She found her grandmother Sedna already in the kitchen, preparing a pitcher of orange juice while the morning coffee brewed. Kore and Naga came in right behind her, and Dema paused to hug them both before she put her muffin in the toaster.

Kore chattered gaily about the coming day, and Dema couldn't help smiling as she listened to her. After her recovery, Kore had started helping out at the clinic. It obviously made Naga more comfortable to keep her daughter close after the long years she had been missing.

Kore seemed to thoroughly enjoy the human contact. Although she had no formal medical training, her natural effervescence made her a favorite with the patients. She had a knack for lifting their spirits to match her own.

Kore was telling them about a new member of the clinic's staff. His name was Roger, and Kore said he was full of fascinating stories. At the mention of his name Dema felt a little tug at her intuition, but she dismissed it, telling herself that if Kore liked him he must be okay. Although Kore seemed to like everyone.

Dema shook her head. This concern must be a holdover from her snake dream. It was not as if Kore would spill all the family secrets to him. Or that he would believe her if she did. Dema realized she was still brooding about the possible implications of her dream. Perhaps, she thought, she had been neglecting her shaman training for too long.

"Shaman training is all about a way of looking at the world, isn't it Grandma?" she asked as she poured herself a cup of coffee.

"Yes, but more exactly it's about a way of perceiving the world, don't you think?" Although Sedna was well steeped in shamanistic lore, she deferred to Dema when it came to practical experience, and made no authoritarian claims.

"Looking, perceiving, what's the difference?" asked Kore from across the table.

"It's a matter of perspective, I would say," said Naga. "And of receptivity. I can't just look at my patients, I have to perceive what's going on with them. That's part of my medical training."

"Exactly," said Dema. "Shaman training is about breaking out of the normal way of looking at things, and learning to really look, to perceive in a fuller sense."

"In a spiritual sense," Sedna added, "bypassing the body mechanics until we learn to perceive on purely spiritual channels."

Dema nodded. That was certainly the beginning.

"But there's more," she said, "Not the shape-shifting and other mind-over-matter stuff. It's about purpose, direction, and something else..."

"Ahhh...," Sedna smiled. "Connections. It's about connections."

Naga nodded as if she understood, but said nothing. Kore looked blank. Dema looked at her sister and smiled. "That's the part I'm a little weak on, I think."

Kore was attentive, so she went on. "I understand connections when it comes to shape-shifting. You have to be able to sense the fundamental agreements, the underlying reality of bodies on a cellular level, before you can influence your own to change shape. That's our heritage from the Lamia, that innate ability we have. But shaman training goes beyond that, doesn't it Grandma."

"Yes, it does," Sedna replied. "There is more than one reality."

"Wait a minute," said Kore. "When I was having trouble recovering from being the snake, you kept trying to get me to return to reality, you told me my altered state was artificial, and couldn't persist if I didn't want it to. Now you're saying there is more than one reality?"

"There's only ever one true physical reality," Sedna told her, "But there can be any number of human realities."

"Memes," said Naga thoughtfully, after a pause.

"Huh?" Kore and Dema responded in chorus, turning puzzled looks on their mother. Sedna was smiling.

"Memes. Human ideas. Cultural realities. Things that live and replicate only in the human mind, that have no physical existence. The Bible. The Koran. The Bhagavad Gita. Medical journals. The Chicago Times."

Kore was frowning in puzzlement. "Come on, Mom, the Chicago Times has physical existence, and it's replicated in piles on street corners all over the city!"

"Mom doesn't mean the paper isn't real," said Dema. "She means the physical paper is only that. To a dog, say, it's got no more significance than a roll of toilet paper. The ideas in it, the things we read, exist only in people's minds. Right, Mom?"

"That's right. The word 'memes' was coined after the word 'genes' to make an analogy between physical evolution and the evolution of the world of ideas. A meme is supposed to be the smallest self-replicating unit of thought."

"Okay, I think I get it now," Kore said. "Ideas may travel on physical channels like symbols on paper, but they really only exist in minds that understand them."

"Yes. The words we are speaking, or the electronic bits in a computer or a cell phone, are not the ideas they represent. The ideas themselves persist and replicate only in minds that are receptive to them. If an idea doesn't appeal to you, you won't communicate it to others, and it may die out," Naga added.

"And ideas that are real in one mind may be totally unknown to another," said Dema.

"That's it," said Sedna. "Every mind has its own reality, its own inner world of ideas and experiences. Among animals that share thoughts only in a limited way, that inner world is quite simple and accepted matter-of-factly. A shape-shifter can pervade that reality in an animal and then influence her own animal self to temporarily accept that different reality.

"But humans have complex inner worlds and exchange thoughts in sophisticated ways. They have cultural realities that may affect them more strongly than physical reality does."

Kore began looking puzzled again, and said, "I'm not sure what you mean, Grandma."

"Physical reality is relatively stable, it evolves slowly and can be known and relied on. But mental reality is varied and variable, and the realities of people can shift in unexpected ways.

"That's the point about connections. You have to understand the realities of others as well as you can if you want to get along, make and keep good connections, but they are intricate and many, and evolve rapidly, so it is not a simple task. Most of the stress of modern existence comes from the struggle to keep pace with cultural evolution."

"Now I get it. 'It takes all the running you can do just to stay in the same place,' After my ten years as the snake, I still haven't caught up."

"Connections. I'll have to work on that." Dema was still thinking about Kore's comment about catching up as she rose to leave for the DEA office.

Dema realized that Kore was right. After ten years as a snake she had been starved for human connections. She was working hard to catch up, and had become very good at it. This was what made her such a hit at the clinic.

But her very enthusiasm made her vulnerable to infectious "memes." She turned to mention this thought to Naga, but she and Kore were already headed for the door on their way to the clinic.

Dema looked at Sedna. There was something in Sedna's eyes that told Dema she was having similar thoughts about Kore, and then the look changed and Dema knew that she, too, had put such thoughts aside.

There was no better place for Kore than with Naga. There was no need for their concern. Dema gave her grandmother a hug and then she was out the door, on her way to a day at the DEA.