. . .but today's not your day, and tomorrow isn't looking good either

I was dying. My soul was dying. I could feel the energy that powered me escaping through the yellow ribbon in my chest. As everything went black, I felt myself lifted, and a far of voice saying, "Just hold on a bit longer, Jamie."

"Who?" I was too confused to understand the answer, if there even was one. I just wanted to fade out. I felt myself getting lighter, as I rode higher in the person's arms.

I felt something tugging at my chest, and then the world exploded. Color streamed out of me and filled everything up. Sounds and thoughts flew like birds. I felt myself filling up, and then expanding like a balloon. It was power. Pure, sweet, power. I laughed and it was the sound of thunder.

I looked down at my feet and saw a small figure looking up to me. I no sooner thought to get closer, than I was the same size as the figure.

"Jamie, you need to calm your emotions. Thoughts have power here." Walker was a little frantic and for the life of me I couldn't understand why. I was the sun, the moon, and the stars. I was the universe, and I was an ant. Everything but Walker was me here. Maybe I should change that. . .

"Jamie, Think about who you are. Focus on Olivia, and Bree. Focus on the people who love you, and who you love."

What is love to me, who is the entirety of creation? What is love when everything breathes with me, lives with me, and dies with my thought?

"You are a person, Jamie. There are people outside of this space that need you!"

Thought came hard for a moment, as if I was pushing against the weight of the universe. Something inside me moved instead. What's going on with me, Walker?

"I had to plug you into this place to save your life. This much power was never meant for a human mind to control."

I can't focus. My mind wants to fly into a thousand pieces. Help me!

"There's only so much that I can do, Jamie. You have to do most of this for yourself. Focus on your loved ones. Keep them in your mind."

I tried. Oh how I tried. I thought of my mother, and Mary, and they quickly slipped away. I thought of the children for a moment before the wonder of being took me again. I collapsed from the size of a galaxy to a planet. I couldn't keep it going. My mind felt like it was made up of millions, billions, trillions of me. . .and then I realized it was. For a moment, I was every Jamie and James and variant in existence. I was being born, and I was dieing. I was making love and I was in the extremities of pain.

I realized I had to focus myself down to being a single person in a single point in time. I found the Beast's thoughts in the midst of it all, and saw him gloating about winning. I locked onto him, and tapped into Olivia's mind. She was talking to him about something, and couldn't quite realize why the answers were wrong.

Call Jamie on the headset. Talk to her mind to find out what's wrong

"Call Jamie"

"Hello, Liv."

"Yeah, the Beast kicked me out of my body and is sort of inhabiting it now. Can you add Walker into this?"

"Lock Jamie, Call Walker"

"You're on the party line with Olivia and Jamie, what can I do for you."

"Walker, I just need you to protect this point for me. I will need to bring Beast back here. Liv, make sure my body stays safe."

I let go of the connection to Olivia, since I didn't want her to be a part of what I would do next. I locked onto Beast and, well, the closest that I can describe is to say I jumped.

'Honey, I'm HOME!!!'

I felt his surprise as he turned to look at me. There was still something off about his spirit in the moment before he turned to face me.

'This is impossible. There's no way that you could be here.'

'Think again, buttercup. Have you anything to say in your last moments of life?'

'You can't defeat me here!'

I shifted into my armor. Bringing my sword around in an arc I slashed through his arm. He screamed and clutched the stump for a moment. The arm quickly grew back into place.

'SEE! I am invincible in my own mind!' There was still pain behind his eyes as he said this.

'Ah, but I can cause you pain.' My sword flew toward him again, it's silver surfaces shimmering in the light. He dodged back at the last moment and I only slashed his jacket.

His form shimmered for a moment before he once again became the demon. It was diminished in size from before, as if some of the substance was gone. The talons struck out for me, but came to an abrupt halt when they encountered my breastplate. Our relative strengths had shifted. I grabbed the claw with my left hand and slashed through it with my right. The bellow of pain that emitted from the lungs of the creature almost knocked me from my feet.

It scrabbled away, but I gave chase. Around us a primordial forest grew faster than thought. I heard the screeches and calls of creatures out of sight. A giant lizard crashed through the trees. I vaguely remembered it as a Tyrannosaurus Rex from the one trip my school had taken to the museum.

It bellowed at me and made to eat me in a single bite. I was more than I seemed and expanded myself to it's size.

The sudden movement grabbed it's attention, and facing something bigger than itself gave it pause. My sword sheared off it's hide. I tried to get a better angle and it bit into my left arm. I felt the fangs as they tore the material asunder. I cried in pain. This wasn't going according to plan at all.

I punched the beast in the head until it let go and then grabbed my sword in both hands. Dropping to a knee, I thrust upward with the point into his head. The weapon was wrenched from my grasp as the behemoth collapsed. As I was trying to pull it free, the monster, forest, and my sword all disappeared. The Beast was only a few steps away for my huge form, so I made to kick him. He flew into the air to dodge my attack, and the ground disappeared out from under me.

I was tumbling through the air, concentrating trying to alter my shape. White feathered wings tore through my armor, ripping it from my body. I was left in gauntlets and a thin shift covering my top.

I flew after the Beast, trying to draw nearer to my quarry. He would be mine, and I would have my body back.

'You don't need to do this! We can share the multiverse, you and I. You're the only one who has seen what I've seen. The shear scope and splendor of it.'

'Thanks, Vader, but the dark side is not my path.'

'You'll regret turning me down!'

'Probably, but not today!'

A dragon attacked me from behind. We tumbled and lost some ground on the Beast. 'Two can play at this game.' A shadow passed over the dragon and I, and then it was plucked from the air by the Roc I'd imagined. I considered what I was doing. The normal physical laws didn't apply in this space.

I could continue chasing him. . .or I could simply appear next to him.

'Gotcha.'

I made a grab for him, but he evaded again. both of us were unlimited in our motions, making it difficult to get a hold. It was a case of the unstoppable force, and the movable object. No matter where I went, he was already gone.

'I need a more confined space. . .' I muttered to myself.

That gave me an idea. I formed a cage of thought around him. He looked at it as he fell thought the air. He tried to slip through the bars, but they held him. He changed to mist, and I instantly changed the cage to glass walls. He began to expand, and I reinforced his box. I felt the strain to contain him. It was as if he were trying to push himself out of me. I redoubled my efforts, and even collapsed the cage a bit.

I was focusing on keeping him in, and the next he was behind me and slashing at my unprotected back. I spun and intercepted his strike with my sword.

'This is getting us nowhere, Beast.'

'It is wearing you out. Eventually you'll have to leave, and I will have won.'

Leave. . .something about that.

An image played through my mind. I watched as he slashed through my ribbon again, and how it easily parted. He pulled his chain from the matter of the plane, and tied it into my body's ribbon. I had an idea, and it was time to put it into action.

'You know what? It is time for us to leave.' A smile played across my lips.

'Us? There is no us. Leave any time you want, though. You're welcome to admit defeat.'

In the next instant I was behind him and wrapping him in my arms. I folded my wings around the two of us. I let go of my one true world.

We were instantly in the plane again. I pulled my chain out of the matter of the world, and watched it become a ribbon again. I tied it into the ribbon for my body. It was time to end this forever. The Beast could not be allowed the potential to survive.

'Time for us to go home!'

I grabbed onto the ribbon, which was now a war of blue and yellow, and dragged us back to our body.

'What have you DONE!!!' The Beast was frantic as we slipped back into the body that welcomed us home.

The distance between us grew inexorably smaller and smaller. At the last moment, he charged toward me, and we merged.

I felt myself coming apart at the seams. I felt the time that he'd lived, and he felt my own short span. I had to focus on who I was. He took away my mother, as his mother looked the same. Olivia was next. One by one I was stripped of the people I knew, as most of them were similar to people he had known. We were being paired down to nothing. Like a drowning sailor I threw my arms around the last person I had. The newest one in my life. Bree. She was a being unique in the multiverse. Somehow she was the only version of Brian that was female. The odds against something happening that way at random are so slim, that I began immediately to wonder who had set this particular peculiarity up.

I began to rebuild my core identity around the pillar that was Bree. The Beast tried the same around himself. I quickly pulled in my memories of childhood. I connected soaring spans to Mary, and from there to Frank. I made halls for my mother and minarets for each of the Jamies I had met, bar one.

I made a deep, dank, dark, solitary dungeon for the Beast. I pushed him in, and then locked the door. Then I went skyward again. I made walls out of my memories of all the Brians that either I or the Beast had met. I created mortar out of my step-fathers. I molded and shaped. I added windows and loop holes. I added towers and keeps. I was making a high place. It was also a permanent place.

Once the castle itself was completed, and the mountain, upon whose knees it was built, established, I went after the town. Buildings and inns. Stables and roads. People, lots of people. Everyone who I'd met in my entire life. The good and the bad. The sick and the well. The living and even the dead.

It teemed with life. It teemed with my life.

And when it was all done, I walked up from the town, the populace following me. A procession for the crowning of their queen. My clothing and form changed as I walked. I no longer needed the wings, or the adult form. I was happy to be the 14 year old me.

However, I was in a gown of state. It was one fitted to me perfectly, and it was yellow like daisies in the sun. It was as yellow as a field full of daisies. As we walked, just such a field spread out from that mountain. Rolling hills and copses of trees as far as the eye could see. In the distance a river glinted in the sun. It was a river as wide as a sea, and as deep as thought.

The crowd became more jubilant as we reached the gates. My image of Bree met me there, and we went, hand in hand, to the top of the stairs to that deep well of sorrow I had crafted so well in my castle.

I walked down alone.

It is as it should be, walking down those thousand steps into the dark, yet never needing light the entire way. The Beasts presence grew stronger the deeper I went.

'We have come to the end, Beast. Have you made your castle large with the love of those around you? Have you crafted the walls of hurt with the mortar of adversity? Have you created a town big enough for everyone to live in peace? Have you populated it with those that affected your life? Have you added your field of dreams, and your river of sorrows?'

'Yes, you have Jamie. There is only one thing that remains for you to do.'

'I'm sorry it came to this. Your time is over.'

'And ours has begun.'

I stepped from the last tread and into the darkness. The Beast consumed me, and was consumed by me. We became us for a moment, then us became me.

I wasn't the same little girl that had gone into the woods to run away. I also wasn't the damaged soul that had been locked between worlds to save all of creation.

We tempered each other.

But I was still myself. I simply had a lot of bad experience to draw from now.

I took a deep breath. Happy to have use of my lungs again.

I sat up.

I looked around at those people whom I owed my very existence to.

I smiled

I said, "42".