It wasn’t a nightmare, exactly… especially not at first. I just found myself within a vast, blank space and a moment later realized that I was falling through it. That part seemed very natural, since there was nothing there to hold me up. It wasn’t particularly scary, because there didn’t seem to be anything for me to land on. There also wasn’t anything around me to grab hold of, or anything to give me some frame of reference for the size or nature of the space… there just wasn’t anything at all, really.

Despite the profound lack of details, there was still a sort of clarity to the dream that unnerved me. I was seeing things strictly from my usual vantage point inside my own head, and while the setting of the dream was unusual, it was consistent… it wasn’t undergoing any weird shifts or jumps that I could tell. My experience with dreams was that when things got this concrete, there was probably an outside influence involved.

I’d just dealt with my own personal outside influence the night before: my father, the man who I’d never met outside of my dreams. This didn’t seem like his style, nor would it be usual for him to visit two nights in a row like this. He was a skulker. As a full-blooded demon, he couldn’t afford to attract too much attention.

The blankness of the setting reminded me of another dream episode I’d had, when the campus had been under the influence of an emissary from one of the less compatible nearby frames of reality. The effects of its presence had made sleeping minds bleed over into each other, and while it hadn’t actually invaded any dreams, there had been another presence… a sort of owl/turtle hybrid that had somehow cobbled itself together out of the unusually literal mind of a living golem. I hadn’t exactly cared for it.

“You take your sweet time coming to the point, don’t you?” it said, suddenly floating very close beside me.

The owl-turtle thing might have looked more turtle than owl, except for the fact that it was bipedal and used its front/top flipper-wings to fly. Actually, once I started thing about it, it might have been slightly more owl than turtle.

“If you were in a hurry, you didn’t have to wait for me figure it out,” I said.

“Actually, I did,” it said. “I needed that last little link to be made by you in order to come all the way over. After spending the last three months in a hole full of Dee’s people I won’t exactly say that your mind’s well-defended, but it ain’t a rusty sieve, either. I might not have been able to find my way in at all, except for two things, the first being that you were there the night I was born.”

“I had the impression you were around before that night,” I said.

The details of my previous meeting with the thing were really spotty… it had been a dream, after all, and it had happened in the midst of a pretty messed-up phase of my life. I knew it had originated in Two’s dreams, though. I had the dim impression that it had somehow crossed over into Dee’s mind, though I was pretty sure that had happened before the night of the fish-beast.

“Oh, I was around,” it said. “But much less real. What’s that rhyme about the golem who becomes a real boy?”

“Little Willy Tinker,” I said. “If you’re real, why are we in a dream?”

“Because I’m a real dream,” it said. “Maybe the first of a kind, I don’t know.”

“Are you saying that the fish-beast’s weird telepathy gave you a physical form?”

“No, no, no,” it said. “You aren’t even listening… I’m still a dream, but now I have a real form. Not physical. But real.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means I can go walkabout without riding Dee’s telepathy, which was always pretty dicey. I mean, if I rode her thoughts into a mind without any psychic powere, there was no guarantee that I could ever get back out of it. And of course, I could never have used her to visit you… wouldn’t have been safe for any of us.”

“But whatever the fish-beast did lets you enter my mind without being ripped to shreds?” I said.

“Kid, what you call the fish-beast is from a place with far weirder things than a little demon hunger,” it said.

“Don’t call me ‘kid’,” I said. “You were only born a year ago.”

“I was,” it said. “But Two and Dee are both older than you are, and I have their experiences and maturity put together plus bits of lots of other folks I’ve managed to pick up. You, included.”

I felt like that should have bothered me, but it didn’t… he didn’t actually have a literal piece of my mind any more than he literally possessed Dee’s. When he left Two, he hadn’t left her a vacant shell. So he was talking about something like an echo of thoughts and memories, a copy.

If it had been a person I’d be seriously concerned about what they might do with that copy or what it might contain. But the owl-turtle thing was thoughts. And on top of that, I had a feeling that it was trying to rile me and I didn’t want to take the bait.

Still, if I wasn’t going to be upset by its declaration, I didn’t really know what to say to it.

“How nice for you,” I said. “I guess everyone should have a hobby.”

“Anyway, don’t you want to know why I picked you to come and visit?” it said. “I mean, come on… this is one of the biggest dorms on campus. Lot of sleeping minds. I could have picked any of them.”

“Maybe you’re limited by proximity,” I said. “Or maybe you can only jump to minds that you have pieces of in your little collection. Maybe you didn’t want to just slink around in the background but you don’t want word getting around that you exist so you chose to bother someone who already knows about you.”

“Maybe, maybe,” it said. “But we’ve been here a week and this is the first time I’ve dropped in that you know about, so maybe you should be thinking about the timing.”

“Are you telling me I shouldn’t trust you?” I said. “Because I already kind of don’t.”

“I’m not the first visitor you’ve had recently, am I?” it said. “I could feel him, you know… feel him coming and going. That’s the other reason I could find my way in, by the way, since you never asked.”

“That’s nice,” I said. “What are you going to do with the information?”

“Lady, I’m trying to help you!”

“The last time we met, you made fun of my level of awareness,” I said. “But I’m perfectly aware of what I dreamed about last night. I don’t know what I think about it, but whatever fresh insights you’re hoping to bring me would be coming from Dee’s mind, and I already know what she thinks.”

“The thing is… I think I could have followed him,” it said. “And I don’t think he felt me, so I don’t think he would have known he was being followed.”

“What exactly would that accomplish?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” the owl-turtle thing said. “I’m a thing that shouldn’t exist, so I’m still learning what I can do. I couldn’t pop out of his head and have a look around, because of the whole no physical body thing and there not being an actual plane of dreams for me to exist on outside of people’s heads, but I could take a look around inside his head. Chances are he knows where he is and what he’s up to.”

“You think you could do that without getting caught?” I asked.

“Don’t know,” it said again. “But I doubt he could do anything if he knew I was there. Dee has been trying to get rid of me for months, and she’s a telepath from a people who make a real study of telepathy.”

“And the man you’re talking about is a centuries-old demon,” I said. “He may or may not be older than any of the people who tried to remove you from Dee’s head, and he’ll have the home ground advantage.”

“Centuries or not, I’m pretty sure he’s never run across anything like me.”

“What are you, exactly?”

“I don’t know,” it said. “Ask me again in a thousand years and I might be a new kind of god. I don’t plan on that, in particular. I’m not aiming for it. But I could see it happening, in the natural course of things. Anyway, what do you care if your old man rubs me out? You don’t like me. Dee doesn’t like me. I’m some sort of ridiculous owl-turtle thing. No one likes me!”

“What do you care if I care? Do you need my permission to go do this?” I asked.

“I need your cooperation if I’m going to help you,” it said. “I’m not about to go risking my unprecedented existence if you’re not going to listen to whatever I find out.”

“I thought you were sure nothing he might do would get rid of you,” I said.

“Pretty sure,” it said. “But hey, even if he’s never seen the likes of me doesn’t mean that he couldn’t crush me using something he learned from other things. I mean, just because you’ve never seen a new type of bug before doesn’t mean you can’t crush it like all the other bugs.”

“So now you’re a bug?”

“Compared to him? Who knows! Maybe he’s a bug compared to me,” the owl-turtle thing said. “I don’t know, I want to find out. And I don’t mind being compared to a bug because I have no ego to speak of. If it’s true, it’s true.”

“So this is just a chance to find out how you stack up against a demon?”

“It’s a chance to find out a lot of things,” it said. “I don’t even know what all! Interesting and important things keep happening near you… maybe not always around you or to you, but you’re on the periphery of so much shit you don’t even know about. This is my way to find out.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I thought we established this: I don’t know,” the owl-turtle thing said. “But big things are coming. Trust me on that. I’ve been inhabiting the dreams of one of the most perceptive people on this campus, and she’s psychically sensitive and divinely connected, to boot. Short of an actual oracle, there isn’t a better vantage point for connecting signs and portents than that.”

“So if I said yes… would you leave right now?” I asked.

“Leave you alone?”

“Leave and follow the trail.”

“Nah, the trail’s gone cold,” it said. “Actually, that’s the other reason I’m asking you. I think for this to really work, I’d need to be inside your head when he shows up, so I can follow him when he leaves.”

“So what you’re really asking me for is permission to live inside my head,” I said.

“Incidentally.”

“No,” I said.

“You would barely know I was here. When you’re awake, I mean.”

“No!” I said.

“I’m not asking you to do anything that isn’t ultimately in your best interest,” it said.

“I think I’m capable of figuring out what is and isn’t my best interest,” I said. “And even if I’m not, I’m entitled to think that I am. If you don’t get out of my head, I’ll start treating you like I treat him.”

“You mean you’ll sit and talk to me?” it said. “Kheesh. You never yet asked me to leave… said no to what I was offering, yes, but I would have left the first time you asked.”

“This is me telling you,” I said.

“And you don’t have to tell me twice,” it said. I might have said something about it stalling, but it was leaving, in a way… it was becoming less distinct. Not really less solid, just less well-defined. I supposed that was what withdrawing a presence from someone’s mind was like. He wasn’t getting farther away, just less there.

“Thank you,” I said. I made a mental note for the next time it showed up… and I was pretty sure there was going to be a next time… to ask it to leave as soon as it started irritating me. I had a feeling it might not be as accommodating as it claimed, but if that proved to be the case then at least I’d have confirmation of my suspicion.

It was hard to say why I disliked the owl-turtle thing so much. The first time we’d met, it had said something about my mother implying that it knew more about her death than I did, which was plainly ridiculous… but I hadn’t exactly been crazy about it before it pulled that one out.

“I’m sorry we couldn’t work something out,” it said as it faded from my mind. “Sorry, and surprised… I really thought you might want to know what he’s done with the pitchfork.”

There was more sex… other sex, different sex. I couldn’t remember when I lost my bra, but I had very clear impressions of Ian playing with my piercings, tugging on them and sucking on them. He liked the imagery of the lock and the key, I could tell… he also liked the way my tits looked with me lying on my back.

Breasts, that is… the way my breasts looked. They were perkier then, more… life-like, almost. More like what breasts were supposed to look like.

It was a weird thing to think, but it was in my head and I was past the point of questioning it.

Ian seemed to be feeling very exploratory, like he was looking at me with a new set of eyes… and a new set of hands, too. He went everywhere. Not exactly gently, but with a kind of respectful awe. No, not respectful… it was more like appreciative. I was suffused with an understanding that he’d felt self-conscious about looking at me and touching me before, even when we were having sex, even when he was looking at me and touching me.

Now it was like barriers had been removed, either between us or inside of him, and he saw himself as having an all-access pass, and he was determined to make the most of it, like he thought he might not get another chance. Not just in terms of enjoying himself… though I had no doubt that he was, but it was also like he was trying to commit every inch of me to memory.

For my part… if I even had a part… I was just fine with lying back and letting him do it, letting him explore, letting him play. I felt a kind of peace I’d rarely felt, and absolutely no pressure or doubt.

To call it “nice” seemed a bit like an understatement, but any other word… any other emotion, even a pleasant one… felt like it would be too harsh, too hard, too solid. Nice, on the other hand… nice was just nice. Pleasant, but not overwhelming.

Relaxing.

The pleasant haze persisted in my head even after we headed downstairs… after Ian decided it was time to head downstairs and took me with him. So did the feeling of togetherness, of being together with Ian and, increasingly, of having it together in a way I’d never felt. I had the same sense of being a part of life on the campus and being connected to the crowd, but I also had my anchor, my rock… I had that, and so much… less. I felt less weighed down, more comfortable in my skin. Ian did, too.

Iin his skin, I meant.

There was indeed pizza, and I both barely was aware when it was in my hands and was hyperaware of it in my mouth, of the texture of the bread and the cheese, of the subtle and distinct flavors in the tomato sauce. I ate it freshly delivered and piping hot, the cheese… extra cheese… gooey and stretchy and wonderful. I ate it warm, with the cheese settling down into a thick but less unruly layer and the sauce assuming a more piquant taste. I ate it cool, when the crust was beginning to harden and reminded me of crusty salad bar breadsticks I’d eaten as a small child. I was aware of this transition through states more than I was aware of the passage of time, though that must have happened, too.

Much the same sorts of conversations wafted through the air around me and washed over me, though they seemed to have mellowed out. The same worries and doubts were there, but there was less urgency and a greater sense of grounding behind it. The crowd had changed in composition, as some had left to do homework or go to bed and others had come down to see what was happening. I wasn’t at all sure that this was responsible for the change, though. It seemed more like it was just a greater amount of time since everyone had finished their last class and had time to unwind and connect with friends and just relax and feel the place.

I couldn’t have said whether I said one more word downstairs that evening. No specific conversations stood out to me. Amaranth still hadn’t come back by the time we went upstairs, but I didn’t mind. I felt a sense of connection to her, too… sort of distant and in the back of my mind, but when I thought about her I felt an even greater sense of peace and happiness.

It wasn’t like we needed to be around each other all the time. I was still hers, even when she was with someone else. I just had to think about her even a little bit to know that for a fact.

Two seemed to accept that Ian was staying over without anything being said. It was a little uncharacteristic for her, but it was just that sort of a night. It wasn’t like we were going to do anything that would disturb or offend her… apart from the rule-breaking involved with him being there in the first place. We’d had plenty of time for that sort of thing earlier, and now we just wanted the chance to drift off in each other’s company.

Pala had disappeared at some point to get her pajamas, toothbrush, pillow, and an enormous plush boar named Mr. Ingimar that she very solemnly introduced to Hand Wash, whom Two informed her with equal solemnity was not actually real.

“I know,” Pala said. “But that is no reason to be rude.”

Sleep came fairly swiftly after what seemed like a very brief period of some rather noisy settling in on her part and ours. “Drifting off” proved to be a pretty apt description for it. It was almost like drifting away. Lying in the dark, curled around Ian’s body, I felt rather floaty to begin with… albeit anchored by his rock-like presence. As his breathing became deep and regular, the sense of that presence receded, and I found myself carried away on the tides of slumber.

The transition from lying in bed with a sense of floating to actually floating in a dream happened rather quickly, but it felt smooth rather than abrupt. There was no confusion or disorientation… I knew I was dreaming right away.

Not that it would have been easy to mistake the dream for reality. I was floating over a vast open field. Off to my side there was an enormous mountain range whose storm-ringed peaks rumbled and shifted like a giantess tossing and turning in her sleep. Down on the field below, there was an army or armies arrayed in endlessly shifting formations… not doing battle, simply arranging and re-arranging themselves like they were participating in some insanely intricate drill.

On the other side of me… on a perfectly normal scale but somehow no less imposing than the mountain… was Two, asleep in a crystal coffin like one of the princesses of the ancient kingdom that had preceded the First Empire. The “foot” of the coffin was big and protruded out in all directions, including down through whatever surface it would have been resting on if it had been resting on something and not just floating in space. I looked at it for a few seconds before I realized I was seeing the whole thing sideways… it was the pedestal of what was actually something like a display case. As soon as I saw that, I felt like I was sideways… and then either I rotated or Two did.

Her eyes opened, and she turned her head to face me.

“Hi, Mack,” she said, her voice a little muffled by the glass.

“Hi, Two,” I said.

“This is a strange dream,” she said.

“I’ve noticed this,” I said. “I’ve had to get used to strange dreams since coming here, but this is definitely not a normal dream, even for me.”

“I’m not certain I would want to see your normal dreams,” Two said. “If you start masturbating, I am afraid I am going to have to ask you to excuse me while I wake up.”

“I’m not sure you’re sleeping,” I said.

Her display case swung open and she stepped out. She looked around, her face going through the contortions of thought.

“I’m pretty sure that I am,” she concluded. “Though I don’t know how I’m doing any of this. I never learned to dream any of these things,” she said, looking down at the soldiers. “Maybe Pala’s dreaming those?” She looked past me and waved. “Hi, Pala!”

“Pala’s not…” I started to say, but I was turning automatically to see what she was looking at. The mountain range, once turned on its side, was pretty obviously Pala laying on her side. Though now she was doing that sideways in the air.

“Hello,” she said. “Is this what happens when you sleep in the dorms?”

“Not normally, no,” I said.

“Oh,” she said, sounding disappointing. “That could be interesting. Though it could also be tiring… I could see needing extra sleep if every night were like this. Though the extra sleep might just tire you out more?”

“I don’t think it would work like that,” I said. “You’d still be resting no matter what you were dreaming you were doing.”

“But you could dream you were tired and need to take a nap in the dream,” Pala said. A panicked look fell over her face. “Oh! What if that happened and I’m only dreaming that I’m dreaming? That could be why the dream is not normal.”

“I don’t think that’s it,” I said.

“But what if the first time I fell asleep I never woke up, but only dreamed that I woke up, and each time I fell asleep after that I never woke up from that dream-sleep?” Pala asked. She sounded utterly serious and yet no more than mildly alarmed by the idea. “And would that mean that I am still only a baby, or have I actually grown up?” Then her face grew brighter. “Or maybe I’ve grown more, maybe I’m only dreaming that I’m this small.”

“I’m pretty sure this is my dream, anyway,” I said.

“Well, I don’t see your name on it,” Pala said.

“It’s my dream,” Two said. She pointed up, and there was a sign hanging in the air that said “Two’s Dream”. “I put my name on it.”

“Two… that’s not how it works,” I said. “I’m dreaming about the two of you… that makes it my dream.”

“I think we are all dreaming about each other,” Pala said.

“I think so, too,” Two said. “But I still put my name on it.”

“That’s…” I started to say it was impossible, but it seemed as good an explanation as any, and not even particularly weird. “Well, I guess it’s not like I’ve never had a visitor in my dreams before.”

“It is not your dream, it’s mine,” Two said. “If you want to put your name on the dream next time, you can do it, but I thought of it first so this one is mine.”

“Why do you care whose dream it is?” I asked.

“I am tired of having the same dreams,” she said. “This one is different. I would like to have it.”

“Okay, it’s your dream,” I said. “Let’s not have an argument over whose dream it is. Let’s just… figure out what’s happening. I mean, the first thing is… is this actually happening? I mean, I’m open to the possibility… but I suppose we’ll have to see if we all remember this when we wake up.”

“If we wake up,” Pala said. “This could be an enchanted sleep, and enchanted sleeps last forever.”

“Sleep can be enchanted to last forever, but that doesn’t mean that every sleep with some magical angle to it is going to last forever,” I said. “Anyway, we’re in the middle of a college campus that’s got an awesome enchantment department, so it’s not like we’d be out for long even if somebody, somehow, for some reason put us in an enchanted sleep.”

As soon as I said that, though, I felt prickles of worry running down my spine. Skilled enchanters like the kind turned out by Magisterius University would be pretty good at breaking enchantments, but they’d be even better at creating them in the first place… if it was just a single rogue student or professor having a bit of fun, someone else could undo it, but what if this was part of a concerted effort by the school administration, maybe even sanctioned by the government? It could be an attempt to target me, or to pacify all of Harlowe while something else went down…

If that line of thinking seemed a little paranoid… well, it wasn’t like the school was above being involved in conspiracies and cover-ups. Covers-up? Whatever. Embries had his own game, and it could be anything.

“What if we aren’t in the middle of the campus anymore?” Pala asked. “If we are asleep… and being prevented from waking up… we could have been moved anywhere, couldn’t we?”

Yeah… that was exactly the thought I needed to have in my head.

“Well, we’re still all together,” I said. “That strikes me as a good sign. If somebody were targeting… one of us… there wouldn’t be any reason to keep us together once we were asleep.”

“Why would somebody be targeting one of us with a spell that has all three of us?” Pala asked. “They cannot have very good aim, I think. And where is Ian Mason? He was asleep with you.”

“Maybe he went up to go to the bathroom?” I suggested.

“Maybe it’s a spell that only targets girls because they didn’t expect any boys to be in the girl’s dorm during the night,” Two said.

“I somehow doubt that,” a voice said from above.

We all looked up, and there was the second strangest looking creature I’d seen flying overhead in the past twenty-four hours. It was like a weird agglomeration of an owl and a turtle, the sort of creature that usually resulted from the odd fancy of a great wizard who achieved immortality and didn’t know what to do with all the spare time this results in.

I supposed it could have been something native to Pala’s plane

“Oh,” Two said, making as disgusted a face as I’d ever seen. “You. Hello, ridiculous owl-turtle thing.”

“You know this… thing?” I asked her. It sounded rude, but “person” seemed a bit off andI wasn’t sure “guy” was applicable. That, and Two had addressed it as a thing.

“Yes,” Two said. “That is some sort of ridiculous owl-turtle thing. He is a bad dream.”

“A martröð?” Pala asked, shaking visibly. Mr. Ingimar suddenly appeared beneath her, a giant plush riding boar. “A nightmare?”

“No,” Two said. “Just not a very good dream.”

“Don’t sell yourself short, kiddo,” the thing said. “I think you did a heck of a job.”

“This is your dream?” I said to Two.

“Yes,” she said. “We have established that it is.”

“I don’t mean the whole… the, uh, owl-turtle thing,” I said. “You dreamed that up?”

“I did,” she said. “But I thought that my friend Dee got rid of it.”

“Don’t worry, I’m only visiting,” it said. “Your friend Dee is a very good environment for someone like me. She likes to think of herself as a highly skilled telepath, when really she’s a very strong telepath.” Its head twisted around atop its shell to look at me. “Do I need to explain to you the difference between strength and skill?”

Somehow, I didn’t like this owl-turtle thing.

“So, what… you’re a figment of Two’s imagination that’s using Dee’s telepathy to mess with everybody’s minds at once?” I asked.

“Aw, heck no!” it said. “If Dee were strong enough to mess things up this badly, she would have done it a long time ago… no, I don’t think any telepath on this plane could do this. Really, the fundamental laws of reality don’t even come close to supporting what’s happening now.”

“Obviously they do, or it wouldn’t be happening,” I said.

“Oh, well… what do I know about impossible things happening? I’m just a self-aware dream that somehow gained independent existence and agency,” it said. “What’s obvious is that if the fundamental laws of this reality don’t support it, there must be another fundamental reality involved.”

“The plane of dreams?” I said. “That’s never been more than a hypothetical…”

“It’s not even that,” the thing said. “There’s no such thing. Or place. Or whatever. Trust me, I’d know… there’s no out there out there… just the insides of you peoples’ minds and the usually rare points where they intersect.”

“So what, then?” I asked. I was vaguely afraid that this was going to have something to do with me, or with the man who visited me in my dreams. He was from a different plane. He evidently knew something about minds intersecting.

“You’re sort of close… but not really,” it said, as if I had voiced the thoughts out loud. “No, this cameo appearance is being brought to you by something else that’s not supported by the laws of this reality, so it carries its own laws around with it. Seen anything disconcertingly impossible looking lately? Present company excluded.”

“The eyeless fish-beast,” I said. “It’s doing this?”

“It’s the proximate cause,” the owl-turtle thing said. “Whether it knows what it’s doing to the psychic environment or cares is hard to say… well, if the beast were fathomable it probably wouldn’t be warping reality, would it?” It pointed its flipper-wing things at Pala and me. “The effect is going to be stronger around the two of you because your extradimensional ties already weaken the structure of the world.”

“I’m pretty sure I’d notice if I were doing that,” I said.

“Me, too,” Pala said. “If I were doing it. I don’t know if I would notice if she were doing it. It would depend on how obvious she was about it, and if I would recognize such a thing if I saw it.” She paused and thought about it. “She could be doing it right now and I wouldn’t know. She probably is.”

“Oh, I don’t mean either of you are going around punching holes in reality all willy-nilly,” the owl-turtle thing said. “Just that somebody who was doing such a thing would have an ever-so-slightly easier time with you around… the effect’s going to be a lot stronger with her than you, obviously, because she’s not native.”

“But she’s got to have at least as much human blood as I do, if not more,” I said.

“Her? Nope, she’s a full-blooded giant,” it said.

“Now I know you’re lying,” I said. “Or that I’m dreaming… or whatever. I’m dreaming you’re lying.”

“Ask her yourself.”

I looked at Pala, who was looking down the length of her body. She brought her hands up to her face and squinted at them.

“I do feel pretty full of blood,” she said. “At least my heart is.”

“Were both of your parents giants?” I asked.

“Is that a rude question?” she asked.

“What? It’s not meant to be rude,” I said. “Is it rude in your culture?”

“I don’t know,” she said.”Usually when somebody asks me about my parents, it is a rude question.”

“What, were they not married or something?”

In case anybody has ever wondered: dreaming that you’re being punched by what is apparently a very compactly-built storm giant can still hurt quite a bit in the dream. I didn’t even see it coming, because she didn’t seem to move… one moment she was sitting astride her giant stuffed pig and the next she was right in front of me, punching me in the face. The proportions somehow worked themselves out so that it was a dead-on shot.

The good news was that the pain didn’t last. It was just an overwhelming rush of sensation that suffused the entirety of my being for a moment and then was gone.

It wasn’t a good moment, or one I’d be in any kind of a hurry to repeat. But it was brief, and when it passed I was horizontal and Pala was reaching a hand down towards me.

“I’m sorry for doing that, but you should not ask rude questions,” she said, helping me up. “My parents were married, but my mother died when I was very young.”

“Oh,” I said. “I’m sorry. My mother died, too… I was sort of young. It wasn’t my fault.”

“Interesting sidenote,” the owl-turtle thing said. “Bullshit.”

“Interesting sidenote,” I said. “I can punch pretty hard, too.”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“It hurt when she hit me,” I said.

“Because you expected it to,” it said

“So for the remainder of this dream, I could choose to be completely immune to pain?” I asked.

“Oh, heavens no,” it said. “You lack the basic willpower and self-awareness for something like that. Even knowing that this is a dream, that nothing here is real, and that pain only exists as a sensation in your head because you think it should, you would still expect the pain to come and so it would. Me, on the other hand… I’m a lucid dream. I’m pretty much made of self-awareness, and that’s why you should listen to me.”

“You’re making an awful lot of assumptions for someone who just met me,” I said.

“To the contrary, I met you the same time that Two did. And I’m not making assumptions, I’m making observations… based on what she knows of you, and what I can see now, existing as I do at the moment in the spaces between all your minds.”

“If you can see my mind, then you know it’s not bullshit about my mother dying,” I said.

“If you could see your mind, you might learn a thing or two about it…” the owl-turtle thing said. It was suddenly cut off with a squawk as Pala reached up and grabbed its leg, yanking it downward to our level.

“‘Interesting sidenote’,” she said. “I am a lucid dreamer. Would you like to find out if I am better at expecting you to feel pain than you are at expecting not to feel it?”

The owl sort of swirled away into nothingness and reappeared with a pop a respectable distance away.

“Nothing to find out, I already know how that one’ll go… I don’t even know what pain feels like,” it said.

“But Two knows what pain feels like and you came from her,” I pointed out. “Your knowledge of me comes from her. Why don’t you have her experience and understanding of pain, too?”

“What, am I missing out on something great?” the owl-turtle thing said. “Is there some reason I should be rushing to add pain to the list of things that make up my semblance of an existence?”

“No, I’m just trying to get a handle on how these things work,” I said. “As much as it’s possible. For instance, why is it just the three of us here?”

“Because you’re really bad at counting, apparently,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“No, I mean… Ian was asleep in bed with me. Still is, I’m sure,” I said. “Why were we all drawn into this effect but he wasn’t? I can buy no one outside the room being close enough to share a dream with us, but he’s closer to me than Two or Pala.”

“He might be along by and by,” the owl-turtle thing said. “Like I said, the reality warp is going to be stronger around you two… and Two’s bound to be more receptive to this kind of thing than he is. She’s a very literal dreamer. Everybody within the fish-beast’s penumbra is experiencing something, and if you paid real close attention to the nothingness at the edges of your consciousness you might catch glimpses of them here and there. If your boyfriend surfaces, it’ll probably be because of the intense connection you forged with him.”

“So, are we in any actual danger here?” I said.

“What kind of danger?” it asked.

“Not waking up, having lasting mental effects… basically, anything beyond a sort of interesting diversion.”

“A big vast emptiness is interesting to you? No wonder you get along with her,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“Sharing a dream is interesting,” I said. “It’s… novel.”

“Oh, great… just what I need, cultural tourism,” the owl-turtle thing said. “I’m glad you find my way of life so thrillingly exotic. But seriously, given that this may be a once-in-a-lifetime chance, don’t you want to use it to do something more interesting than hanging around having a conversation you could be having on the elemental plane of useless bags of meat anyway?”

“Well, I am trying to figure out the parameters of this,” I said.

“What, so you’ll be ready to maybe actually do something with it if it happens again?”

“What exactly could we be doing right now that we’re not?” I asked. “What opportunity are we missing?

“I don’t know… a journey of self-discovery? Finding out what I know about your mind that you don’t? Learning interesting things about your dormmates?”

“How can we do that when they’re not here?” I asked.

“Aren’t you paying any attention?” the thing said. “They’re here… they’re all around you. You’d just have to focus on someone and sort of… tease them out, a bit.”

“So… if I wanted to bring Ian in, I could?”

“Oh, that’s seizing upon a rare opportunity,” the owl-turtle thing said. “Well, you could certainly try. Like I said, your connection could make that easier… or it could make it harder to figure out where you end and he begins. I’d be very surprised if you don’t see permanent side effects from that, you know.”

“What are you talking about?”

“This would be the ‘self-awareness’ thing I was talking about,” the owl-turtle thing said. “Though, in my limited experience, you people aren’t really equipped to know when something’s out of whack with your thoughts. You are your thoughts, so whatever’s running through the head you occupy just gets accepted as the new normal. That’s why implanted suggestions work so well… not because they have any kind of force behind them, but because a brain that finds a thought lying around is going to assume it’s meant to go somewhere and do its best to file it wherever it seems to fit. Not that I’m complaining. I wouldn’t have been able to uproot myself from one mind and insinuate myself into another if that weren’t so.”

“Whatever,” I said. “I’m not really terribly interested in snooping around my floormates’ dreams, if that’s what your suggesting we could be doing. I doubt Pala or Two would go for that, either.”

I looked at them, and they both nodded.

“Ah, well, I just thought you might want to take the opportunity while it lasts. Especially while you’re the only ones at this level of active,” it said. “If this place gets any more crowded, you might have a harder time asserting control… especially if somebody shows up who doesn’t show your compunctions about poking and prying.”

“Someone like Ceridwyn Banks-Labelle?” Pala said.

I looked at her, then looked where she was looking.

“Oh, hey!” the owl-turtle thing said. “This just got slightly less boring.”

Soon: Oh, maaaan…. hold on tight, because shit’s about to get real imaginary.

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Thank you for reading!

Dee stood on the path of darkness once more, the same path she had trod through her own dreams many times during a long weekend of sleep. She didn’t possess full conscious memories of her previous journeys along the path, though she did recognize it and she did have the unmistakable feeling that she had been on it many times before.

She couldn’t be certain, but she had the distinct impression that the last time she had followed it, it hadn’t been labeled with a neatly-lettered placard reading “Path Of Darkness”.

“That’d be her doing,” a voice said.

“Whose?” Dee asked.

“I think that’s my line,” the voice said again.

There was a fluttering in the darkness above Dee… darkness that her eyes could not seem to penetrate or sort out, and then a thing descended into view… a thing that flew awkwardly on flipper-like wings. It had talons somewhat like a bird’s sticking out from a hard-carapaced torso.

“What manner of creature are you?” Dee asked the ungainly thing.

“Well, I think that should be clear,” it said.

“Not in the slightest,” Dee said. “You remind me somewhat of a picture that was labeled ‘tortoise’, but you also bear some resemblance to a night-hunting bird.”

“Like I said, perfectly clear,” the thing said. “I’m some sort of ridiculous owl-turtle thing, as you would well know if I hadn’t left my label behind.”

“Label?”

“She likes labels,” it said. It stopped its flapping and immediately a convenient post (conveniently labeled as such) materialized out of the darkness. There was a sign sticking out of the post bearing the description the thing had just given Dee for itself. “See?”

“Who? Who likes labels?”

“Whose dream do you think you’re in, exactly?”

“I thought I was in mine,” Dee said. “But then… I can see darkness in my dreams.”

“I would think you’d be able to see plenty of darkness in this one,” the owl-turtle thing said. “There doesn’t seem to be much else here to look at, excepting myself.”

“Darkness isn’t usually so opaque and monochromatic,” Dee said. “This is like someone else’s dream of darkness.”

“That’s an astounding coincidence,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“What is?”

“That it’s like that,” it said.

“How, precisely, is that coincidental?”

“In that it precisely coincides.”

“To what?” Dee asked.

“To the fact that it is someone else’s dream,” the thing said.

“So you have implied,” Dee said.

“You don’t believe the evidence of your own eyes?”

“Eyes can be deceptive, and so can dreams,” Dee said.

“Have you ever had a dream where you couldn’t ‘see darkness’ before?” it asked.

“I… don’t know.”

“Why not?”

“I do not always remember my dreams,” Dee said. “They are not always… what is the word? Apparent.”

“You mean you’re not a lucid dreamer,” the thing said.

“To the contrary, I think I am perfectly lucid,” Dee said.

“A lucid dream is one in which the dreamer is aware that he or she is dreaming,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“Then this is manifestly a lucid dream, insofar as we are discussing the fact that I am dreaming,” Dee said.

“No, we are not,” it said. “We are discussing the fact that you are in a dream.”

“You are splitting hairs.”

“Scales or feathers, maybe, but I don’t have any hairs to split,” it said.

“It is a figure of speech,” Dee said. “At least, among the humans of the Imperium. Among my own people, the nearest equivalent phrase has the idiomatic meaning of ‘to do things rightly’.”

“A good phrase,” the owl-turtle thing said. “Some distinctions are worth making, and this is one. You are in a dream, but you’re not the dreamer here.”

“I am not a dream,” Dee said.

“Of course not,” the owl-turtle thing said. “You’re not interesting enough to be a dream. Although you do have a label.”

“I do not,” Dee said, but then she looked down and saw the placard hanging around her neck. She tilted it up towards her and read it upside-down: My Friend Dee.

“Are we starting to form a picture of whose dream it is that we might be stumbling around?”

“Two,” Dee said, letting the sign slip from her hands.

“Correct!” the owl-turtle thing said. “And so now the only question is why you would have entered her dream in the first place.”

“That is no great mystery,” Dee said, memory trickling back into her head. “She has expressed some distress with her dreams and so I offered my services as her telepath and friend.”

“Maybe no great mystery, but it’s at least a copper detective novel to me why you would do that when you’re not exactly master of your own subconscious realm to begin with,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean that you might have thought to put your own house in order before opening a maid service,” it said. “You can’t control what happens in your own dreams. What made you think you could do any better in somebody else’s head?”

“In truth… in truth, I never considered that there might be a connection between my own dream states and my efficacy as a dream-healer,” Dee said. “After all, I have recently proven myself to be mistress of my own waking mind, and it isn’t as though I went to sleep before I entered this mind.

“No, it isn’t as though you went to sleep before entering this mind… it is, however, exactly as though you went to sleep as you entered it,” the owl-turtle thing said. “That’s what dreaming is, as she herself might say.”

“I do not believe that she would,” Dee said. “It seems to me that Two is no great expert on dreams. In fact, the thing that distressed her the greatest was the fear that she might somehow be doing it ‘incorrectly’ and never know because she had no basis for comparison.”

“Well, if you’re the basis then I think she’s doing pretty well for herself.”

“I must confess to a certain amount of dislike for you, ridiculous owl-turtle thing,” Dee said. “I do not understand why Two would have dreamt you up, both in the sense that I cannot begin to apprehend what purpose you would serve and in that I cannot imagine her of all people conjuring something like you up.”

“Well, then I guess we know who between the two of you has the better imagination, don’t we?” it said.

“Be silent,” Dee said. “Now that I know I am not in my own dream, I will attempt to dispell this darkness that is no doubt preventing me from seeing what it is that so distresses as she slumbers.”

“How exactly do you plan on doing that?” the owl-turtle thing asked.

“I think a little light should do it,” Dee said. She lifted her hand and concentrated.

“If only you had one.”

“Hush,” Dee said. “I am attempting to impose my will upon the dreamscape.”

“That’s an interesting approach.”

“Hush,” Dee said.

“I don’t mean to criticize, but it looks to me like you’re all wick and no wax, as candlemakers say,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“I do not believe that anybody has ever said that,” Dee said.

“Two’s friend Hazel has.”

“I do not believe that candlemakers have said it,” Dee said. “And even if they had, the analogy is hardly apt. A wick without wax could provide illumination, albeit without the convenient moderation of combustion a proper candle provides.”

“Oh, yes, please, let’s do sit around arguing the semantics of metaphors,” the owl-turtle thing said. “Because when I saw another person, the first new person in here since ever, I said to myself, ‘Boy, some sort of ridiculous owl-turtle thing,’ I said, ‘don’t you just hope she likes doing that, too?’ Because you can never have enough of that.”

“It’s hardly a metaphor to begin with,” Dee said. “But you do have something of a point. It is hardly productive.”

“Of course, it could hardly be less productive than what you were trying to do before.”

“In what way?”

“In the way that what you were trying to do before wasn’t productive at all.”

“What do you mean?” Dee asked. “Explain yourself, please.”

“What you were trying to do was failing to produce results,” it said.

“I know that!” Dee said. “And you seemed to know that this would be the case before I did.”

“Another astonishing coincidence,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“So you did know, then?” Dee said. The thing nodded. “Do you have an alternate suggestion?”

“I do,” it said.

“What is it?”

“Try something else instead,” it said.

Dee sighed.

“Why is my approach the wrong one?” she asked.

“You’re trying to see what’s going on in Two’s dream by imposing your will further upon a scene that only exists because of the imposition your will has already made,” it said. “It’s just remotely possible you could conjure up some light and dispell a bit of darkness, but that would be like erasing a painting of a wall to see what’s behind it, wouldn’t it?”

“So… what do you suggest I do instead?” Dee asked.

“What do I suggest?” it asked.

“That is what I asked.”

“Are you sure you want me to tell you, though?” it said. “Because I’m sure you’re going to turn around and ignore what I say.”

“Hearing advice does not obligate one to take it,” Dee said. “Or do you expect me to agree to do whatever you suggest regardless of how reasonable or not it may prove to be?”

“Not a bit,” the owl-turtle thing said. “In fact, I expect the opposite. I expect you to ignore what I suggest regardless of how reasonable or not it may prove to be.”

“For one who despises semantic arguments, you do seem to go out of your way to provoke them,” Dee said.

“Yeah, I’m just a bundle of contradictions,” the thing said.

“I cannot imagine that Two cares for you very much,” Dee said.

“Well, that’s your problem,” the owl-turtle thing said. “Maybe if your imagination was better you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“I am not in any ‘mess’,” Dee said. “I am endeavoring to aid a friend and have encountered an unexpected obstacle. If you don’t have any idea on how to remove it, then I do not see the point in further conversation with you.”

“But I do have an idea for removing this and any other obstacles you might encounter in this task,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“Then let me hear it,” Dee said. “I do not promise to follow it, but I will give it a fair hearing.”

“It’s very simple: give up,” it said. “You’re in over your head again, Dee… you’re unqualified and under-equipped. You’ll be lucky if you get out of this without injuring either or both of your psyches.”

“You do not know of what you speak, ridiculous owl-turtle thing,” Dee said.

“I do,” it said. “Because you do.”

“You are not my dream,” Dee said.

“No, but as it transpires, you’re leaking quite a bit of yourself all around the place,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“What are you exactly, the manifestation of Two’s insecurities?” Dee

“Well, I sure ain’t her conscience,” it said. “And I’m not trying to sabotage you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“And yet by following your advice, I will guarantee that my task will instantly fail,” Dee said.

“Right, so you have a lot to gain,” it said.

“I do not follow your logic.”

“You’re not succeeding here to begin with,” it said. “You’ll be giving up prolonged failure in exchange for instant failure. Seems like a good deal to me.”

“I’ll be giving up the chance of eventual success for nothing,” Dee said. “That hardly seems like a bargain.”

“Well, that all depends on what exactly ‘the chance of success’ is and how long ‘eventual’ might be,” the thing said. “I mean, if the chance of success is zero percent, then it’s easy money that I’m right. If it’s somewhat higher than that… well, you have to decide how you prioritize your own time.”

“Perhaps I have more faith in my abilities than you do.”

“There is no ‘perhaps’ about it,” the owl-turtle thing said. “You do, and that’s exactly what the problem is. You have overestimated your abilities again, just like you did when you decided to try to fix your own sleep-related problem… just like you did when you decided you could handle a cursed implement all by yourself.”

“I was able to resolve the repercussions of that latter incident by myself,” Dee pointed out.

“Well, with a little help from a friend,” the owl-turtle thing said. “But I’ll let that go, because I think we both know what I’m talking about.”

“I most certainly do not,” Dee said. “I have always striven to cultivate a measure of humility.”

“Yes, I’m sure you pride yourself on how humble you are,” the owl-turtle thing said. “But let’s face it: the friends you have on the surface don’t make it very easy to be humble, do they?”

“I do not hold them to the same exacting standards I hold myself,” Dee said.

“Ah, that would be the humility talking again, wouldn’t it?” the owl-turtle thing said.

“I came here to help Two and I do not intend on leaving until I’ve done so.”

“Then we might be here a very long time,” the owl-turtle thing said. “On the other hand, if you leave now, I can guarantee you will help her.”

“In what way?”

“In a way that she will appreciate,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“And what if your guarantee proves to be false?”

“Then you can come back and try this again,” it said. “Assuming you remember this.”

“I do not always forget my dreams,” Dee said.

“Yes, well, this is not your dream.”

“Should that make it any harder to remember?” Dee asked.

“I don’t know, and neither do you… so it’s probably not safe to assume either way,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“Then I have little incentive to take your bargain.”

“Unless you’re confident in your ability to remember this dream if you really mean to,” the owl-turtle thing said.

“You will not bait me,” Dee said.

“Oh, I don’t mind it,” the thing said.

“You do not mind what?”

“You acknowledging that I’m right about your likelihood of remembering,” the owl-turtle thing said. “I was trying to get you to recognize your limitations and that’s an excellent start.”

“I recognize that you are a pest,” Dee said. “And that you have no intention of leaving me alone so I may muster the concentration needed to leave this demi-dream I have created and attend to the task at hand. Therefore, I will take my leave of you, and you can rest assured that you will see me again, because I will be back, whether or not there is any truth to your ramblings about helping Two… and I will be better prepared for dealing with the darkness, you, and any other obstacles I might encounter.”

“Oh, I don’t doubt that we’ll be seeing each other again,” the owl-turtle thing said, though Dee only heard its words dimly and from a great distance… she was already pulling herself up out of the trance. The darkness of the dreamscape dissolved into the dimness of the meditation chamber where Two slumbered on the floor in front of her.

Dee felt like she herself had been asleep for a long time, though a glance at the timepiece on the wall dispelled that notion… it had been mere minutes. Her memory of what she had done was nebulous and rapidly dissolving, though she felt an acute sense of frustration… frustration that turned to a prickle of dread when the first thing that Two did upon being roused was to thank her for getting rid of “that ridiculous owl-turtle thing.”

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Much like more willful golems would have chosen to use whatever latitude or ambiguity their orders allowed to wrench themselves away from the path their masters set for them, Two used the framework of her recurring dream to subvert it, willing her dream-mouth to open and blurt out an impossible, nonsensical word before the scenario could progress to its painful conclusion.

She still lost her cozy box in the laboratory where every single object has been imbued with a purpose, including herself… she still shattered the dream of returning to her former, simpler existence as an enchanter’s tool, but she did so willingly, on her own initiative, instead of being forced to do so due to the irreconciliable conflicts between the rules of her old life and the demands of the new one.

The death of the dream still dumped her into the conveniently labeled flat featureless plane, but she could cope with that. She could even handle its sole other regular occupant, some sort of ridiculous owl turtle thing that her sleeping mind had dreamed up somehow.

“It’s not much use wondering about that,” the owl turtle thing chided her, from its perch on the pole. “You dreamed me up because your friend Hazel told you that people dream about things like me. You didn’t even change the basic details that she gave you as an example. You’re just not very good at dreaming.”

“I know I am not,” Two said. “Maybe that’s why you aren’t a very good dream, ridiculous owl turtle thing.”

“You’re only insulting yourself, you know,” it said.

“It’s rude to insult other people,” Two said. “So that’s good.”

Two concentrated a few moments and she began to rise up into the air

“Now you’re just being ridiculous,” said the owl turtle thing.

“I’m practicing dreaming,” she said. “People don’t get better at things if they don’t practice them, you know.”

“I know everything that you know,” it reminded her..

“I know!” Two said, irritated. She began to wobble in the air and then started to descend. “But flying is something else that people do in dreams.”

“I think that’s more hovering than flying,” the owl turtle thing said as she touched back down. “And now you’re not even doing that.”

“You interrupted me when I was just getting started,” Two said. “You are much too rude, ridiculous owl turtle thing.”

“And what do you think that says about you?”

“I don’t know,” Two said. “And so neither do you.”

“I know everything that you know and many things that you don’t.”

“I don’t see how that could be,” Two said.

“Who said it could?” the owl turtle thing asked. “Whether it could be or not, it is so because you have dreamed it to be.”

“Well, I’m not a very good dreamer,” Two reminded it.

“That isn’t actually a bad bit of dreaming, in my opinion.”

“Your opinion doesn’t matter very much,” Two said. “Since you are a bad dream to begin with.”

“You think I’m a bad dream?” the owl turtle thing said. “That bit in the laboratory is a bad dream. This is just a not unpleasant bit of absurdity.”

“Not from where I’m standing,” Two said calmly, staring down at her feet. She began to lift up off the ground again. She kept her focus on her feet and the upward motion until she was a good twelve feet above it, then looked up and around, proud of her accomplishment.

“Look down again,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing said.

Two did, and saw the ground was once again beneath her feet, though she hadn’t moved.

“That’s not fair,” she complained.

“Fair, shmair,” the owl turtle thing said. “It’s the ground. That’s what it does.”

“It doesn’t do that when I’m not dreaming,” Two said.

“It doesn’t rise up to meet your feet?”

“My feet come down to meet it.”

“It’s the same thing,” the owl turtle thing said. “It’s like the difference between coming here and going there… the same thing from a different perspective. Like the difference between this side of the pole and that side. It doesn’t matter which is which because it all depends on who’s looking and where they stand.”

“Last time you told me it does matter,” Two said.

“It does.”

“But then you said it doesn’t,” Two said.

“Naturally,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing said. “It all depends on where you stand.”

“I really don’t like you, ridiculous owl turtle thing,” Two said, and she looked down and tried to concentrate on levitating again, but nothing happened.

“You’re too aware of the ground now,” the owl turtle thing said. “And what your position is supposed to be, relative to it. You’re never going to fly while you can see it.”

“Then I won’t look,” Two said, and she tilted her head back to look upwards into the endless expanse of the sky and tried to imagine herself lifting up off the ground she couldn’t see.

She couldn’t feel herself moving, but she hadn’t really felt anything the other times. She kept concentrating all the same.

“It’s working!” the ridiculous owl turtle thing cried from somewhere far below.

The stupid thing’s excitement infected her, and Two actually smiled gleefully as she looked down to verify… and saw her feet right on the ground.

“It was working,” the owl turtle thing said. “But you wrecked it.”

“I really don’t like you, ridiculous owl turtle thing,” Two said. She looked around at the flat featureless plain, stretching away in every direction all the way to the horizon. “The ground is problematic.”

“The problem is you.”

“Hush,” Two said. She turned her face up to the sky until it was all she could see, and she scrunched up her face and screwed up her will, then looked down. The plain was gone… she was floating in space.

She giggled.

“That’s cheating,” the owl turtle thing said.

“It worked,” Two said.

“You didn’t deal with your actual problem, you just avoided it.”

“It worked for me,” Two clarified. She raised her arms and turned around in place.

“You’re not even moving,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing said. “You didn’t really do anything.”

“And you aren’t really anything,” Two said. “So I win.”

“That doesn’t even make sense,” it said.

“Hush,” Two said. “I’m dreaming.”

Two wakes up in the glass case, which means that she hadn’t woken up at all.

The case, like everything else in the full but tidy basement workshop, bears a label. Its label says “Golem Case”. The block letters were applied to the glass almost directly across from her eyes, and so she can see the backs of them without moving or looking around and so she knows without moving or looking around that she was in the proper place, that she was in her place and so she knows that much at least is right in the world.

This means she’s dreaming.

She hears the bolts on the door at the top of the stairs sliding open, one after another. She tenses up. She hears the door open and she sucks in her lips a bit.

This time I won’t do it, she thinks as she hears feet tread on the stairs. I won’t say it. I don’t have to. I don’t have to say anything I don’t want to ^{I WANT TO DO WHAT I’M TOLD} but I’m a free being ^{but if I were a free being I wouldn’t be back here} but if I’m back here and not a free being then Miss Ruth never told me to say it and so I don’t have to.

Then she hears the bolts on the door at the bottom of the stairs and that door opens, and the man steps inside.

“Good morning!” Two says, and he freezes. The perfect dream of her perfect life begins to crack and fray around the edges. She doesn’t know what he says in response to this. She doesn’t know what happens next.

She had never said “good morning!” to the man.

Sometimes when this happens she wakes up and she cries because she ruined the dream and she can’t get it back. Other times she keeps dreaming. The workshop falls to pieces and is blown away, leaving her on a vast, flat, featureless plain (labeled “A Vast Flat Featureless Plain”) in an infinitely expanding empty space (labeled “An Infinitely Expanding Empty Space”), alone except for some sort of ridiculous owl turtle thing sitting on a post, both labeled appropriately.

The ridiculous owl turtle thing has occupied the vast featureless plain ever since the day that Two, wanting something to replace the workshop dream that had been her refuge until Miss Ruth’s increasingly specific admonitions to be more personable had finally destroyed it, had asked her friend Hazel what sort of things people dreamed about. Her friend Hazel had told her that a lot of her dreams had impossible things that were not quite one thing and not quite another. The next time Two had fallen asleep, after she wrecked the workshop dream, there it was: not quite an owl and not a quite a turtle.

It perched upright on the top of the post on bird-like talons, but it had a reptilian underbelly and a turtle shell. The things that stuck out of the holes at its shoulders might have been flippers and might have been wings. Its head was turtlish, but with owl-like tufts over big yellow eyes and a beak that almost might have belonged to a snapping turtle as much as a bird.

“Oh,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “Back again?”

“Yes,” Two says sullenly. “I am back again.”

“Did you try what I said?”

“No,” Two says. “I did not.”

“Well, there’s no use glaring at me like that if you aren’t going to take my advice.”

“Your advice isn’t any good,” Two says. “I cannot make something up about my own… my maker. Making things up about people is called lying and gossip, and it’s wrong.”

“It’s only gossip if you tell other people and it’s only lying if you act like it’s true,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing said.

“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think I know those things,” Two says. “So I don’t know how you could possibly know them.”

“I am a ridiculous owl turtle thing,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing responds, “and I am clearly impossible.”

“I am going to ignore you,” Two says. She looks around the vast, flat, featureless plain. “I think I am going to sweep.”

“Going to sweep? But you’re alweady sweeping,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “This is all a dweam.”

“That isn’t very funny,” Two says.

“It’s your nascent sense of humor, honey. I just work here.”

“I need a broom,” Two says, looking around the infinitely expanding space, but of course, there is no such thing as a broom there.

“And who told you to sweep?”

Two freezes, looking guilty. Her face in the dream takes on the spasmodic tic that it does when she’s stuck in a chain of thoughts. In her bed, under the blankets, her whole body kicks and twitches.

“I… I… I… this is my space and I am supposed to keep my space clean and tidy,” she says with a measure of triumph as she works the justification out.

“Looks pretty neat and tidy to me,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says.

“Miss Ruth says that practice makes perfect.”

“I don’t think she was talking about sweeping perfectly clean surfaces.”

“She did not specify,” Two says. She says again, “I need a broom.”

“Have you tried the other side of my post?” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “It seems to me that you can see everything there is here from where you’re standing, except for the other side of my post. So if you can’t see a broom, that’s the only place it could be.”

“Oh, okay,” Two says, and she walks around the ridiculous owl turtle thing. There is no broom leaning up against the post. “No,” she says. “There is no broom here.”

“Well, of course,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. It’s facing her again. “That’s this side of the post. You want the other side.”

“But I went to the other side,” Two protests.

“I beg to differ,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “You did not go to the other side. You came to this side. The other side is always the one at which you are not.”

“That poor chicken must be very tired, then,” Two says. “And dizzy.”

“Now who isn’t very funny?” the ridiculous owl turtle thing asks as Two reached around to the other side of the post and feels her hand closing around a wooden handle. She pulls out the improbably-placed broom. It’s labeled “Improbably-Placed Broom”.

“You,” Two says, and she begins to sweep the perfectly flat, perfectly clean surface of the vast, flat, featureless plain. “You aren’t funny. Still. Now be quiet. I have sweeping to do.”

“How will you know when you’re done?”

“When I’ve swept the whole place.”

“But it’s endless.”

“Yes,” Two says, and she smiles.

“You aren’t very good at dreaming, you know,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says.

“I don’t care,” Two said as she starts to sweep.

“Your name isn’t even Two,” it says. “You just made that up.”

“I think I hate you, ridiculous owl turtle thing,” Two says.

“You aren’t supposed to hate anybody.”

“You aren’t anybody,” Two says. “So that’s okay.”

Steff doesn’t have the self-awareness to know that she’s dreaming, but when she wakes up it will seem like it should have been obvious to her… so obvious that in the moment she awakens, she’ll manage to convince herself that she knew it was a dream and was just going with it.

There is no room in the fortress at Kilrest as big and expansive as the throne room in her dreams. While the ogres tower over her, they don’t build their structures any bigger than they need to. They lack the architectural cunning to build a great big hall with a high vaulted ceiling like the one Steff always imagined before she saw the real place, the one she still pictures more than half the time when she imagines her life after graduation.

Steff sits on her throne in the hall, and it is her throne. Viktor doesn’t factor into this dream. She has dreams about Viktor and she has dreams about Kilrest, but ever since they went there she hasn’t had any dreams about Viktor and Kilrest. Her sleeping mind cannot make them fit together. Her brooding lover does not fit with her idealized fantasy life of wicked decadence.

The hall is full of her subjects… ogres and reanimated skeletons and zombies… and her victims, which this time around consist entirely of people she went to school with. The ones who attacked her, the ones who teased her, the ones who snubbed her, the ones who happened to be present for the worst years of Steff Johnson’s life are being torn apart, being impaled on spits, being tortured to death in a dozen ways, but none of them are dying because Steff’s dark magic is too awesome to allow them that escape.

They’re starting to twist off Cindy Mears’s head now. What had Cindy done? Steff couldn’t remember anything in particular. But she was hot and effortlessly popular and Steff had popped so many boners over her while trying to figure out if she was a gay boy or a straight girl or what and that hadn’t made things easier for her.

Not that Cindy had been alone on that score. An adolescent male body is on a hair trigger to begin with. Adding in fifty percent elven blood… for a while it had seemed like everything turned Steff on, and this at a point in her life when she regularly found herself thinking of violent and/or morbid things…

It really was no wonder that certain associations had stuck in her head, though Steff has never had the self-awareness necessary to think about how she might have come to associate violence and death with sex. Even asking the question could seem to imply that there was something wrong with doing so, and Steff had spent too many years and too many tears convincing herself that she was fine to do that.

Life in her dream of Kilrest was so good. She didn’t feel like rocking the boat with a lot of moody self-examination.

“Why, yes, I do see your point,” Mother Khaele tells Amaranth in an utterly realistic and wholly plausible scenario in which the nymph has just pointed out the fundamental flaw in existing cosmological models which results in the perceived division between the so-called higher and lower races, the people and the animals. “You’ve worked it out quite nicely. In fact, I have to admit that I left that mistake there on purpose to see which of my children would be the first one to spot it, so that I would know who would be worthy of sharing my…”

At this point, Mack’s leg twitches in her sleep and she kicks Amaranth in the ankle, jarring her awake. She blinks her myopic eyes several times in the perfect darkness of the blanket tent before she realizes where she is and that her Mother’s praise had simply been a dream. She sighs, and tries to go back to sleep.

Moeli’s working the desk when She comes in, cool as ever. She doesn’t look at anyone when she comes into the room. She keeps her head down, thinking her important thoughts, but She‘s not afraid to say anything to anybody. Really.

She‘ll just blurt out things that would make a bugbear blush without even thinking about it. Just like that.

Eventually She sidles up to the counter, the way She does, like whatever She has got to do isn’t even that important.

“Hey,” She says, with that quiet, husky voice that drives him wild. “I, uh, found your notebook.”

“Oh?” Moeli asks. His hearts skip a couple of beats as She puts it down in front of him. He’d wanted to show his notebook to her, but he’d always chickened out. It was a million to one chance that She would be into something so weird.

“I hope you don’t mind I looked through it… well, I had to figure out whose it was. I thought the drawings of motorcycles were kind of cool. Did you do them?”

“Yeah,” Moeli said. “I did.”

“I like motorcycles,” She says. “I think they’re awesome.”

“I do, too,” Moeli says.

“In fact,” She says, leaning in close. “I’ve got one outside. A real one.”

“No shit?” Moeli says.

“Yeah,” She says. “Half-demons have motorcycles. But I can’t seem to figure out how to make it go. You seem like you know a lot about them, though. Do you think maybe we could try to take a ride… together?”

“Well, I’m kind of working now,” Moeli says. “And I can’t just walk away. Also, you said you weren’t into me.”

“I’m a bitch and I was lying to you for no reason,” She says. “Didn’t you know that?”

“Of course,” he says. “You know what? My shift’s over.”

Two has been sweeping for what seems like hours, and the ridiculous owl turtle thing is a distant memory behind her, as she’s sweeping in the way she’s been taught: one straight line until she comes to the wall or carpet, and then move over.

She doesn’t expect to find a wall or carpet any time soon. She doesn’t expect to find anything, as there has never been anything in the vast, flat, featureless plain except the post with the ridiculous owl turtle thing on it. But there had also never been a broom behind the post (that she knew of, anyway), and unfortunately for her, Two understands that one runs across unexpected things in dreams.

However, there are an infinite number of things she does not expect to run across, so it won’t necessarily have to be a wall or carpet or something else that would force her to turn around and start heading back towards the ridiculous owl turtle thing.

In fact, the first unexpected thing she runs across is her teddy bear, Hand Wash. In her dream, he’s as tall as she is, though he still just sits there with his firmly stuffed legs jutting out in front of him to support him and his upper body leaning slightly forward to keep him balanced on those legs.

“Hello, Two,” he says.

“Hello, Hand Wash,” she says. “I can’t stop to talk. I’m busy sweeping and I have to keep going until I’m done.”

“Sweeping? I thought you were dreaming.”

“I can do both,” Two says.

“I can’t do anything,” Hand Wash says.

“I know,” she says.

“I’m a teddy bear,” he adds.

“Yes.”

“I’m not even supposed to be talking,” he says. “Sorry.”

“That’s okay,” she says. “I forgive you.”

And onward she sweeps.

Ariadne knows the dream before it starts, because it’s the same one she’s been having for weeks now. That thing is in her class. It wears a mousey, unassuming little face, but the elven professor knows the fire and death and hate that lie behind that mask. She can’t say anything about it, though. She can’t do anything.

Nobody else sees. Nobody else knows.

Every time she turns her back, even if it’s only for a second, another of her students is gone. The thing is clearly responsible. Why can’t anybody else see this?

And now there’s more of it. More of them. It’s brought in its friends.

How much longer can this go on?

How long before the school’s overrun?

Something must be done.

Something must be done.

Amaranth, having just found out that she had aced all of her classes (as expected!), was getting ready to go home for winter break, but she was planning on taking the fast route home and traveling there in style. Steff had helped get her “dressed”, so to speak… arranging her on the platter with roasted potatoes and other vegetables, brushing her body down with garlic oil, and even stuffing an apple in her mouth for aesthetic purposes. Steff had wanted to use garlic butter, but Amaranth had felt that using an animal product would be more likely to bring Mother Khaele’s disapproval.

Now Steff is wheeling the trolley with the covered platter on it to the elegant dining room where her Mack waits along with Viktor and their new best friends, Iona and Feejee. This was such a brilliant idea, she thinks to herself, enjoying the smell of the garlic and the pepper and the fire roasted onions, and when she surprises all of her sisters by arriving home early and explains how she got there, they’ll all be so excited to try this… the ultimate carnal experience, the ultimate sharing of self… and the new phenomenon of responsible, consensual cannibalism utilizing renewable resources will put places like Tender Mercy’s out of business, she just knows it.

Who says you can’t have your cake and eat it, too?

And then the trolley stops and she knows that the moment of revelation is upon her and Mack is going to be so surprised and everybody’s going to think she looks sexy and delicious and she’s going to taste so good…

…and then Mack rolls over in her sleep, pulling on the blankets and Amaranth isn’t on the platter at all.

“Oh, phooey,” she says, and then she tries to go back to sleep.

Some dreams are simpler than others.

In Trina’s dream, everybody had four eyes, except for her, and this made them all freaks. Sara Leighton dreams that the teleport accident which in reality had joined her with her sister had actually sent her twin to another plane of existence. Tara’s version has it so that it merged them fully and they’d become one person. On occasion, they’ve each dreamed it the other way and broke out in a cold sweat in their sleep.

Feejee dreams of blood in the water.

Iona dreams of blood.

Kai, who often thinks of nothing but murder all day, dreams a surprisingly peaceful dream about her grandfather’s calligraphy pens. Suzi dreams of invisible cheeseburgers. Maliko dreams about her Sooni.

Scylla dreams that she’d made it to the damned rabbit before the snake-eyed bitch did. The snake-eyed bitch dreams of cutting off her pink skin and finding scales underneath. Gladys dreams of being up on stage, hundreds—no thousands—of people’s eyes upon her. Cetea dreams that she can use a damned mirror without it breaking.

Honey dreams absolutely nothing, as six crushed flower petals in a tall glass of vodka have rendered her oblivious even to oblivion.

“Hey, hey Two!”

“What is it, ridiculous owl turtle thing?” Two asks as the clearly impossible thing flaps its flipper wings in ungainly flight alongside her, oblivious to her attempts to sweep away from it.

“How come you never dream about your friends?” it asks her.

“I do,” she says. “Sometimes. But not when I dream about the workshop, because they weren’t in the workshop.”

“You never dream about them here, either.”

“They were never here,” Two says. “And anyway this is still the workshop dream. It’s just broken, and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“You could stop saying good morning,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says.

“No,” Two says, shaking her head. “I tried that.”

“You could stop freaking the hell out when it happens,” it says. “That’s what breaks the dream, you know.”

“I don’t care,” Two says. “I have a different dream now. I’m sweeping.”

“But have you considered the ramifications of that?”

“No,” she says.

“Do you think there really was a broom on the other side of my post?”

“Yes,” she says.

“It was there because you dreamed it up,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says. “You could dream up anything you wanted.”

“I don’t care,” Two says. “I’m sweeping.”

Dee is a child in the marketplace. One of her hands is being held by Dehsah, and the other by her mother.

No, that’s wrong. My mother never took me to the marketplace.

Dee is a child in the marketplace. Her mother, pretty Dehsah…

No.

Dee is in the marketplace, with her lover, Dehsah.

Dehsah hasn’t been out of the house since we became lovers.

Dee passes a fitful night, her subconscious unable to provide any dreams of succor which her conscious mind does not reject out of hand.

Amaranth looks beautiful in her wedding dress, and so does Mack. They are having an outdoor ceremony, of course, and even a hilltop shrine was out of the question under the circumstances, so they’re holding it in a beautiful elven forest bower. Everybody from Paradise Valley is there, and so are all the students she’d worked with during her years of study (in which she’d attained multiple degrees and many honors), and nymphs and satyrs and fauns of all stripes.

Mack had agreed to have a Mechan officiate, to get around her little disability, but when they get to the end of the aisle Amaranth sees that it’s not the scientist there at all, but Mother Khaele herself. Amaranth looks in alarm at Mack, but Mack is standing unharmed in the presence of the divine.

“Rest easy, my daughter,” Mother Khaele says. “For your love has redeemed this demon-tainted soul completely, and now I will happily join the two of you as one, after which you will be taken to your honeymoon in a carriage pulled by specially trained horses, who will join you for…”

“Sooni!” Mack blurts out, and Amaranth looks at her in confusion as the wedding dissolves and she finds herself in bed once more, where Mack blurts out Sooni’s name a few more times.

“Suzune-Darling, there is something you must know,” her mother tells Sooni, who sits anxiously by her feet, hanging on every word. Her mother is so wise and so beautiful, just like herself. “We have kept this from you for years, for your own protection, but now you must be told.”

“What, Mother?” Sooni asks. “What is it?”

“I only hope you can forgive my dishonesty towards you,” her mother says.

“I’m sure if you were not truthful towards me, it was for a very good reason,” Sooni says, bowing her head.

“You are such a good daughter, Suzune-Darling,” her mother says. She gets to her feet. “Perhaps it would be easier to show you than tell you.”

She turns around in a circle, and when she does her features have changed. It’s the same kind, wise eyes that are looking down at Sooni, but they’re yellow instead of black. The same calm smile, but with a shorter snout.

Her mother is a nekoyokai.

“Mother… you’re…?”

“Yes,” her mother says, nodding. “And not just that, but I am Queen of the Nekos. Which means that you, my humble daughter Suzune-Darling, you are the Neko Princess. You look like you do because you are half kitsu, but now that you know the truth you will be able to change between the two at will. You must keep your identity as Neko Princess secret, though, or else you will be in terrible danger.”

“That’s why Father always became angry when I acted like a neko!” Sooni exclaims.

“Yes. He was simply worried about you,” her mother says. “And you must know that Kai…”

“Kai is my true sister!” Sooni says. “I’ve known it all along!”

“Yes! Your heart knows the truth, Suzune-Darling, my Neko Princess!”

A door slams downstairs, pulling Sooni away from her mother. She sits upright in bed, shaking her head in confusion. What had she just been dreaming? It had been about her mother, she’s sure about that… but the details are all slipping away. Her mother and nekos.

Oh, well. It couldn’t have been a True Dream if I can’t remember it.

She reaches down and gets her mother’s shoes, the shoes she wears everywhere, even inside the house, off the floor and holds them to her chest as she lays back down, hoping her mother comes back to her soon. She had left a map of the Imperium with Prax circled on it at the family shrine, along with a brochure for the campus with her room number on it, but she wasn’t sure if her mother could come this far, or that she’d have the time.

She had a lot of work to do, her mother did. She was a very important person.

“My friend Hazel used to keep a dream diary,” Two says.

“Oh, so you’re talking to me now?” the ridiculous owl turtle thing says.

“I’m talking,” Two says. “I don’t think it matters if I’m talking to you or not, since you are not real. Her mother made her keep a dream diary from when she was eleven until she turned twenty-two. She made my friend Hazel write her dreams down every morning, and then she read it. She wanted to make sure that my friend Hazel didn’t get the curse.”

“No, she wanted to find out if your friend Hazel already had it,” the ridiculous owl turtle thing replies. “That’s a different thing. And it isn’t a curse.”

“I know,” Two says. “I told my friend Hazel that, and she said ‘Well, it isn’t a blessing.’ And then she told me not to talk about it.”

“But you are.”

“I’m dreaming,” Two says. “I’m not really talking.”

“So why can’t you stop yourself from saying ‘good morning’ to the man?”

It’s the war again.

The bridge.

Theona’s down by the bridge, trying to finish her spell of unmaking before the orcs overwhelm her. Jill can see that she’s just going to make it… get the spell off, that is. She doesn’t have time to finish it and escape.

The rest of Hydra Company… all four of the other survivors… have their hands full. Nora’s gone dead to the world again, seemingly conscious of nothing but the bow in her hands. Ironically she’s doing the most to help Theona, sending arrow after arrow at the thundering horde as it bears down on her.

She makes every shot she takes, and every shot is a fatal one, but she might as well be standing on a beach trying to shoot down the waves as they head towards the shore.

Mur-Si is… who the fuck knew where Mur-Si was? The most Jill could see was where she had just been, as ogres collapse with the legs cut out from under them and orcs die in fountains of spurting blood. Jill had been told… some hundred years before… that she had been bred to be the greatest warrior the world had ever seen… but the bastard elven hybrid is a strong argument that the Founders had wasted their efforts.

Jill and Fayborn are fighting back to back, Fay’s gleaming sword and Jill’s giant axe cleaving a circle around them. Jill keeps getting glimpses of the kid in the wizard robes down by the bridge, kneeling helpless and alone as she focuses on her spell.

“What’s the plan for extraction?” Jill asks.

“Soon as we see the bridge go down, we bug out,” Fay says. “Simple enough for you, Flattop?”

“What about The?”

“She bugs out, too.”

“She’s never going to make it back up to us,” Jill says.

“She might,” Fay says. “Didn’t think we’d make it this far at all.”

“We’ve got to get down to her,” Jill says.

“Can’t,” Fay says. “If she fails, we’ve got to be ready to try Plan B.”

“She’s our wizard,” Jill says. “What are we supposed to do to the bridge without her, have Mur-Si stab it to death?”

“Need to know basis.”

“You sent her down there to die,” Jill says.

“We were all sent here to die,” Fay says. “Some of us are better at it than others.”

Jill headbutts the orc in front of her and then charges through the gap left as it goes down, trampling goblins, shouldering past orcs, and dodging around ogres. Fay yells out behind her, something about sticking together, but let the bitch yell. She stands a better chance on her own than the neophyte mage who had, completely unwittingly, become the linchpin of the entire mission.

And as she thunders down the side of the ravine towards the bridge, Jill remembers that this has all already happened and that it’s just a dream, and she realizes she’s not going to make it in time.

The bridge starts to crumble and Theona stands and turns to run up towards her. The bridge is collapsing as a pair of ogres catch hold of her.

They don’t even have weapons out. Why would they? She doesn’t. If she’d been fighting them, they might have been forced to kill her, but instead they’ve got her in their hands…

“Opening the first charity brothel together was the best idea ever, Amaranth,” Mack says.

“Oh, it just seemed like the natural thing to do, after you and Two overcame your inhibitions and embraced the nymphly codes as a way of life,” Amaranth replies. “But this is just the start. Once we start teaching our classes, we’ll get more women of all races to subscribe to my new revolutionary philosophy and soon the entire world will be at peace because everybody will be too busy loving one another to hate anybody. Of course, some credit belongs to Mother Khaele.”

“No, she told me it’s all because of you,” Mack says. “And that you shouldn’t need to feel humble about it, but that’s just like you to think of her.”

“But, Mack, you couldn’t have spoken to… oh, poop. This is a dream again, isn’t it?” Amaranth says as she wakes up.

“Huh? What?” Mack murmurs sleepily beside her in the darkness.

“Nothing, baby,” Amaranth mutters, frowning. “Nothing.”

Leda is dancing across the smooth, glassy surface of the lake. It’s winter, her favorite time, but though a dusting of snow coats trees and the ground on the shore around the lake, the water remains unfrozen. Even in human form, though, it bears her weight. She leaps and she glides about in the moonlight, and then she heads for the thicket of reeds in the center of the lake, where on this side there is a small island, barely more than a bump of rock jutting up above the surface of the water.

That small island of reeds is the gateway to the other side, where her mother’s castle and where her true kingdom is. On both sides, the kingdom of Mariinsky Lake is not more than the lake itself, but on the Other Side, that lake is much bigger.

Even though she loves the castle and she loves the true lake far more than she loves the dreary, cramped one she’d just been dancing upon, she feels cold dread seeping down her spine as she passes through the reeds and finds herself on the large island with her home in front of her. It’s daylight on this side, but the sun doesn’t seem to warm her up much.

She knows what’s coming next.

Leda is a true princess: grace defined, possessing endless reserves of natural charm and refinement. But somehow—witches, probably—she screwed up and got herself exiled for four years to a moonforsaken frontier outpost in an empire of human barbarians. It was unthinkable, it was impossible… but it had happened, and it was going to happen again.

What would it be this time? Would she upset a tureen of soup? Lean against a priceless tapestry? Would she tread on an ambassador snail’s tail? Accidentally insult a visiting frog prince?

Knowing that her doom was coming but not knowing what shape it would take was terrible torture, but no matter how much she fights against it, her body still insists on passing over the drawbridge, under the portcullis, and through the gatehouse. She exchanges polite pleasantry with the guards in their bright red uniforms.

Her mother and her stepfather are waiting for her in the throne room, and in between her and them is a gauntlet of respected courtiers, servants bustling around with important loads, and guests of high social rank. But no matter what Leda did, no matter how careful she was, something would go wrong because when she reached the throne room, her stepfather would smile that sneering smile at her and say those nine most hated words:

“Your mother and I have been discussing your education.”

And so the dream went.

“Do you want to know what I think?” the ridiculous owl turtle thing asks.

“No,” Two says. “I really think I do not.”

“I think you say ‘good morning’ because you want to.”

“I want to do what I’m told,” Two says.

“Among other things,” it says. “But I think you want him to acknowledge you.”

“No,” Two says, shaking her head. “You are mistaken.”

“I think you know you couldn’t go back to being a piece of lab equipment now that you’ve been a person, and you want to know if he could relate to you as a person.”

“No,” Two repeats decisively.

“I think part of you would like to have a conversation with him.”

“You are mistaken.”

“I think you want to know what he thinks about you… if he thinks about you. Does he miss you like you miss him? Would he take you back as you are now? Would he hire you as a free person? Would he like you?”

“No!” Two yells. She turns and clobbers him with the broom. “I hate you, some sort of ridiculous owl turtle thing!” she yells as she hits him again and again. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

“Amaranth, you’re so smart!” the professor proclaims. “In all my years of teaching, I’ve never met a student who understood the material so quickly and so completely. That a nymph should be the one to…”

Under the covers, Mack begins to masturbate furiously. Amaranth, awoken once again, sighs, reaches over, and guides her lover’s hand to a slightly better spot. Mack moans in her sleep.

“At least somebody’s having pleasant dreams tonight,” Amaranth says.