Time did not exist within the stone tower's walls, nor across the blooming fields which spread outward from its base, nor over the rocky hills which rose from these fields, nor to the sea beyond the fields which tongued sugar sands into submission. Time did not exist, even though one might note changes that only time could bring: the bearded emerald moss and clustered gray barnacles which crusted the stones, the dark waterlines which gave proof of water's long ago trespass.

Within the tower, the oaken floor was likewise ageless, unmarked by any footstep, though countless feet had crossed it. Countless feet stood upon it even now, rising in gleaming plate armor, scuffed leather boots, sandals made of summer's sweetest: white lily tongues, pink peony ruffles, the bruise of grape hyacinth. My own feet were bare, stripped as the rest of me had been--and feet, not hooves. Ten chilled toes which I would have normally taken great delight in, delicate metatarsals and extensors wrapping the core of an ankle at once strange and familiar. Iron cuffs bound both ankle and wrist, iron which felt as though it would sink through my flesh, straight down to my bones where it would crack them apart and boil the marrow.

The standing figures which ringed me faded into brilliance at mid-calf. Whatever they wore beyond their shoes was lost to me in the ceaseless shimmer of a clear, hot light. This light came from no construct; it simply was, as it had always been. The heart of Otherworld, some called it. The color of Her pulse, the warmth of Her heart. I, a creature of dark and wet, had no love of this light, no matter that it was part of my world. Unseelie, I was drawn to its opposite, to the cold shadows which permeated the places most did not dare go. Chained to the floor, there was no escape from the light. They didn't mean for there to be.