THE KING IS DEAD by Verity

The young girl sits in front of the Dream King in his white glory, eyes closed, patient, cloaked and veiled in shadow. He surveys her with an almost mocking thoroughness, but a wry ghost of a smile he cannot contain twists his lips to belie this.

You have served me well in my time, raven, says the Dream King.

(And if he could hear her mind, and perhaps he could, he would hear: the king is dead, long live the king! chanted in a silly sing-song little girl voice like that of his sister-not-his-sister.)

"I try," says the girl, a little embarassed.

No, you do not. You either do or you don't. You have earned a boon of me for such strength. Dream is the perfect white of sparkling stars, his eyes black holes that are strangely whole and wise.

"The library," she says, with determination, with no small amount of joy.

She follows Lucien about as he works for the first few decades, but after that she knows the library so well that it is almost part of her, and seeks his guidance no longer. She listens to the books' whispers and converses with them in a secret private language of their own creation. Sometimes Lucien overhears them and gifts them all with a laugh.

In her head she loses track of the years and anything but the books. Lucien is their keeper, their lover, their master; she is their friend, and that is something different altogether. Months without hearing a human word go by without her notice.

She dines on words and eavesdrops on the secret affairs of unsuspecting mortals now long dead.

"Who was she?" Lucien asks his master. "When she was mortal."

Dream looks down at his librarian from his seat on the edge of a library balcony, his expression amused and kindly. A girl. That's all.

They both gaze at her. She is the same as when she came there - her hair is red and streaked with highlights, her skin is lightly suntanned; she wears a sleeveless black top jeans, and sneakers.

"She wasn't ever mortal, was she?" Lucien says, after a while.

Perhaps once, when the last Lord of the Dream reigned. She dreamed of being Delirium, though, and after a while, I understood what she meant.

Far off in the distance, a girl sings: "The king is dead, long live the king..."