What had you been thinking about
the face studiously bloodied
heaven blotted region

It is night of course. A fine night at least.

Fall technically. But warm. Sacramento stays so warm. In life he would have hated it. Now a corpse, Milton doesn't mind. Temperature does not, by and large, concern him.

What matters is that the sky is clear, cloudless really, and the stars are a visible and unending tapestry. The moon also present, but only as a thin sliver of itself, hung there among those cold and distant lights.

Milton thinks about the stars. That their distance is more temporal than anything else. That their light, currently registered by his dead but still seeing eyes (which transmit that information to his dead but still thinking brain), is beyond ancient. Is ante-antediluvian.

Kindred eat your hearts out.

And then he thinks that each of them are a sun in their own right. And he wonders why they do not burn him like tiny brands when the earth's sun would translate him directly into ash. In any event, he is thankful they do not.

The property surrounding the mansion is as extensive as the manse itself. It is well-maintained, but lightly developed. Vast, carefully manicured lawns, some stands of trees, occasional gardens. A few paths criss-cross the distances, from near to far etc. It rather has the feel of a golf course, which Milton considers charming

There is also a tennis court and Milton finds himself strolling toward it now, through a night that feels important (for no particular reason). Unsure what would possess him to choose this course.

Milton has never liked tennis. He was forced to play and watch quite a bit in his youth and he does not miss it. Does not miss his mother's voice, already threadbare when he was ten, chiding, Remember tennis, Milton as he ran out the door. Eager, always, to escape her.

The world outside was little better, but had one thing going for it: it was not her.

He wonders if Jacque enjoys the game. Decides against it, even if the Seneschal does love a flick of the wrist.

Likely this was placed here for appearances only. Possibly for guests.

It is hard court; composite surface painted a tasteful green. Not the bright, garish blue of the US Open. Or the black you sometimes see, which manages only to look like a parking lot.

The moment feels somehow significant. Perhaps it's the resonance with his past. His former, life-long misery. And the distance he feels from it. From her. From all of it. Even from Elias, whose final death he sometimes still mourns. Though, admittedly, less and less.

Their light still reaches him, but it is fading.

The tennis court is just a square of green under the alien glow of the stars (fires burning through aeons to be here tonight). Around it is the darker green of the grass. Milton considers the cost to keep the sod so fresh, lush. The water bill alone...

Here he stands, firmly rooted and flourishing in a new Domain, worlds away from Boston. From Watertown. A known and increasingly well-regarded quantity, possessed of a few, valuable allies. Conversational partner to Princes and Priscii. His task for Quinn nearly complete, his other business concerns steadily expanding. On the eve of a momentous conversation with the Seneschal of Sacramento, the primary topic of which will be his official petition to join the First Estate.

Under the uncaring and unyielding stars, Milton Northbridge can almost feel the past evaporating and the future being born. And he is, briefly, happy.

Briefly. Such things do not last long for the undead in his experience. And that is fine as well.

As if on cue, the wave of profundity breaks. Recedes. Leaving only a not-unpleasant dullness.

The Lord turns, silently, on his heel, and continues his walk into the darkness. Back across the grass, onto a nearby path, and further. Still further.