Alraune soared on white wings, scanning the horizon of the dreaming with sharp owl eyes. As her wings beat against the mists, the shifting landscape below her stretched endlessly, the tapestry of dreams as infinite as a soul’s desire.

Where are you?

She could feel the tendrils of a distant dawn as the strong foundation threads of the dreaming began to fade with the waking of a new day, and still she had not found him.

She caught an updraft and shifted her pin feathers just enough to turn in graceful arc, prepared to return to the waking world and the warm sleeping arms of Adam, when finally, far below she saw him, staff ever in hand, the beckoning lantern swinging with his slow but determined steps.

Alraune folded her wings and missiled toward him, descending onto the path before him, her bare feet touching the dusty road as lightly as the feathers she had suddenly shed in favor of her natural form as High Priestess, voice of the Aracana.

Bare save the cloak of her long, moon-mist hair, Alraune approached the old man, her pace stately, her head held high, the slightest smile on her lips.

“You are not an easy man to find, sir,” Alraune laughed.

“Perhaps I don’t want to be found. Did that dawn on you, miss?” He said with a gravelly voice, his long white beard rolling with each word.

Silence filled the step between them for a moment before they both broke out in soft laughter.

“’Tis good to see you, my dear,” The Hermit said, his arms spread wide in an inviting hug.

Alraune fell into the embrace and kissed his weathered cheek as she pulled away, “It’s good to see you too, sir.”

He looked at her, his smile fading a little before he stroked her hair and slowly began to walk again. “What troubles you, Alraune?”

She fell into pace beside him, the path before them leading to an unseen horizon. “Sir, I come seeking your guidance. Friends of ours have sought our advice on an ancient crypt discovered in the northern mountains.” As they walked side by side, Alraune told him of the coffin and tomb discovered by Decardo and Lady Cherry, of the ancient essence that seemed to emanate from it, and of the Adam’s dreams Adam during his fever and after the poisoning by the snow snake, of the mention of the Elder Arcana and Cherry’s healing of Adam and the disembodied threats that came from Adam’s lips, but were not of Adam’s voice.

TAKE HIM. WE WILL HAVE HIM AND ALRAUNE TOO

“There is something unnatural, yet… familiar about it. Do you know of these things?”

The Hermit walked a few more steps, then stopped and looked at Alraune with a piercing gaze.

“What do you think it is?”

“If I knew, I would not be here asking you what you thought it might be.” Alraune crossed her arms, lightly meeting his gaze.

“I am not a book of knowledge, Alraune. I don’t have those kinds of answers.” He swung his staff and began to walk again, silent for a dozen steps. “Each of us has our own ideas of what is desire, what is pleasure, what is pain. Within the box, my dear, each will find their own answers.”

He stopped again and looked at her, his ancient blue eyes gray with concern. “It is interesting that it has been Adam visited by these visions of the Elders.”

Alraune looked away, her gaze focusing on a single tree breaking the horizon far off in the distance. “Yes,” she whispered into the winds.

“You have felt it, haven’t you, the change in him?”

Alraune nodded, allowing the concern she had harbored deep within to surface and be burned by the mists of the dreaming.

“Alraune, the Elders are primal in their power… it is more felt then seen, more tasted than heard. If Adam has extended his hand to them –”

“He wouldn’t do that,” Alraune shot, her words a paper shield against his accusation.

“Alraune…” The Hermit chided.

“No, he wouldn’t trust something like that. Not after what happened with Charnadis.”

“My dear, I do not speak of trust.” The Hermit began walking down the path again, leaving Alraune alone on the path, staring after him, her mind whirling around the implication of his words. No, Adam didn’t have to trust the Elders to be an instrument of them – to embrace them. The old man cast a look at her, his eyes drinking in her beauty.
“What does your Adam want?” the Hermit asked.

Would he do that? Could they offer him something she could not? In the past few days there had been a decided change in him, his flirtations more direct, his teasing more charged, as if with the growing light of the summer he had been rejuvenated and recharged to embrace all the bounty of the world.

She stared after the old man, his steady steps taking him far off into the dreaming landscape until finally he faded into the mists.

Dawn fast approached and as the summer sun touched the earth and sleep and dreams retreated, she rose into the air on the wings of a snow white owl and raced toward home.

She awoke from the dreaming flight in her and Adam’s bed, blinking slowly against the pink light of dawn shining through the windows. She stretched languorously and turned toward Adam, eager to greet the day with a kiss, but instead of his mussed blonde hair and sleep-relaxed face, Alraune was greeted by a hollowed pillow and cold sheets where Adam should have been.

And the Hermit’s question turned in her mind.

What does your Adam want?