Sedna was sitting with a book open on her lap. When Dema entered the room, she put the book aside and stood up to give her a hug. "You've done it, Dema," she said.

Dema smiled back at her. "I think it's because the wound has fully healed," she said. "I woke up this morning feeling wonderful, and suddenly it was easy.

"Except for this." She held out her hands and turned them over. "I'm still pale, and cold-blooded. I can't seem to do anything about it." She reached up and brought a handful of her white hair around where she could look at it herself, then looked back at Sedna.

Sedna studied her for a moment, then asked, "What about in your dreams, your memories of the first time?"

Dema thought about that for a moment, then said, "My body is pale there, too. All the other snakes are black. I thought my pallor was from the loss of blood, but I'm healthy now, and still it doesn't go away. I suppose I could use makeup like I did before, and hair coloring, if I have to."

Sedna gave her another quizzical look. "What about your mind?"

"Oh, everything is still very dreamlike, but I'm getting used to that. It makes it easy to change form."

"Perhaps," Sedna ventured, "your cold blood and your pallor are symbolic."

"Symbolic? How?"

"Remember, all that you have gone through was brought about by your own inner will. Your white hair is a sign. Loss of blood does not explain that. I think perhaps your pallor has some deeper meaning, either from your past, or in this life, or both."

Dema considered that for a moment, then sighed, and shrugged. Despite this unresolved question, her spirits remained high. "Guess I'll have to wait and see," she said. "Watch this!"

She stepped back to the middle of the room, and dreamed herself into snake-form. The jumpsuit dropped away as she raised her long body high and arched her snake-head down toward Sedna. Once again it had been easy. She was pleased, because she hadn't been sure she could do it so quickly with Sedna watching. She made her head turn fully human, including the cloud of white hair. That was still easy too. Smiling broadly at Sedna she said, "Isn't it great!"

Sedna grinned back at her. "Dema, you truly are a wonder. I know of none since the first Lamia who had your power."

"Actually, she wasn't the first Lamia," Dema told her. She dream-shifted back to her human form, retrieved her jumpsuit and put it on, then sat in a chair opposite and told Sedna the story of her most recent dream, with the remembrance of how the Lamia her mother had been slain before her eyes.

After that Dema went back to her upstairs room and experimented with makeup. She told herself it was so she could go out to the car and get the rest of her things without startling the neighbors, but in truth she just wanted to look like herself again. It did not take her long, and aside from the white hair and yellow eyes, she was satisfied. She wrapped a long shawl over her head to hide the white hair, then went out to the car and brought in her bags.

Back in her room she set down the bags and stripped off her jumpsuit. She wanted to dress more normally, and stay in her human form for the rest of the day. On a sudden whim, she shifted to snake-form and back again, then looked in the mirror. Her makeup was gone. It had fallen to the floor in a sprinkling of dust.

Once again she sighed and shrugged. Then she dressed, this time more normally, for the sheer girlish delight of it, with undergarments, slacks and a white blouse. The white blouse, she thought, would make her pale coloring seem less stark.

She rejoined Sedna, and after chatting again for a while they decided to have dinner. They went to the kitchen and prepared a normal meal, then sat together at the kitchen table and ate. Dema took special pleasure in being able to do this mundane human action in the normal human way again.

After a pleasant evening, they both retired to bed. Dema went to the back room again, still wanting to avoid the chance of being discovered by her mother. Tonight, though, she went to bed in human form, slipping under the covers and closing her eyes to sleep...