Magician

Floating. For a moment he was the embodiment of the name he had chosen for himself. Pure, childlike joy without any pretense or notion of self-consciousness. He was joy.

Above him was a cloudless blue sky. Supporting his form was a large body of water. He listened, fascinated, to the sound of the water sloshing in and out of his ears as his head bobbed slightly with the tiny waves. At the very edge of his peripheral vision on the right he could see a wide, sandy beach. All details were lost, but he knew he was quite far out and there almost certainly was no one there to help him even if he were to call out.

But nothing was going to happen. He had a destiny. He had seen it, and drowning was nowhere in his future.

Of course there were the distressing dark periods in the future. Like small valleys in the plains, he could see both sides but he couldn't see what lay inside them, only what awaited him on the other side. And much of it made no sense at all. There was a towering city of shaped stone and gleaming metal, a tired old man who held his fate in tired hands and on the other side of one of the larger valleys . . . a shadowy woman. He could see only her form, no details he could use to identify her. No matter. She was waiting for him on the very edge of the valley and on the near side The Magician.

The Magician, he thought as a chill passed over him.

· · ·

"What about the magician," She asked softly.

In a flash Joy had passed from completely asleep to hyper-alert, crab-walking away from her again and backing himself up against one of the boulders that littered the landscape they'd been traveling across. "What?" Undirected fury clear in his voice.

"You were talking in your sleep, love," she purred and not for the first time Joy imagined what sounds she would make if he were to throw himself at her and try tearing her throat out.

She'd laugh, because I'd be a broken heap before I even got close, he thought bitterly. "He killed me, that's all. But you already knew that."

Her hollow gaze made his mask itch and it was all he could to to keep from reaching up to finger the imagined crack in the cheek. She doesn't believe me. She knows I'm not telling her everything I know and she's going to--

"We'll reach Futility today," she announced finally. Then, without another word she stood up and strode away from the miserable little camp, leaving Joy and the still-sleeping form of Pop-top alone.