The Shadow’s bar sat on a lonely spit of land, at the edge of Bogardan where the isle met the sea. In all the planes, as shockingly many of its patrons over the years might attest, there was seldom if ever a stranger place where drinks were sold. The barman was some manner of shadow creature, probably something out of Urborg who had decided centuries past that becoming proprietor of his own tavern and sometimes inn was a more fulfilling and profitable than stalking the night in search of breath or blood. In one corner there was a small tree growing in an ugly clay pot, but the fruit it bore was not lemon nor lime but the very fruit of paradise, for though it is not known from where or when the cutting came it was a tree of utopia. On either end of the bar there were mounted clever counterfits of severed heads purported to be in the images of Urza planeswalker and Gerrard of the Weatherlight, the décor no doubt the lasting remnant of some tasteless joke made centuries past and never retracted.

Aria sat on one end of the bar, comfortable for once that the faceted glass-paste eyes of Urza were the only ones on her, that no one would care for once even if she stretched her wings wide, force of habit alone her cause for hiding them. She sipped her own drink, a mild ale for she could tolerate no stronger, as she watched the barman mix various liquors and other fluids in a skull and set the mixture ablaze like a torch before serving it. She could not stay for long she knew, for even should she have had the means to rent an upstairs room for the remainder of her days the place was too far from the woods and rivers for her to ever want to call it home. But, all the same, she could take here a moment’s rest.

Then, Aria felt a hand on her shoulder, and a voice in her mind.

You and I seem to share some secrets, the pretty, feminine voice said, If you want to talk about them, follow me upstairs.

The voice ceased, and the hand withdrew, and Aria turned in time to see a woman with long, snow-white hair, lily skin, and a simple, thin white dress walking slowly away and beginning to ascend the creaking stairs to the rented rooms above.

To follow, or not to follow? It could be a trap, but some part of Aria seemed to trust even the glimpse of the strange, white-haired woman. That both set Aria on edge and numbed the edge. Had the woman worked magic on her? It was almost impossible to tell but also difficult to feel concerned over it. Slowly, about as the woman reached the top of the stairs, Aria rose from her place, checked her cloak carefully, and trotted upwards after her.

Aria followed the woman into one of the small rooms, where she sat at one chair and motioned aria towards an empty stool.

“All right,” Aria said, closing the door, “What’s this about?”

The other woman looked up at her, affording Aria a good look at her host. The white-haired woman was certainly not old, for she was smooth-faced, bright-eyed, and high-breasted as the village matchmaker had often touted girls to the lads she sought to match them with, but somehow she did not seem exactly young either, her motions and expressions having a grace and fluidity that only came with the weight of some age.

“I will say first,” the woman said, her voice just like the one that had sounded in Aria’s mind, “That I am no mind-reader. But it has been given me to speak to the mind, and lately I have been able to… hear… some things. No words, nor pictures, nor even ideas, but just the sense of something or another in someone that you might call an assessment of their character.” She sighed, “I wish I had possessed this power longer, but I wish many things.”

“So then,” Aria asked, “What are you?”

“I am,” she said, “Like you I think. I saw in you something swirling. Chaotic. Dark. Frightening. It is something I have also seen in myself. You’re a Planeswalker, aren’t you?”

Aria nodded. Of all the things she kept concealed, that was the one she was most comfortable revealing to a stranger.

“As am I.” the stranger said, “My name is Mari Gwynn.”

“Aria.” She replied, “Pleased to meet you.”

“Do you think,” Mari asked, “You could tell me about how you came to be a Planeswalker?”

Aria shook her head. “I can’t say much. I was scared, and in pain, and then I was somewhere else.”

“I see.” Mari said, and looked down.

“That disappoints you?”

“I had just thought something and found I was wrong.” Mari replied, “I’m sorry, pay it no heed.”

Now that was asking quite a lot, to leave a pronouncement like that be. Normally, Aria might let it be anyway, out of politeness, but her host had her at a disadvantage and Aria dearly wanted the subject off her own past.

“What had you thought?” Aria asked.

Mari looked at Aria carefully, and fingered the fine silver chain that hung around her neck for a moment.

“You seem a decent sort,” Mari said, “But… I have been wrong before, to my sorrow.”

“I swear,” Aria said, “That I will do you no harm.”

“Swear instead,” Mari replied, “That anything I tell you will not leave this chamber.”

“I promise.” Aria replied, voice solemn.

Mari nodded, and then spoke quietly and with utter seriousness. “I had thought that you were, as me, something other than a human.”

Aria tried to nod sagely, avoiding giving away her secret just yet, in case Mari’s tale was a lure for her to come forward with her truth.

“You look like a human.” Aria said, “What are you, if not one?”

“It’s… hard to explain.” Mari replied. She paced over to a light end table and moved it towards the wall, then turned and latched the door, “Suffice to say you’d not believe it just from me saying so. But since you’ve sworn to keep my secret, I will share it with you.” She fingered the amulet on that silver chain, and closed her eyes.

“Before I got this,” she said, “There were many, on any world, who sought to do me harm, believing that my blood or bones or other parts would give them something they wanted. I hide as a human because I have to, not because I want to. I do not like deceit.”

And then, Mari Gwynn was gone. The air rippled and shimmered, and where the beautiful and undeniably human woman had stood, there was a beast the likes of which Aria had never seen, but of which she had heard tell.

She was something like a horse, for the most part, but seemed more nimble, perhaps like a deer. Her coat and mane and the tuft at the end of her long tail were pure white as the human Mari Gwynn’s hair, and from her forehead there sprouted a long, spiraling horn that shone like pearl. Around its neck, on a silver chain, the creature wore the same amulet as the human had.

Do not cry out. Mari’s voice rang in Aria’s mind, Some one would come to check, and these locks I do not think are very good.

“You’re a unicorn.” Aria said, breathless, “I didn’t know… didn’t know unicorns were even real.”

We are. Mari said with great sadness, But the wide planes are no place for my kind, and I endure them only because of this planeswalker curse that is inside me. Inside me as well are dark, swarming thoughts that came along with the curse. It was their like, those memories that are of the void and not my own, that I thought I also sensed somehow within you.

At once, Aria felt she had been bitterly ungenerous, and had treated Mari wrongly.

“You were not wrong.” Aria said, “not about… what I am, at least. Humans raised me, and I loved them as my family, but the day I became a Planeswalker was after they and I both realized I wasn’t one of them.”

Then your spark… does it come from outside as well?

“I don’t think so.” Aria shook her head, “I don’t have any… other memories either. If anything, I can’t remember some of what I should.”

That is strange. Mari said, Can you show me?

Aria started to refuse, but then she remembered she was in the upstairs room of an inn and bar owned by a shadow, where liquor fermented from the fruit of paradise could pass beneath the noses of long-dead heroes, talking to a unicorn. She carefully took her cloak from her shoulders and let her illusion go, revealing her gossamer wings. They were longer than she remembered, and momentarily Aria wondered if she wouldn’t need to find another way to conceal them.

“That’s what I am.” Aria said, “A changeling, child of two worlds, belonging to neither.”

I have some dark memories of this. Mari said, haltingly, Tell me, what do you know about your parents.

“That my father never sired me.” Aria said, “And my mother never gave birth to me, and their real child is somewhere with those who did sire and bear me, I know not where.”

Interesting. Mari replied, You haven’t met them, the parents of your birth?

“No.” Aria said. For a moment, she fell silent, but then she added one last piece, “At least, not that I can remember.”

You mentioned something earlier, about not remembering.

Aria nodded. “I went off into the forest one night. I don’t remember anything until I came back to town, with my new wings on my back and my new friends, a pack of wolves, at my heels. I… don’t know what happened out there. I might have met them.”

You should find out. Mari suggested, If not by going back where you have been, then by going forward and looking back. I can tell from the very words you say that your heart is troubled, and those strange threads that are within me… I cannot shake the feeling something like them is in you to. If you discover what that is, perhaps it will bring you some solace.

“Thank you,” Aria said. She called on the mana of the nearby sea and cast again the spell of invisibility so worn into her mind before throwing her cloak over her apparently bare back. Taking this as some sign, Mari caused the air to shimmer again, and once more the white-haired woman in that ivory gown stood where the unicorn had been, one hand clutching the amulet around her neck.

Aria walked towards the door.

“If you want to speak again,” Mari said, sitting down on the bed, “You can leave a message with the Shadow whenever you come through, for he’s a good sort, and my own search often brings me by.”

Aria nodded. “Same to you.” She said, “This isn’t my first time through.”

Mari smiled ever so slightly and said a pleasant goodbye, and Aria walked back down to the common room, where all eyes focused on the commonplace madness and it seemed demons and angels might rub shoulders with only glares passing between them. In the corner, a metal woman was singing a strange old song, and as Aria returned to her seat only the false eyes of a false Urza were upon her.

It was good, Aria thought, but she would not stay. How often had she thought of those days, the last days she had spent on Ikass, and how often had the missing ones slipped through her mind as though the memory did not want to be found.

There was something there, she told herself, and when she found it, who could say?

Perhaps she would finally find a place for herself as well.