaginings. And I didn’t know it was a contest," she added, as he ran his fingers over the books she knew he would kill for.

He smiled. "All life is a contest, dear, didn’t you know? Darwin knew it. A few of those sociologists have an idea. The birds and the bees have a clue as well."

He let his tongue linger over the words. He knew that theatrics drove her crazy.

She wasn’t going to ask any questions. It would prolong his game, whatever it might be, that much longer.

He took the seat opposite her. It was the only one free of manuscripts.

"What brings you to this adorable little town? I was hoping to renew our acquaintance somewhere a little more cosmopolitan."

"It suits my needs," she answered quietly. There was more truth in that statement than she dared let on. She hid her face in the book she was researching, but he leaned forward and pulled it down.

She could only see his eyes over the binding. They were the same as they had always been. No matter how someone changes, she mused, their eyes never do. Eyes, after all, are the windows to the soul. But she didn’t need eyes to see what was in his heart; she had experience enough.

She held his gaze. "My class starts soon."

"I know. ‘Introduction to Eastern Thought,’ isn’t it? How apropos." He made no move to leave and seemed to have no intention on telling her what he wanted. How typical.

"Ten minutes," she said, glancing at the tacky plastic clock above her desk.

"A time limit?" he asked. "And I’m only worth ten minutes? I’m hurt."

"I didn’t say that," she said evenly. "I was pointing out that I should leave in ten minutes. If you need anything from me that requires more than that amount of time, it will have to wait until after class."

"Putting the frails before friends? I never thought it possible," he said derisively.

"Putting duty before all things," she corrected. "Giri and ninjo. My lecture today covers that topic if you care to stay and listen."

"Please don’t patronize me," he sighed. "I get enough of it at home."

She ventured a question. It would give up a bit of her advantage, but she wanted to know. "How is everyone?"

He leaned back in the chair and waved his hand. "Same old, same old. You’d know if you came and visited more often."

No information whatsoever. She should have expected as much.

"Which leads me to my sojourn here."

Ah. "This isn’t a social visit?" she asked coyly.

"There is something in your possession that we will assumed you borrowed. The owners would like it back now. I am here to take it with me."

She expected as much. "This most certainly will take longer than" - a glance at the clock - "less than nine minutes now. You can stay in the office until then, if you’d like, or we can meet later."

His façade of the Briton was peeling away like old paint. "You aren’t putting me off," he said, with a touch more throat than was required.

He was watching her too closely for her to make the necessary mental gymnastics that sparring with him required.

"I see it. It’s right over there, in the cupboard between the Malefactum and Kirchoff’s Demonologie. I can get it myself and I’ll be off, no worries."

"That’s Australian," she noted. "Make sure to get your expressions right."

"No one will notice a small slip and if they do I’ll say I’m a very well-traveled English gentleman," he joked, but there was an edge to his voice. "Shall I get it or shall you?"

"Do we have to do this now?" she asked.

"Yes," he hissed. True colors, she thought. They were black and blue and purple, just like a bruise or a love bite. She put herself between the prize and the opponent.

He let a smile touch his lips. "It’s a simple matter, luv. It’s a trifle. You honestly can’t say you need it."

"Nothing is needed in this world," she argued. "All that we think we need is actually want and desire is to be ground underfoot like a snake’s head. But I have it and that is what is important right now."

"You have it now. Who’s to say it won’t be taken from you?"

"No one can say. Perhaps you will take it from me, perhaps another." Her eyes hardened. "But whether it be you or someone else, it will have to be taken."

He smiled again. He knew he had a nice smile. Experience had taught her that he saved it for special occasions, like right before he lied. "It doesn’t have to be like this, dear."

There it was. She shrugged. "If you say so."

She prepared herself anyway. She had really liked this office, too.

"What I mean is that you don’t have to be here if you don’t wish to be," he said softly.

"Are you going to take me away from all of this? I never knew you had leanings towards chivalry. How very Byronic."

"Byronic? His heroes were always a bit wicked, weren’t they?"

He knew that. He didn’t have to ask. They had met Byron, after all.

He stood up and she braced for the beginning. He smirked at her and stepped away from the chair.

"I’m certainly not here to rescue you from this" – he gesticulated extravagantly, making her office feel mundane and tawdry – "life you’re leading. That would ruin your fun. You like pretending to be a frail, don’t you?"

She hated it when he called them frail. They were, but that wasn’t the point.

His eyes danced with pleasure, taking cheer in her annoyance. He continued. "It was agreed that you should know that you’re welcome to return of your own volition."

"Return? I never thought I joined," she retorted.

"We aren’t a club, dear," he said darkly. "It’s what you are."

"What I am is free to make my own choices," she said, her voice filled with steel.

"Don’t kid yourself, love," he scoffed. "You take the easy way out. You let your precious duty, your giri, make your decisions for you."

"But I have to decide if I wish to accept my duty." She put her book down and went to her desk. "I’m just lucky that it has the additional bonus of thwarting you and your friends."

"Give it to me."

"No." She searched for her lecture notes. They were somewhere on her desk. She kept one eye on her visitor.

"You have no use for it and it must attract more trouble than it’s worth, yes?"

"It’s worth the trouble."

His back was to her. He was examining her collection very closely. She wasn’t too worried. Her books were protected from the likes of him.

And what likes is that? She asked herself. His likes are my likes as well, aren’t they?

She waited for his next move. A choice quote streaked through her mind.

Two of a kind we are, contrivers both.

That was her favorite line from the Odyssey. Homer had always emphasized it when he recited the epic. She felt it was very applicable to them; her and he who was in her office.

But she had given up contriving against others and traded it in for contriving for others. Spoken aloud, it was only a change in prepositions, but in reality, it involved an alteration of philosophies.

He didn’t subscribe to philosophy. None of her old acquaintances did. They preferred to look at the world as if it was divided into two camps: the winners and losers. They were the winners and made certain that no one challenged that position.

She was challenging that position again, just like she had before.

"My word, this is an extensive collection. No wonder you were hired. I assume your colleagues in the Philosophy Department are absolutely cumming themselves over having access to these."

"There’s nothing extraordinary there," she said.

"You mean you made it so that what they see is nothing extraordinary. What a clever little girl you are." He turned around. "Though I would think you’d be in the Theology or the English Department, considering your background."

"Theology, mythology, philosophy, it’s all related. You know that."

"We made it so," he clarified.

"We made it something, but I don’t know what to call it anymore. It should be obvious by now. It’s out of our control. We planted the seeds, but we didn’t tend the garden. We let them do that for us. They took it from us and made it their own."

He rolled his eyes. "How philosophical."

"How true. And that’s why you want it back, isn’t it? Because it will be a way to get control of the garden again."

"I see it as pest control. We’ll pull all the weeds and kill all the grubs that infest our little garden."

"You don’t like getting your hands dirty with honest work."

"And you find playing in the mud much too enjoyable to be respectable," he snapped.

There was the wedge, the vital difference in viewpoint. He had found her habit of ‘associating with the help’ mildly annoying. She had found his indifference exasperating. Hence Kuan-yin to balance Enma, and Parvati to complete Shiva.

"Respectability is determined by the opinions of others. Dignity and pride are determined by one’s opinion of themselves. That is all I require." She couldn’t lie, but she wasn’t telling the whole truth. She had what she required, but not what she wanted. Ostracism wasn’t glamorous, but no one had said this would be done easily.

"How noble of you. The self-sacrificing heroine, ignoring personal feeling, shuns society in order to complete her duty." He laughed.

She found her notes. "I must leave now. Do you wish to continue this later?"

He snapped his fingers, time stopped, and she exploded.

"You idiot! We’re in a university! Do you know how many people you might affect?"

He was unconcerned. "It’s a Friday. There’s hardly anyone around and now we have unlimited time to discuss and resolve our issue."

At one time she had found such a flagrant exercise of power stimulating. "My class –"

"Is on a Friday afternoon. Students are the same, forever and ever, amen. They will start the fleshy exploits of the weekend as soon as possible and a lecture, no matter how interesting, is not going to give them pause. Of all things in history, that never has and never will change."

He was right and she acquiesced. This was more important than the life she had hidden herself in. She would discard it reluctantly but easily, if it were necessary. It wasn’t like she didn’t have practice, she thought bitterly.

"Now that we have all the time we need," she observed icily. "shall we finish this?"

He pretended to be taken aback. "Are you insinuating that I came here to remove it by force?"

"Oh, you would never be able to do that," she replied.

"You have that much faith in your protections?" He wondered if the twitch of her cheek muscle was one of anxiety or annoyance.

"Faith lacks knowledge," she said.

"And you did so like to learn," he added. "Learning gets you in trouble and gains no profits."

"Stagnation invites decay, which leads to death. Didn’t Darwin mention something about evolution too?"

"Taking my own metaphors and sending them right back at me," he mused. "I’ll have to watch my tongue."

Let me cut it out for you, she thought, before saying, "Could you possibly leave me be? I’ve found satisfaction of another kind now. Nothing you offer me can replace it."

"While we’re merely looking for something to replace that which was taken from us," he said. "I’ll leave right now if-"

"No ifs," she said firmly. "My continued bliss is directly related to what you and your associates desire. It stays, I stay, and there is nothing more to it."

"It is only a symbol," he said. "An object that is not worth your bother."

"Symbols have power. Look at the crucifix, the caduceus, and the double-headed axe. They repeat again and again…"

"Because we made it so."

She shook her head. "We dropped the seed. We had nothing to do with the flowering."

"Metaphors again. And what of you and I? We are flesh and blood" – she raised an eyebrow and he corrected himself – "of a sort. We do not live in words, metaphors, or mythology. You have individuality, but you deny it. Tell me truthfully that you deny your feelings easily and without regret and I will leave you now."

"I cannot say that. We, our kind, are not automatons and it is fruitless to ignore personal feelings." He smiled proudly, though she did not know at what. It was a hollow triumph. He knew that she could not lie.

"But I can say that I do so without shame or guilt. And regret is something that is mastered when you don’t spend time dwelling on the past."

He pulled out a small leather book from the shelf. It was very old. "Onerous, I imagine, with these reminders around you."

She shrugged. "It is my duty –"

"Duty!" He exclaimed and snapped the book shut. A small cloud of dust billowed into the air and she winced. He replaced the book roughly and turned to her. His blue eyes flashed, like lightning illuminating the ocean during a storm.

"Duty is a delusion. It changes with every passing fad. Once upon a time, it was a girl’s duty to do as her father wished and she did so without question. Once upon a time, it was a society’s duty to execute children for feeding their starvation wracked bodies and it did so without remorse. Yet that is not the fashion now, nor will today’s duties be required by the next generation. Do as you please, love, because it won’t make a difference in the long run. And didn’t you say that you didn’t care for other’s opinions? You’ve made your own chains. You delude yourself, pretending Prometheus’ place when nothing binds you to this duty."

"True duty is timeless and never-ending."

"Said with such enthusiasm," he observed softly. He gazed at her and she knew that if she looked away first, it would be a defeat of sorts. He continued. "If it’s a burden, put it down. It will make the darkness that much more enjoyable to dance in. Or do you insist on wearing your barrel, holding your candle and searching for an honest man? Why torture yourself?"

Why torture myself? The thought came unbidden and she almost succumbed, but like a chorus, the verse rose again.

Two of a kind we are, contrivers both.

She rallied around what she knew. "More torturous to live with shame. Much more torturous to watch the deterioration when I would know that I could have prevented it."

"Deterioration? You think it would be a fall from grace?" he asked in blinking amazement. "They would learn their place again. They would know to tremble in the dark and to leave milk out on the porches. They would fear lightning, earthquakes, fire and father!"

She ticked them off her fingers. "Lightning, earthquakes, and fire are natural phenomenon. Father is only human after all. Fearing the darkness is silly and milk left out at night either spoils or is drunk by stray cats." She allowed herself a small grin. "Unless you –"

"Never," he said indignantly. "But this is what I mean. We are laughed at, held as superstitions and myths, or worse yet, our teeth are pulled."

She frowned in confusion. "Teeth pulled?"

"How long has it been since you heard that Cinderella’s stepsisters cut off their toes to fit their feet into the glass slipper? When did you hear the version of the Little Mermaid where she died? Our history is studied and torn apart and deconstructed. There is no fear of god or the devil in this time or place. Philosophy has replaced worship. Religion is taught in classrooms instead of dispensed by voices that come out of rocks or pillars of fire."

"Children don’t grow up afraid of the bogeyman anymore," she replied.

"No," he said. "They have learned that it is more prudent to fear their own kind. Wasn’t it better when they walked quietly through the woods, blanching for fear of rousing a troll or oni or some other that might steal them away? Now they cringe at the sight of their friends, who are turning into monsters right before them. We gave them something to fear instead of each other and the world was a better place for it. There is nothing wrong with wanting that back."

She interrupted him, laughing, realizing, and wanting him to realize what had brought her here. "You contradicted yourself. You said we are flesh and blood, but we are not! We are deconstructed and studied and torn apart! We are words, metaphors, and mythology! And there we are vulnerable!"

She pointed out the window, to the statues on the lawn. "We made sure when we found them, wherever we went, to insinuate ourselves in their minds and their hearts so that we might have power over them, hold sway over them. We overwhelmed them with ourselves because it was so easy to do. And then we left them to make sense of what we were, so that we might play again."

She stood in front of him, a mocking grin cutting a swathe across her face. "They did their job too well! They broke us down into manageable parts and once we were manageable, we could be replaced or discarded or deconstructed. And it is no one’s fault but our own!"

"Then let us take it back," he cried. "We shall start again and not make the same mistake twice."

"No," she said firmly. "We had our chance and we squandered it."

"Wrong," he countered. "You took our chance away! You stole from your family and you are condemning your family to a slow death."

"Wrong," she mocked. "I am alive, am I not? You should do like your darling Darwin advocated. You adapt. All of you adapt and you’ll live."

"Give it to me," he ordered through clenched teeth.

Her fists balled reflexively and she sighed in frustration. "So that is it. You won’t adapt. You find them so repulsive that you refuse to live among them. Are you all so proud that you’ll die for your precious policy of apartheid?"

"La belle dame sans merci," he muttered angrily.

"Mercy for the vain-glorious has no place on my conscience," she said. "We have lived among them. There is nothing different with what I do now than what we did before to them."

"We watch, we mold, but we never participate," he said distantly.

"Watch? Are you saying the Old Testament happened by watching?" she asked caustically. "That had your fingerprints all over it."

"And yourself? ’Thou shall not covet,’" he quoted pointedly.

"I wanted to make up for –"

He hissed, "Or the seven fold path to nirvana? What of the Bhagavad Gita? You do have a way of turning out religions and then coming around and insinuating yourself into my fun."

"There has to be a balance," she said, as she watched him walk to the window. He gazed at a bird caught in mid-flight and she wondered how strong he was, how long he could keep this up before time would reassert itself.

"Ying yang. Shiva Shakti. Inanna and Ishtar. Morningstar and Yahweh," he listed as he scanned the green lawn. The mannequins stood quietly, waiting, without knowing they were waiting. "Your views on parity are quite renowned among our set. Is this childish act of defiance yet another way you insist on forcing your views down our throats?"

That last sentence had been a mistake. She swallowed her rage with easy practice, but the scimitar edge in her voice betrayed her. "Such comments will not help your case."

The Midwestern cadence she had adopted emphasized the scorn behind the words. Heedless of her contempt and having weathered worse than that in their long acquaintance with each other, he ignored her retort.

"You give yourself airs and have pretensions of some ennobling sacrifice of self that places you above us. You consider us, your family, rooting pigs, those beasts that are driven by appetites alone. But you were driven by your appetites as well."

She closed her eyes. There were always mistakes. Hence Aphrodite, Cihuacoatl, and Kali. She smiled faintly, remembering.

"Kali was your favorite, wasn’t it?" he said, divining the reason behind her smirk. "It was asinine of me to have taken on that form of asura."

"What was asinine of you was interrupting my work."

She said that from far away. She was in other places now, in jungles, on mountains, in sea-caves, lurking on the edge, in the shadows of creation. It was here that the emotions were pure and exposed and not corrupted by philosophy or civilizing effects or even by others. The world was full of singularities, of a thousand pockets of awakening consciousness that were too new to know that they would soon struggle against each other. The universe was not yet amoral, for morality itself was not well established. Reason was overruled by rawness and by reality. Each life was here only in this place, there was only now. There were no candles that illuminated both the past and future poorly; the world was shrouded in darkness, but did not care because it did not know what light was.

That darkness had been all encompassing, thick like a black velvet cape. It covered the body, weighted it down underneath soft folds. It had been comfortable; it concealed and it dulled the world. The darkness was everything; there had been nothing else.

She had been there, in the darkness, at the beginning. She had rebelled against her longings even then, but it had been a poor rebellion led by peasants with farm tools, who had attempted to fight her desires, which had been armed with proper tools of war; edged weapons that had stabbed her, rent her in two, pierced, slashed, and knifed her until she had fallen under their relentless fervent advance.

Then the sacrifice began and the blood never stopped flowing.

If he hadn’t been so self absorbed, if he hadn’t been calculating his next move, like a practiced chess player, he would have seen that the time to strike was then, at that moment, when she was remembering. He had forgotten that the most powerful enemy in argument was the reconstruction of memory and forgetfulness itself. Once that was overcome, once the past skipped forward, all arguments were lost and all that was remembered was lost in the cold clarity of being.

But he was too busy watching his handiwork in the commons.

He said, "You found that engagement infinitely amusing. It took me a good millennium to live that down among the tribe."

She remembered herself instead of the joy of the blood. "It produced the thuggee cult," she answered stiffly.

"Oh, yes. They were very"- he waved his hand, searching for a word -"enthusiastic. Others would be proud of inspiring that kind of devotion."

"Then others find their pride in idiotic things. I never felt that death was an integral component of worship."

Once giving into it, she had destroyed, ravaged, and plundered just like any other of her kind.

But redemption was always a proffered choice, if one were brave enough to take its hand. The suffocating cloak could be thrown off, if one only undid the clasp. And to feel the wind, the cold rain on the skin had shocked her into awareness, had given her a night vision of sorts, where she had begun to see for the first time.

For she had driven the sun away, but had brought it out again with a strip tease. She had stolen children away and then returned to grant them again. She knew the Greeks, but redeemed herself with Mohini, who wasn’t just a pretty face but had a job to do as well.

With faltering hands, she discarded her cloak, only to take it up again and place it around her shoulders. There were weaknesses, battles with her kind that caused her to retreat to the detached velvety darkness, times of impatience that brought her precipitously close to ruining centuries of hard work. Eventually the gloom would stifle and smother her until, panting for air, she had to cast it away as far as she could throw it. But she always seemed to pick it back up.

Then, one day, she had consigned it to the flames of a new fire and it had floated away in the sparks that drove the night away.

"I’ve had enough of this," she said. "Leave now or I’ll throw you out myself."

"You would risk your frails to the perils of a skirmish?" he inquired scornfully.

"You were chosen for a reason," she said quickly. "You aren’t the ambassador by accident. Why you?"

He was so surprised by her question that he didn’t lie. He replied, "I volunteered."

"You weren’t –"

"Sent? I am not an errand boy, my dear, and I run hither for no one," he said harshly. "I came to take that damnable thing back before the real trouble begins."

"The real trouble?" she asked.

He, who was always careful of his expression, furrowed his brow. It was such an uncharacteristic gesture that it caught her gaze. His eyebrows reminded her of ravens, searching for a place to perch, whether it be on a crag or carrion. She had had many birds; peacocks, quetzals, doves, and eagles. She remembered when she had first chosen the raven as her bird. They, he and she, had been king and queen underhill to those above, holding court in the misty lands.

It was his eyebrows she watched as he said, "They’re making plans. You think I’m the most persuasive person they could send? You believe that considering our long, drawn out, and mostly adversarial alliance they would choose me to come? No. They are working on a scheme. It will not be fun for you or them. We are playing games, love, but the games have very significant stakes placed on them. There will be a clear-cut winner in this especial one. They plan on it being them."

"You meant ‘us.’"

"I’m not –"

She interrupted, impatient with his quibbling. "Don’t be ashamed. You are one of them."

"I am one of me. And I am trying to help you."

"You are trying to confuse me." She stood next to him at the window. "Tell me what they want with it."

"What they want with it?" he repeated. "You stole it! They want it back."

She was very impressed with herself. She had annoyed him very much. "And if I give it back? Then what?"

He shrugged. "Then they’ll put it somewhere safe." He considered something for a moment. "Somewhere safer," he corrected.

"And they won’t use it?" she asked suspiciously.

"Of course they’ll use it! It’s meant to be used. That’s its purpose! Not using it would be just like those old women that collect decorative plates for three easy payments of nineteen ninety five and sit them on their mantelpiece to be admired and collect dust. Do you want it to be a decorative plate?"

"It would shatter the world," she said certainly.

"We’re thinking it would just hairline fracture it," he replied.

"And they would set the bone with more of their ‘medicine’? Caulk the cracks with what exactly?" she asked dryly. "I trust them to fix the world as much as I would trust a medieval barber at brain surgery."

It had taken her a very long time to realize that she did not know the rules of the game. It had taken her a bit longer to know that no one else did either. She wasn’t afraid to acknowledge that she didn’t know very much, but what she did know, down to her toes, was that she wasn’t going to play the ‘games’ anymore and she wasn’t going to let anyone else take advantage of others who didn’t know there weren’t any rules.

"Whatever you desire, luv," he said flatly. "I came to warn you and perhaps talk you into being reasonable."

And it was a truth of sorts.

He struck quickly. She felt the approach of it before the connection; it singed the cells in her brain before it even touched her. She raised what defenses she could, cheek muscle twitching with concentration.

He was fighting her outside of time and in the mundane. That was against all the rules, but she had known for a very long time that there were no rules and never had been. Rage took control. She had to be very careful, for though she had thrown her old cloak away it was never too hard to get a different one that fulfilled the same purpose. She found the thread of the emotion and held it close, feeding on it, and waited for the next strike.

She had put her power into protection of both herself and her duty. She had to do without small cantrips and she hadn’t tasted fey wine in what seemed like a thousand years. Every spare ounce of magic went into the protection spells around her. Sacrifice paid off, though, for his next assault was nothing. She batted it away like a child’s toy.

Then she kneed him as hard as she could.

He fell to the floor and crumpled like a dirty Kleenex.

She had discovered that it was possible to always win or, rather, never lose at life if she didn’t play like it was a game.

She crouched down, tensed to defend herself, but found that he was in no position to do anything. He cursed gutturally, slipping in and out of languages. She was certain that no language had or would ever find the exact words to communicate the pain of getting nailed in the unmentionables. She waited for the swearing to die down, then carefully helped him up. He leaned heavily against the wall.

"I forgot that taking the form of a frail has some disadvantages," he said ruefully, wincing at the last twinges.

"It’s one of the many reasons I prefer being female," she said truthfully.

"You won yet again," he said. "You have grown much stronger here in the mundane." His frame, his perfect British gentleman façade, was hung with resignation. It did not become him at all. "Take your pleasure."

He admitted defeat and it meant that his form was forfeit to her. Not his life of course, but his form in this reality. He would have to start from scratch, get a new body, if she chose to destroy him. She considered it carefully. He was dangerous and knew her weaknesses, but the counterpoint and refrain echoed in her mind, along with the dull thud of the drinking cups on the tables and the smell of the fire in the large stone hearth.

Two of a kind we are, contrivers both.

"Go home." She took the book she had been reading off the table. "Just go home."

"What do you want me to tell them?"

"What you like. What you know."

She whirled around suddenly, book in hand.

"No. Tell them this. Tell them to come to me. Tell them I am here because I disagree, but that disagreement does not always mean conflict. Tell them that I learned the difference between duty and personal feeling."

He nodded. She knew that he would be true to his word, for even contrivers had their honor of sorts. He glanced at her cabinet one more time, looked out the window, and snapped his fingers.

The bird flew away. He tossed her a fleeting smile, full of regret, full of promise and full of what might have been. She ignored the weakness in her knees and watched him go to the door.

"I think…" she began.

He paused on the threshold, waiting to hear another of his kind’s voice before he made the long journey back home through the mundane.

"I think my favorite was Egypt."

"Osiris," he said thoughtfully.

"Isis," she countered.

"They loved her in Rome," he observed.

"Perhaps it was because she brought things back through perseverance. Perhaps it was because she never let change stop her. She changed around it and changed through it, but managed to keep her substance, her essence to the end."

"There was an end to her. The cult died out."

"Did it? Isis ended, but the cult of the Virgin began."

He allowed himself a brief, sincere smile. Then he bowed in the old way and disappeared through the door.

She checked the clock. One minute of the ten she had promised him was left. She gathered her notes and teaching materials. She would have plenty of time to get to class.