Thus the Sign established itself; coming like a coded message from nowhere. Now its apologists range from wheelwright to Court ascetic; it is scrawled on every alley wall to fluoresce in the thin bluish moonlight; it rustles like a dry wind – or so it's said – even in the corridors of Methven's hall. Its complicated sub-sects, with their headless and apparently aimless structures, issue many bulletins. We counterfeit the 'real', they claim, by our very forward passage through time, and thus occlude the actual and essential. One old man feeding a dog might by the power of his spirit maintain the existence of an entire street – the dog, the shamble of houses with their big-armed women and staring children, the cobbles wet with an afternoon's rain, the sunset seen through the top of a ruined tower; and what mysteries lie behind this imperfect shadow-play? What truths? They process the streets impulsively, trying to defeat the Real, and hoping to come upon a Reborn Man.

Such a procession now made its way toward the Bistro Californium, given up like a breath of malice by the night. It was quick and many-legged in the gloom. It was silent and unnerving. The faces which composed it were nacreous, curiously inexpressive as they yearned on long rubbery necks after their victim. Surprised among the Cispontine ruins not an hour before, this poor creature fled in fits and starts before them, falling in and out of doorways and sobbing in the white moonlight. A single set of running footsteps echoed in the dark. All else was a parched whisper, as if some enormous insect hovered thoughtfully above the chase on strong, chitinous wings.

Since their condition allows them no deeper relief, the merely selfish are raddled with superstition; salt, mirror, 'touch wood'are ritual bribes, employed to ensure the approval of an already indulgent continuum.