Katsovo walked through the city. Like most of her kind, and despite what some people have claimed there are others of her kind, she did not know what she was looking until she found it, or it found her.

Some might have considered the city to be large and varied, consisting of many races, and many kinds, not all of whom would have been recognisable and known to the common people of this century. And there were some, Katsovo among them, who would be truly unknown to all the mortalkind despite the many names she would be known by in books and legends and memories.

She walks among this city talking to whom she wills, hearing the tales of beggars and thieves, dancing with the rich and smiling at their petty fancies that they use to hide themselves. And so she finds what she was searching for.

He is a man, so ordinary to himself, so arrogant in thoughts like many of his kind in this city, so confident in his powers. But these powers are nothing, for they are powers of mortals. Catching sight of Katsovo he decides that he must be the one to catch her, the one to seduce her, the one to love her as he has loved others. But he does not know who she is, to him she is but a woman he does not know, mortal like everyone he knows.

And so the game of Katsovo begins again. Like it has begun and ended so many times before, so many times to come. It starts with a conversation, a line used so many times by this man, and that Katsovo has heard many times of it’s like before. She smiles at his petty arrogance but feels that somehow this is why she is here and leaves her wonderings to examine this mortal man.

She sees a mortal of eight and twenty, primped and primed by money to look like who he thinks he should look like rather than what he is, but she can see what he is, and she smiles. She decides that here is something she might enjoy.

He sees her smile and mistakes it for a smile at him, for he is of the kind that exists in all cities and all times, the kind that thinks that is there for his benefit. He does not see her for what she is, for to him is the blindness of mortalkind that has blighted this city and this world. He never sees the people who serve him and walk past him, and watch him with terror, with fear, with disdain, and with nothingness. He sees a smile and thinks “she is mine”.

He offers her the wisdom of his words, thinking them worthy of all things, and greater by far than the words and thoughts of all in this world. Little knowing of what lies outside his city, for mortalkind were ever unknowing of what they had no wish to know.

Katsovo smiles and thinks of the many she has known in all the long years who thought as he did. She thinks of the many she has known who were more powerful and more fond of themselves than this man. She thinks of the many she has known who were truly better than this man in oh so many ways, the mystics, the thieves, the ascetics, the beggars, and the kings. She accepts his words and his flattery and lets him believe that she is a mortal and thus interested in what he has to say.

He thinks she is the one for him and resolves to make her his, he arranges for them to meet again in the greatest restaurant in the city for he is of the kind that believes that money and shiny things are the way to all things. After she has left he asks about Katsovo and discovers that everyone knows her but none know her. And he is intrigued by the mystery.

Katsovo returns to her house in this city, she lives in a manner befitting her kind, in a manner that some would have considered a temple in ancient times. In this city all are temples, some are to forgotten gods worshipped by those who have forgotten who they are worshipping, and have forgotten that they are worshipping. Some are temples in the street to the sky, and their priests are those who lie at the bottom ignored by those who dream of the top. And some are temples merely to the gods who live in the heads of each of the inhabitants of these private temples.

The sun shines each dawn on the buildings that reach to the sky for the ones who rule this city wish to show their power and their riches to all that live there, they wish to impress each other with their majesty, but to one such as Katsovo who has seen the majesty of cities that all now living of mortalkind have forgotten, they are but children trying to impress a mother they will never know.

A meal for two, of dishes sublime to those of jaded palates. For the man believes himself to have eaten the most exquisite of dishes as is his right by position and power, but Katsovo has eaten the dishes of all the races and lands of this world and knows that these dishes are but dust and carrion. But still she smiles and talks of little things, and listens to this man and his dreams of the power he holds and the power he believes he holds.

The man talks to impress himself and thinks of what he will do with his power, for he still has not seen Katsovo for what she is. He knows himself and is content in his power, in his belief that she is his to play with and that it is merely a game he is playing, a distraction from his life in the city, the life that he believes the city needs to survive. For his kind has ever believed in their power above all as they live their lives above all.

But in their arrogance and in the lies they always tell themselves they hide from those who rule the city, they hide from those who would be ruled, they hide from the common people of the city. Truly this man is no different despite his thoughts of his power.

He dreams his little dreams he thinks are big dreams as Katsovo smiles. For she knows what this man is really like and she is waiting for him to decide what he wants, for him to show what he is truly like when he is alone. She can see his heart that even he does not know, she can see his soul that he believes is his alone, but she knows that he is merely a common man who thinks he is a man above all others.

In this city of lies above and truths below Katsovo watches the waiters and the people around her, she sees the hate inside for those that surround them and the envy that exists in the hearts and minds of the people who believe themselves perfect. Katsovo in her life has seen many who thought themselves perfect and fewer who could have truly claimed that some aspect of them was almost perfect, and none of those who live in the heights of this city would fall into the category or possibility of perfection. But in the gutters and alleys Katsovo has met one who could truly claim this.

This man smiles as he prepares for the finale of the game he thinks he is playing, this game he has played so many times before, little knowing that the game he is playing is not of the rules of mortalkind that he has played so many times before. For in his assurance of power he believes that mortalkind is all there is.
In this city those who live above have no fear of those below for they are confident in their power over those who live below, and they know that those below have no wish to harm them. Indeed many of them will never know of the lives that those they pretend to rule live. And many of them have no wish to know of the lives of cold decadence of those they rule from below.

Who leads who is a matter of perception, this man perceives that it his power and his reaches that are leading this woman. Katsovo perceives different for she knows that this man has led her through his actions and his power and that she has led him through his thoughts and cold and jaded desires. Who has led who, who has found the truth, only Katsovo knows.

In this city there is still love in the streets and the temples, there is still companionship of equals, and companionship of nights. There are those who love forever, never leaving in their thoughts and hearts those whose bodies and minds they have chosen. There are those who love for a night or an hour to keep the demons and monsters of the dark and of their minds at bay, forever wishing for what they can never have.

And in the night of the city the man talks of his wishes and his power to Katsovo, he tells her of what he can do to her, and of what she can do. He tells her of the things he has done and of what he can have done. And Katsovo listens, and looks at this man who thinks himself a prince of mortalkind, and she tells him the truth.

Above the city there is a change and those who think they rule shudder in the night at the loss they do not yet know, yet they feel, each in their hearts how close they came and they change above. Below the city there are smalls and those of them that sleep each night sleep easier despite never knowing or suspecting what has happened.

Katsovo walks through the city, smiling and dreaming, and waiting for something to happen.

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