Eidolons

Remember how I said there would be four parts to this?

You know, after I revised my original statement that there would
be three?

Remember how I insisted on it?

Thankfully, I was right.  This is the final part of 'Eidolons'.
Commentary is very much appreciated.

Ranma belongs to Takahashi.  The Dreamlands are the creation of
H.P. Lovecraft, and belong to whoever now own the rights to his
works.  Anyway, both are used without permission, as you no doubt 
have already guessed.

...

Four - Tempus

          Lo, I or you,
Or woman, man, or state, known or unknown,
We seeming solid wealth, strength, beauty build,
          But really build eidolons.
          
          The ostent evanescent,
The substance of an artist's mood or savan's studies long,
Or warrior's, martyr's, hero's toils,
          To fashion his eidolons.
-Walt Whitman

...

     He had been shown Ryoga killing Akane first.
     
     It had been a total accident.  Because she hadn't turned
around to yell at him, had only taken another step forward, and
the singing razor sharpness of Ryoga's belt as it whirled through
the air had sheared half her face off.  

     The one memory he would always have would be Nabiki, 
screaming as if the sound was being torn out of her with a hook,
as if she was never, ever going to stop.  Funny how a sound would
be retained, but the sight would be forgotten.

     It had only begun there, though.  The Mirror-Lord had so 
many other things to show him in the monolithic looking-glasses 
birthed from the molten flatness of the silver sea.  Ryoga
killing Akane had only been a prelude to the horrors that were to
come.  Images of death, loss, pain; so many, so many that they
were beyond counting.  Akane died: of disease, accident, murder.
She died at her own hand, at his hand, at the hands of a hundred
others.  Raped and tortured and broken, so many times it felt as
if his eyes - which he could not close, was not allowed to close 
- were going numb, as if he were becoming used to the images.  
It all began to blend together, until there were only two
universals, he the murderer, she the murdered.

     Again and again, variations on a theme, more and more 
mirrors rising from the mirror-sea, images flaying his mind
apart.  It showed him more - more, ever more:  as though his life
were flashing before his eyes a hundred thousand times, twisted 
beyond all recognition by some subtle change.  Akane hated him, 
or he hated her, or he was insane, or she was, or his father
engaged him to Nabiki instead, or Akane was never born at all, or 
he was never born at all, or they were born into a world where 
they would never, ever meet.

     And terribly, most terribly of all, he realized that all of
it was true.  Every image, warped though it might be, was as true
as him.  The slabs rose from the shining sea, and they showed him
glimpses of everything that could be, that had been, that would
be.  Because there are worlds in mirrors, an infinite number of
them, spinning through space around the furnaces of alien suns so
distant that the light of his world's sun fell away and died into
the howling void, the graveyard of the stars, before it could
ever reach them.

     It was too vast to comprehend.  Certainly not impossible to
conceive, but to be actually shown it, to be shown how time and 
space are not a river or a sea or a turning wheel but an endless 
unbounded void in which the infinite universes are thrown atop 
one another like discarded refuse or swing without rhyme or 
reason around the seething mindless chaos that is the beginning 
and end of all things... to have the absolute knowledge of that 
truth rammed into his fragile human mind like a spike, that was 
too much.  Frozen as the figures in the ice below, Ranma could 
neither scream nor weep, only watch, as the Mirror-Lord showed 
him wonder upon wonder, horror upon horror.  Worlds of fire and
worlds of ice, worlds blasted by the carnage of endless wars 
where he and his father wandered through the ruins of vast 
cities, worlds where dark gods walked abroad and mortal men 
huddled in terror beneath the earth.  Worlds of endless night, 
where the stars hung closer to the planet, glaring down like 
eyes, and winged things as vast as mountains descended upon the 
helpless cities to feast and revel in blood and chaos.

     What you call dreams are only other worlds, the Mirror-Lord
said.  Its voice was slick and smooth, and slid into Ranma's head
like shards of glass.  What you call lies are only other truths.
All things, all possibilities, exist.  The mirrors were 
everywhere, the images in them searing into his mind.  The silver 
sea was boiling now, swirling chaotically as tens of millions of 
icy slabs rose and fell, showing him fragmented glimpses into so 
many nightmares that they could never be numbered.  Everything 
that could have gone wrong, in past or present or future, each 
tiny change that rippled down through reality and transformed the
world into horror beyond imagining.  The almost friendly rivalry
he and Ryoga had turned into a bloody feud that would engulf 
their children, and their children's children; the impulsive
decision by Shampoo that made her break Akane's neck instead of
using the Xi Fa Xiang Gao; the speeding car that struck his 
mother while he lay within her womb and killed them both.  His
entire existence as he was was so absolutely improbable, a 
combination of billions of tiny factors that ended up producing
him as he was and his world as it was, that in the end all of it 
was for nought.  
     
     Nothing mattered.  He, the world, the universe, were less 
than a drop of water in the ocean in the end.  Mortal men died,
worlds cracked and fell to the dust, the suns and stars 
collapsed into themselves or blew apart in cosmos-shattering
explosions, and _none of it made any difference_.  At the last, 
all things would collapse again into their beginning, into the 
primordial chaos that had brought forth creation with no more 
thought or purpose than an inebriated man vomits up his excesses.  
The realization was shattering, so much that it made him simply
want to lie down on the ice and never move again.  But he 
couldn't even do that; he was completely in the thrall of the
Mirror-Lord and the worlds it showed him.  So what if he was free 
of the Neko-ken; any happiness would be fleeting.  What a fool he 
had been to care for such a thing; what a fool he had been to 
care for anything, or for anyone.  It no longer even mattered to
him if it ended or not.  Let it continue, or let it stop, it made 
no difference.  

     It was then that he realized that it had stopped, that the
mirror-sea was flat and smooth again, with only the glistening
asexual being that was the Mirror-Lord breaking the monotony of
the landscape as it floated above the silver sea.  Ranma crumpled
to the ice, frostbitten and bone-weary.  He gazed into the
terrified eyes of a statuesque woman in the garb of ancient Rome
where she lay in the ice below, and saw in the sheen of the ice
the reflection in his own eyes of the same look.

     "Do you see now?" said the Mirror-Lord.
     
     He did not.  Without help, he could not fully comprehend or
remember what he had been shown.  The ultimate futility of all
things was not so conscious to him now, though it might be
infinitely worse than any else of what he had been shown.  All he
could truly remember was his hands killing Akane, again and 
again.  Tears leaked from his eyes and froze before they struck
the ice.  Damn you, Cologne, he thought, saying nothing.  Damn 
all of you, in every world.  No one was spared: not him, not
Cologne, not Akane.  There were billions of reflections of all of
them, warped and twisted beyond imagining.

     <Do not be consumed with phantoms...>
     
     Cologne had said that.  She hadn't finished, though.  What
had it meant?  It could not have mattered anyway.

     <Do not be consumed with phantoms...>"
     
     "...for though within each mortal lies all things, our will
is yet free."     
     
     With his hands he pushed himself up to his knees, though his
body was cold and ached terribly.  The Mirror-Lord was still
floating in the same place, the tiny smile gone, the bored look
returned.

     "Yeah, I see."  He'd asked to wake up, and now he had.  
"Nothin' matters in the end.  Not me, or the world, or you.  But
you know, if nothin' matters in the end, then it doesn't matter
that nothin' matters.  Or somethin' like that.  So we're right
back where we started then, huh?"

     The corners of the Mirror-Lord's perfect mouth edged 
fractionally downwards.

     "I have shown you the futility of all things," it said.
There was no note of uncertainty in the voice, no hint that the
change in expression was reflected anywhere else.

     "Yeah?" Ranma replied.  Naked and shivering, he still 
managed a shrug.  "What else ya got?"

     There was no answer from the Mirror-Lord.  
     
     Ranma smirked, and continued.  "Ya know, this place may be
as real as the waking world to the people who live here, but to
me, it's just kinda like a messed-up dream.  And dreams, hell,
weird stuff happens.  You get what you want, but you don't
realize till you got it that you got what you want.  I dunno."

     Again, no answer.
     
     "Ya know, the whole not talking thing was kinda ominous
before, but I think I got it figured out now.  You just don't
know what to say.  That was the worst you got.  And it didn't
break me.  And it ain't gonna, because I'm getting out of here
and I'm goin' back to Akane RIGHT NOW!"

     With all his might, he drove his fist into the ice at his
feet.  A tiny, hairline fracture was the only thing visible for a
moment, and then the ice floe exploded in a blast that seemed to
rise up from below, from down at the impossible bottom where the
imprisoned shapes of the young gods were only tiny dark pinpricks
to Ranma's eye.  Boulder-sized chunks of ice flew in all 
directions; one struck the Mirror-Lord, and it howled as it broke
asunder into countless glistening fragments that fell back into
the silver sea.  Ranma was flung high into the air, arms 
flailing, battered by the hard impacts of the exploding ice
fragments.  A triangular piece as large as his chest struck him
hard on the head, and the last thing he saw was the glistening
expanse of the mirror sea looming below him, with the shattered
fragments of the ice floe bobbing on its glistening waves, while 
in the sunless sky above a million gods flew young and beautiful
as they cried out for their freedom.

...

     Atop the hill that overlooks the city of the dead gods,
Silverhold shuddered once, and began to fold silently in upon
itself as thought it were a complex puzzle being put back into
its box.  The silver moat dried up, and the mirror-walls of the
spires and keeps turned opaque.  The precise angles and lines of
its construction grew smaller and smaller, until they disappeared
altogether.  Silverhold turned from three dimensions to two, two
dimensions to one, and then it passed out of those dimensions
that the mortal eye may glimpse altogether, and there was nothing
left on the hill but the lunar dust.

     The cold grey land that held the ziggurats, minarets and
pillars of the temples of the younger gods let forth a long sigh, 
like a sleeper awaking.  With a gurgle, the spouts of the 
fountains, carved in the shape of men riding on the backs of 
dolphins, and slender mermaids, began to pour water into the 
dusty bowls of their fountains, and in the courtyards of the 
temples the barren dust began to bloom with lilies or roses, or 
with the small white blossoms of the olive trees, as the tendrils 
of the grapevine began again to twine round the Corinthian 
columns of Bacchus's temple beneath the endless night of the 
lunar sky.

...

     Afloat on a sea of interstellar blackness, Ranma listened in
wonder to the piping music that filled the cosmos and drove the
planets in their courses round the stars, which he saw now had
their own orbits, a subtle change of position so gradual that it
was unnoticeable to the eyes of any but the gods; the stars spun
like the spokes of a wheel, bringing the death of old ages and 
the birth of new ones, a great and terrible clock winding down 
all of existence so that it all might fall again into its 
birthing-place.  And after that, who could say?

     He felt as though he were being passed from hand to hand,
the hands themselves the size of many worlds, the bodies the 
hands were attached to infinitely larger.  He was utterly 
content; existence in the end was neither benign nor malign, it
simply was, and its purpose was the slow consumption of itself.
Was it not enough to affirm a man's own existence that he was a
part of that great machine, though an inestimably small one?

     After infinity, he found that he looked again into the 
startlingly lovely, dark-skinned face of the goddess of cats.
Her hair swirled all around her face in the passage of the winds
that howl, more alone than any other thing in existence, through
the passages between the stars, and she stood before him upon the
nothingness as he remembered her, with gold jewelry glittering 
upon her bosom and laughter dancing darkly in her vivid eyes.  

     "Service rendered, mortal," she said, and laughed.  There
was joy in it, and an almost cruel edge that was as uncaring as
the universe.  Her face changed; not like the melting of wax or
the flowing of river, somehow nothing like that.  More like a
masquer throwing off her mask, but no mask had ever really been
there, and now there was the tawny head of a lioness where the
beautiful face of the woman had been, but somehow it was the same
face.

     "Send me back."
     
     Her lip curled in a sneer, exposing glistening white fangs,
and Ranma remembered all the reasons why he had feared cats
before.  "Do you seek to order me about like some chattel, mortal
man?"
     
     "We had a deal."
     
     "So we did."  
     
     The broad golden eyes of the goddess glinted with a light
like that of far-off suns.  Almost condescendingly, she raised
her hand, four velvet-furred fingers and a thumb tipped with
sharp claws.  Again, Ranma felt reality lurch, as though his body
were being pulled in every single direction at once by 
irresistible forces.  He fell, or perhaps rose up, passing for a
moment through a gauzy curtain as thin as paper but harder than
steel; in that moment, he hung between the waking and the 
dreaming, between the devouring void of space that lay beneath 
the mirror-sea and the solid walls, proper angles and correct
physics of the Tendo dojo, where the whole journey had begun.
The void began to fade out, until it was only a dark presence
upon the edges of his vision, and then it was gone altogether,
and he stood in his bare feet upon the dojo floor.  It was
comfortingly familiar; from what his father had told him, the
dojo had been in the Tendo family for nearly a century.  It would
probably be in it for a century more, and still look the same 
then as it did now.  

     By the light streaming in from behind the stiff waxed paper
covering the windows, the sun was just risen, and the household
would be rising with it.  Kasumi would already be in the kitchen,
starting breakfast, and soon enough they all would gravitate
towards the table for the morning meal.  And he would join them,
made whole, free from the curse.

...

     Ranma Saotome walked down the long hall that connected the
dojo with the house, the only thought in his heart that of Akane
Tendo.  Akane, who he had gone to the moon for, for whose sake he
had passed through the tempting desolation of the city of the
dead gods.  With the return to her at the forefront of his 
thoughts, he had made a pact with the cat-goddess to go into the 
depths of the Mirror-Lord's domain, and he had emerged from that
place of horror with his mind opened and shaken, but unbroken.
The young gods were free, and somehow that gave him great joy, 
for he knew in his heart that the red and purple flowers bloomed
again in the courtyards of their temples as though with the
long-awaited coming of spring.  A new and vital confidence filled
him: he had glimpsed into the face of the abyss, trembled for a
moment on its edge, and pulled back from the brink.  If his life
with Akane might be short upon this earth next to the lifespan of
a star, or even one of the old gods who he knew lay sleeping and
waiting for the time when the coursings of the stars would bring
them into the proper places for the awakenening, then what of it?
They would be happy for a time, and then it would be the end.  
There was no nobility in the nihilistic urgings to do nothing 
that does not serve some ultimate purpose; more noble by far to
seek joy while one can.  Of the infinite worlds and the infinite
Ranmas... he wished them well, but none of them were him.  They 
had their own lives to live, their own Akanes to love, or murder
as it might be, and though he mourned what he became in those
other worlds, he knew also that he was not bound to such a fate
as they.

     Wise though he might think himself after what he had seen
within the icy mirrors of the Mirror-Lord, Ranma Saotome was yet
unaware of many things.  He thought that the Mirror-Lord was 
destroyed, or at least defeated for a time, but prideful in his
vanity that he was he did not realize that there are mirrors that
look back and forth through the walls of time as easily as they 
do through the walls between the worlds, and that a being capable
of wielding the power of such mirrors is no more bound to a 
single place in space and time than a planet is bound to a single
place in its orbit.  Nor was time a fixed and static thing; it
may seem so, but it moves differently in different worlds, even
as the horse moves faster than the man.  And that which is not
static may be changed, twisted or skewed, by one who commands the
mirrors of space and time.  The gods are mighty, but many of them
are more petty than the pettiest man; even wise Athena cursed
Arachne with the bloated body of the spider for daring to defeat
her in a contest, and the Lord of Olympus bound Prometheus to the 
rock for daring to share fire with mankind.  The Mirror-Lord was
mightier than any of the young gods, and pettier still by far.

...

     The footsteps were audible before anything else, and Ranma
raised his voice, asking who was there.  The reply came back; a
weary voice, something almost beyond belief in the tones.  "Oh my
God."

     A woman stepped around the corner, into the dojo hallway 
from the house.  A woman who had been beautiful once, but the
weight of years had driven her down, and turned nearly all the
black in her hair into grey.  Her face was lined in places, 
around the eyes and mouth.  Ranma guessed her to be in her late
forties.  A low moan escaped him, as he realized that the
greatest threat to human love is not the uncaring universe, but
the awful and malign gods who compare to men as men compare to
the lowest of single-celled bacteria born in the primal surgings 
of the Panthallasian sea.  There were no words, not in the face 
of this, when the woman you have come back to has seen thirty 
years go by while a day and night have passed for you, and the
weariness and sorrow of her eyes as she gazes upon you is too 
much to bear.  Ranma turned and ran back down the corridor, not 
listening to Akane's shouts behind him, needing only to escape 
from this into something else.  He fled through the dojo, out the 
great double doors, and leapt the wall of the backyard to run 
into the tangled streets of an unfamiliar city.  It was dirtier 
than he remembered, and the skyscrapers of the downtown that were 
visible on the horizon seemed only to grow only larger.  The sun 
itself was dimmer, as thirty years of dust and smog from the 
factories hung thick in the air.  Much of the residential and 
commercial areas of Nerima seemed to have been torn down, to make 
place for great factories that filled the air with smoke.  The 
fashions of clothes were different, and the architecture as well; 
subtly, everything seemed somehow more unstructured than before.

     When he reached the place where he believed the Nekohanten
to have been, there was nothing there.  No factory, no store, no
house.  Simply an empty, fenced-in lot filled with construction
materials that looked as though they had not been touched in a
decade.  Ranma cried out and fell to his knees, pounding at the
concrete sidewalk with his fists, so hard that it shattered 
beneath the blows.  The people walking by shied away from him, 
thinking him mad, and in that moment perhaps he was.  Then, out 
of the corner of one tear-filled eye, he saw a small quick shape 
with long white hair dart round the corner.  No more conscious of 
his actions than a hound who chases a hare from so many 
generations of instinct, Ranma leapt to his feet and pursued the 
figure that could only be Cologne - come to gloat over her 
deception, no doubt - through the tangled streets, catching only 
glimpses of her as he ran.  

     At last, after what might have been hours of pursuit, he
came to what seemed an impossible anachronism in this nightmare
future-world of belching factories and towering skyscrapers: the 
arched torii entrance of a small Shinto shrine, where a basin of 
water lay still and calm beneath a slightly-rusted metal faucet 
that occasionally let fall a drop of water to disturb the placid
water.  Beyond it lay the small shrine itself, a tall red-roofed 
structure surrounded by hundreds of stone statues; robed 
children, their hands clasped as if in prayer, benign expressions 
of utter peace upon their faces.  Some things do not, he 
realized, change so quickly; the women still brought their mizuko 
to Kannon's shrines, offerings for the protection of the souls of 
their dead children.

     Ranma looked about; there was no sign of Cologne in any
place.  With a sigh, he wiped his eyes with his sleeve and 
performed the harae at the basin; with the lukewarm water he
washed his hands, then rinsed his mouth and spat into the dust.
The ritual was familiar, if not often performed by him.  Then he
stepped through the torii and within the grounds of the shrine,
watching as the rice-paper ropes that guarded the entranceway
to the building itself swayed slowly in the wind.  Before he even 
entered, though, a voice called his name, and he turned.

     From the first look, he knew that the woman could not be
human; the same unearthly beauty that the cat-goddess had
possessed was in her, although she seemed calm and temperate in
her appearance as Bast had been fierce.  She was slight and dark
haired, clothed in pale green robes of ancient style, and with a
slender staff in one hand.  Her face was like that of one of the
mizuko, calm and begign, utterly acceptant of fate.  Angry as he
was, grieved as he was, a peace descend upon Ranma at the sight
of her.

     "I bring you the thanks of the young gods," the goddess
said.  Her voice was like chimes.  Slowly, she bowed her head in
genuine respect.  "And my own.  I was bound in mortal form,
half-trapped within the mirror-prison of the world of dreams and
this one."

     Ranma spoke with dry mouth, not wanting to believe.  
"Cologne."

     "Kannon," the goddess corrected.  "Cologne is no more."
     
     "How long?" he asked in a tight voice.
     
     "Thirty years," the goddess answered.  "Thirty years since I
was free.  In its vengeance, the Mirror-Lord bent time that the
years might flow by in seconds as you passed between the world of
waking and dreaming in your physical body."

     "You bitch," Ranma snarled.  "Goddess of compassion my ass.
You sent me there as your little pawn, to set you free, and now 
I've got nothing left.  Damn you.  Damn all of you."

     The sudden grief in Kannon's eyes was stunning, so much so 
that Ranma could not help but feel guilt.  "You asked for help,
and I gave it.  I did not know that she would be so cruel as to
force you to go against the Mirror-Lord, or that the penalty 
might be so harsh.  Believe that I did not."

     And he did.  He did believe, and there was no kind anger but
senseless in the face of this.  His shoulders slumped, and he
felt as if he would begin to weep anew.  All lost.  All his
journey for nothing.

     "Did she ever... did she ever find anyone else?" he asked.
     
     "Do you truly wish to know that?"
     
     Ruefully, he shook his head.  "No.  No, I guess I don't."
     
     "It was not all for nothing," the goddess said softly.  
"The young gods are free again, as we were in the old days.  We
stand in opposition to the ones whom the stars are waking, and
the end of humanity's age will come slower because of that."

     "But you can't win."
     
     "No."  She bowed her head again.  "No, we cannot.  Our doom
was decided long before even the birth of the oldest of the
younger gods.  For we are but born of the primal dreams and
beliefs of the human mind, but the old ones who lie sleeping are
older than that by far.  In time, though, their reign too shall
end, and new races arise in their place."

     "Yeah.  I was shown that."
     
     "Thus, human existence in itself has worth, to the extent
that were are happy with it, and work to make others happy."

     Now Ranma laughed.  It was bitter.  "But even that is
nothing, in the end."

     "But it is something while it exists."  The goddess smiled
at him, and his heart lifted slightly.  "We are not without our
gratitude.  When next you sleep, your dream-self shall descend
the seven hundred steps into the Cavern of Flame, and talk with
Nasht and Kaman-Thah of the land of Dreams, for old as they are,
the two priests owe us some favours.  Then shall you walk through
the Gate of Deeper Slumber, and again into the Dreamlands."

     "And why," Ranma asked quietly, "would I ever want to go
back to that place again?"

     "Because it is the better place for one such as you than
this world."  With her staff, the goddess gestured at the 
billowing smoke visible from the factories in the distance that
rose to stain the sky.  "In it lie the gateways to other worlds,
and other worlds of dreams, and perhaps gateways back into time
itself, that you might return after a day rather than after
thirty years.  The wonders of that land are endless, and you
shall not age while you are there."

     "Right," Ranma said.  He grinned; so it was not hopeless, he
realized; perhaps he could find his way back to her, and they
might finally be united.  

     "Call upon me if you are in need, and I shall aid if I can,"
Kannon said.  "For one of my names is the one who hears the cry 
of the world, and another is the great lord looking down in 
pity."

     And then she was gone, as though she had never been there.
     
     In dreams, Ranma thought, all things are possible.  And he
walked back out through the gate of the torii.     

...

     When he slept that night, as promised, Ranma found himself
descending down the seven hundred steps to the Cavern of the
Flame.  Naked he went, and stood before the two great priests of
the Dreamlands, the hoary sages Kaman-Thah and Nasht.  Before the
flame that burns forever in the cavern, they spoke of many 
things: of the perfumed gardens of Sona-Nyl, of the brazen gate 
Akariel that guards the entrance of dread Thalarion, of the 
inhuman men of Leng, and of so many other wonders and horrors
that men might speak of them until the end of time.  When he was 
ready, they clothed him in a robe of gold and white, and he 
walked out of the passage and into the Enchanted Forest.  This 
time, he was careful, and none of the alien flora captured him, 
nor did the weird-eyes zoogs seek to menace him.  They knew 
better; Ranma walked now with the surety few dreamers ever 
possessed.  He came in time to the town of Ulthar, and tarried 
there for a while in the company of Stalkfast and the other cats,
who told him marvelous tales of the grand battle against the Cats
from Saturn and their terrible allies.  Ranma the Cat was not 
there, they said; none knew where he was, for he had disappeared
soon after the escape from the city of the Moon-Beasts.  Some 
said he had gone to visit King Kuranes in Serranian, that 
marvelous floating city of rose-coloured marble.  Others said
that he had gone to the terrible Vale of Pnath, to hunt the 
monstrous dholes against all warnings of their immense size.  
Ranma the Dreamer and Ranma the Cat would not, in fact, meet for 
a decade, as time passes in the Dreamlands.  Even then it would 
be only inadvertent, when both took it upon themselves to visit 
the city of the dead gods at the same time, and saw together how 
it had become a beautiful city filled with temples and hanging 
gardens that trailed vines down upon the vibrant tessellation of 
the mosaics.

     But once he passes out of the town of Ulthar, the stories of
Ranma the Dreamer become more sketchy, his appearances more
scattered.  All who meet him are asked if they know how the veil
of time itself may be pierced, but none can say if he ever has
found the answer.  Perhaps he wanders still, through the land of
dreams, seeking the way back to his love, or barring that, some 
salve for the wounding of his heart.  The horrors and wonders of
the Dreamlands enrapture him, and sometimes he seems to forget
altogether of Akane, but then again he remembers, and he leaves
to wander solitary through the gloomy forests near Ogrothan on
the sapphire shores of the Cerenarian Sea, or to wax melancholy 
with the creature that was once Pickman in the Crag of the 
Ghouls, because the thoughts of his lost love (who may yet again 
be found) are ever upon the edge of his mind.

FIN FOUR

...

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon
The golden apples of the sun.
-W.B. Yeats

FIN EIDOLONS

...

Author's Notes:

     I suppose some people thought there was going to be a happy
ending because the first chapter made it clear that Ranma lives
through his initial adventures in the Dreamlands.

     Well, no.  That's not what I felt like this time.  This is
not, of course, an "everybody dies" Lovecraft ending, but I think
it's in keeping with the lighter, more fantastical tone of the
Dreamlands stories.  Human love is ultimately incredibly fragile
in the face of an uncaring universe and the malign powers of the
Mythos; nevertheless, there is hope.

     I've had a great deal of fun writing 'Eidolons', and it's
also given me a well-needed break from WUE.  Now that this
small side-project is finished, I can resume dedicating nearly
all my resources and spare time to the mega-epic.  Which _will_
be finished.  :)

     My great thanks to everyone who has given me commentary and
encouragement on Eidolons, from incredibly extensive analysis
(hi Vince) to threatening to hunt down and slay all who fail to
read it (hi John).  

     Thanks also to John Biles and RPM for 'Children of an Elder 
God', which probably gave me the drive to put fingers to keyboard
again in the insane attempt to use elements of both Takahashi and
Lovecraft in one story.  

     And now, because I've written long author's notes and short
author's notes, and like short ones better, I'm done.

-Alan Harnum, May 06, 1999