Dema drove home. On the way, she thought about the sense of loss she had felt when she let go of the forest dream, and the relief that came when she realized that it would always be available to her.

She thought about the forest spirit, the old shaman who had merged himself with the forest dream and become the forest protector. She wondered what lucky accident had literally dropped her into his lap, rather than into some other stretch of woods. Then she remembered her certainty that she could find a forest dream in any forest. That was before she had met the shaman, when he had still been asleep. 

Or, she suddenly thought, perhaps he had been more awake, but on a different level. As she drove, she opened her awareness to the countryside, sensing the life in it more deeply than usual. 

Sedna had taught her that this was the third level of shaman awareness. Beyond that there was the realization that life is subject to will, that you control your own destiny. Sedna had called this the final level of shaman awareness, but Dema now thought there might be another. For with her new understanding of the forest dream, and its dreamer, she felt there were other sleeping spirits out there, perhaps also shamans, who had forsaken physical form for this deeper level of awareness. There was, she was certain, no shortage of such souls. They were beyond the need for personal bodies, because they had expanded their personal dream to include not just one creature, but many.

But it was a place she was not yet prepared to go. She had the ability to comprehend other forms than the one she had been born to, and to become them at will, and her forest dream experience had opened new possibilities to her, but as she had told the forest spirit, she remained committed to the call of the Lamia. She smiled to herself as she thought of an appropriate line with which to close this chapter of her life, one penned by Robert Frost.

"The woods are lovely, dark and deep, but I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep; and miles to go before I sleep."