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That night found the two, dragon and horse, sitting acrossfrom each other outside under the stars. Huntchy had proved to be everythingthat had been said of him. His stupid act was as brilliant as the rest of hisabilities, which begged the question as to why he was wasting them. But hedirected the conversation away from himself. "I think you'll be here a few daysmilord," he said with only slight disrespect. "It seems to me your lady hastaken disfavor with your recent actions. Considering the ill effects of saidactions, she seems within her right to forgo your companionship for as long asshe wants. So perhaps you might tell me more about yourself. You are not whatyou appear to be, nor are either of you birthed from this world." Jon-Tom thedragon, now named Drake, tried his best to put on a quizzical face. It didn'twork on a wyvern's features. "Now how the hell did you come to thatconclusion?"The horse whinnied out a heartylaugh. "It's simple really. You carry a duar, a rare and valuable spell singingtool. Yet you failed to recognize the formidable power that was likelycontained within the potion inside that archaic cask. Yet again, you proclaimto have been a unicorn once. Your wife is very nice and well known to me. Sheis listed as being a very bright student, yet nothing was known about her priorto her arrival. She was dropped here by some unknown female who made someunreasonable demands of the guilds and the townspeople. Strangely, these conditionswere met without complaint. Sybeele, if that is truly her name, talked to herclassmates about her former home, and how it was a world away."

 He continued. "She seemed a littleyoung to have the reproduction knowledge she had, but then, being a horse, Ihave some fault along those lines as well. She spoke of you; at least I assumeit was you, as if you were some sort of...well, for lack of a better term; a god.Certainly you seemed to have once been powerful, yet it is not presently readilyapparent. Therefore, something has happened to it. If she changed you into thisform, then she would seem to have inherited it. This town needs a wise ruler,not some gimmicky couple with their own agendas. Yet, despite your flagrantshow today, you seem to have a good heart and more wisdom than you let on to.Would you care to elaborate?"Jon-Tom; or was it Drake now?Anyway, he sighed, allowing a bit of smoke to escape. "I'm from a world calledEarth. I was pulled over to here by a wizard who needed help fighting thePlated Folk. He was looking for an "engineer" to help combat the insect'snewest weapon, but he latched onto me instead. It turns out I could make magicplaying that duar.  It helped turn thetide of the

battle."

 The horse looked at him oddly. "Iknow the full history of the battle with the Plated Folks. There is no mentionof a human with a duar. I would therefore call you a liar, except that I feelyou speak the truth. Give me a moment to cogitate on this until I can resolvethe inconsistencies I find in your statement." Jon-Tom sat silent, amused byhis host's new method of speaking. He was beginning to think he liked the"dumb" Huntchy better.Both of them sat there in silence.The dragon used his remarkable vision to peer into the night sky, searching outstars and galaxies.  He became soengrossed in what he was doing that he was startled into reality by the snortof his companion. The horse was staring him down. "You are a greaterincongruity than I first surmised. If you speak the truth, and I believe youdo, then you must be from the future. If this is so, then I need to recalculatethe possibility of time travel. Up to this point I would have dismissed it as magicallyimpossible."The dragon leaned back and sent aflash of fire into the blackness surrounding them. "Time travel seems to bepossible only thanks to a greater power than I. Do you have a religion; abelief in an all powerful creature?" The horse took in his question seriously."There are many legends. Some say it is a male, others say a female. A femalegod makes more sense to me, but there has never been empirical evidence toconfirm or deny the presence of such a power. Magic can be measured, sunlightcan be measured, rainfall, the seasons, life, death; they can all be observedand measured. But a god, that is beyond our ability to perceive and quantify."

 In his early days, this talk wouldhave made Jon-Tom's head spin. Now it was just like afternoon tea with hisaunt. The dragon blew a few smoke rings before answering. "Kuja-Yotay is hername. She herself says that she has gone by many names over the millennia. Icall her Eve. It was she that brought Sybeele here. The stories my new wifetell are likely all true, given that I haven't actually heard them. She is frommy world, but four hundred years in the past, on par with your present. This issome three hundred years before I first arrived on this world. It doesn't makesense to me, so I don't question it. I met Sybeele through an accident offate.""I assumed I was here, though I hadno idea where here was. Eve tells me very little about whatever mission she hasme on. I'm here now for some reason I yet do not fathom. Perhaps it is you, my friend,which I'm here to change. Or perhaps not. I have no idea. Things simply seem towork out for the best in my presence."Huntchy snorted.

"Like today? Ihope that wasn't a sign of things to come. This town might never survive thelikes of you at that rate." He said it with a hint of humor in his voice, butalso with an edge that said he rather meant it. The dragon took no umbrage withthe remark. The horse was correct after all. He could have done some terribledestruction had it not been for his wife's quick witted, if ill conceivedsolution.

 "I drank it, because if I didn't,everyone would have called the deal rigged. I had no idea that stuff everexisted. I figured it was just some old wives' tale concocted by the distillersto increase sales. I'm afraid I was never informed about the earlier insectwars." That much was true. He had been told about the last time they had wagedwar, but nothing in regards to earlier attempts at taking over the hills andvales of the warmlanders. On the other hand, he hardly needed to know about iteither. At the time, simple survival had been the highest priority. Huntchy shook his head. "There isenough alcohol and magic in that cask to fuel the fire of the greatest ofdragons for weeks on end. Maarteel was old and nearing the end of his years. Hefigured that a brilliant end to his life would help memorialize him to futuregenerations. But his fires were growing weak. This stuff gave him the necessarykick to incinerate a good one hundred thousand of the Plated Folks before heexpired. It is said he went through sixteen casks. Twenty three were said to beleft over. All twenty three were accounted for as being detonated. Apparentlythe accounting was wrong."

 The dragon let loose a chuckle. "Doyou think so? I'll have you know though, that for the first second or so, thatstuff tasted pretty smooth. After that, it rather burned going down..." His drolltone caught the horse off guard, but only for a second. He started laughinguproariously. He didn't stop until he had tears in his eyes. "Oh my lord, LordMayor, you are too much. You make light of what could have been the finalstroke of your life!"Jon-Tom sobered up. "It would benone too soon in coming Huntchy. I'm way past the normal age of a human. I'velost count, jumping between times, but this is essentially my third or fourthlife. I'm well over a century old now. There comes a time when you simply gettired of it all. But Eve says I need to do these things, for even though I wasnever meant to be here, I have somehow managed to fit into events with thecomfort of a well tailored suit. Even this mishap with Sybeele, on my homeworld, resulted in things happening that had already happened by my temporalreckoning. It boggles the mind if you devote too much time thinking about it.So I

don't."

 "As for whatever she may have saidabout us, the fact is yes, we did have a brief relationship. And yes, she wasreally too young for it. But I assumed I was here, only four hundred years inthe past. Here, things seem to follow different rules than from where and whenI'm from. Only when I returned here, in the future, did I find out my mistake.Only...it didn't seem to be a mistake. Everything that happened seemed to havehappened as it was meant to unfold. Maybe it would have happened without me,and maybe not. There is no way of telling. It's both eerie and awe inspiring toknow you had a hand in shaping your world's history."Huntchy was mulling that over."Like now. You are here in the past, shaping the future without knowing howyour influence will alter the course of events, or knowing the terminal outcomeyour presence here will evoke from the timeline. I find this to be reckless anddangerous and damned irregular. Are you certain your presence here isnecessary?"Jon-Tom the dragon shrugged. "Idon't know a damn thing. If you ask me about my first wife, Talea, who hasn'tbeen born yet, I can tell you a lot. Ask me about my friend Mudge, I can tellyou even more. Ask me about spell singing, or pirates, or lovely tigresses, Ican spill my guts for hours. Interrogate me about my mentor, Clothahump, and Ican go on for days. But when it comes to Eve and her infernal meddling, I am ata loss to explain a thing!"

   Thehorse started during his little tirade. "Clothahump? That is a rather uniquename. I suppose he was some sort of wizard? Perhaps another spellsinger?" Thedragon wrinkled his nose. "No, he was a bone fide, run of the mill,all-powerful, know-it-all, conniving, pain in the ass reptile-in-a-plastron asever I have met on this world. He was also very patient and very wise."  Huntchywas looking at Jon-Tom with a curious stare. "So, this Clothahump was very oldthen, when you first met him?" Jon-Tom scratched at some itchy scales. "Yes, hewas old. And cantankerous and grouchy and opinionated and..." The horse cut himshort. "But he was old. How old do you estimate him to be?" Jon-tom continuedscratching. "I think around three hundred years or so. His kind lives a goodlong time. He's still alive, in my time. Of course, that could be said foreveryone I know. They're alive at some point along the timeline. But he was anincredibly wise wizard, even given his propensity for exaggeration. Why do youask?"  Thehorse sat back on his haunches. "No reason I guess. The more I learn about you,and how you came by your magic, the more I can grasp with who you are.Clothahump is an

old name. It's a family name that goes back to the veryearliest wizards. Of course, it was not always pronounced that way. Before theGreat Awakening they went by their cultural name of..."

   Jon-Tominterrupted. "Great Awakening? What the hell was that?" The horse would havebeen knocked back on his tail had he not already been sitting on it. "What?!You've never heard of the Great Awakening? It was the point in our mutual andcollective history when we first were able to communicate between ourselves ina common language. Did it never strike you as strange that you were able totalk with your new friends as easily as if you grew up with them? Or did allthe species on your world already have this ability"  Thatwas going to bring up an aspect he didn't wish to deal with right now. "No,there are multiple languages on my world. Some of us cannot understand others,so it makes for a poor communication network. Even among my own kind, there isa great disparity in our ability to have civilized conversations." Huntchy wasnodding knowingly. "Like here. We had many languages and dialects. Today, wespeak the same tongue. The old languages are remembered in names. Huntchfeld," hesaid with a wince, "is a leftover from my sire's side." To Jon-Tom, it soundedvaguely British. As did his former Cockney accent.

   "Hutchfeldis a nice enough name. Mine is much longer. I think I'll adopt the new one youfolks thought up for me. Aiden Drake seems quite appropriate considering thecircumstances. So you're saying that a name can give away a person's heritage?"The horse groaned. "Not exactly. All you need to do is look at the species toknow that. But narrowing that down, yes, their name can tell you where they'refrom. My father was originally from the island nation of Kenilor, just a bird'sflight away from the shores here. Mother was a local. The pattern doesn't workfor everyone, for some break with traditional names, but for the most part,there is some order to it. As it is, my father was from the stable of Studor,in the county of Prenwall. Therefore, if I liked putting on airs, I could callmyself Hutchfeld, of the line of Studor-Prenwall. However, I actually preferHuntchy. It's less presumptuous."  Thishorse might be super smart, but he was down-to-earth. The dragon was beginning tolike him. "I've gone by many names, so adopting another is hardly new. I likekeeping it simple too. But this island, how come I've never heard of it?" The horsehad no answer for that question. "How would I know what you would or would notknow? Are you a specialist on this world's geography?" Jon-Tom was about tospout off, telling him of the map he had placed inside his

head. It dawned onhim that the effects had faded until they was gone, and whatever had remainedhad slipped away until nothing was left except that which he himself hadlearned...the hard way."

   "Iguess not. Still, it seems that I should have heard of these places. I did alot of traveling to faraway places. I guess I missed more of this world than I realized."Huntchy was less than sympathetic. "I haven't seen much of this world, and Igrew up here. How much of your own world have your seen?" It was a goodquestion. "Not much, I'm afraid. I think I traveled it more since coming here.I had a run in, in the Bahamas when I was with Mudge and Roseroar, and I endedup in Texas via a connected passage in a cave another time, and then in Germanywhen I met Sybeele. Otherwise, I guess not much."  "Ifigured as much. People with responsibilities often get tied to them. That oftenmeans getting tethered to one place. I almost envy you your travels. Almost. Ibelieve that you should live your life to the fullest, but you should only haveto live it once. To live life over and over again; I can see where that wouldwear you down. Yet, it seems to have done you more good than you are aware of. Isee the fire in your eyes as you remember your days past...or is it future?Either way, you value your memories. Today is yet another for you. If youtreasure those you love; those gone and those here, then you will remain youngforever. The trick is knowing when to savor one over the other. Sometimesmemories need to be put to rest to make room for new ones. It's rather likecolts growing up and moving out, to make room for their newest sibling. Theolder is not gone, but has made the necessary sacrifice for the good of thenext in line."

   Jon-tomwas prepared to argue against that simile, but realized that Rundain didn't fitthat mold. Besides, he, the colt's sire, had not been present in a propercapacity as a parent. It was therefore a sufficient comparison for the discussionat hand. Or hoof. "I suppose you're right. But my mind is overflowing withmemories. It's difficult to put them out to pasture. I don't want to forgetanyone I've met, or loved, or mated."  Huntchy'seye lit up. "Mated? Loved? How many have you dared to bed?" That brought fortha low, somewhat disgusted chuckled from the dragon. "Oh goddess, how many? We don'thave that kind of time. There was Roseroar the tigress, Talea my first formalwife  - and a human, Lorissa the horse,Mel-Aura the eagle,..." Huntchy whinnied. "A horse? And a human? I would thinkthe match improbable." Jon-Tom sighed. "Not when you're taken over by thespirit of a unicorn and transformed into such a likeness

of him as to beindistinguishable from the original." He declined to mention his endowment inthe nether regions made the match closer than might be imagined.

   Thehorse snorted. "Hence you being a unicorn was not an over exaggeration. I sensethe list is impressive, so I don't wish to be intrusive into your personallife. Perhaps a better question is; who is the most memorable?" Jon-Tom found thetigress's name on the tip of his tongue. "Roseroar was my first and greatest.But Eve has to be the most unusual and spectacular. It's been a learning experiencefor both of us."  "Eve?"The horse pondered that for a moment. Then he fell over. "Are you saying thatyou and this goddess entity have somehow managed to perform the act ofreproduction?" The dragon was back to blowing smoke rings. "Do you want theparticulars?" Huntchy hastily apologized. "I'm so sorry for doubting you, butif you're so intimate with such a being, why are you here serving as the mayorof a simple town. And why are you married to a simple human girl?" His eyessuddenly narrowed. "You really have no idea why you're here, do you? You bed agoddess and do her bidding, yet she tells you nothing. You're either veryfaithful or very stupid. I believe you will need to tell me more before I canfigure out this particular enigma. I would suggest we get to bed, though withall you have told me, I don't think sleep will come easy." Jon-Tom grumbled to himselfthat the lack of information about his present host was going to keep him up. What'sa stupid dragon to do though? He put out his fire and closed his eyes. Imagesof burning sugar plums danced in his head.