He hadn't slept since he got back. His clothing, though freshly drawn from his closet only hours ago looked as though he'd spent the last 48 hours in them. His body was drained and it seemed to be leeching the life out of the green-black designer suit.

Time was clouded...he couldn't count the days spent on the trail of the firebird; vital for the tincture he needed to distill it had led him across half the world. Through jungles, across plains and into the heights of mountain eyries and in the end, he'd found the source of his single golden plume in the tabernacle of a small, half forgotten and disused church in the middle of Budapest.

The golden bird had mingled with the peacocks that wondered the overgrown garden, before Constantine's approach had sent it in through a cracked stained glass window, the lingering fragments of figures aglow with the last of the sunlight and it had been for him an omen. The long and fruitless journey had a different flavour at the end; no longer bitter but rich and sweet like the musk and pomegranates of the Phoenix feather he claimed for Valentinian.

The tincture itself had been a simple task after that. He'd arrived home at Le Byzantin and immediately set up the elements that one would not often find in a modern home; not out of place in the residence of an apothecary or perhaps - if one believed in such things and up until recently a great many had - witches.

He'd stewed the eucalyptus leaves in boiling water. Three hours of anxious fretting; checking and rechecking the phoenix feather to reassure it was not all a dream. Then, stirring in a piece of mandrake root and allowing the mixture to cool. Before finally, hands shadowing - exhaustion or overwhelming emotion he couldn't tell - he'd dipped the Phoenix feather into the potion and stirred clockwise.

Now...he stood with the golden liquor in a crystal vial meant for one of their blended perfumeries. It swam still with the colours of the phoenix feather; prominent gold, fire-threaded red and smaragdine that winked like motes in the tincture to end petrification. All that remained was for Constantine to annoint his bother, the reverse Galatea. The directions he'd faithfully followed had promised immediate effects...if successful.

He swallowed, his body trembled - exhaustion and strain drawing him to the last of his body's resources. And now he was here...and so was his brother.
A sprig of green curled round the statue Valentinian's leg, lending the bleak grey figure some colour. Weathering would not set in for some decades yet, but the pigeons had not been so kind. I should get a little warm soapy water, scrub that first... a shadow of himself glimmered through, he grinned ...they may be winged rats but you'd swear the rhyme of the cow who lept over the moon came from such. Still, it won't kill you Nian...maybe force you to stoop your shoulders beneath the weight.

"I can't...I haven't strength for more...for delay," he whispered nervously and moved towards his stoned brother and annointed him as though he were a king born long ago and the vial held sacred olive oil and not the steeped essence of even older magicks.

It was a rush coming back. Wrapped in stone, time had passed for him as though hours were seconds and months, days. Valentinian knew only that they'd been captured by The Source - another one, like the head of a Hyrda you killed one and another came to take it's place...sometimes more, but then they invariably ate each other till there was one; there can be only one - and that something terrible was going to happen if they didn't escape. Then something terrible had happened...only he'd not been entirely certain what.

Time, stoned time, leapt forward as Constantine applied his tincture and Valentinian was thrust into mortal time once more and abruptly became aware he was covered in shit.

Merde! She dumped me in a guano mine? Slowly he took in his surroundings, the quiet courtyard and his brother who seemed to have aged a decade overnight. He needed an explanation...and there was only one person who could give it.

"Tine...nous ne sommes plus au Kansas, n'est-ce pas?"


Translation

• We're not in Kansas anymore...are we?"

"Tine..." Melinda smiles at the sight of the darker Zeno brother, having peered out the entrance before stepping outside. She allows the heavy oak door to close behind her as she starts down the steps. Her attention is so focused on Constantine that she does not even notice the other man initially, especially since his back is to her.

Her eyes drift over to this strange blonde man and the smile fades, replaced by a puzzled look. Her mind works to connect the familiar feeling that seeing him has given with a face or a name.

"Cupid!" Something does click and the smile returns, even brighter than it had been for her lover. She races forward, overcome with the joy of this miracle. Luckily, and her clothing thanks her for this, she notices Val's slightly sullied state and freezes before actually wrapping her arms around him. "Oh... ew."

It was an instant in time, barely noticeable and certainly nothing that would fit on a pie chart, but for Constantine it had been the longest second of his life; then Valentinian had reached the cusp of his resurrection and stone bled into flesh and life came back to his twin. Yet Tine could barely stir up a smile, exhaustion clawing through him; his joy was drowning as though the walls that had shored his strength were finally shattered by success.

He took a step towards Valentinian; the effort drained him as though he'd leapt a tall building.

"Non...not Kansas...Avalon, but free at last," he murmured and quickly recounted events for his brother as though his voice would fail him soon and the story must be told before the last grain of sound was emptied from his lips. Then as he came to the ending of it, his search for the phoenix feather he lost it all to the sight of Melinda entering the courtyard as though they'd had tea at Le Byzantin only that morning. "Eli L'aventurière..." it seemed the wind spoke for him, because he could not.

He couldn't even move towards her, it was almost as if he'd become the stone that had bound Nian to the spot. You've stood still long enough for fatigue to find you. He reached for resources, for strength and found them empty...still he managed to force himself towards Melinda even as she reached out towards Valentinian. Watch out for that...

It wasn't the suit that made the man; Grandmère had instilled that in her heir and while it still took Valentinian a moment to gather his poise; pigeon-wear could have been all the rage on the catwalks of Milan as the Light Witch - Sorcièr Légère - caught up on the time he'd missed. Does that mean I'm biologically even younger than my twin...by more than just a mere handful of minutes? Merde.

He could almost feel Constantine's fatigue, but before he could react to it, Melinda Halliwell made her entrance and everything almost seemed normal. Except pigeon-wear took a step back.

"Merry Hell...some things never change."

Melinda, who has since wrapped her arms about herself, can't help but to look upon Valentinian with wide-eyed wonder, amazed at this miracle. She shakes her head, awed and in disbelief. It seemed like ages since the Source crashed Wyatt's coronation with the "gift" of Valentinian's stone form. A status that no one had been able to reverse. Until now. "But I don't understand... we tried everything."

"How did you do it?" The young empath turns her head to the side, looking to Constantine. Seeing as he is the only other soul present within the courtyard, she correctly assumes that he is responsible for his twin brother no longer being petrified.

Around him, a heavy aura of weariness seeped into the ether, but the darker of the Zeno twin's brought forth the answer to Melina Halliwell's question as he reached her side. He felt like little more than a puppet on string; strings which Damocles's sword threatened to cut at any moment.

"Shadow's Mistress," he remembered the affinity he'd felt with the owner of the place, the taste of the shadows in that font of magical lore. "The owner should be on the Halliwell contact list ... definitely 'magical people to know' material." He wished for a chair to sink into, his only motivation now for remaining on his own two feet was that Valentinian was the only one capable of carrying him away from the courtyard ... and that ride was covered in pigeon shit. "The hardest part was the phoenix feather."

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