Star Harbor Nights

The easiest and most obvious way into the Club was through the front door. The black door, so called because it is a door that is black, leads one to a darkly elegant antechamber bathed dimly in candlelight and draped in red velvet. Not much ever happens in the entryway. If there's any particular magic in the place, it is the kind of magic which ensures nothing happens. It is a buffer zone, between the world within the Club and the worlds without.

There is only one black door, but it may be found in many places. Anywhere that such a door could be found, it may be found, assuming one knows how to look. All who have passed through the black door even once will remember its exact location for the rest of their lives... even if the location they remember doesn't quite mesh with other details of their memories.

That isn't to say that the door moves, of course... but neither does it exactly remain in one place.

Just past the antechamber is the central feature of the Club. Perhaps it is not the most important place located within its confines, but it is certainly the busiest. I refer, of course, to the legendary Sands of Time Club Bar.

The taproom interior resembles a gothic nightclub by way of a medieval tavern. The highlights are all black and crimson, set against the dark gray stone which made up the floor, walls, and the vaulted ceilings which always seem to accommodate the head of the tallest guest in the room while hanging oppressively close to one's own.

At any given moment, the room contains the most impressive cross-section of interesting people, creatures, and beings to be found in any world, and in large numbers. The bar is never empty, but never quite full. Though the crowd ebbs and flows with the passing of hours, there are never too many empty tables and yet there's always at least one available, located some place convenient to the needs of whoever or whatever needs it. The tables, big round affairs of some dark and massy wood, are all of one size, though this one size proves as suitable for a pair of human-sized conspirators colluding in closely with each other as it does for a company of a dozen ogres and trolls. Set into the back wall are a series of elegant booths with cushions of red velvet. These have beaded curtains for privacy, and while they lack some of the versatility of the all-purpose tables, there a almost always enough of these as were needed as well.

One mustn't conclude from this brief overview that the club's interior or its accommodations would somehow change their shape or size in response to the presence or needs of club patrons. This isn't the case at all, and if that is the impression given, that must be chalked up to the difficulty of rationally discussing an irrational phenomenon. How can a dwarf sit on a stool and rest his elbows on a table alongside an ogress sitting on an identical stool, her knees comfortably contained beneath the same table? Magic, of course. Don't waste time thinking about it. If anybody ever did crack the secret, they'd probably either break the enchantment or go mad. The tables, stools, and room itself remained unchangeably the same size they had always been, which is to say, the right size.

The focus of the Club was the barroom, and the focal point of the barroom was the bar. Predictably, though it was sometimes necessary to jostle and jockey for a particular position alongside (or far away from) a particular entity, there was always space at the bar. Regardless of the exact number of drinkers in attendance, or their relative thirst, it was usually only necessary for one man to tend the bar. Though it was no doubt due somewhat to the nature of the place that he was able to keep all comers supplied and satisfied while carrying on casual conversation and dealing with various minor crises as they came up, some credit must be given to the particular man. For, those rare times when Johnny Dark was not tending the bar in the taproom of the Sands of Time Club, two others were needed to take his place.

"Why's he tellin' us, then?" an aardvark interrupted. "We're already here, so we obviously know all about it, don't we?"

"What're you on about?" the salamander at his side asked.

"That bloke goin' on about the sizes of barstools and enchantments and such," the aardvark said.

"That's the narration," whispered his other companion, an armadillo. "You're not s'posed to act like you can hear it."

"Then what's he sayin' it for?"

"He who?" demanded the salamander.

"Him!" the aardvark said, jerking a finger (for he lacked thumbs) in the direction of the man in the gray tunic and cloak. His likewise-colored feathered cap was pulled down low over his eyes. He stood a few paces from the table of the animals, with his back to a brace of candles set high on the wall so that a shadow was cast upon his face.

"Oh," said the salamander without much interest.

"Just setting the scene," the Drifter (for of course, it was he) explained. "If you will have patience, gentle anthropomorphs..."

"Here now, that term's offensive!" the aardvark huffed. "I'm not ape-shaped."

"I'm sure he didn't mean anything by it," said the armadillo.

"I most certainly did not, and I hope to beg your pardon," the Drifter said contritely.

"If you was on my world, would you like to be called aardvarky-morphic?"

"I suppose I probably wouldn't," allowed the Drifter. "Though... I suppose it might be considered a compliment, depending upon the intent of the speaker."

"S'pose it might, s'pose it might," the aardvark agreed, mollified. "Go on, then."

"Very well. As I was saying, if you'll have patience, our story will soon catch up to us," the Drifter declared. "For, it is to the Club that our hero, Ray Vallenzio, will soon be coming."

"When?" asked the aardvark.

"Now," replied the Drifter.

Ray always felt out of place in the Club, which was something of an accomplishment, considering how varied was its clientele. They were all mythical creatures or users of magic, but those two categories are sufficiently broad as to allow for almost infinite variations.

Ray, however, was a man of flesh and blood... a man touched by magic, marked by it, but ultimately as ignorant of its workings as a tea leaf is of the chabako demae tea ceremony.

Thus, while he felt perfectly at ease among the various mutated inhabitants of Twistville, he couldn't help feeling uneasy in a crowded room full of such diverse creatures as minotaurs, fauns, ogres, trolls, elves, dwarves, animals that spoke and walked upright...

"Technically, isn't everything that you mentioned an animal that walks and talks?" the aardvark interjected. "I mean, isn't a human being an animal as much as an aardvark is?"

"Come on, Barry," the armadillo said. "Don't be that guy. Nobody likes that guy."

...ghosts, vapors, and assorted other entities too numerous to mention. On his way to the bar, Ray passed a satyr locked in an intimate embrace with a pale-skinned, scarlet-eyed woman in a nurse's uniform, a knight in shining mail topped with a motorcycle helmet, a ticking brass man with gears visible through a tempered glass plate in his chest, and other beings of even more wholly remarkable description.

Perhaps none so remarkable, though, as Jolie la Belle.

"Hey, Ray!" she called out in greeting as she saw him.

"Hello, Jolie," Ray said. "Uh, how long have you been..."

"If you mean my hair, I've been wearing it this way forever," she said. "You'd know that if you came here more often."

"I was going to say serving drinks," Ray said, indicating the tray of mugs she carried.

"Oh, right," Jolie said. "Maria sprained her... um, I'm not sure what a naga sprains. But Johnny's letting me pitch in. He still won't hire me full-time, but every little bit helps... I've got student loans to pay off. Can you believe that you still owe the money even if you drop out?"

"Yeah, who knew?" Ray said. "I actually need to talk to Johnny, though."

"He's at the bar, of course," Jolie said. "Talking to that cheap floozy, like he has been all day."

"Who?"

She pointed to the bar, where a large black bird, a raven the size of an eagle, sat on the counter dipping its beak into a wineglass of amber-colored liquid. Johnny Dark, a slim, slightly mousy man wearing a trenchcoat and fedora, seemed to be carrying on a one-sided conversation with the creature from behind the bar.

"That's a raven," Ray said.

"Yeah, that's real original," Jolie said. "Talk about going overboard on the whole goth thing. I bet she writes a bunch of shitty poems that don't even rhyme about cobwebs and skulls and cutting herself and puts them on her MySp..."

"It's a raven," Ray repeated.

"She comes flapping in here, all like, 'Look at me, I'm dark and moody so that means I'm deep,' and he falls for it..."

"Why don't I just go over and interrupt them, then," Ray said.

"I'll come with you!" Jolie said brightly.

"Don't you have drinks to deliver?"

"Oh... right," she said.

Ray made his way through the crowd fairly easily. He was graceful enough to slip through the smallest gaps, and big enough and fearsome-looking enough to create gaps where there were none. He was almost to the bar when he felt an icy breath upon the back of his neck, and a velvet-gloved hand fell upon his shoulder.

"Hello, Fire-Eater," a thickly-layered purred voice in his ear, rich as chocolate and sweet as honey. "You have come to buy me a drink?"

He knew who it was before he turned: the Demonatrix, succubus protector of Star Harbor's streetwalkers. Tonight she wore a fishnet bodystocking over black leather lingerie. Her pale body exuded cold sensuality from every pore. Few men could resist her deadly charms. Ray was not known for his willpower in this area, but he did hold an ace.

"Some other time, Desiderata," he said. She froze at the sound of her name, a look of anger clouding her beautiful features before she shrank away through the crowd.

"That is not a woman to be dismissed lightly," said a rather more pleasant voice, with a trace of an accent heavily muddled through time and geography. "I have seen her eat the better part of a pimp."

"I'm not a pimp, Johnny," Ray said, turning to address the bartender. Ray had first crossed paths with Johnny Dark during his childhood with the carnival. He still looked exactly the same as he had then... his face clean and smooth, barely looking old enough to be in a bar, much less behind one.

"And you have nothing to fear from the defender of ill-used women," Johnny said neutrally. He gestured towards the bird, which looked up at Ray curiously. "I'd introduce you to my lovely companion, but she has yet to tell me her name."

"She talks?" Ray asked.

"Not out loud," Johnny explained. "She speaks the heart-song, the language of birds... with a slight trace of a northern accent... for those who have ears to hear it."

"Is that a fact?" Ray asked. "Look, Johnny, I'm sort of here on business. Is... she... in?"

"I have not seen her," Johnny said. "But you know how it is with her. If you are here to see her, she must know this, and knowing this, she will either be here or not depending upon whether she wishes to be seen by you. Such is always the way with the Seeress."

"It's kind of important," Ray said.

"My mistress the Seeress is charged with the safety and the security of the entire earth realm," Johnny said. "If she is not in, you can be assured that her reasons are at least equally pressing. Still, nothing ventured, nothing gained... you can but try your luck and see for yourself if she is there or not."

"Thanks, Johnny," Ray said,

He knew better than most that the Seeress's concerns were not always as lofty as the security of her home dimension, for he had known her when she was just a woman... even a girl. He had told Perfect of his childhood, and his love of Serena, but he had not told her everything. For, the acid that blinded Serena had awakened within her other senses...

"That sounds an awful lot like the plot of that movie, Daredingo," the aardvark said.

"Will you shush!" the armadillo said.

"Shush, yourself," the aardvark said. "I'm just sayin'."

...and made the young woman a seeress with powers to rival those of her grandmother. It was this that brought her to the attention of the Fates, who would eventually elevate her to the office of the Seeress, mistress of the Sands of Time and their pre-eminent agent over the earthly plane.

But a mind already slightly unhinged by tragedy can not hope to cope with the onslaught of information that comes with the gift of nigh-omniscience, and Serena the Seeress slowly grew bitter and...

"You know, you're giving away an awful lot of information through narration here," the aardvark said. "Haven't you ever heard of the principle of 'Show, don't tell.'? Or 'Actions speak louder than words.'?"

"Yes, but it seems more economical that way," the Drifter replied. "This way, the audience is able to have an informed opinion about Ray's actions."

"Yeah, but why not just give them the clues they need and let them work it out for themselves?" the aardvark asked. "Or at least let this stuff unfold naturally in the course of the story."

"In my experience... which is not, I might add, inconsiderable... an excess of enigma can be off-putting," the Drifter said, a little testily. "There's plenty of room for mystery in this tale. What's really to be gained by keeping..."

At this point, a tall, skinny young woman with strikingly green eyes and spiky orange hair turned around in her seat and shouted, "Yo, Morgan Freeman! Your penguin's marching away!" She jerked her thumb in the direction of a grand staircase, fenced off by a velvet rope, before turning her attention back to her table and the game of cards she was playing. The Drifter turned to see Ray climbing over the rope and ascending the staircase.

"Oh, damn," he swore. "Well, to briefly conclude, the Seeress has grown bitter and crazed over the years, forced to absorb the knowledge of every tragedy and cataclysm that occurs, and perhaps equally bad, forced to live with the knowledge that the lover she once turned away has moved on with his life. Some say there is also a prophesy concerning the Seeress's demise... an event she cannot herself foresee... at the hands of the woman closest to Ray Vallenzio's heart. For whatever reason, women who profess their love for Ray Vallenzio, and vice versa, have never fared well in the time since Serena has come to power. This is why the man known as the Fire-Eater found himself ascending the marble staircase towards her chambers, to confront the woman who had been his lover and now was his tormentor."

"Not bad," the aardvark admitted. "Would've been better with zombies in it, somewhere, but not bad."

"Oh, be quiet, Barry!"