The world is a numinous place, for those who have eyes to see it. Welcome to the Numinous World, where gods and angels intervene in the lives of mortals, and a band of eternal companions unite and reunite over the centuries, striving to make the world a better place despite wars and dark ages, hatred and cruelty. Here are stories from the very beginning of our history, when the Lady of Cats entered the life of a young woman and changed her forever, long ago when farmers first scraped a living from the soil. Here too are stories of the ancient world — of Dion, the peerless scientist of Alexandria, of Lucia, a Roman waif, of a Persian princess and her Jewish sister in law, of Lydias of Miletus who is once and always Ptolemy's man, and of a Nubian girl who begins a long journey toward a strange destiny. There are stories of the Dark Ages, of a last Roman outpost on the shores of Britain and of an Arab warrior who at last comes home to a white city on the sea, of a Scottish witch who serves the Storm Queen and fears no other magic, and a Knight Templar enslaved by the beauty of the world. Others follow — a messenger boy dragged into the Great Story and a desperate ride dogged by the Wild Hunt, and a mercenary captain of the Thirty Years War who finds his destiny in a remote corner of the Bohemian mountains. Here too are more modern tales of the Age of Revolution, when Dion, Emrys, Sigismund and Charmian reunite in Napoleonic Paris, and at last we roll into the twentieth century with a young American girl with extraordinary oracular powers. Of course there is also Michael, Mik-el, Mikhael, who watches over his charges as best he may, though the world may change around them. These are tiny windows into a miraculous world, glimpses through a glass and darkly of all that might be — for those with eyes to see. Table of Contents The Ravens of Falkenau 1614 AD Dion Ex Machina 4 BC Cold Frontier 505 AD Small Victories 1800 AD How the Lady of Cats Came to Nagada 8000 BC Prince Over the Water 1040 AD Horus Indwelling 285 BC Paradise 641 AD Slave of the World 1203 AD Little Cat 1012 BC Vesuvius 79 AD Unfinished Business 22 BC The Messenger's Tale 1553 AD Morning Star 469 BC Templar Treasure 1188 AD Winter's Child 1821 AD Brunnhilde in the Fire 1901 AD