So many things seem strange and yet at the same time, it's all so real.  The no-mans land between one reality and another, that which is buried deep within our heart and minds and that which we trudge through every day.  I stand in my study like one in a trance, breathing slow, and deep.  Overlooking the slow rise and fall of the waves, the soft light of a single desk lamp and a few not-so-fragile inches of treated glass, the only thing seperating me from the cool darkness drifting outside these walls.  I built this place to withstand a hurricane, a tidal wave, earthquakes, all that lovely and at times foul-tempered nature could throw at me.  Yet the darkness is still there, lying as much in me as outside my window.  The mist moves like so many cool tenctacles of an unknown creature as they carress the window before moving on, seeking a warmer touch, the touch of life.  It is not just this I watch as I stand here, a silent, detached, living statue.  As much a spectre of the long cold nights as that which I watch, simply playing at being human because it's all I know, and not always playing my part well.  The staff leave each evening with as much speed as possible while still remaining polite.  Though useful for that which they have been hired, I don't care for this constant company of strangers, which is why I return to my other home only as they leave it.  Visited only by my brother or my mother, my sister far too busy with her life, and my nephews as much strangers to me as those that flee my home and my presence each time the sun sets.  The rest of my day, spent in the light-house...  My eyes, following my thoughts, break from the waves and the beach on which they waste themselves.  Picking a single shadow from all those which twist and writhe, appear and dissapear as the mist plays with the ambient light of a cloud masked moon.  A tall stark shadow that remains firm, a sentinel against what tricks the mind might play in such surroundings.  Having it built as I did this house, meant to last for an eternity, or at least as long as I myself remain.  I know not how long that might now be.  Something within me broke as my brother and I found ourselves fighting for survival, on the shattered streets of what was once a great metropolis of man and his dreams.  The same thing broke within him as well, yet he has dealt with it better then I have yet been able.  Perhaps it was his ability to deal and live with people, an ability I could only emulate for short bursts.  He found solace in a girl, in friends, in his fellow artists.  I could only find it to a degree in him, my mother, yet ultimately in myself.  The habit of a lifetime, and one which has only seemed to heighten my need to keep all but a few at arms length.  The extended lifetimes we seem to have gained along with the abilities, like that which has allowed me to give my mother a longer and pain free life, were welcome advantages.  Advantages that have helped us become more then we would perhaps have ever been without them.  Though well aware of what is thought of me by others, hearing their whispered conversations when they think I am not present.  If I cared any less what others thought of me, I would have to be dead, and therefore not concerned with much of anything pertaining to this world.  A world much changed by the human species endless thirst for power and their uncanny ability to travel blithly down the path of self-destruction.  From the balconies of my tower upon the water, as from my study windows, I have watched the creatures that live here, some could only be described as dragons of the waters.  Not some dumb beasts are these, an intelligence lurking in the depths of their eyes that goes beyond the simple instincts that drive most creatures.  Then there is the girl, once more my mind marks the path of my eyes, returning to the beach of black sand.  More a fine silt then sand really, grasping at each step as if demanding one to stop and admire the view of what I have found here.  I keep others away as a habit, yet my habit seems to have enabled the wonders here to blossom.  The dragons and others more open with their presence here since I came to own this place.  As if on cue I hear the mellow, haunting tones of my serpantine neighbors, a sound I always find myself just on the verge of understanding, yet never quite.  Claimed it as my own though I have, I retain no illusions about to whom all this mysterious beauty truly belongs.  A small movement in the water draws me instantly from my musings, breaking the rythm of the oceans breathing like a quick, silent gasp.  Then almost as if called to by my wandering thoughts I see her break the water for a moment only, followed by the quick flick of a scaled, rainbow-hued tail which quickly dissapears as well.  So I wait, for I know what comes next, a ritual repeated nearly every night.  There she is, walking slowly from the mist in the short-sleaved, gray dress she always wears.  As if the mist had simply formed around her to create the garment, falling to mid-calf, it flows about her as she moves.  Almost I swear I can hear the quiet rustle as it moves under the invisible fingers a playful breeze, the even softer sound of the sand shifting beneath  her slippered feet.  Her pale, smooth skin catching the faint light of the night, seeming to almost glow.  Seeing the light, perhaps sensing my gaze, or simply because I have been here every time before.  She turns to look up at my study window, despite myself I breath a little faster and my pulse increases, as the ocean before me, I release a small gasp of wonder.  Green hair, streaked with blue and falling a little past her shoulders.  Hair which should by all rights still be wet, yet isn't.  Almond shaped eyes holding mine, they're scarlet-purple intensity trying to make sense of me, even as my own eyes try to convince me that what I see is real.  As always she settles herself upon the soft sand, our eyes never leaving one anothers. Perhaps in fear of shattering this distant intimacy we have come to share.  A short lovely girl on a lonely black beach, bordering an ocean inhabited by dragons.  A large, well furnished home, another lying beyond the waves, sitting atop the ocean herself.  Neither of us speak, we simply watch one another.  Part of me wonders if this is all truly just a dream, part of me can not, or will not accept that it isn't reality.  A final part of me quietly wonders if this is not in fact her dream that I have wandered into.  That all of this is real in another place and time, I am the fiction, I am the stranger here.  Yet in the end, where-ever the truth of it may lie, my eyes open and I find myself once more in the mundane world I had hoped left behind.  The taste of bile in my mouth, in truth only the taste of bitter dissapointment.  My gorge rising as I fight back tears, the trading of that reality for this bringing on a despair so acute as to nearly reduce me to a lost, weeping child.  Taking a deep breath I shake my head and steady myself to accept once more the reality in which I'm forced to live, and thrusting from me for a time at least, yet another series of dreams that promises a reality that may never be.  Made all the more unbearable by it's rarity of a place where I'm not simply trading my inner conflict for some outer catastroph.