It’s cold outside; the rain falls down and Adrian Trench, Knight-in-exile, thinks that it might even be the size of fists, hail like rocks. But he’s got a gin and lemon, his winter robes hang by the door in the event that he needs to leave in a hurry, and the windows close almost all the way, in this tiny little bar.

So many stories take place in a bar. A bar, Adrian thinks, or an inn or a marketplace, or somewhere close to them. Places where people can meet and talk, and talk to remember and pass on great stories. Adrian watches as two children, a boy and a girl, who he now realises are brother and sister (after reaching out and skimming along the quiet sides of their minds), play in the gutter on the other side of the street. The rain soaks their clothes and their faces look happy. He can feel their laughter swelling up inside him, mixed with the drink, taking him to marvellous places. And now he can almost hear it through the cracked window, over the roaring sounds of bar patrons telling stories of far-off planets, and the crackling and hissing of flames coming from wall-mounted firesticks.

Then suddenly there’s a shout. Through the haze, brought on by world-weariness and frustration, mainly, Adrian can feel something stir. The walls around him are still swirling, still moving rhythmically inward and outward with his breathing, but there’s something more happening, just beyond the edge of his perception.

A man flies across the room towards Adrian, thrown from the bar, but stops in mid-air before he gets there. The other people in the bar see this and shrink away from the fires reluctantly, knowing that this is a mind-trick manifest in the physical realm, and they are not welcome to interfere. Adrian holds the man above a table for a several seconds, trying to think. He contemplates the man’s appearance; his dark skin, not black but olive, augmented by a thick brown beard and raggedly hair which hangs down around his face. Adrian senses a calm about him, this stranger, and in a drunken brashness leaps into his mind.

Ah, there’s a true calm here. A calm over an outrage. Adrian jumps into the man’s memories and finds himself confronted by a kindly figure forcing peddled wares on this dark, olive-skinned stranger. Two for the price of one and a half! the man insists. And the stranger is sickened to his stomach by the audacity of this kindly man.

Adrian lets the stranger go. He falls to the floor and stumbles. Adrian is sober enough to cushion his fall a little. Now, after delving into the stranger’s mind, Adrian knows why there was a ruckus at the bar, too. The midnight news reports were showing an assassination, some governor named Tao killed by a militia group. And this olive-skinned stranger had calmly protested the men who cheered on the newscaster. A great event has occurred, and the stranger did not agree with it.

Adrian feels that the day is important, but doesn’t know why. Something happened on this day, and memories of this event echo down through the annals of human history, riding on subconscious waves of thought, whether from a far-distant past or a far-unchangeable future.

And then he spins suddenly towards the door, seeing a glimpse of a connection, like a candle in the half-light of dawn. The olive-skinned stranger is gone. Adrian looks out the window and sees him there, across the street, smiling in the rain with the children. He hands them each what looks like a small crystal, but Adrian can’t make it out. His mind is, inexplicably, closed. Adrian tries to get up, fails, tries again and is outside as quickly as his legs will take him, but the olive-skinned stranger is gone.

Adrian stands in the rain, too tired to chase, and spends a minute watching the children playing with their crystals. He smiles to himself; no-one else is around now. Then, like a man finally resigned to the truth that there’s nothing he can do to stop a glacier from overtaking his town, Adrian turns and goes back into the warm.