In which Dema's abilities as a shaman shapeshifter are tested.

Miguel Ortega awoke in a cold sweat, as he did almost every morning. He had dreamed of the white snake again. But his new yacht was being provisioned in the port of Barranquilla. Soon he would go to sea, leaving behind his family home in Cartagena, and with it, he hoped, these terrifying dreams of jungles and the snake. With his yacht, he would voyage north to the United States, to revitalize his family's drug trade and, he secretly hoped, find again the mysterious dark-haired, green-eyed woman he desired.

Dema Culver looked in on her sister-snake, coiled on the bed in the guestroom at the back of the house. Dema felt Kore's yellow snake-form eyes focus on her, and knew that she was awake.

As she opened herself to Kore's snake dream, she heard her grandmother Sedna come out of the bedroom across the hall. Together they joined Kore in the snake dream, and helped her dream her body into human shape.

As usual Kore remained pale. She could not yet waken fully out of the snake dream and regain her human color and metabolism. But she had found her human voice, and said "Good morning," as she hugged them. Naga joined them, and Kore hugged her mother too.

Kore was still sharing Dema's clothing, and Sedna bustled about shaking them out and handing them to her as Kore got dressed. "Sedna, this is sooo much better than living in my old snake den!" Kore said as she reached behind her neck to pull the mass of white hair free of her collar.

The four of them went to the kitchen where Dema and Naga began preparing their morning toast and coffee. Sedna turned on the stove to fix something more substantial for Kore and herself, and Kore got the orange juice out of the refrigerator. Her reptilian metabolism did not seem to be interfering with her human tastes.

As they danced around each other between the toaster and the coffee maker, Naga and Dema apologized to Kore and Sedna for running off to work. "Never you mind," Sedna replied, "You two just get along about your business. Kore and I have a big day ahead of us too, and we'll get started sooner if you clear out!"

So Naga went off to her clinic in the Medical District, and Dema headed for the DEA office. At home, Sedna would once again join Kore in the snake dream, and help her try to broaden it into the shaman dream that would in time allow her to master her transformations.

This had become their routine since Dema had discovered that Kore had been living as a snake in the big drains beneath the streets of Chicago all the years since the night she disappeared. Dema had found her and brought her home. Sedna had nursed her through the drug withdrawal. Now it was Sedna's self-appointed task to help Kore recover her full human physiology.

Naga, too, had become more involved with her family. Although she had never learned to enter the shaman dream herself, Kore's return, and her need, had revived their mother-daughter bond. Naga left for her clinic later, and returned home earlier, than she had in years.

Often in the evenings she and Dema would talk about the shaman dream state, Naga trying to understand it analytically. She hoped in this way to learn something that might help Kore recover. Although Sedna remained confident as always, Kore's progress toward recovering her humanity was agonizingly slow, and both Dema and Naga had grown increasingly concerned.

But Kore was making progress, although she continued to revert to snake form during the night. At first it had required Dema's skill to help her regain her human shape each morning, but soon Sedna could do it. They had pretty much settled into this as a routine, until one morning Sedna had to call on Dema to assist her.

That night Kore had gone deep into the snake dream, deeper than Sedna could follow. Dema was upstairs getting dressed when she heard Sedna's silent summons, and rushed down to Kore's room. There she found Sedna sitting on the bed, hands gently stroking Kore, who was still in snake form.

Without hesitation Dema shifted into snake form herself, and slid onto the bed with Kore. She entwined her long dark coils with Kore's pale ones, as she had done joyfully the night of their reunion, and went deep into Kore's dream.

Kore responded to Dema's presence, sharing her dream, but she did not respond to Dema's urging to dream herself into human shape. Her snake mind seemed to have become dominant again, and was intent on following the urging of another instinct, the instinct to hunt.

She welcomed Dema's snake presence, but wanted her to join in this snake-form adventure. Dema sensed that Kore's naturally effervescent spirit had begun to feel frustrated and stifled by the long days under Sedna's tutelage. In her own irrepressible way, Kore was making a bid for freedom.

Dema passed this on to Sedna's awareness, along with her own helplessness to persuade Kore out of this desire. The fact was, Kore made it seem so enticing that Dema was sorely tempted to join her in it.

Naga had come into the room, and was watching the slowly twining bodies of her snake daughters. She stood back, doubting her own ability to help resolve whatever problem Sedna and Dema were encountering with Kore this morning.

But when neither daughter shifted form at all her concern mounted, and something stirred deep within her. Without knowing what she expected to accomplish, she found herself kneeling beside the bed.

She took Kore's snake-form head in her hands, looking deep into her yellow eyes. The connection between them intensified, and she poured herself into it as she said, "Kore, I don't know what's troubling you this morning, but it will pass. We will make you whole again, Sedna and Dema and I. You don't need to be a snake. You will be free again."

Instantly Kore's body shifted from snake to human form and she was in her mother's arms, embracing her, head on her shoulder, tears streaming from her eyes. "I love you, Ma," she croaked. Dema too returned to normal and now stood by the bed, looking at her mother with awe. Sedna was beaming.