Noctivagant

[Patricus I]

Noctua

Philip held his ground while the demon loomed near. Then the ground transformed and eventually fell away to nothingness. In that moment, Philip peered around himself, but he wasn’t even sure he had eyes. It was the most dream-like he’d ever experienced. What should have been sight felt more like pointed awareness, and around him there were entities. Nimeda was an essence of flowing, cold water. The girl was something of squatty shadow. Then there was the being at their center - the self-named Sandman, who in the briefest of moments was a figure of flowing sand.

Philip felt himself reform, and before he could usher defense or conjure thought at all, the being that wielded such power was gone on the echoes of warning. Philip’s frown dug lines deep into the folds of his face. He tried to follow, but his will was blocked by the Sandman’s resistance.

His gaze - his real gaze - settled briefly on Mara, a girl huddled shy and quaint in Nimeda’s arms. Two sides of the same person, she was hardly a foe now.

Philip’s anger wasn’t pointed at her, though Mara and Nimeda would feel the waves of its heat. Nor was it directed at the moniker. It was the defiance, the overt threat. But before he could act, the creature was gone.

This wasn’t him. He wasn’t the aggressor. Nor was he a defender. He was the body alone.

Philip was contained tranquility when he turned back to them. Any semblance of conflict was smoothed aside.

“Mara?” he repeated her name thoughtfully. He first thought of the mother-in-law of a famous Biblical woman. She was a defiant and commanding woman of the Old Testament who declared she be called the name, Mara, which meant bitterness in the old Greek. He wondered if the forlorn girl in Nimeda’s arms was likewise bitter.

“Yes, we were introduced when she wanted to see me drown in water that doesn’t exist,” he said with a flick of the gaze at Nimeda to quiet her correction before she even started it. Yes, of course he couldn’t drown unless he believed he was drowning was what it said.

“You are acquainted with that … Sandman?”