Cern woke slowly, clinging to the pleasure of the dream experience. He smiled to himself and lazily turned his head, expecting to see Dema asleep beside him. But she wasn't there. He listened for the sound of her puttering about in the bathroom or the kitchenette, but heard nothing. Had she left for work already?

He got up and padded around the apartment, looking for a note. Surely she would have left one. But there was nothing. Not even a pot of coffee. He started one himself, then went to get dressed. While he was doing that, he noticed the clothes she'd worn the night before, still draped over a chair in the bedroom.

Now he was really puzzled. She must have gotten an urgent call in the early hours. Why it didn't wake him too he didn't know, but then he was pretty deep in the dream they had shared. He didn't dwell on it, he finished dressing and left for work. On the way to his car, he noticed her Jeep still parked on the street, but that only added to the mystery. 

He did not imagine that it was anything more than a sudden emergency that she would be able to explain to him when they met again later. He got in his car and drove off, beginning to think about his first appointment. With all the distraction, he had not quite realized that he was still wearing the torc.

Dema knows. She can feel it, and knows that the extra intensity the torc gives to their dream is part of the reason she cannot shift. She had expected the effect to lessen when he took it off and hung it on the peg in the hall as usual. Now it is clear to her that he hasn't done that.

So she remains in snake form, hidden high in the tree. But as the morning wears on, and his mind shifts out of the dream and onto the business at hand, she feels her normal control begin to return. She stays in snake form long enough to get out of the tree and back into the apartment...

Once she had returned to normal, the anxiety that had begun to build up in her dissipated, and she relaxed. As she got dressed, she went into her shaman dream and relayed to Cern the sense that the emergency was over and all was okay. She felt him relax with the reassurance, and felt more at ease herself as she drove off in the Jeep to pick up her own normal routine.