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1. He's back in England, and there are no witchbreed here, just witches and their familiars - long, sleek beasts of many colours, with names carved into their sides: Ford, Mercedes, Jaguar.*2. There's a girl with blonde hair running towards him, and a man running after her, clad in unlikely clothes."What is happening?" he gasps, only half-aware of his surroundings. In the corner, a blue box is starting to glow."We're being chased by a Thlingor!" The man enthuses, grabbing him and dragging him towards the blue box. He smells odd; comforting, and Nicholas is abruptly reassured. "Fancy coming along?"*3. There is a room, built and furnished too sparsely to be anything other than a cell. One wall is a different colour than the rest, and he does not recognise the material, only that it is smooth like glass. He tries striking it occasionally, just to listen to the sound it makes. Meals appear; meals disappear. The room continues.At last, a man arrives with thinning hair and empty eyes. "Hello," he says in a brittle voice. "Welcome to the Ministry of Love. My name is Winston."*4. He almost runs into her, not paying attention. Shows he's getting old, maybe; it never would have happened before. She's beautiful, at any rate, and clad in one of those outfits that seem so popular here: tight skirt, tight jacket, silk shirt, and she might as well have been wearing a sign saying 'Witchbreed' for all the subtlety of it all. "Oh, I'm sorry," she says, and grabs his hand as he's reaching for his fallen papers. "No, please, let me."He lets her. He listens to her introduce herself, thinking what an apt name for a liar she had. Lie-lah, as if she'd been born Witchbreed and had not chosen it. he nods, and he smiles, and then he leans in a little and whispers in her ear, "tell your employers to stay away from me, or they will greatly regret ever crawling out of their pit."He's walking along the beach and thinking that maybe he should visit home once in a while, and he smells the air and thinks, well, this isn't so bad, is it?*5. It all looks familiar, dark wood and tangled vines and even the distant birdsong, like he had never left at all. He stumbled through the trees, pushing the foliage out of his way, for what felt like hours, searching and calling for - for anyone, really, for anyone at all.It takes him a rather long time to realise that there is no one here. It takes him even longer - not until after the first pains come, and he could barely stand up - for him to realise why.*fin
