Make Willing the Prey (Dreams by Streetlight)

To the Illuminadi who named me a
Dreamer.

I’ll never have a better bunch of
friends.

Prologue

S
cry,
scry, visions flow

Show me now the world below

Scry, scry, never hide

Show me now the world outside

Scry, scry, seeing right

Show me, lift the shroud of night

Scry, scry, sight remake

Show to me a soul to take

His chair creaked as he leaned in
to look.  No, just a maintenance cart.  Some kind of janitor.

Haun sagged in disappointment. 
How boring.

What time was it, anyway? 
Eleven?  No, midnight.  Ah, midnight, his favorite time.  But not a favored
time for humans.  On a weekday, all he could expect to see in the university’s
courtyard at midnight would be lonely janitors.  If only it were a weekend. 
That would be quite a different thing.

He mused about how humans marked
of the passage of time.  Days.  Weeks.  Weekends.  What of nights and
fortnights?  Why ignore the passage of the moon, with its, new moons, full
moons, waning and waxing?

The image in the mirror had grown
misty with his distraction.  Refocusing his gaze, he muttered, "Scry,
scry, focus do, Show me now, keep vision true."  The fog vanished, and the
square became clear once again.  A couple of students stepped out from behind a
bush.  The girl plucked leaves from her hair.  The boy... was it a boy?  He
buttoned his shirt.  Then the girl laughed, and they walked through the square
arm in arm.

See, that's a little more like
it.  Not mundane at all.  If only he had known they'd been there, he could have
watched.

But they were a diversion from
what he really sought.

How long could it take to find
her?  Fortnights?  Moons?

Pox on Niglith!  A pox on him and
his whole accursed kind!  What a stupid bet.  He never should have taken it. 
But he wouldn't let it get the best of him, nor would he settle for merely
meeting the minimum requirements.  If he was going to put forth this much
effort, he wanted some kind of return on investment: something beyond winning
the challenge.

Why did he let Niglith into the
house in the first place?  That old fart was bound to be nothing but trouble. 
If Haun had any sense, he would board up all the windows and doors just to keep
them out, those ugly, horrible social ones.

Not that Haun hadn't enjoyed that
night, drinking good spirits, gambling and laughing.  He had even smoked a
pipe.  Not generally his style, acting like such a gnome, but it felt good. 
Haun was never one to pass up a good feeling.  Maybe Niglith was right, he
should get out more often.

A figure flicked past in the
mirror.  A professor.  Cute, but old and not his type.  Plaid?  Who wears
plaid?

Where were his thoughts?  Oh yes,
the bet.  Niglith had gone off about Shakespeare, how he had known the man,
what great company he was, blah blah blah.  The old timers were like that,
babbling on and on about how great things were in the good old days, when faith
was strong and everyone had dreams.  Whatever. 

Niglith had finished some yarn
about how 'ol Spear had come up with the idea for the Taming of the Shrew.  He
got a wicked look in his eye then, and said, "We should do it!"

"Do what," Haun had
said.  A statement more than a question.

"Tame a shrew, of
course."

"I have no idea what you're
talking about."

"Surely you've read
Shakespeare?"

"Bah.  He bores me."

"Ah.  Well here's how it
works.  I find some cranky old bitch and bet that you could not get her into
your bed."

"You mean fuck her?"

"Yes."

Haun initially felt reluctant to
take on any part in a plot involving ol' Spear.  But... A challenge?  And sex?

"Why do you get to choose
her?  If I'm going to fuck her, I want to choose."

"Fine, I will let you
choose, but you must let me approve of her, to prevent you from cheating."

"A cranky old bitch,
huh?"

"Yes.  Wait... no.  We shall
adapt it to our situation.  She shall be a boring, stuffy sort of old
goat."

"Not old.  I want her
young."

"Yes, young.  Perhaps a girl
without a creative or lusty spark in her whole being?  Someone who would never
be interested in someone like you?"

"Got it.  But that's not
enough of a challenge.”

“Ah. A nun then?”

“No, that’s not what I mean. 
Boring girl is fine.  What I mean is sex is too easy."

"Alright, not sex.  What
then?"

"Marriage.  In order to win
the bet, I must marry her."

Niglith chuckled.  "Oh,
that, that would truly amuse.  Marriage then."

Once he found her, abduction
would be simple.  As if in answer to this thought, he heard a scraping sound
coming from beneath the floorboards, followed by a soft whimper.  He stomped on
the floor and the scraping stopped.

But finding her, and then getter
her to marrying him.  That’s the kind of challenge that made a game worth
playing.

Lost in memories and plans,
Haun's mirror had grown dim again.  It had almost gone out completely this
time.  No matter.  Clutching the mirror frame, he chanted:

Scry, scry, make to fear

Show to me the people near

Scry, scry, feed my need

Show to me the ones who bleed

The university square appeared
again.  There, there was someone.  Young, attractive frame, nice walk.  Is that
her face?  Pretty.  Yes not bad.  In fact, quite alluring.  But would she meet
Niglith's standards?  She carried books, but those could be art books, or
poetry.  He touched the mirror and zoomed closer.

"The Dynastic States of
Europe"
, "
Rome 1500-1750CE"
, "
Prussian Society,
Religion, and Economics"
, "
The Fall of an Empire: Ottoman
Letters and Legal Documentation"
.  Stuffy stuff indeed.  Entire books
written on the most mundane aspects of past human affairs.  Just reading the
titles made him want to fall asleep. 

Still, it might not mean
she
was boring.  After all, human students took all sorts of classes they didn't
really like. 

Then he saw why she traveled the
square in the middle of the night.  She wasn't going home like the others.  No,
she was headed
into
the library.

Haun leaned back in his chair and
put his fingertips together.  "Ah, my sweet.  You'll do.  You'll do
nicely." 

Following her with his scry, he
watched her unlock the library door, then lock it behind her.  She walked with
familiarity to a darkened corner and returned with a pile of books.  He grinned
with pleasure as she sat down, put on a pair of reading glasses, and began
flipping through them, one by one. 

She had short straight hair that
looked like dark maple leaves in autumn.  Thin eyebrows.  Smooth skin, small
features, adorable nose, moist soft mouth.

"Yes, you will more than
suffice."

What lovely eyes she had...

S
andy
awoke, not to the invasive buzzy whine of the alarm clock, but to the sound of
it stopping.  In horror she looked at the clock to find it read one hour past
the time she needed to get up. 

She leapt from the bed, the books
that had kept her up all night sliding off the covers to the floor.

“Crap,” she muttered blearily at
the tragedy of bruising the pages.  She tripped into the bathroom and flinched
when she thought she saw a spider on her counter.  But it was only one of
Jina’s hairbands.  She must have left it last night after they’d watched that
movie. 

Groaning, she glared at herself
in the mirror.  She’d have to skip her shower.  What a lousy way to begin the
day.

But she wasn’t about to skip her
tea.  By the time she had dressed, putting her shirt on twice because it was
backwards the first time, she heard the kettle whistling.  The sound invaded
her quiet world and she rushed to make it stop.  She barely remembered to turn
off the burner before filling the paper cup. 

When the doorbell rang, she
flinched, knocking over the half-full cup and spilling hot water down the front
of her skirt. 

She flinched again and screamed “Fuck!”
before ripping her skirt off to keep it from burning her more.  A shuffle
sounded at the door, and yelled, “I mean, just a minute!” 

Her legs stung and two bright
pink lines ran down her skin, but it hadn’t blistered.  She would live,
assuming she survived the rest of the day. 

She ran to her room to put on a
fresh skirt before opening the front door. 

“What?” she snapped.

 “Sandy Windham?”  A grizzled old
delivery man stood outside in the apartment hallway.  His nametag said “FDS”.

“That’s me,” she said gruffly. 
“What do you want?”

With hesitation, as though afraid
she might start yelling at him, he handed her a single white rose.

Her features softened immediately. 
“Sorry for being so… I’m just having a bad day.  You know how it goes.”

“Sure, I get it.”

She took the flower and looked
for a card, and when she found none, asked, “Who is this from?”

“Don’t ask me.  I just deliver. 
Uh, have a better day, ma’am.”  He raised his hand a little in a half wave, and
retreated down the hall.

She closed the door and examined
the rose.  It was pristine, perfect.  The dark green of the leaves and stem
contrasted against the white bud.  Each soft petal seemed to be placed in
exactly the right positions to make the rose a work of art.  It looked like she
might have a good day after all.