Hood grounds himself within the aether, feeling the aetheric currents wash over him like a river. Breathing slowly, Hood centres himself, calming his mind. What he is attempting he has not tried before but he has a certain feeling, a certain insight into how it may be achieved. Familiar as he is with basic healing, whereby one encourages the original natural energetic alignment within the body to accelerate, thereby causing the rapid integration or reintegration of body tissue, Hood believes, in theory, a similar though somewhat different approach can be applied to the rose window. Of course he could treat the shattered glass simply as a jigsaw but the enormity and complexity of the task - to manipulate every piece, hold it in position and then somehow apply lead fixtures both to the original pieces and to the now disintegrated shards, is simply a ridiculous proposition. No, Hood’s thinking is somewhat more refined and considered. He will start with a levitation spell…and so he whispers the words of power and watches as they effect the weave, knotted ribbons bulging from the aetheric fabric, parting and swaying, spiralling…but then he stops…and the aetheric ribbons recede back into the fabric again.

Something is almost tickling his mind, a rogue thought, prowling around its circumference, waiting to be let in. The dance of the real is mesmerising and quite beautiful and Hood wonders why he has not taken the time to fully examine the nature of this dance before. He realises that almost all of his experiences of spell casting have usually been done from a situation of urgency, or as a pragmatic stepping stone to achieve something, a something which his mind has treated as a priority. In short he has always treated magic as a means to an end, even though he has always thought of himself as wanting to understand, but now, on reflection, the manner in which he has tried to go about constructing that understanding has been ill conceived. Indeed, the very act of thinking about understanding as something that has to be constructed is telling, in and of itself, and reflecting thus, Hood glimpses something profound. Since he has started on the journey of ‘learning’ he has taken in what others have given, or written, or stated, seen the efficacy and results of this knowledge, and then compared it and contrasted it with other aspects of things that are known. In this way he has recognised similarities and via observation and insight has, in a manner of speaking, put two and two together to form something new. It is as if everything that he knows is a blanket but a blanket with badly stitched seams and, although it hangs together sufficiently well to serve a purpose, it is mismatched and motley made. No, as Hood now realises, understanding flows. It is not a matter of putting two and two together, it is a matter of taking one, and allowing it to blossom, or conversely, taking many and seeing how they may be viewed as one.

Hood lets these thoughts wash over him, wash through him, and allowing himself to consider them seriously, sits, cross legged, before the broken window. He closes his eyes and listens.

Drip, drip…shhhh.

The faint stirring of a breeze, the soft drip of water - tears falling. Hood smiles to himself at the allusion. Water and wind, two distinct noises…or one soundscape, an interdependent blend where each affects the other, indistinguishable as separate instances except via a strange focusing of mind?

Everything is everything!

Hood’s focus softens and widens. He gazes up at the ringed petals about the central rose, lets his eyes circle from one, to the next, to the next, all the way around, and then all the way around again. He considers the story, considers it not as twelve distinct instances, but as a continuum. Round and round. The story - an allegory - a simple telling of time, laid out in time, without end or beginning…Which raises the question regarding time and how it should be considered.

Hood’s eyes search the petals before him.

What is time?

Each moment birthing the next - a procession: the totality of cause and effect, unfolding - but one in which one finds oneself contained within, mixed up and indistinguishable from it all.

Time is the aether!

And realising this Hood has come full circle, for it was this intuited notion of time that he was considering in order to heal the great rose window. Simply moments ago, and he could not have fully expressed it, did not know why what he was intuiting would work, and it was for this reason, although he began his casting, he hesitantly stopped. But it is so much clearer to him now.

Of course it should work…shouldn’t it?

Hood stands and begins again with the levitation spell, rippling the weave and hooking onto his fingers each tiny thread that corresponds to a sliver of glass or an edging of lead. The threads are multitude but Hood is patient and more importantly utterly fascinated as to whether what he is about to attempt will work. With the threads held, he splays out his fingers and turns his hands almost palms up, his thumbs thrusting forward, speaking the words of power associated with part of a healing spell, accelerating the threads away from him, as one would do with the body’s energy streams. The effect is, that as the ribbons proceed, it feels that they are drawn together as one and feed through and out from the centre of his palms, moving forward before him, swaying and pooling like the hair of the drowned drifting in water. As the ribbons continue to feed forward, an act akin, Hood believes, to drawing the past into the present, or reversely, replacing the objects of the present to positions of the past, the glass and lead follow their aetheric trajectory, retracing their pathways through the air. Slowly, the image of a resplendent Aspartemane begins, at first with a strange crow like void, to reassemble itself. Hood, utterly entranced with what he is doing pays no notice to how draining this new magic is. He does not notice the sweat that breaks on his brow, gathering and then dripping from his nose…and he does not notice the shadows that slip into the library chamber.

He wants it complete, or as complete as he can make it…it is almost as if the Goddess herself demands it.

And then it is done.

The full weight of the effort that Hood has expended crashes down upon him. He sinks to his knees, gasping, his head bowed, the ruined library spinning about him. He tries to steady himself, putting a hand on the cold damp stone before him and leaning forward, his heart thumping in his chest. Positioned so, he slowly becomes aware of a presence behind him, and experiences that sliver of fear when an animal realises how vulnerable they are.

A soft laugh and what appears to be a slow but appreciative clap sounds out. Hood slowly turns, fearing the worst, his eyes trying to focus, and as they do so, they make out the blurred outline of a masked figure.

“Madeleine?” Hood rasps.

“No, young man.” A hand reaches for Hood and helps him to his feet. “I fear you may have drank a little too deeply. Take a moment, whilst I marvel at the result of what I cannot fathom.” The figure steps back and Hood’s eyes slowly drift back into focus.

“Madame Masque?” says Hood, confused on more than one level. For although it sounds like Madame Masque and to all intents and purposes the person before him is acting like Madame Masque - at least in the way in which Hood remembers her - the person wearing the mask is definitely NOT Madame Masque…or at least is not the same person who was wearing the mask when last he met them.

“Hmm,” she hmms in response, still gazing, it would seem, in admiration at what Hood has accomplished. “Almost perfection,” she says, carefully examining the window.

A small piece of glass falls from one of Aspartemane’s antlers and shatters on the floor.

“Almost,” a tone of humour creeping into her voice, before turning quite earnest: “but I can see that you can only work with what remains,” understanding that not all of the window is actually present. “The guild has access to some highly skilled artisans. I shall see to it that we locate a couple of glass-smiths and have them put the finishing touches to your endeavours before the night is out. It is a beautiful piece and it would be a shame for it to be lost, having stood the test of time for all these years.”

Hood has slowly regained his senses but is still confused as to the presence of Madame Masque. He has neither the energy or the inclination to speak and so tries a simple rasp of “How…”

“…did I know you were here? Well…” Her mask tilts momentarily to that of Madeleine’s leaning against Hood’s satchel. “Let us just say that: ‘I have my eyes’. But it would seem, may I be so bold in saying, and touch upon what may be something painfully close to your heart, that Madeleine no longer has hers,” she says, the mask turning and looking squarely at Hood.

Hood meets the gaze of the mask, and the lady behind it, then nods silently, his shoulders stooping somewhat, reflecting his feelings. He bends to pick up the mask that in some weird sense was his friend, and passes it gently to Madame Masque, who takes it reverently in hand and cradles it to her chest. “We offer you thanks for returning her to her kind,” she says in a strangely formal manner.

Standing still for a moment, and if Hood’s senses are not still awry, Madam Masque appears to whisper softly to the mask that she holds, before turning on her heal, her white dress swishing as she does so, and, with her one free hand, snaps her fingers in the air. “Follow me Master Hood, for our business is only but beginning, and we have a meeting to attend.”

Hood does a double take, then realises that the finger snapping is not directed at him, for from the shadows two guild members materialise to flank Madame Masque as she walks swiftly towards the main library doors. Hood taking a deep breath and picking up his satchel, shakes out the slow creeping pain that is stirring again in his hand, and slowly trots to catch up with the Guild members.

All the while, the goddess Aspartemane, as if protectively watching over Hood, gazes serenely down.