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For Gabriel Clyde and Seth Drake, who know all too well

The tall white Borzoi sat at his midnight table outside the café, enjoying the strange and magical sensations of the fragile light all around him. It was and it was not like twilight; it was and it was not like a partial solar eclipse; it was and it was not day nor night. In the writings of some tormented soul, it might be said to be one of those nights when the barriers between worlds was thinnest, when something evil might slip through and devour souls. He was in no danger. His soul was his own, no matter what one might have suspected to the contrary.

The wolfhound was patient as he sipped his spice-laden tea, savoring the true taste that he could only find here in Saint Petersburg, no matter if they tried to call it Petrograd, or Leningrad, during those less-than-happy years. Perhaps it was location that added to the flavor, or perhaps it was anticipation. She would arrive soon enough, and the tea was strong and delicious, and the night not the least bit dark in any meaningful sense.

He paused to consider the history, his tail moving slowly in counterpoint to some distant, not quite heard melody. How many years now? He was reluctant to count, as if making a tally would somehow jinx the faintly hermetic quality of their meetings. If a moment is truly magical, he had learned, it doesn't do to try to mix in the ordinary. It would be like using common honey for a hydrangea mead, or mere sugar in some exquisite crème brulee. Magic, like genius and inspiration, should never be cheapened, quantified, or reigned-in.

"Good evening, Kirill."

Rising fluidly, a smile lighting up his long narrow muzzle, he greeted his visitor warmly. "Dominika,dorogaya." In continental fashion, he kissed the svelte white tigress on both cheeks and invited her to sit across from him. He indicated the samovar, and she nodded briefly. Original incarnations of urns such as these could have been made of anything from tin to silver; this one combined modern electric efficiency with a traditional design that at least kept the illusion of the traditional tea service. He poured from the teapot, keeping warm on the ring at the top of the samovar, into the glass container inside the pewter holder until it was a sociable two-thirds full; less would be stingy, more, indiscreet.

"You look well,dorogoy," she offered in return. "Has it been a good year?"

"I did find a home for one of the stories; the anthology paid $100 for it."

"American? Canadian? Australian? Where are you these days?"

"Kipped down in Oz," the Borzoi grinned, affecting just a touch of Steve Irwin. "Traded winter for summer in a single plane flight. The anthology, however, is based out of the U.S. We are a global community these days."

The lady cat sipped her tea, her whiskers upturned in appreciation and approval. "Makes things easier, I would guess."

"In many ways."

She set down her cup and looked at him thoughtfully. "Still keeping it up?"

"A thousand words a day, or at least the equivalent. As long as I make a full year with at least 365,000 words in it, right?"

"It's only a yardstick."

"I know that." He smiled softly at her. "It's a useful one, though. It helps to keep me on track. Oh..." He reached into his shirt pocket and removed a small thumb drive. "Easier to deliver that now than in the old days. Paper manuscripts could require whole steamer trunks, it seemed."

"I do trust you."

"And I trust you. But every writer wants 'just one more reader' in his flock."

She considered the drive, her emerald eyes strangely crystal clear even in the light of the white night, her beautiful face not neutral yet revealing nothing that he could fathom easily. "Do you get tired of it?"

"I do take a day off now and then." He sipped his tea, wondered just how much he should tell her, how much she didn't already know. "I certainly can't complain about inspiration, can I?"

"There is that," she chuckled. She held the pewter holder in both paws, looked at him over the rim, through the few threads of steam curling up from the cup. "Are you still lonely?"

He felt the ice in his veins for just a moment. "Occasionally. Sometimes, it lingers for days. I keep it at bay as best I can. New ways to communicate tend to help. When letters could take days, weeks, now we talk across the globe in milliseconds. I have lovers I've never even met, save for dots on a screen. And the stories bring more to me through the years." He looked around, seeing the café, the street, the various pedestrians who either didn't or couldn't sleep while the sun still shone, who wore new clothes and new styles yet looked as old as his memory would allow him to bring forward.

In its way, it was all so familiar. He remembered Dostoevsky - as well he should - and thought again of the star-crossed lovers on four nights when there were, for all intents, no stars to be seen. On this night, the summer solstice, the whitest of the white nights, stories seemed to swarm about his mind even more than they usually did. Lovers, enemies, loyalties, betrayals, civilian and military, civil and criminal, parent, child, and childless, the stories loomed. No wonder Russians are considered a passionate people, he thought, when all around them are stories waiting to be told.

"So many stories," he whispered.

"And they have to be told."

"Why me?"

The tigress set down her cup gently on the table, her long and expressive tail curling elegantly about her hindpaws. "You've never asked. Why now?"

"I don't know. Perhaps reassurance. I know that you've taken care of me all this time, and that you've never failed me, and through your continued patronage, I can only assume that I am not failing you. But these stories... someone else could tell them. Someone else must have heard them."

"That's the point, my_dorogoy." Her voice almost a whisper, her eyes held his as she continued. "Someone_must hear them, or they will never rest. There is no such thing as an 'ordinary' life. Every heart, while it beats, has something it must tell. If it is not told while the heart still beats, it must be told afterward. Someone must tell it. And someone else must hear, even if it's only one."

Reaching across the table, she took the wolfhound's forepaw in her own. "Not everyone can tell a story. Most people cannot, which is why their stories are never told, even to the ones who most need to hear them. You can tell a story, and you have done so... many, many stories over the years. How many names have you used? How many are known, how many are forgotten? But your stories... Kirill, I know that you doubt this, but I promise you that every story you have ever told was remembered by someone. Every story has touched someone. They will remember your tale, even if they don't remember who told it."

"But why?" No matter how he fought, the Borzoi could not prevent a tear from falling down his furry cheek. "Why can I not be remembered? Why can I not be appreciated for myself?"

She squeezed his paw tenderly. "Because they may not remember the storyteller, but they must remember the story. Dearest Kirill, you knew this from the day that you first discovered your gift. Few know how truly important the story is; fewer still know the value of the storyteller." She gestured with her muzzle toward the bookstore across the road. "Is that what you want?"

He glanced quickly at the shop window, knowing what he'd see - another myriad works of what readers expected, another panoply of mediocre words demanded by an undemanding audience, an epidemic of best-sellers that line the pockets, strip the mind, leave the heart untouched. He wrestled with the answer, part of him wanting to yell_Yes, by the damnable capricious gods of the mainstream, yes I want it, the money, the recognition, the prestige, the respect of those who don't even respect themselves enough to treat a story properly..._

Eyes closing, squeezing out yet more tears, the wolfhound felt the quiet touch against his heart of what he knew was the truth, even though it pained him. He didn't write the stories for the money, nor for fame, nor even because his beloved tigress benefactor had kept him whole and healthy and safe from harm for all these years, all these many, many years. He wrote the stories because the characters came to him and begged him to say what they could not, because his heart was too soft to turn them away, because he knew what it felt like not to be heard, and he couldn't bear to have someone else suffer that fate for all eternity.

He felt her move to his side, embrace him warmly, despite the disapproving looks from some few who still could not understand why the white nights were magical, who could not see past their own anger to be able to tell their own story. All too likely, he would see them again, perhaps not so long from now, when they would cry and pray and plead for him to tell the story that they could not. He wrapped his arms around the tigress, crying long, hot tears, his muzzle in the fur ruff about her neck, swathed in a scent that he could not identify, could not always bring to mind, but could not ever forget. She held him, pet his silky headfur softly, waited for him to regain himself.

"All my lovers are fictional," he murmured in her ear. "Once each year, I find you; one night each year, you come to me; one night each year, I can touch my inspiration, my muse, my reason for living. For the rest, I must write, invent, recreate, speak for those who cannot. Sometimes, I can even speak for myself, but no one knows it's me. Like them, I cry out to be heard, and no one... it's as if no one..."

The tigress kissed him, her lips to his, his breath catching suddenly, his heart swelling and beating fast in his chest. The touch, this simple touch... who can live without this? Who has died without it? How many times, how many lives, how many stories...

...stories...

She pulled back from him, his long nose and muzzle cupped in her forepaws, a single tear on her striped white cheek. Without thinking, he leaned forward and kissed away the tear, tasting something rare, something from a memory (a story), something very like the taste of dandelion wine and the impossible summer when all is possible, if only you can_look_and see and feel...

"It has been a very long time, Kirill... do you wish me to let you tell all of your story?"

He considered, not with fear but with love. "Are you in the end of my story?"

"I have never left you,dorogoy. From your first quill pen to your newest keyboard, I am with you. I have been with you from the first word, and I will be with you at the last." The tigress kissed him once more."Ja budu ljubit tebja vechno."

"I will love you forever," he repeated to her. Smiling sadly, he said, "I can only hope that I have the strength to keep writing."

"You will," she said, her lips teasing his ear.

"How do you know,dorogaya?"

"Because everyone has a story, Kirill."

The tigress stroked his long headfur tenderly.

"Who do you think has been writing yours?"