"You will not see me coming."

"But I already did," I replied, staring. He stared back, unimpressed. "You had to come and now is as good a time as any," I continued, but trailed off as he stepped forward. The wings on his back flared open and the soft, delicate chiming of the errata dangling whispered a nonsensical tune. The glass and silver and ivory ornamentation that hung from his wings caught some impossible light, reflecting back into the back of my mind, bringing forth memories of bicycles and lemonade and tire swings.

"You think you know who I am, but I'm not," he replied, the voice of a dusty piano, a long dusk, rain and fog, wet concrete, an empty parking lot, a silent building. I should've been crying but I'd imagined that voice for so long that hearing it only made me ache to own it. I took a step closer, and the wings widened. The mask of his face poised in emotionless sympathy and heart-broken apathy was an addiction for my eyes, an opiate vision.

"You're here to take me away," I whispered.

"I am not here for your soul. I am here for your mind."

I stopped. Suddenly, the familiarity crashed into recognition and the figure solidified; the spiraling symbology of his mask, the voice, the cloak...

"But they said..."

"They were wrong. We were all wrong. You proved it so. And now the time has come to pay back that debt you owe." Reaching up, he slowly caressed my cheek, and the chrome limb spread a shiver of autumnal weakness across my skin, the flesh finally acknowledging something impossible, both living and metal, both organic and immortal. I cautiously placed my hand over his and wrapped my fingers around his paradoxical hand. Leaning close, he looked at me one last time. I looked beyond the mask and saw the Mirror, reflecting back at me, but not at me but of me. Through that Mirror, I could read and hear and see every story, every lie, every wish, every curse, the blood of gods and the heart of my soul and every soul of every human who ever, for just a moment, believed in something else.

"An angel of resurrection, of a new life..." I muttered.

"Yes," he replied, a snowy forest, an untouched cavern, a new deck of cards, lightning and distant thunder, a friend lost then found. Darkness within darkness, the gate to all mystery.

Pressing my lips to the steel, I dreamt of a sky falling and woke to pick up the pieces.