![[img: Klein Bottle]](./grid2.gif)
Another Man, Another Dream, Monday, January 9th
He woke with a question.
A single bead of sweat was balanced on his brow. He lay quite still remembering, trying very hard to think. The little bead swelled, ran tear-like to his cheek where it clung briefly before it was lost upon a satiny sea of lavender. He opened his eyes. It was as if the bandages had just been peeled away. His eyes adjusted to the stars.
It was a hunter's night. The beasts were out and about - Sassanian lions, Mayan tigres, Nubian leopards. All were held captive by stoney bonds - lattices of nephrite, lapis, serpentine or carnelian.
He started to see things more clearly. Around or through the dense foliage he saw and savored the glowing embers that had earlier inflamed his passions, his innermost soul. It was the way their glimmer had annointed her cocoa skin, her chestnut hair and those nacreous, smokey sapphires - those purbrown eyes.
The clock on the wall said 3:15. The expansive skylight, the starry lumorama confirmed the A.M. The half-bed, half-sofa, low and circular, confirmed the house not his - her adobe bungalow on Cottonwood Lane.
His mind had conceived parangles and mnemonic power, posicubes and anticubes, discontinuities and S-T superwindows, thinspace and thickspace, but had not, perhaps would not, could not ever solve the conundrum that was Julia Jane Moffett.
The mind, the man, the dream was the mathematician, Henry Kincaid.
He whispered gravely, "It was the attic again."
He rested on his back, on his pointy elbows. Her satin sheet failed to cover him. He paused to absorb the wonder that was Julia and her space - enriched by her treasured figurines, delicate and robust, by her rare succulents, soft and moist, delicate and robust.
"I was locked inside," he added as he kicked one of her lacy pillows to the floor. "The windows were boarded. There was a door ... boldly numbered ... secured with a heavy padlock. There was an eerie glow all round me."
She stirred sleepily. Like a waking lioness she stretched and extended a limber leg high across the lavender sheets to caress his chest with her prehensile toes. She traced the coarse stubble lower and lower before recapturing her bed sheet. As he began to speak to her, she pressed a cautioning finger against his slightly parting lips.
As she silently coaxed, he endeavored to coax from her a verbal response. "Julia, I searched for the key, but my pockets were empty."
"No wonder. You have no pockets to search," Julia murmured in a sonorous while slightly husky voice.
He stroked her thigh. He pinched her taut skin. Reflexively, she drew back, but returned to him her talented toes. She returned, as she always had on occasions such as this, to the means of her repair, to her universal engine, to a measuring rod neither purely English nor exactly metric, but a tool mostly Scotch-Irish.
He lost clear thought in the absorption of her lavish landscapes - Kilauea, Serengeti, and rugged Tirich Mir. These wonders ringed her aptly named "Rimfire Room".
She fretted. She pouted. "The fire dies. You are suddenly so cold. Must I restoke the fiery furnace?"
"You wound me severely," he said, seizing her by her ankle.
She wore a Zuni anklet of silver, turquoise and jet plus some saffron thingamabob in her hair. She glowed more than the fervid embers in the flickering hearth.
Henry inhaled. His lungs tingled tremulously. He recalled that unfathomable aspect of time just moments before waking. "The room was enchanted. The dust in the air danced. It lit the room. I soon discovered that I was not alone. There was a part man, a part bird ... a dazzling angel in rainbow plummage perched inside a gilded cage. Doleful eyes reflected on its miserable confinement ... a hostage held in the name of misguided science. This creature would not speak to me, though I sensed that he could, if coaxed, speak volumes to the world.
"There was an intriguing clutter ... a curule chair flanked by griffins, a marble bust of old Socrates, an astrolabe or some such thing, three delicate bottles, Klein bottles, I think, plus exotic toys and machines in various stages of disrepair. Puzzles abounded in every facet of the room.
"I saw loculi spilling guns and knifes, rings and shamrocks, scrolls and books upon moquette that only partially concealed roughly laid, pine boards. Every corner of the attic ... and there were many ... was a kaleidoscopic rapture continually filling space, time and possibility until it seemed the room or I would surely burst."
He sighed pensively. "It was the crucible of my dreams." A chill took its brief possession of his eyes and the telling of his tale.
She covered his body with hers, a nearly perfect fit. "Tell me about the Kleins ... the bottles. "I'm curious about such curiosities."
"Elephantine ... they were elephantine."
"Oh ... were they huge?" she asked, intrigued.
"No ... not at all. The bottles were about four inches high, three inches wide, and rested on a small teapoy near the griffin chair. They were clear, glass bottles ... figurine elephants resting on their rumps. Each had swallowed his trunk ... and something ... uh ... green."
"Ugh," she exclaimed as she plucked him playfully where his trousers seldom fit. She plucked him again, this second time much rougher.
He seized her just as roughly by the nape. He remarked, "Watch out, dear Julia. You know how this dream works. Out was in then in was out ... in then out ... both too much and not enough at the same time."
"Unhand me rude sir ... then tell me something. I know the shape of these queer bottles. You'd have to enema the beast to get anything in. Maybe I don't want to know, but what's inside these glass pachyderms?"
"Surprised you would need to ask. It's a quarvine like that one in Lloyd's gold ring."
"Shoulda known ... what else? That gizzard buster comes up like a bad oyster. Gives me the creeps the way that crystal stares. You say ... in your dream ... on your honor ... there are really three."
He rested a warm cheek on hers. "One inside each Klein bottle ... inside the elephant's clear, round belly."
"Perhaps it is these eyes that power your attic and your crucible," she whispered furtively.
"They draw their power from the bottles. They have infinite power when blown infinitesimally thin. And these exquisite bottles were blown incredibly, impossibly thin."
"Not sure I follow. You mean ... the power of thin time ... or thin space? Either property of the Light could crush if revealed."
"No ... I mean the awesome power of topology."
Julia exclaimed, "I think I see. It is drawn from the bottle's single side ... its odd dimensional twist inside the greater container."
"Yes, like Lloyd's manifold with its warps, with its time-breach of space, with its space-breach of time ... you know ... the elephant's probing trunk." He sighed. "And to think that he dreamed all this."
"I should tell you mine. I should tell you of the man down below." She paused. "Henry, I'm sorry. This stitch in time is yours. I'm your warp. Please weave your yarn. You know I'm yours completely."
This inspired less irksome thoughts, and a timely pause for gentle weaving, for Julia was a supple fabric stretched over a subtle warp.
She bewitchingly purred. He prolonged her purr.
Finally, he uttered with a smirk, "Tell me of your man ... below."
She had curled into a ball. She intoned dulcetly, "I have two dreams ... actually of two very different men. One's a chameleon of sorts. I call him my Artful Jack. The other man ... well, he's my Fire Stoker."
As he lay in every way exposed, his head tilted toward the stars, he detected in her voice an uncharacteristic break in her confidence that he had not discerned before. "I think Friday's computer crash ... it's implications have finally given your heebies the jeebies."
"Not at all." She uncurled, nestled in his arms, nuzzled him, reached low to apply an exquisitely sensual massage with long fingers.
He murmured, "Ah ... such fine fingers. But of Friday ... You know the Lens drivers were fried to a crisp."
"I know," she said. "The Light Shell, the AIs ... everything was hit hard. I heard that Max was in the 'con, Owen in the lumitorium when Lloyd emerged with his panigma ... when all the computers winked out."
"Ah ... you heard this from ... from our genius, Lou Konnick?"
"Yes ... something about an OHM box. I fear it's true. No one else will open their mouth."
"And would you ... I mean ... open your mouth?" he asked coyly.
She contemplated it. "Definitely not. Too much ... too dangerous an opening. I'll apply some Finesse Juliesse."
"Well ... I may not like this. What will you do?"
"You know ... just a little nibble."
"Perhaps ... a somewhat risky, somewhat nasty nibble?"
"No ... no! Not enough to arouse them ... but enough ... enough to see why our angry Ivan was so concerned about Lloyd's scan. If Lloyd ran the panoptoscope I should be able to recover the panoptogram ... reconstruct some of Friday's dreamspace ... enough to learn of the consequences of Lloyd's Panigma."
"You might pilot the Lens yourself ... that is if the Machine ever runs again."
"Hmm ... not likely the former. I'll pilot at Hell's Gate," she countered, quoting his own oft-used expression for the warptear.
"I will have you on the dream couch yet."
He caught the glint in her eyes. In the low fire light it was the glint of deep lilac. She noticed his attention and batted her eyes fetchingly. Her sweet locks fell over his flushed face. He inhaled her. She smelled like the honeysuckle from his lost youth. He suckled tenderly and eagerly, her golden, ripe honey.
She molded her body to his. "I will tell you mine if you will tell me yours," she offered temptingly with pursed lips, dark like two rubies underneath the stars.
"Dear ... my lips are just too dry to speak a word of it."
She kissed them ... then kissed him longingly hither and yon. "Better?" she asked seductively.
"You really want to hear about the attic? Now?"
With her cheek pressed against him she nodded that she did.
"Well then ... I'll tell you ... tell you what I can. Have you ever been locked in a closet or an attic? Once ... by accident ... I locked myself in a basement shelter. You know ... one of those sixties bomb shelters. I was six or seven. I'll never forget the feeling. My attic dream captures all the helplessness ... and a good deal more."
She insisted, "What is more? What is worse? Some bugbear in the corner ... some mansarde manticore?"
"No ... not really. It's a quality of dimension. It's our Lens ... its phase tilt ... where space grows thicker ... where time grows thinner ... isopotential reality ... where all things can happen ... and usually do before the night is through."
"Henry ... this dream is only a snippet of possibility. It cannot breach the barrier between fantasy and reality."
"Julia, I disagree. As I recall the details I am persuaded that this dream is much stronger ... a breach ... a rift ... a portal of real power. I'm feeling it again, right now, an intrusion of some kind into the world of common sense and the commonplace. I know this is childish, a return to youthful fantasy and susceptibility and hardly science. But there is the suspicion, much more than the suspicion, that I must find the key ... find the way out before it's too late."
"Too late for what? Perhaps you see no key because you are the key ... or I am. Look at me, Henry. What do you see? I'd like to know."
With magic fingers she kneaded him, comforted him, relaxed him. Her "needing" lifted him. Within incremental time the enchantment subsided. He located his voice if not the answer to his innermost dream.
"I'm feeling better." Henry described the mansarde: "In the center there is an escritoire, filthy gray. I see it as clearly as I see you ... a disturbing clarity that grows stronger when it should fade. This dream has a stubborn cling ... like millions of tiny fishhooks ... "
She replied, "I've checked the CIC database. You've logged over two hundred hours in the chamber, second only to Lloyd himself. Your PPI is subpar. And you say you've not been sleeping well. Henry, you need ... "
"Need a rest," he finished. "I know. Looks like I'm going to get one. But that will depend upon your skill in restoring the software."
"You need to get away. Forget the Machine and you will forget these dreams. There are better things. I'll help. I will help you now ... help you purge the poisons and the pachyderms. But you must be still."
"But Julia, I can tell this quickly. I'm okay ... really. I need to. You said you wanted to hear ... or that you were willing."
She fell against him with a desperate sigh, with a deep rattle of resignation.
He encircled her. "Where was I?"
"Here and now ... and here with me."
"Good sign ... eh? Attic is fading ... and Julia is repairing ... replacing. My attic is almost gone."
"Weenie wax! Henry ... if you must ... please tell."
"Well ... I suppose I must. The dusty writing table in the center of the room looks promising. Somewhere in all the clutter I expect to find the latch key that let's me out of the attic. Under the copious layers of dust I discover an old-fashioned quill pen, a nearly empty bottle of ink, an imposing stack of papers, but nothing more revealing.
"The dream's taking me too deep, taking me too long. I'm searching now with less deliberation. I notice the carpet. On the floor an oil lamp had been dropped ... its oil spilled. Flame had burnt through the carpet to expose some of the ill-fitting boards. The darkness seeps from below through the openings in the floor. I am drawn to the floor. I am expending too much energy, processing too much space and time.
"A peruke ... I think they're called ... one of those foppish, powdered wigs ... lay like a slain rabbit near the lamp. I raise the fallen wig with my foot expecting, but finding nothing underneath.
"There's a wall tapestry that reminds me of our Dome mural, excepting that it's alive. With unseen hands it is being knit and reknit over and over, the same scene I think as if to get it right. Or perhaps it knits itself. I gaze intently upon this vast panoptorama, and though there is rich detail, real depth, color and dimension, plus a tantalizing psychic tug, my brain will absorb none of its deeper fabric.
"I'm pondering the imponderables, discovering no clues. I turn to investigate an etagere colorfully stocked with ampules and flacons of rare aromatics and essential oils, then to boxes and chests concealed under cloque fabrics. But I am to discover no key in these mysteries ... no way out. The key becomes my obsession. By now I'm desperate. By now the space inside is growing thick and rich with possibilities."
"But you are the key ... you ... your mind ... your sight. You are the way out ... don't you see," she repeated with emphasis.
"Julia, I see everything and nothing. To some end I riffle the pharmacopoeias, the manuals and manuscripts, the books on dusty shelves ... Metaphysicum, Volsunga Cycle, Oneiros, even Goethe's Faust.
"The toys, the mantic devices, the instruments are powerless. The antique rebecks, flageolets, sackbuts and cembalas are stone silent. I scrutinize a pellucid crystal, an orb with not one iota of error. It's light blinds me. I turn away in severe pain. By now I'll try anything. I rumage everything ... anything ... a cuspidor ... the cushions of an old chair. I am frantic for a way out. Space-time thickens to crush me ... an implosion of supercritical space."
There was that quality of crescendo to his voice that frightened her, that was dangerous. She rested her forehead on his. The fall of her hair calmed and caressed him. "You should stop and rest ... or the day ahead will crush you even more. It will not require any help from your overdeveloped dream muscle."
With two fingers Julia stroked his eyes as if to charm them closed. "What must I do to soothe you?" she asked.
He held his breath as if afraid to let go. "Please let me finish."
She repositioned her hands. "Please let me." There seemed nothing beyond her reach, nothing beyond her powers of tactile persuasion.
"You create a wonderful diversion," he admitted. "But I've started something that I must finish. I must tell someone. And I want to hear about your dreams as well ... your dreams of Jack and the Fire Stoker."
"Of course you want. What you want may not be enough. But finish before you implode. Do you ever find this key that so torments you?"
"I'll defer on that. Under muslin I uncover some fascinating toys. At first they seem harmless enough. One's a battered doll ... actually a rosy-cheeked marionette with tangled lines ... a hopeless knot. The cause of the fouled lines is another doll ... no I'll not call it that. It's just a head under a cowl attached to the back of the marionette."
"Henry ... how do you do it? You see the most perplexing things."
His voice cracked around the edges. "One must risk his eyes to see."
"His sanity? Dear, it's the dark shelves where you look."
He shivered. "This bodiless, faceless creature frightens me. I pull back its black cowl to expose a sucker-face. An ugly gnome stares at me through its one green eye. It actually grins at me. The eye opens and closes like it's signaling. I toss the twisted, two-headed thing back into the toys. Fortunately there are other faces less intimidating. In fact, I am suddenly the intimidator.
"Another creature, a plenicorn ... a unicorn with many prongs gazes up at me horrified as if I've come to do some harm. I retreat ... and nearly trip over a box ... a large jack-in-the-box that until now I hadn't noticed. In my palm appears a large crank handle. I insert the shaft into the gayly painted wood. The box expands."
Julia released her gentle grip, ended her expert massage. "My Jack?" she wondered. "Perhaps it was my Jack that frightened your plenicorn and not you." Both near and far at the same moment, she seemed to be seeing or reliving something not in this world. Her lucid eyes had lost their remarkable purbrown and appeared suddenly gray and lifeless.
He massaged her neck and shoulders allowing some time for her case of jitters to subside - no less a case than his own. Peering up at the stars through the skylight he explained, "I turned the crank. Out came the weasel tune, then as expected, the lid sprang open. But there's no Jack. He won't come out. I know he's in there. I can hear him ... a zealous scraping. I impulsively reach inside. I can feel him in there squirming and struggling like some wild beast. Using both hands I try to pry him out, but it's of no use. He's wedged in tight. In fact, I'm lucky I get my hands out before they're cut to pieces. When I do look down I can see that both are amply streaked with blood."
Henry's telling of a quaint and simple toy had produced an odd and unexpected twist. He could see that Julia had been hiding, denying even to herself the vivid episode of nightmares that had been troubling her for a long time. She finally spoke: "Someday I'll tell you about Jack ... about Jill too. But not now ... not tonight."
"I think it would be better if you got this off your chest."
"Do you really expect me to tell it now? We're here alone telling stories like this in the dark. If they were only stories ... well ... that would be different. I wouldn't care if they curled my hair. But we both know they're not just bedtime stories. Besides, I can't see anything more than the fire and a few dim stars. I can barely see you. For all I know you're Jack."
"A romantic notion, but Jack's a dream and nothing more. Without Nettie's core the probabilities are well-below the causation threshold. They'll never be more than free, random consciousness and we both know it. But I am sorry I started this. I've scared us both for no good reason ... for no good reason." He inhaled. "We must remember we're reasonable people. We're scientists."
"Back in the Lab and in the light of day I might agree with you. I'm as logical as the next person. Afterall, I've programmed and empowered the world's most advanced biocomputer. In the bright light of day each event correlates unalterably with the next. Most attics are safe. Jack doesn't usually jump out of thin air. And Jill survives her nightmares. But Henry, this isn't the Lab or the light of day. It's night and we're quite alone. It's dark and you're telling me your dreams ... dreams you cooked up on a machine that could run the solar system."
A pause. "Do you want to hear the rest of it?" he asked somberly.
She laughed in spite of herself and it jolted him. "Henry, you're a rare find ... rare indeed. Go ahead. Did you see Jack?"
"No, the lid slams shut nearly taking off my head. Never got a look at him. But there's one I did. Do you remember I mentioned a half-man, half-bird locked in a golden cage? This creature is adorned in purple, gold, green, and scarlet feathers like Quetzalcoatl. Maybe this is the reason I didn't see it right off, the damned key that is. All this time the key was held in its tight bird's beak.
"With some legerdemain I insert my hand through the bars of the cage. Nevertheless I'm defeated. The elusive key transforms itself into a serpent and slithers past me. The man-bird bursts into an angel's song and makes his escape by turning sideways, first disappearing, then reappearing outside the bars. Once outside he is even more remarkable. And that song is ... is from ... from ... "
"God ... I suppose? Hmm ... this goes on and on. But the bird was a valuable lession learned," she said. "One can't sing or maneuver with a snake in their mouth. You agree?"
"Yes, though some will crow. Julia, I track the man-bird high into the rafters, finally losing him in a beacon of unearthly light. But snakes crawl low down and dark. I've no problem following this one ... an ugly reptile with a man's face. You know this face. Care to say?"
She covered with soft satin before she answered: "I can picture deep grooves cut in leathery cheeks and caverns filled with shadows that flow into his mouth like the primordial ooze."
"Very good. Of course, the Anathema of the Lens, none other than Leopold Hardan, the one and only."
"He is not a handsome man. When this reptile shows up in your dreams it is time to worry."
"No kidding. Well ... the snake spies the box, snifts out a flaw, a tiny slit near the lid. He crawls in with our reclusive Jack."
"Who should I feel sorry for?"
"Me! It's my nightmare. What I do next might be called stupid, but what is stupid in a dream?"
"Depends on how much power you're pulling ... remember?"
"Don't know. Don't want to. I first try to tip the box, but it must weigh a million tons. Since it won't budge I lift the lid, but I can't see a thing. In desperation I grope for the key, my key, presumably the snake with Leopold's looks."
Julia was concerned about the dream's mnemonic power. She seized his arm as if to say: Stop and think! "You've never measured this one?" she asked fretfully.
"If you mean the dream ... nope. My guess is about 0.2 cics, but I don't really know. I do know that my arm goes in full-length. It seems I might go in too, for this box of dreams exerts a tug on the hollow of my gut. Then I touch something unexpected ... and incomprehensible.
"Julia, it's the story of the blind man and the elephant. What I touch makes no sense. There are all kinds of sharp and dull, hard and soft. There are all kinds of shapes ... nodules and spurs, tubes and toroids. It's our Panigma Machine packaged into a gizmoidal bundle.
"All my options have been reduced to one. I must remove this machine from the dream box if I'm to escape. I anchor my toes and wedge them tight. I pull. With everything I have I pull ... till out it comes ... a loculus ... so simple, so perfect when seen with the eyes. It can be seen throughout and throughin, cube after cube ad infinitum. In spite of its depth and its substance there is the clear simplicity."
"Finally the momentous moment has arrived," said Julia. "You hold within your hands the panoptic panigma of the Lens and the elusive key ... the infinite cube. So what comes next in this endless tale?"
"You guessed it right ... the endlessness itself. I want to look forever, but I must transform the key before the thickspace does me in. I extract a 6-d cube from infinity's labyrinth. I disassemble the cube's dyad. The weight of the 6-d cube takes its toll on my strength, but I am able with great effort to solve all of its loculi and separate the 5-d posicube from the 5-d anticube.
"The anticube itself I return to the dream box. I never truly see it, its depth or its substance, though I touched both briefly."
"At least you didn't select it for the scrap heap." She diverted her eyes. "We may need it someday to pump the light ... the day when all our sins are called to an audit by Central Accounting."
"But not yet. The 5-d cube I flatten into its ten quars. From a new dyad or paracube I tear off one quar and pitch the rest away. I hold the hypercube ... one 4-d cube or quar with sides and corners and edges like any box, only with many more of them. It makes cubical shadows. Cubes beget more cubes, only smaller and smaller until they disappear eventually into the asymmetry of time."
"You unlock the attic door?"
"No, not just yet."
"Ah, yes ... I think I see. You must flatten the hypercube as you flattened the posicube if it is to fit inside this lock with only three spatial dimensions."
"I press it flat ... till it's all inside the three dimensions of length, width and breadth. Its surface-volume ... I will call it this ... is the same as the hypercube ... the same as eight regular cubes."
"You've made a tesseract, but how can it fit the labyrinth inside the lock?"
"The eight cubes are arranged in a kind of twin crucifix. I insert the tesseract into the lock. It melts and molds itself to fit, collects inside the mechanism like hot wax. The door opens easily. I look out ... into space now infinitely thin ... into time infinitely thick. The pieces fit the puzzle. This I know. I then wake ... and it happens again. I can't remember jack shit ... not a goddamned thing of what I've seen through the attic door. I feel real bad. Like I just barfed the best meal in my life."
"I see. But have you considered the price of remembering?"
"Who would not pay it? Well ... Julia, that's my dream. I admit the allegory perplexes me. No matter. Now ... tell me yours. And if it's not the right time to reveal your Jack, at least tell me about the Fire Stoker. Or is this time and space too dark for him to come out too?"
She relocated his pleasure and hers, and applied sufficient pressure in long, rhythmic strokes. Fires were restoked and reignited.
He whimpered in the dark in sounds that moved up the scale. He was the scientist no longer.
"Think of Hardan and that maniacal grin of his stretching from one ear hole to the other," she said. "That would quench the Devil's atomic furnace. Now my love ... how about a teensy, tiny confession ... eh?"
"Now? Whose is it you want? Mine or yours?"
"Both. I'll admit I'm here because of a dream or two, not for my technical credentials."
"Scandalous ... but you've marvelous credentials."
"Do you admit to the same motivation?"
"They say ... one size fits all."
"What does that mean ... precisely?"
"Don't know ... don't care precisely."
She turned suddenly serious. "You know Henry that we're no different from Kovrani's lab kooks. I suspect that doctors and subjects alike share the same nightmares."
"No surprise. But tell me yours before I burst from curiosity."
"I wouldn't want that on my nice, new, satin sheets. But I must warn you that my dream is almost over before it starts."
"I'm near to knowing what you mean," he said.
"I dream about a man laboring to save the world. He is immense, bare from the waist up, shoveling mountains of material into an infernal boiler. Perspiration rolls downs his arms, his chest and back. His effort is frightening. Pulsating veins are ready to burst. The size of his scoop is enormous, on a scale that numbs me."
"His scoop ... really?"
"He looks down, smiles, but does not falter. I feel the tremendous heat. The shoveling goes on. Load after load is fed into a fiery hole."
"This is interesting. Load after load you say."
"Finally I notice what he's shoveling."
She found, then squeezed hard his curiosity. He complained, but not so much that she would stop.
"Would you like to know?" she asked enticingly.
"Dare I say no," he moaned.
"Then I'll tell you. He's shoveling the masses ... thousands of screaming people ... thousands of living souls into the fires of Hell."
"But who is this man ... Satan ... I suppose?"
"Henry ... I hope not. I pray not. He is my dear father. He died four years ago in Phoenix, a decorated veteran of three wars."
There was nothing more to say. Minutes passed. Demons were chased - for a time defeated. She at last mounted the supine beast, impaled herself on its florid horn, rode it heroically, rode it like a Valkyrie, from Hell back to Heaven.
She was but a shadow on the wall. And how thin is a shadow? How much power is there for a mere shadow on the wall?
©Copyright by Edward John Darenkamp