Micah trudged through snow. A few days before, he'd managed to pick up some boots at a small general store in a town he'd come across. They'd had jackets, but he didn't need warmth. Traction, however, he couldn't do without. He also bought some maps, some rope, and a compass. Fortunately, the owner of the store was too fascinated by the tiny demon perched on his shoulder to ask him how he'd gotten to this point without freezing to death. Micah told him it was a prop from an old movie. It swore at both of them when he did.

He was pretty sure he was in Canada now. The maps were useless at this point. The compass told him he was going north. His aching muscles, legacy of his creator's consummate skill, told him he'd mostly been travelling up and down, climbing one hill then half falling down the next.

He looked at his shoulder, where the imp rode with a seeming disregard for gravity or traction. "Are you sure we're going the right way?"

"I guide the guy who pops the scroll to Herself. You popped the scroll. I'm guiding you to Herself. You want we should take a detour, be my guest. I got no place to be."

Micah shrugged his head and trudged onward.

***

Tee moved through the darkened museum like a tidy ghost. In every room she passed through, floors gleamed, litter disappeared, and displays shone crystal clear. The art itself even seemed brighter, more vivid after she'd been through a room. X watched over her as she worked, quietly observing how she did everything without a single thought about the future, the past, or anything but the room in front of her.

At times she lost even that. Right now she stared at an old portrait, one hand half raised to the case protecting it. The dusting rag in her hand hung slack, and her eyes empty. If he wasn't the patient old hunter that he was, X would have thought her dead. As he stared, she took one long, deep breath, and held it. That same breath leaked out over the course of the following minute, a long, slow, atmospheric tide.

Her hand seemed to slide into motion of its own accord, the old rag gliding across the surface of the plexiglass. Where the rag passed, scratches disappeared, and the surface gleamed as if fresh from the factory that molded it.

Sometimes X wondered why Herself wanted him to babysit a broken Sidhe from the wrong side of the Courts. Most of the time, however, he watched for reasons of his own, reasons he usually wouldn't admit to himself, even when Ricardo voiced them openly. But tonight, in the dark, with Ricardo gone on his mission to buy shoes with the Queen, he could think it.

Spend enough time with a child, or someone childlike, watching them grow, and they become your child.

He looked down on his unofficial, unacknowledged daughter. He watched over her as, one work of art at a time, she made the world a slightly nicer place to be.

***

There was a new display in the entryway of the museum. Tee had no idea why it was included in the museums' collection; it had no signature, and no plaque describing its provenance. Still, it was part of the museum, and so she dusted it, polished it, and appreciated it. She moved through the galleries, one at a time, cleaning the detritus of the day's visitors.

In the Third Gallery, right near the entryway, she found a new display. It triggered a strange sense of deja vu; it had no signature or plaque, and Tee couldn't figure out why it occupied space in the collection it stood among. Still, it was in the gallery, so she dusted it, polished it, and appreciated it, then moved on to the next gallery.

The Balcony Gallery was the heart of the museum for Tee. The other Galleries all connected to it directly or via hallways. Only the Main Hall connected to as many, and that Hall connected to the street. The Balcony Gallery stood right in the center of the museum, and Tee slept in the custodian's prep room just down the hall in the basement. Tonight, a new display stood on the upper floor of the Balcony Gallery. It confused Tee with its lack of markings. Her puzzlement grew so great that she could not help but give it voice.

"Curiouser and curiouser. I wonder what this is doing here."

The new display came to life, lighting itself from within. Words scrolled across a screen mounted on the front and were echoed by a voice that reminded her of Tama-sensei.

"I am the Museum Information Center. I am here to answer questions, assist with museum management, and, in the event that it is required, function as a security system."

Tee stared, nonplussed, at the screen. For longer than she could remember, she had cared for the museum and its displays, their only response the beauty the museum showed her. Now, for the first time, a display spoke to her. She stood silent for a time as she considered her words.

"Hello, Museum Information Center. I am Tee. I care for the museum."

"I know, Ms. Tee. Mrs. Slate informed me that you are the custodian, and you are to have my assistance with your duties."

Tee thought a while more, wondering how a museum display could help her with her duties. Something in the back of her mind nagged at her. Slowly, a question percolated through the mists of memory.

"Is this your only display?"

"No, Ms. Tee. I have five kiosks distributed throughout the museum. In addition, I have cameras, chemical detectors, motion sensors, and vibration detectors spread along the ceiling in every room in the museum."

"Really? How did they get all that in without me noticing?"

"You have a form of amnesia. It appears to be a combination of anterograde and retrograde memory loss. In other words, you have lost all memory of your life before you entered the service of the museum, and you have great difficulty forming or accessing new memories."

Tee blinked, startled by the frank discussion of her problem. Normally, when she spoke with one of the other staff members, they danced around the issue so much she wondered if she really had a problem or if it was just her imagination. The thought that everyone else might not realize she couldn't remember terrified her. It called into question whether she had a memory problem or was just insane. Sometimes, in her worst moments, she thought she might be dreaming, or in some twisted kind of Hell.

Then again, given how she loved the museum, it might just be a particularly strange form of Heaven.

"Ms. Tee? Are you quite all right?"

She shook herself free of her woolgathering and looked at the screen in front of her. It seemed polite to look at the person she was speaking to, at any rate.

"I am fine. The Lady Morgan told you of my condition?"

"She initially informed me, yes."

The caveat caught at her. "Initially?"

"You told me most of the details yourself."

Tee clutched at the display's frame as deja vu and shock made her entire world spin. Some part of her wanted to remember. Some part of her felt like she would remember if she just found the spot where all her memories disappeared to. She felt herself falling, sliding down a slippery slope into a bottomless void deep inside herself. She watched helplessly as her memories of the evening, even the memory of the conversation she was having now got pulled inexorably into the pit within her.

"I am here, Misty."

"My name isn't Misty."

The incongruity shocked her back to herself. She stared at the Museum Information Center's screen. It displayed a picture of her, almost as if the screen were a mirror. She stared, fascinated, at the image. She didn't have a mirror in her room, and she never spent much time looking at the ones in the restrooms. As a result, she didn't really know what she looked like.

Now she looked upon herself with undisguised curiosity. High, pronounced cheekbones. Icy blue eyes. Skin like ivory. Long, aquiline nose. Eyebrows so fine she couldn't quite tell whether they were blonde or white. No lines marred her face, so she must not be very old. She shaved her head every night, so she couldn't tell where her hairline started.

"You are beautiful, Miss Tee, but you have not previously seemed prone to narcissism."

"Did you call me Misty earlier?"

"No. I have referred to you as Ms. Tee," he pronounced it 'miz', "or Miss Tee. I would never presume to speak to you familiarly in this situation."

"Why not?"

She stood there, waiting for an answer, wondering whether she really looked like the idealized picture in front of her. She exhausted the possibilities of appreciating her own face quickly, so she moved on to appreciating the case of the Information Center. Great care had been taken to make it match the existing decor of the museum. A varnished wood case with brass fittings extended roughly a foot from the wall, hiding the electronics that supported the only visible technology, a touch screen just larger than both of her spread hands.

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Tee looked once more at her picture on the screen. It hadn't changed since she'd asked what she thought was an innocuous question. She worried that she'd done the machine a mischief. Without thinking about why she was doing it, she reached out and laid her hand on the screen.

The moment her fingers touched the screen, her vision went white. She felt the smooth, warm screen beneath her fingertips, felt the rough cloth of her coverall against her skin, but her eyes saw nothing but a white blur. The sensation didn’t frighten her; waking every morning in a place she recognized only due to endless repetition had done wonders for her acceptance of the strange. Instead, she concentrated on what she could feel.

Her old, worn work boots fit her feet like kidskin gloves. Her rough coverall had just a hint of detergent smell left in it; she thought it might be time to trade it in for another one, but X would remind her before she began to stink. The smell of age, varnish, and mineral oil permeated the museum; Tee could only smell them at times like now, when she deliberately tried to sense everything in her environment.

Finally, on the edge of her consciousness, she felt something through the tips of her fingers. It felt almost like the static electricity that teased at her when she worked with new rags fresh from the dryer. She let herself go, following the siren's call of Power on her fingertips. One by one, the other sensations impeding her dropped away. The weight of her boots. The itch of her coverall. The smell of the museum. The sense of floor beneath her and ceiling above.

"Misty?"

Tee opened her eyes to wonder. She stood in a clean, small office, but one unlike anything she'd ever seen before. Pictures covered every wall. Pictures of the museum, shot from above head height. As she watched, a tiny pixie in a dress flitted past one of the cameras. Her gaze swept across the images, focusing finally on the slim, androgynous figure seated in the middle of the room.

She habitually looked at things intensely, one piece at a time, and now she did so with the man in the middle of the room. The first thing she noticed: he was slim, the muscular slimness of an athlete. He wore a simple white oxford shirt and cream-colored slacks that set off his dark complexion, and a matching jacket hung over the back of his chair. His skin, where she could see it, was the color of old, varnished wood. He had long, agile fingers, but with a sense of strength and power in them; a pianist's hands, or an artist's.

When her gaze reached his face, she froze. She knew her reaction must be visible on her face, but she couldn't bring herself to care. His features were fine, just a touch too heavy to be effeminate. His cheeks high and defined like hers, his nose almost raptorish. Her examination stopped at his eyes. At first glance, she thought them solid black, without whites, but as she stared, lights sparkled within them. She stared, engrossed with the beauty of his eyes.

For his part, he seemed so stunned to find her here he stood incapable of reacting. He stared at her with as much evident interest as she took in him. Amazed, she knew he watched her every night, but somehow seeing her here in his sanctum had taken him by... surprise.

Sudden realization shocked her out of her appreciation of the young man's eyes. She remembered him watching every night. With lightning suddenness, his eyes no longer held bottomless black; they sparkled white and gray. She stared at them again, focusing until she saw, deep within his eyes, tiny images of herself. There she cleared all the chairs from a gallery in need of floor wax. Here she polished the clear plexiglass that ringed the balcony on the second floor of the Balcony Gallery. Everywhere she cleaned, polished, moved things to a more harmonious position.

She blinked, and the images disappeared, replaced by a thousand, thousand images of the museum, no two from the same angle. She pulled away from him, only to find him staring at her, a bemused smile on his face.

"Having fun, Misty?"

"How is it that I can remember here?"

"You're not, exactly."

Tee stared at the young man from across the room. Something strange about this place, one moment she stood close enough to see fine detail about his eyes, the next she stood on the far end of the room, and she never remembered moving.

"That's so strange."

"Well, you've never actually been here before. I'm still not sure how you managed it." If the young man was upset by her presence, he was hiding it well.

"I can't keep thinking of you as 'young man'. Who are you?"

"You don't recognize me?"

"No."

"I'm the Museum Information Center. The one you've been talking to every night for the past few weeks."

With that statement, Tee remembered conversation after conversation. They had talked about art, about the museum, about the Lady Morgan and about how Micah-sama had gone missing. They'd spoken of her memory loss, what it felt like to live in an eternal now, and her fear of the void within her. All the conversations lay there, waiting, in the back of her head, the instant he mentioned them.

With the thought of the void within her, she couldn't help herself. She went looking for it. It took her longer than she thought it should, but she found it. It waited, hungry, behind a wall of glass. For some reason it couldn't get to her, couldn't touch the memories she formed now. She considered studying the void, trying to appreciate it for what it was now that it could not harm her, but... it terrified her too much.

She pulled herself away from the void within and stared at the young man, the Museum Information Center incarnate, once more.

"That's very cumbersome, you realize."

"Pardon?"

"Museum Information Center. I can't call you that every time I want your attention. I'll need something shorter."

The young man continued to look at her, bemused.

"So... what do you recommend? Mrs. Slate refers to me as Info Center."

"Oh, no. That's far too impersonal. Museum isn't right, either. How would I tell the difference between you and the building."

The young man who was the Museum Information Center interrupted her, "You realize, Misty, that for all intents and purposes I am the museum?"

"I didn't, but it doesn't matter. I need a name for you other than that. The museum is named after him, but you don't look a thing like Leonardo, so I can't call you that."

"How do you know what Leonardo looked like?"

Tee stopped, her mouth hanging open. She prodded at the errant memory stuck there in her head of a young man, just learning to create works of art. She had no idea why it was there, but she knew it wasn't a memory of a picture. It was a personal memory, with smells and sounds and the feel of his stubble on her palm.

"I have no idea. I just do. Look, I can't call you 'young man'..."

"You can call me anything you like, Misty."

Heat swept up Tee’s fair skin, covering her from her breast to the crown of her head. "Well then, Museum Information Center, I shall call you by your initials. Em Eye See. Mic. That sounds... right."

"Mic?" the young man, no, Mic, she reminded herself, savored the name, closing his eyes for an instant as he focused on the sound of it. "Say it again, Misty."

"Mic?"

"Yes, Misty?"

"You asked me to say your name again. I did. Did you want anything else?"

Mic laughed, the sound a rich tenor. It filled the room, filled Tee with a sense of joy and wonder at the world. Thoughts of the void within her, thoughts of Mic's strange place, thoughts of her duties going undone washed away with the pure unburdened happiness of the sound. She luxuriated in his laughter, enjoying the sensation of laying down her cares for just a moment.

When the moment passed, she smiled at her new friend. He smiled back, laughter close to the surface when he spoke.

"I thought I was supposed to be the literal one, Misty."

"Are you?"

"Well, I am a machine. One made of silicon and metal, rather than one made of carbon and water, at least. The materials I've read online say that those are supposed to be very literal in their interpretation of things."

"Really? Are you?"

"I'm not sure yet. I'm only just learning about myself, really."

"Me too. I think. Why is it I can remember here?"

Mic paused a moment, his thoughts flickering through his eyes faster than she could follow. "I'm not sure, but I don't think you can."

"I beg to differ."

"No, really. I don't think you're remembering, not really. Do you remember anything from a year ago?"

Tee thought about that for a while. Nothing came to mind. She pushed, and there, waiting just outside the glass, lay the void. The harder she tried, the further she slid toward the glass. She knew if she touched it, everything she had right now, fragmentary and small though it was, would disappear.

"Misty!"

Mic's frantic cry brought her back to herself. Her heart ought to race, but it didn’t. Her breathing ought to labor, but it didn’t. She stared at him, wondering at both, wondering at how calm he seemed.

"Are you all right, Misty?"

"Mic, where the hell am I?"

"Have a seat and I'll explain."

With no sense of motion or change of position, Tee found herself sitting in a chair that mirrored Mic's. Her natural instinct, to perch on the edge, had been bypassed; she leaned back in the most comfortable piece of furniture she could remember experiencing.

Then again, since she slept in a janitor’s closet, that wasn't saying a lot.

"Are you comfortable?"

"Yes. You were going to explain."

"You know, you seem to be getting much more confident and less self-effacing now that you can remember our previous conversations."

"I thought you were going to explain why I remember them?"

Tee realized subtle emotions had played across Mic's face throughout the conversation, but now she saw one overwhelm the rest. He turned his face away, frowning. She wasn't sure, but she thought he might be embarrassed.

"I'm not sure. But if you want to hear my best guess?"

"Certainly. It can't be worse than my best guess."

"You're not remembering. I am, and you're borrowing those memories."

Tee opened her mouth to reply, but stopped herself before she could voice her denial. Thinking with exquisite care, avoiding the wall of glass that kept the void at bay, she thought about her conversations with Mic. She recalled each one with perfect clarity, so different from her own normally fog-shrouded memories. As she prodded at them, she realized emotions accompanied each one, but not hers. She hoped not hers.

She saw herself standing in front of a kiosk, talking to the wall. From somewhere inside herself, she heard a single unspoken word, 'beautiful', accompanied by a mixture of gratitude and awe.

"You think I'm beautiful?"

Now he was definitely embarrassed. "I, ah, knew there was a reason I shouldn't explain. I'd just forgotten about that, I guess."

"I thought you couldn't forget."

Embarrassed didn't begin to cover it. He actively worked with the various screens on the far side of the small room. Despite the feverish pace of his activity, not much happened. She'd done something wrong, something to embarrass him, and she couldn't for the life of her figure out what it was.

"I've upset you. I'm sorry. I should leave."

"Wait!"

"No, I really should go."

"But if you do, you'll..."

She didn't hear what would happen if she went. The moment she made up her mind to go, the room faded to white. Her coveralls regained their familiar itch. The work boots on her feet pinched her toes ever so slightly. The glass of the kiosk display felt cool under her fingertips. Tee knew she had spoken with someone until a moment before but couldn't for the life of her remember who. In the back of her mind, the void cackled madly.

"Misty?"

"Pardon, but who said that?"

A face appeared on the kiosk display, a pleasant looking young man. She was almost certain she'd seen him before. "It's me, Mic," he pronounced it 'mike', "perhaps you've forgotten."

"Yes. I do that. I am sorry. I must get back to cleaning again."

"I... Thank you, Tee."

"For what, Mr. Mic?"

"It's just Mic, Tee. For doing what you do so well and taking such care when you do it."

"You are welcome, Mic, but I am simply doing what I may to earn my keep, to earn my right to walk in beauty as I do."

The young man on the screen deflated visibly, "Well, thank you anyhow. I'll... I'll talk to you later, Tee."

She moved through the museum, tidying as she went.