Like a stab in the back the image pierced a central nerve. With the chill of a razor riding skin it swelled over me, split through some unknown protective caul sheathing my unconscious to override my waking thoughts. Have you ever swam in the ocean? Do you remember the feeling of a great wave passing overhead while submerged beneath it? From the patterns of chessboards to a driver's reverie my mind slipped along an unbroken thread of Time from /is/ to /was/. There, and back again. Air so clean, so pure of smog and toxin and the scents of freshly washed and perfumed humanity that i willed my lungs only to inhale, to burst if need be rather than lose the sweet breaths they held. But i had no control in /this/ dream, only a too weak connection to the most basic senses nor my accustomed power to enhance them. i walked, or was walked, along a path of dust and sharply edged pebbles on barren feet, with the healthy verdure of an untouched countryside panorama shown through my eyes. A body, only distantly familiar in its kinesthetics, carried me along this walk, one arm swinging free but strained in balance to the unseen burden carried by the other. i willed this body to display for me its load but found that no effort of will could turn its gaze aside. And so with my host i walked a lonely, beautiful, daylight mile, absurdly recollecting some lines from a parable concerning a man, Christ, and a place of sand. At length my bearer's paces slowed upon a crudely built bridge of the sort that allows passage over stream only until the freshets of spring drown the wood beneath their foam-capped charge. Peering over the far end of the bridge, my host revealed to me a circle of stones so perfectly and compactly arranged as to form a looking pool of sorts, complete with a silver coin answering wishes at its center. My reflection was that of a child still far removed from his teenage years, but though the water's surface was as unblemished by ripple or wake as a polished mirror, i could tell nothing more of the boy whose perceptions i shared other than counting of the clock of his mortality. Not unusual, of course, for i cast no reflection myself and still bear witness to the inevitable dying of mortal flesh, and that was my initial thought as i waited for this strange journey to continue unto a more rational conclusion. Then before me once again Odin the All-Father battled Loki and the Jotuns as Ragnarok waged across a chessboard, the vision having parted like a page torn from a book. Or the curtains on the stage as Act One commences. i watched the game end, Loki the inevitable victor, and let my memory slide back behind the boy's eyes. His eyes, i realized, that held no fear of the shining sun, not mine. His eyes, that saw only the haziest reflection within a pool made from his own hands. His eyes, that bore witness to a clock twenty years and counting. His eyes, that were mine, in another Time, another place. The memories are coming back to me, my foes, my friendS. The Dominations of the Sisters are fraying along the edges of my Past, and with the weakening of the levy, the dam /will/ burst fortH. But do not applaud my good fortune yeT. My Embrace was more than a rebirth into vampiric form; i remember nothing from that point three days after my recreation. i /have/ nothing but a photograph showing a woman and myself, together; but i have written of that beforE. And i have become quite accustomed to being without a pasT. Think of the childhood guilts and errors that drive you even now, consider what misfortunes and pyrrhic victories clench your fists and drive your teeth hard into your lips, and you perhaps you will understanD. But, oh, what it could mean to finally know who i aM. Who i waS. And so, like a goblet of tainted blood to my starving undead flesh, the first memory returnS. i can place no year to it: a rural setting in modern day Europe, a rustic child from an Appalachian village, or a Time hundreds of years further Past, when the air had yet to be tainted with the sulfur of the modern daY. Perhaps those of you who know me best can shed light upon this fortuitous advenT. It would seem that i am about to be created yet again, and i wonder: Do i truly wish to see my past unfold before me, one dreamembrance at a Time, or would it serve me better to reinforce the dam before the foam-capped freshets charge the bridgE? the Ticktockman