The feeling again was familiar, and as I lay there – floating upon the sublime beauty of the Goddess' grace – the visions that came to mind were familiar too: a hanging tower, tier upon tier tracing away skyward into the clouds above, the whole of the structure covered in heaping tendrils of greenery. Spilling, tumbling down, down and bending into endless streams of water that went surging over the edge to the unguessed ground below. Something within me yearned to reach out – to touch, to hold, to -stay-. There was a voice in the water. A whisper in the air. A soft call in the lush sway of the grassy gardens. 

The warmth of a new spring breeze rustles amongst the ivy; soft promises a year only just begun slip through the chinks in wrought-iron gate. There is a life to things now – a life lost in the time before, which makes little sense as in all reality the time was -then- and I gaze upon it from -now- – but somehow in the muddle things are confused. The fringe of an ill-remembered dream. The edge of pleasant memories where all that remains is the pleasure. The eaves of nightmares where naught remains but the pain. I feel them all, see them all, and then with a sudden rush reality springs forward...

I am seated beneath the shade of our garden walls. The light play of a fountain springs to life before us, soft patter of water upon water; darker shades of tricklings upon stone. We have guests. I am terrible with names. She leans over, gives me a bemusedly wry smile before cupping a thin hand over my ear and helpfully remarking:

“Madame Villefort and her Daughter, Miss...” Her voice trails off as a pair emerges from around the corner; generally my luck – the pair of us rise as one and...

I shudder even now, a certain cold seeping in from some place beyond as I reorient my thoughts: embarrassing moments are the same now as they might have been for me some two centuries in the distant past. I feel my teeth clench, my eyes again opening as I prepare for the inevitable... 

And then the whole image rippled – spread into ever expanding rings, surging outward as though some unfriendly passerby had hurled a stone into the midst of Nestor's thoughts and with that the Demonspawn found himself surrounded once more by the cold marble tile and heavy wood paneling of the Baine and Hoyle London Headquarters.

He draws a breath. Glances about himself. Absently rolls his so recently mangled and battered shoulder, now seemingly as hale as it had ever been... “A convenient trick, that – suppose the gods are still useful for -something-” might be heard to trail from beneath his breath as he spares no time in claiming a tumbler from the table just vacated by Atticus. Left hand resting heavily upon the table, right raising the decanter and pouring... not one finger, not two -- no gentleman's glass this – straight to the brim, and then straight to a chair.