Chapter One: Trickster

I don't Travel every night, but I do it more often than I don't. I don't do it deliberately. I don't choose a destination or decide to step through layers of reality on a whim. I'm not sure why or how it happens, and I won't even attempt to give a scientific explanation for it. For a long time, I thought they were dreams, intensely vivid and draining dreams, but still just dreams. When I got a little older, I learned about astral projection, and thought perhaps that was a little bit closer to what I was doing, except for the fact that I often bring back mementos from my journeys. I have a fairly substantial collection of things from the places I've found myself in, from dried leaves or flowers, to small stones, to carvings and baubles that were given to me by the people I interacted with. I've never heard of an astral projector who brought things back to the waking world with them. So, no. I don't understand it. I just know it happens.

Tonight, I am being pulled, beckoned, drawn through prismatically bending color and song, cool liquid wafting around me, tugging at me. I open my eyes, see that I am underwater, and that a pulsing light draws me upward above the surface. I don't panic, for some reason. It is like I am in a dream.

I surface, my silver hair beaded with shimmering liquid diamonds, and turn towards the source of this subliminal call that brought me here. A man, slender and ethereal, disturbingly beautiful with long dark hair and cerulean eyes that glow, sits atop the water. From his shoulders twist and spiral streams of white light, like curling lightning-wings, almost too bright to look at. He shifts deftly on the surface of the lake, as though it were ice (though clearly it is not, as I see it ripple and roll around him), and smiles at me.

“You're here,” he says with a small smile.  He looks completely unsurprised.

I look around, coming more to myself, noticing that we are in the center of a small lake, surrounded by trees. A thick mist rises from the ground and hovers over the water near the shore. I look back at him. I am still floating in the water; it wafts gently around my chest, tugging at my hair. I feel like some sort of lake nymph. “Yes,” I say finally. “And who might you be?”

He seems to consider this for a moment. “Names are strange things,” he says. “I have many, though in the end there is just one. Perhaps you've heard of me when I was Coyote, or maybe Raven. Or-- then there's Loki, though I have to say that some of those stories were downright scandalous and not in the least bit true. Disclaimer and all that. Bad PR by Thor. I did not have relations with that bull.”

“You're... Loki.” I cough a little laugh, waving my arms through the water. “And Coyote, and Raven... well, which one?”

“I am all of them,” he replies. “And none of them.” He grins suddenly. “Perhaps you should call me the Trickster! A new name, though it is of course very old. That fits, I think.”

I shrug. “Trickster. Okay. Or maybe Trick. How's that? Since you're obviously not going to tell me your actual name.”

“Trick. I do think I like that. And that is my actual name.”

“But you just gave yourself that name, just now.”

“Ah, but you helped. You were like a mirror! How fascinating. Not surprising, though. The best names are the ones you give yourself, don't you think? You choose who you are that way.”

Trick proceeds then to stand up, still on top of the water, and walk towards me. I stare at him unabashedly. “How are you doing that?”

He looks at me half askance. “You still don't know how to walk on water? How old are you?” Reaching my side, he takes me by the arm and starts pulling me up to the surface. “It's quite simple. You walk on water by...” still holding my arm, he slowly lets me gain my feet, supported by the liquid surface beneath me. “By walking on water.” He gives me that flash-grin again and takes a step forward, guiding me by the arm. “You see?” I take a wobbly step forward, and the water holds me.

Then he lets me go. I hover for a split second, and then the water is closing around my head. I thrash and sputter, unable to find my footing (how deep was this lake?), struggling to seek the surface. I finally break through, coughing, my hair hanging in sodden ropes over my face. “Asshole!” I snap.

He looks shocked and amused. I think he is more amused, and perhaps even... pleased. “I am delightfully fiendish, I know. But you did it wrong! You stopped walking on water. When you stop, of course you'll fall in. It's a simple law of physics. You do have physics in your world, yes?”

“I never learned that stuff,” I mumble. “My education was lacking.”

“So educate yourself. Why should you rely on another to give you the knowledge you seek? ” He studies me for a moment. “Why do you think you sank, Evelyn-Siabhra?”

“I... I don't--” I blink. “Hey. How'd you know my name?”

He laughs. “Perhaps I stole the letters from your eyes. Yes, yes, that's it! Of course, they were all topsy-turvey. I had to re-arrange them, like a... what do you call them? An anagram! You humans do have strange words for things. (Though I'm not certain I would use the word 'human' in relation to you, dear.)  Your name could be so very many possibilities, were the letters arranged in a different fashion. Did you know you could be 'Abrasively-Hen?'” He begins snickering like a schoolboy. “Or... A Blarneys Hive! Or. Aha! Sibyl Nerve. I rather like that one, don't you? It would be a fine thing, to have one's first name be Aha! An exclamation by its very nature. Yes?”

I furrow my brow at him, and he shakes his head. “You are far too serious, Aha! You should laugh more.”

“You are... rather odd,” I answer, but I'm secretly enjoying his incredibly random discourse. Something about him fascinates and mesmerizes me, and tickles my mind with an unrelenting sense of deja vu.

He walks up to me and crouches before me, those eerie blue eyes of his still laughing. “All the best people are, don't you think?” He smiles at me. “I brought you here because I wanted to see if it was truly you. I'm still uncertain, however I have seen the hold she has on you, the strength with which she directs your otherworldly paths. I thought your kind were extinct, Evelyn-Siabhra. And if you are the one I suspect-- and

perhaps want-- you to be, you've once again lost your freedom.” He studies my face for a long moment, suddenly as serious as he accused me of being a moment ago, as though trying to read the letters in my eyes. “You have a story far longer than what you can remember.” He slips his hand in his pocket and pulls out a beautiful perfume bottle the color of his eyes, filigreed and encrusted with what looks like amethyst. It is banded by gold, and looks incredibly fragile.  I wonder how the bottle fit in his pocket, especially without breaking.  “Do you remember this?” he asks. I shake my head, and he presses the bottle into my hands.

Then he reaches out and touches me lightly on my temple, almost a caress, and with a tangible whoosh, I am back home, lying in bed.

They aren't dreams. I am holding the perfume bottle in my hand.

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