It's called "Jeff-kun Monogatari" -- lousy title, I know, but it'll have
to do until I think of a better one.

Sincerely,
Luriko-Ysabeth
	Sae.
	You've left the portion of the Dreamscape that I control for the realm of the 
subconscious; I wonder what you're dreaming now?
	Be confident in yourself, whatever it is. I know you have the potential: it is 
that which first drew me to you, that and your sorrow.
	It was not such a great thing in the long view that you grieved over, but to a 
child such a tragedy is near the end of the world.
	Why is it that if I can see that, those whose childhood is far less distant than 
mine in space and time cannot?
	Ah, well, no matter.
	Your happy smile -- your innocent joy -- those are the things worth 
preserving. In a world which has changed as much as I remember it doing, the little 
things are all one can hope to protect; and the little things make up the totality of 
that which abides.
	And as others cannot always be there to protect you, you must learn to 
protect yourself.

	The world has changed since I was young, and perhaps not for the better. The 
arts of magic, once so prevalent, have fallen into disuse; I believe that it may only be 
you five now, and you are not even from the homelands of magic -- magic as I know 
it: the Orient has its own brand of supernatural dealings, allied to but not of 'magic,' 
and neither I nor you are skilled in such ways. Perhaps now that you have defeated 
the tsurinage, those ancient guardians of the Summerlands set wandering when the 
pathways were sundered, there will be no more magicians, and the things of 
elektron-power and nucleic-power will be dominant.
	But, Sae, if you are to be the last of my special students, know that you are 
also one of the greatest. If all those whom I had taught were to gather in one hall, 
and a high table set aside for those who had truly used their power well and left the 
world better than they'd found it, your seat would not be least at that board.
	I was once, long ago when I was young and the modern calendar had not 
been thought of, myself human.
	You would laugh to think this: my eidolon does not look very human, does it? 
When I was a child, my mother's brother crafted such a thing for me, to laugh at and 
keep away the night terrors. I have remembered it fondly ever since, though the 
night terrors have grown so much greater and more terrifying.
	At least, I believe I was then human; she who bore me was human; although 
who or what sired me I do not know and do not care to guess. 
	My mother-not did not want me, hated the very sight of me, for I was an 
eternal reminder of her shame when she had been found not to be the maiden pure 
she claimed before her mother's brother's entire court. It was her brother who cared 
for me, who raised me, who sought to find ways around the Dooms my mother-not 
laid on me.
	The world has indeed changed: in the days of my youth, the relationship of 
'father' was thought of little account, and that of mother's brother stood in its place 
as the parental role. It may be that it was in your Eight Islands, Sae, as it was in our 
Island of the Mighty: your Stormlord is given the position of mother's brother to all 
your emperors since the line began.
	And my uncle was all the parent I needed, when I was small. He showed me 
the ways of magic and that of warriorhood, and I chose the path of the warrior then. 
Does that surprise you? I was very young, and my elder cousins all yearned to be 
warriors.
	My elder cousins were raised by the Queen, who was wife to my mother's 
mother's brother. My uncle was seldom permitted to visit them, although I often 
was: the Queen had no liking for him, and the boys had been given into her care 
regardless of his blood ties.
	I disliked the Queen when I was young because she did not care for my uncle, 
the most wonderful person in the world. I told my uncle that, once.
	He told me, with an expression on his face that I could not yet recognize, that 
he deserved her scorn: for he and his brother had done her one of the greatest 
wrongs it is possible for one person to do to another, and taken by force that which 
has no value unless it be freely given.
	That will never happen to you, Sae. I swear that on my blood and my wings.
	And yet I was not fully happy when I was small. As I have said, my mother-
not had laid a Doom on me: that I should never be named unless she were to do it.
	When I was the age your sister was when first you met me, my uncle tricked 
a name out of her. You would not find it easy to pronounce: 'Jeff' is a corruption of a 
part of my full name, which means the Bright One of the Skillful Hand. 
	I have grown fond of 'Jeff-kun,' though, in the years since. You do me no 
insult, Sae.
	In her anger, she laid another Doom on me: that I should never bear arms and 
armor unless she should array me in them herself. 
	And, as one might have expected, when I was the age you are now, my 
mother's brother again tricked them out of her.
	Sae, do you know what I envy most of all you have?
	Your sister. I would have killed to have a sister; both for herself, and for the 
children she might bear. I should have loved to be mother's brother to a whole flock 
of children, and striven to do as well as my mother's brother did for me.
	For when my mother-not found that the one she had armed against 
phantasmic invaders was none other than the child she had caused to come into 
existence, she laid her third and worst Doom upon me: that no woman born should 
ever wed me.
	And my mother's brother responded by making for me a woman of flowers. 
Her name in your tongue would be Hanagao; and she was lovely beyond compare.
	Lovely and selfish: for despite all that my uncle could do, he could not give 
her a human heart.
	Your Miyama-sempai reminds me of her; perhaps that is a reason why I do 
not overmuch like the woman.
	Sae, I would far rather you never knew of what happened next. Not that my 
wife betrayed me with another man, and plotted with my lover to kill me: that only 
wounds me in my pride, and I have grown beyond more than momentary pain at 
such petty wounds. Not that they succeeded, and that my uncle searched for me 
until he found my soul in the shape of an eagle and my body below it, and worked 
great magic to bring me back: that is important to understand me, and though I will 
not -- cannot -- speak of what it was like to be dead, I can and will praise my 
mother's brother for his care, and say that though he caused me to rise again from 
death, as few before or since have done, since that moment I have never more been 
mortal as men are mortal.
	No, what I do not want you to know of is the madness that gripped me then. I 
wanted nothing more than their deaths, and would have stopped at nothing to gain 
them. I killed the man, and my uncle transformed my so-lovely wife into the shape 
of an owl rather than let me kill her.
	And when it was over, I was sick and tired, and slept for a long time. All the 
fire had burnt out, and left in its place -- nothing.
	I abandoned the arts of the warrior, after waking from that long sleep. All the 
uses I could then see for such led only to more of that emptiness after rage. Instead I 
pursued magic, throwing all my energy into it to keep the Nothing away; and when I 
had learned all that my mother's brother could then teach me, I left for other lands, 
to learn their ways of magic. 
	It was when I was in Egypt -- you would be awed at Egypt, Sae; its culture 
may even be older than China's, though the Middle Flower Kingdom has outlasted it 
-- learning from the last of the heirs of the traditions of Imhotep, who had none other 
to whom to pass the accumulated learning of one thousand years, that my mother's 
brother reached me in a dream.
	They were leaving, all of the greatest and oldest of our race; they were 
leaving and taking ship for the Summer Country, for the gates were opened and the 
way was clear, and our old homeland was changing beyond recognition. And they 
could not wait, even for me.
	Three hopes only had they for me, that I might one day join them. It might be 
that they could reach me in my dying, and I would avoid the place you call the 
Yuukai and come instead to the Summer Country.
	It might be that, later, the gates would be opened for others, and I might come 
to the Summer Country in their train.
	And it might be that later I would do deeds of such might that the Gates of 
Summer would be opened for me and me alone; thrice only since the stars were 
kindled and the rain began have they been opened for any less than a host, and two 
of those have been since I parted from my kin.
	I was lonely then as I pray you will never be able to understand loneliness. 
And seeking to assuage it to some extent, I traveled the length and breadth of the 
known world, seeking teachers, and taking students.
	I will never stand by my sister as she struggles to bear a child, and take the 
babe as it emerges from her loins, holding it up that she may see the fruit of her 
labor. I will never be with her as she strives to raise that child, helping to guide, 
protecting and teaching.
	And yet, in a way I am freed by that, to name myself mother's brother to all of 
my best students.
	The bard in the new Island of the Mighty, to whom I told all the tales of the 
deeds of my race that he might weave them into one great song; as long as men sing 
that song and read its story in books, all of those great heroes and their kinfolk will 
never die.
	The healer in Campania; he is long forgotten by history, and yet his deeds in 
their time were well worth an epic to stand with those of Homer and Vergil and 
Taliesin.
	Merlion Emrys, in an island so changed by time and circumstance that it was 
barely recognizable as mine. He failed of some of his deeds at the end; and yet by 
his work a light was helped to stay lit for a little while, and the king he served came 
with his court and his Companions to the Summer Country at last.
	Malgis, in a land that was once Gaul. You would have liked her, Sae; she was 
the first woman I ever took as a student, and stubborn enough to learn the spell of 
shape-changing if she could not be accepted as a female magician. 
	Kinta, once a slave in the empire on the River Niger south of the African 
Desert.
	And many more -- so many that to name them all would take long and long, 
and yet all dear to me.
	It is true, that if one lives long enough, almost everyone will come to remind 
you of someone you knew before. Your friend Nanaka; though the name is different, 
and the face also, in her I see the Queen who raised my cousins, and Malgis' cousin 
Theotrade. 
	Your Aburatsubo-sempai is younger and more_ innocent is the only word that 
I can find, and yet his every move and speech recalls my Egyptian teacher Min-
nakht, who despite his age and despair at the changing world still had cool fruit 
juice brought to him every morning by servants chosen for their personal beauty. 
While Aikawa Akane might almost be Nimue, Emrys' impulsive, reckless student 
who outpaced her lessons in her desire to learn more and faster and ended in 
accidentally imprisoning him; she was very beautiful.
	And your Takakura-sempai; I have seen many like him in my long life. 
Apparently weak and driven by desires and yearnings, yet there is a core of strength 
and kindness there; if you truly want him, I shall assist you however I may. Simply 
reserve to an old man the right to think that you might have commanded better.
	But you, Sawanoguchi Sae: whenever I look at you, I see only you. Not 
always the wisest, not always the strongest; but your heart is one of the deepest and 
purest I have ever encountered, and your will to go on trying one of the greatest. 
Believe in yourself and your power, and know that you are truly my sister-daughter, 
no matter the mere biological relationships involved.
	Sleep well, Sae.