Cleo blinked.  Standing in the murky vista, odd shapes-- monolith like, appeared to glide silently in and out of the quasi-darkness.  She was alone in a large open space, lighter than the surrounding gloom, dressed in her cargo pants and t-shirt from last night.  Wreathing tendrils of mist, damp and cold, slowly flowing around and over her surroundings, masking and muting them.  Distances were hard to determine as reference points appeared and faded back into obscurity.  She squinted, gazing about, her brow furrowed.
	"This isn't right..." she said.  "Where am I?"  the heavy atmosphere swallowed her words, and they sounded small and timid in her own ears.  
	"You're right where I want you, my dear."  She spun but found no one.  The voice was rich and tinged with a satisfied timber.  She spun again.
	"Who are you?  What do you want?"  Cleo turned slowly this time, alert for any signs of movement in the swirling mists.  There was no sound from the vague and muted shapes.  Best as she could determine, she had ascribed a full circle.  She appeared to be alone.
	"I want," came a husky wet breath by her ear, "Everything."  Cleo spun and swung a balled up fist.  It passed in an arc around her but failed to connect with anything.  She whirled again.  This time something did change.  Behind her stood a small, round table covered in a white cloth and set with a two settings of bone white china and a tea pot.  "But first," came the voice off to her left. "We haven't been properly introduced."
	The shadow seemed to simply swell up out of the ground.  It was the same color as the rest of the swirling mists, but seemed thicker, more visceral.  It continued to rise up, roiling up from the very ground until it stood before her, slightly taller and broader than herself.  Shadowy arms formed, and it took a step forward on shadowy legs.  It paused, spreading spectral arms. 
	"'Ello Poppet."  
Cleo bolted.
	Dashing off into the cloudy mists, heedless of the hidden obstacles and dangers, something long, and snake-like reached around her middle.  It was thicker than her leg, and with a sudden firm squeeze it simply lifted her off the ground.  Cleo kicked at the air madly, her eyes wide with terror.  She pounded her fists against the smoky, semi translucent tendril wrapped around her waist with no noticeable effect.  It continued retracting with its prize clutched several feet above the ground, slowly and steadily back in the direction from which she had fled.
	"Now, now," came the voice that materialized from out of the mist before her.  "That won't do."  Cleo could see the long tendril that held her snaked back and appeared to be somehow attached to the shadow itself.  It deposited her on her feet right in front of the shade.  "Can't have my favorite subject running off, now can we?"
	"What the fuck are you?!?" she demanded.
	"The best thing that ever happened to you, love."  The tone carried a swagger in it.
	"Fuck this shit," she spat and took a swing at the smoky figure before her.  Her fist did two things in rapid succession; it registered a knuckle cracking blow the side of the shadows head and then proceeded to pass completely through it.  The follow through tipped her off balance and she teetered forward and stumbled past her tormentor, the tentacle around her waist dissolving into nothing more than smoke and swirled about as she passed through it.
	“And that,” he let out a throaty laugh, “is why I like you so much.  You keep surprising me!”
	“You’re just a nightmare!” she glared up at him.  “A figment of my messed up imagination.  I knew I shouldn’t have had that last slice of pizza before bed.”  The apparition clucked his tongue at her.
	“Tsk, tsk… You appear to have it upside down as it were.”  He twisted his hand and a large brown feather quill appeared in his grasp.  With a second gesture he produced a small moleskine. “This is my nightmare.”  Cleo boggled at him.
	“Excuse me?”
	“But we are going about all this entirely the wrong way.”  He made a quick scribble in his notebook and two large, leather high backed reading chairs appeared with a ‘poof’ and the remnants of the smoke from which they materialized drifting off the edges.  “I would invite you to sit with me, as there are things for us to discuss.”
	“Fuck you.” 
	“No, that won’t really do, now will it?  Nor,” he added after the slightest pause, “will it really help in the end.”  Another scribble and an old victorian record player appeared off to one side and the clear lilting notes of Claire de Lune drifted about the gloomy scene.  “Hmmm…”  he made another mark and the record took on a slightly scratchy quality one would expect from an old player.  Cleo for her part stalked off into the fog.  Another note inscribed in his little notebook and Cleo emerged out of the swirling mists to stand behind one of the high backed leather chairs.
	“One lump or two?”  he asked as the table holding the tea setting descended promptly from above and elected to hover a foot off the ground in front of the chair whose high wingback side were showing the indentation of her grip.  Her surprise at finding herself suddenly back where she started quickly narrowed to a steely gaze.  She did not move forward.
	“I suppose,” continued the shade, “we could do this properly.  Dress for the occasion?”  With a sweeping gesture he swept his hand down his front and stepped forward into a crushed red velvet smoking jacket.  Wisps of smoky mist clung to his back as he stepped forward and seated himself. He tapped his quill in the vicinity of where his mouth should be.  “Hmmm… perhaps?”
	A breathy puff of air and Cleo looked down to see herself suddenly clad in a rich purple dress.  It had a distinctly Victorian look about it.  
	“Yeah, no.” She said and fixed him with an even darker gaze.
	“No?” he asked with mock sadness.  “Very well.”  Poof.  Cleo looked down at the rather sheer and very clingy cocktail dress she now wore.  Dark as night and yet still conveying the slightest sparkle from subtle silver threads.  It left very little to the imagination and showed off her legs amazingly well.  She leveled her gaze of daggers at him again and slowly shook her head.
	“Of course,” he apologized with the wave of his quill. “That’s more of an evening out kind of thing.”  He paused before waving the quill again. “But do you like it?”
	“Not particularly.”  Cleo didn’t want to admit anything to this thing despite the fleeting wish that this might someday show up in her closet.  She struggled to keep her expression neutral.  
	“Pity.  How about?”  Another puff and she was dressed like something from Little House on the Prairie.
	“Perfect,” she replied.
	“Really?” he asked with a note of surprise.
	“…for Laura Ingles on her way to church!  What the hell?”
	“Yes, well, it was worth a shot.”
	[poof] 
	“I don’t think so!”
	[poof]
	“No.”
	[poof]
	“Really?  I mean, REALLY?!?.”
	[poof]
	“Are you completely deranged?”
	[poof]
	“…those aren’t technically ‘clothes’.  You know that, right?”
	[poof]
	“Ok.  Now you’re just screwing around…”
	[poof]
	Cleo paused and regarded herself.  A stylish blouse with a cardigan, feminine without being ‘girly’ and nice jeans that ended in a set of short suede boots.  She smiled to herself at the look it portrayed.  Stylish and sexy without tipping over into the girly frills she tried so hard to avoid.
	“That’ll do..” she muttered.  Slowly she came around the chair and set herself tentatively on the front of the cushion.
	“Excellent,” the shadow purred.  “Now, as we were… one lump or two?”
	“Two.”  Cleo watched as two smoky tendrils materialized out of the misty darkness and set about delicately depositing two sugar cubes into her tea cup with a tinkling chime.
	“Cream?”  She simply nodded.  The other tendril added the cream with a slight flourish while the first readied the kettle and poured the tea when it’s partner had set the cream back on the table.  Curling under the saucer like a snake coiling up, the first tendril lifted the drink and propelled it gracefully and elegantly to pause before the shadow’s guest.  Its partner had been busy preparing a second cup and quickly delivered it to its owner.  Taking the offered cup, he turned his head to regard Cleo.
	“M’dear?”  She glanced at him but said nothing as she took the cup and saucer from where it hovered, the supporting tentacle  drifting away as so much smoke being waved away.  The lilting tones of Perry Como suddenly drifted up from the victrola as he proclaimed that Papa Loves Mambo.  Cleo noticed the addition of a monocle that was somehow affixed to the face of the shadow and, for the first time, noticed that she could see eyes.  Well, not ‘eyes’ per se, but lighter triangular shapes where eyes would be on a normal living thing.  She could see no mouth where it seemed to be sipping away, a shadowy pinky extended from the cup.
	“Why are you doing this?” she asked after watching her tea for a bit.  The shadow paused then took another sip. 
	“I felt it was best that we talk.”  He set his cup back in it’s saucer.  “Face to face as it were.  I have some questions for you.”
	“I see.”
	“Any particular topic or just general chit-chat?”
	“I wanted to know what it is that you want.” The emphasis on the last word was slight but noticeable.
	“Right now?  I’d like to wake up from this weird-ass dream.”
	“Ah.  I see.”
	“What the hell are you?” she pressed.
	“Me?” He set his cup and saucer in the air to his side and seemed undisturbed by its complete failure to drop to the ground.  “Well, that’s an interesting question now, isn’t it?”  He reached into his jacket and produced a small dull colored plastic pipe.  Fitting it to his face, he made a quick puffing noise and Cleo’s eyebrow shot up as ash gray bubbles began to emerge from the chamber at the end.  
	“I am,” he began after producing several bubbles, “a creative force that has waged war upon chaos and entropy with the most powerful weapon rendering order, organization, and comprehension to the unintelligible.”  He returned to his pipe.
	“Come again?”  she asked, her tea left forgotten in her lap. 
	"I write."
	“...You write.”
	“I write.”
	“You write…”
	“I think,” he concluded, a hint of sharpness to the word, “we’ve established that part.”  Cleo regarded him from under a now pressed eyebrow.
	“Ok.  Mr. Writer Man then,” she leaned back and crossed her arms.  “Gods, this is a totally wacked dream.”
	“It’s not a dream.”  He puffed a couple more bubbles.  “I thought I mentioned that?  Well, not yours at least.”
	“If it’s not mine, then who’s it is?”
	“Mine.  More of a nightmare actually…”
	“Ok.  Sure.  That works…” she paused before suddenly hurling her cup and saucer across the intervening distance as punctuation to her accusation.  “Then WHAT the hell am I doing here?!?”  The shadow casually crossed his legs and made a quick scribbling motion with the quill as the cup, saucer and tea burst into smoke and swirled about slowly in the still air.
	“Well, since I’m stuck here, for the foreseeable future, I thought I should try and at least do something about it.”
	“And where is ‘here’?” she demanded.
	“Why this is the Block.”  He waved a hand casually about him.  “Bleak, lacking description, color, time, definitive place, or any kind of energy… It’s not hell, but you can imagine it from here,” he offered with a wry chuckle.
	“So, circling back; why am “I” here?”
	“Well, where else should you be?” he asked.  “Your story is untold, and unless I determine how to escape this place, it will remain so, and you will remain in a sweaty heap of disheveled bed sheets where we last saw you.”  Cleo eyed him warily.  
	“How did you know about that?”
	“How do you think?”  he waggled the quill by way of explanation.
	“So, is the nightmare part of our dream having nonsensical, cryptic conversations with deranged shadows?  Because, yeah, I can see how that could become hell really quick.”
	“You don’t believe me, do you?”  He paused from his bubble puffing and set his pipe carefully in the air to the side where it stuck, for all practical purposes, as if it had been nailed there.  Cleo glared at him warily.  “Allow me to demonstrate.”  He lifted the quill and the moleskine akin to a magician showing you he had nothing up his sleeves, and then he began to write.

	He scribbled and this time he was at it much longer than the previous times before.  He flipped a page and the rapid, jerky scratching of the quill on the paper continued.  Another page and Cleo felt her frustration bubble to the surface.  This was taking too long.  What was he doing?  Why was this shade deliberately wasting her time?  He was mocking her.  She hated it when her brother Loki mocked her.  She would not be insulted any longer by this spectral buffoon.
	Gripping the worn leather handle of her short hammer till her knuckles showed white, she exploded to her feet knocking the chair backwards.  The pale light from above their tea party illuminated the brilliant silver of her breast plate and she could feel the thrum of power surging through Mjölnir.  Off in the distance, thunder rumbled ominously.
	“Enough!” she shouted.  The shadow looked up from his scribbling and seemed to smile.
	“Yes?”  Cleo gripped the handle of her hammer and heard the leather creak.
	“Cease this at once!” She ordered, relishing the chance to vent her pent up emotions. “By the beard of the All-Father, my father, you will release me from this place immediately!”
	“The All-Father you say?” the shadow leaned back and set the quill and book upon his lap.  Crossing his legs, he casually took the pipe from its resting place in the air and blew a couple of small bubbles.  “You mean Odin?”
	“Of course I mean Odin!” Cleo bellowed.  “When he hears of this disservice to his son, the very fjords of Jötunheimr will quake and shatter, so great will be his wrath!”
	“His son you say?”  The spectre waved a casual hand towards Cleo’s waist.  “You might want to check the plumbing…”  Cleo’s brow furrowed.  This wasn’t right.  Hadn’t she always been the god of Thunder?  “And while we’re at it, did you tell the All-Father about that D you got in Media Analysis last semester?”  She looked around wildly as the hammer slipped from her hands, landing with a dull thunk at her feet.  She watched with bewildered eyes as the silver breastplate faded back to a stylish blouse and she rounded on the shade.
	“What did you do?”  She sat back on the edge of the upturned chair.
	“Me?” there was a note of mock innocence.  “Just a bit of creative writing,” he paused for a beat, “You may recall me mentioning that I occasionally write…”  Cleo boggled at him.  “I just scribbled down how you thought you were Thor and how you didn’t like me just writing and ignoring you and how it made you mad.”  Cleo could feel the blood drain from her face as the implication began to settle in.  Her eyes darted back and forth desperate for an exit to appear just beyond the gloom.
	“Calm yourself my dear,” the shade reassured her as he smoothed down the wrinkles in his smoking jacket.  “As I said before, I mean you no harm.”
	“But you could…” her voice was tight and constrained, “do things to me while I’m here.  Make me think things.  Change me…”
	“Hmmm…,” he puffed at his pipe and a couple of bubbles drifted up in the still air.  “I suppose so, but only within reason.”  He pointed the stem of the pipe at her.  “The rules of plausibility and believability hold sway even here.  I could write you into an adorable puppy if I so chose, but without reason; any kind of believable connection to or from your history, without continuity it would fade as quickly as you Asgardian heritage.”
	“Oh my god,” Cleo whispered, “This is hell…” 
	“In a sense,” he concurred and returned the pipe to his invisible mouth.  “Nothing I craft stays crafted, and there is nothing here to inspire new thoughts or ideas.  I can manage snippets here and there, but compared to authoring entire universes this feels like being locked in a cat carrier in the trunk of a smart car.  Purgatory for a cat, much closer to hell for a mountain lion.”  She rounded on him.  
	“I’ve got to get out of here!”  Her wide eyes showed the whites around the edge.  “Let me out!” she demanded as she sprang to her feet.
	“Please my dear,” the shadow soothed. “Panicking won’t help either of us.” He made a gesture and her chair righted itself.  Cleo’s head whipped from side to side seeking some glimmer of light or a sign.  With a sudden burst of energy she lunged forward, but catching her foot on something, tumbled forward into the small tea set which burst into smoke upon the impact and allowed her to continue her decent, roughly collapsing in a sprawled mess upon the ground.  
	Looking back over her shoulder for the cause of her prone position, Cleo could only see the short handled hammer where it had fallen under the high backed chair.  Then her eyes fell upon the small rock, blending stealthily grey into grey.
	“Gods,” she exclaimed, “you are such a bastard!”  She scrambled up to her hands and knees reaching for the rock behind her.  “I could have broken something.”  Gripping the small cube of a rock, she glanced down at it in her palm, briefly noting that there appeared to be some letters carved into it before launching it straight at the smoky figure.  He raised a hand casually, as if to flick away a fly that was hovering too close.  The rock paid no mind to his efforts.
	There was a sound like a massive tree hitting the ground and the high-backed leather chair and it’s occupant shot backwards tumbling over and over only to skid to a stop several yards off into the gloom.  Cleo stood, jaw hanging slack as she looked from the cursing pile of chair and shadow and the small cube of a rock that lay on the ground between her and the space that the spectre had previously occupied.
	Her hand revealed a slight tremble as she reached down and retrieved her projectile weapon.  It was roughly hewn into a cube and carved into the side in austere letters was one word; WRITERS.
	The gloom chose that moment to explode.  Bits of chair streaking into the sky trailing smoky contrails as they went.  Peels of thunder rang about and the air reverberated with what felt like a lightning strike in the nearby gloom, briefly casting the landscape in a lighter shade of grey.  
	Striding out of the wreckage, his red smoking jacket now appeared quite literal, as charred bits drifted off behind him.  Cleo could see 4 massive tendrils of smoke wreathing like angry cats tails trailing behind him as he stomped up to her.
	“That,” he growled, “hurt.”
	“Stay back!” Cleo shouted louder than she had intended. He seemed larger as he loomed before her, rubbing his jaw in a way that reminded her of a fighter massaging his jaw after getting clipped by a lucky but ineffective punch.  “I just want to go home!”  She cocked her arm back to throw again.  The shadow paused.
	“That would be unwise.”  He did not make any additional moves.
	“Send me home.” She looked at him before adding, “Now.”
	“Let me see what you have there.”
	“Did you know I played softball in HighSchool?”
	“Yes.”
	“Fastest pitch was 56 mph.”
	“Second to last game of the season, 4th inning, 2nd strike to the leagues 3rd best hitter.  It was in my notes.  Now show me what you have there.”  Cleo regarded him again.
	“How did you…” her voice trailed off.
	“I would love,” his voice sounded strained and Cleo thought that the shadows that made up his eyes seemed narrower than normal, “to discuss the intricacies of your backstory, but at this very moment, I’m much, much,” his voice dropped into a predatory growl, “more interested in what you have in your pretty little hand.”
	“Stay back!”  The smoke tendrils fanned out behind him no longer thrashing to and fro.
	“Show.  Me.” He growled.  “Now.”  Cleo shifted her footing nervously before relenting and holding up the stony cube perched on her finger tips.  
	“What…” His head tipped slightly as he regarded the object.  “Is that?” he finally asked.  “Is that writing?  What does it say?” There was an eager tone to his question.
	“It says ‘writers’.”  There was a rushing noise and Cleo found herself engulfed in shadows.  Firm hands gripped at her limbs and what felt like huge snakes coiled around her torso, all climbing towards her hand now clutching the rock.  They seemed to swirl, obscuring her vision and impeding her efforts to kick and punch as she screamed and fought against the enveloping force.  Enveloping everything but her tightly clenched fist.

	As suddenly as it started it was done.  Cleo found herself gasping in huge ragged breaths, half seated in her chair, one leg flung over the arm and leaning back into the crook of the high wing.  The spectre lay on the ground several feet away.  Looking down into her lap she could see the corners of the rock from between her fingers where she still clutched it.

	“I’m sorry,” he breathed.  “That was,” he paused, “unprofessional.”  Cleo slowly rose to her feet finding her legs still shaking from the ordeal.  She backed away slowly to stand behind the chair.  
	From his place on the floor, he began to laugh and it did not carry a single note of mirth with it.
	“The key to it all,” he wheezed.  “Right here and I can’t even touch it…” he trailed off into a sickly giggle.  “…Maybe this is Hell after all.”
	“What?” Cleo asked.  The shadow made no reply.  “What are you talking about?” she raised her clenched fist slightly.  “This?”  This brought forth a new wave of laughter.
	“So, you’re to be my jailor then?”  
	“What is it?” Cleo demanded the fear tightening her voice and making it sound high pitched and shrill.  “What is this thing?”  The laughing continued.
	“It’s the key.  It’s what holds me here.  And I can’t even touch it.  The entire universe bends to my quill and that, that,” he sputtered suddenly “I can do nothing with.”   There was a long pause before he summarized his thoughts again.  “Nothing.”  With that the smokey form lay still and said nothing more.
	Cleo examined the stone cube.  It was bigger than a golf ball but smaller than a baseball.  The same color as the rest of the dull surroundings.  She regarded the shade again.
	“You said it’s the key.  Can this thing send me home?”  She watched the dark form on the ground for movement. “Can it?” she stressed the question.  Silence.
	“No,” came the soft, sullen response.  “That is the lock.”  There was the sound of a long slow breath being let go, and Cleo could sense the hope and fight being expelled with it.  “I don’t even know if it can be destroyed.”  They sat in silence for a while before either of them moved or spoke.
	“So, what do we do?” she finally asked.  The shadow said nothing.
	“I can send you home.”  the words slapped Cleo in the face.
	“What?” she demanded.
	“I’m sure a paused life is more pleasant than anything I could provide here.”  He slowly lifted an arm and a wisp of smoke coalesced into a feather quill.  “I was just trying to make the best of things…”
	“You’re stuck here aren’t you?”
	“That is what,” he sounded tired, “I’ve been trying to explain to you.”
	“Because of this?” she asked.
	“Yes.”
	“So you can’t leave?”
	“Would you care for a final soliloquy victory lap before your escape or would you like me to just wrap this up in a trite dream sequence?”
	“How about batting practice?”  Cleo bent down and fished about under the chair.  
	“Umm, that wasn’t one of the choices...” The shadow sat up and twisted to regard Cleo.  She gripped Mjölnir awkwardly.  Twisting where she stood a couple of times, Cleo pulled back and with a casual toss, launched the rock up above her head and brought the short hammer around to meet it as it returned to the ground…and missed.
	“Could use some of that thunder god hammer skill right about now,” Cleo quipped retrieving the stone.  The shadow shrugged his shoulders.
	“Sorry, that was a one shot gag.”  Cleo arched an eyebrow at him before launching the cube skyward again.  
	This time she used a upward sweeping arc and connected with the cube in an explosive shower of sparks that sent the stone rocketing off towards the horizon like a shooting star.  It continued, far beyond where it should have begun its parabolic fall back to the ground.  From the far horizon there was a flash and the sound of something smashing.  Tinkling noise like that of glass tumbling down upon itself echoed from the direction that both Cleo and the shade watched and light began to blossom far on the horizon.
	“What have you done?” the spectre breathed.  The sound of crumbling and crashing was growing louder.  The light increasing.  The sky above was starting to crumble like flaking ash, the mists being driven into a stale wind by the rushing sound of light flooding across the barren landscape.  And then it was on them, a wall of sound and texture and light and color crashing and rolling over them like a cresting wave rushing at the shore.  Cleo was tossed and tumbled in the wash of senses that trailed behind it.  She blinked to clear the swirling colors and to give her eyes time to adjust to the now brighter light.
	Below her, brown earth, rich and dry was under her hands and feet.  It left smudge marks on her palms and knees as she stood and spun around finding herself dressed again in her t-shirt and cargos.  Green grassy patches speckled in dew greeted the bright morning light that promised a sun poised to crest the tree lined horizon at any moment.  The classical Greek ruins of broken pillars and a few time worn statues dotted the landscape.  
	The two high backed leather back chairs did not seem entirely out of place.  Their rich chestnut leather looking lustrous in the dawn light.  The spectre sat cross legged, his ruby smoking jacket, fluffy and warm in the crisp air puffing away at his plastic pink bubble pipe, iridescent bubbles wafting up in the wind.  His smoky tendrils and body looking darker and deeper than before, a hazy translucence about them.  The scratchy record player quietly playing Beethoven’s 5th to no one in particular.  Birds chirped their greeting to the morning from the nearby bushes and the trees.
	“Nicely done,” he said and she had the distinct sense he was smiling at her.  “Ready to go back now?”  Cleo nodded.  The quill and black moleskine journal appeared in his hands.  “I think it’s time for you to wake up.”  He started scribbling in the notebook.  “Did you want to remember this ‘dream’?” he asked looking up.  Cleo shook her head as she started to dissolve into a hazy shimmer.
	“Wait!” She called out as the world around her started to fade.  “What are you going to do now?”  The twinkling faded and she was gone.
	“I’m going to write,” the spectre pronounced so boldly that you could almost see the manic grin plastered across his face.  “Buckle up Poppet!”