That evening, after dinner, they were relaxing together on Cern's sofa, ready to discuss what they should do so that Dema would not keep on waking up in some altered form.

"I think I should stop wearing the torc."

Dema nodded. "That's probably good, at least for now. But I want to get to the source of it."

"What do you have in mind?"

"Sedna reminded me of our ancestral relationship, the Gundestrup caldron thing."

"We already went there together that first night."

"So we know how our relationship began. We don't know how it ended."

"What do you mean?"

"I don't know. And maybe that's the problem. At any rate, if we were to relive more of that past life together, we might find a clue."

"We can do that?"

"We did it once, we can do it again."

"I thought that first time was because we had both just found out about the caldron. That we were drawn there because it had stirred up those deep memories in both of us."

"That's true. But remember, whatever happens in the dream is what we want to happen. That time it may have been on some deep level we weren't fully aware of. This time, we can guide the dream there consciously."

"That still puzzles me. The idea that we can guide our dreams, the thing you called lucid dreaming. I never knew that was possible."

"Without getting too philosophical, we could say that all of life is a shared dream, and every act of will is simply being lucid in it."

Cern appeared to be trying to process that for a moment. "Okay, if you say so."

"Don't worry, once we are in our dream I can guide it for both of us. At least to get us started. Then we'll just have to see where it takes us."

"How long do you think this will take? I mean, reliving a past life?"

"It might take one night, it could take several. But don't worry. Time runs differently in the dream. It's not like our bodies here will be in a coma or something. I'm sure we'll both wake up in time for breakfast."

"All right then, you're the boss. When do we start?"

She leaned over and began unbuttoning his shirt...