As he rises through the layers of the shaman dream and begins to surface into awareness of the physical world, Cern feels he has finally achieved full understanding of his higher spiritual nature. He is the guardian, the protector of the woods. And Dema is his counterpart. They are the male and female aspects of an overarching spiritual force. His is the paternal role, the protector and provider, hers the maternal, the wellspring of physical life and nurture. They are eternally, inextricably linked. Meant for each other.

There is a sense of rightness about this that swells in his breast. He wants to share these thoughts and emotions with Dema, to watch her glow with the awareness of it as he feels he is glowing. He opens his eyes and turns to look at her, a peaceful smile spread across his face.

He sees that she is already awake, and smiling back at him. In the dim predawn light he drinks in her dusky beauty, his smile broadening. But there is something different, an unfamiliar shape beside her head.

As his eyes examine it, she responds. Still smiling, she lifts her head, so he can see the shape more clearly. It is an ear, a large bat-like ear, mirrored now as she raises her head above the pillow by another like it on the other side.

Now his eyes are drawn to her neck, for her head continues to rise and he can see that her neck is snake-like, holding her head nearly a foot above the pillow...

Cern was no longer asleep. He sat up in the bed and looked down over the rest of her body. He saw that she was shrouded by a membrane of some sort, and he was puzzled by this until she raised her arm to reveal it as a batwing, the tips briefly grazing the ceiling before she folded it again against her side.

Now he saw that her lower body was long and snakelike, but adorned with fins, including a large forked tail fin like that of a trout, which she spread for him playfully.

Cern got up and turned on a light. Dema stayed on the bed. By now Cern was frankly gawking at her. She swung her head to follow him, still smiling as he moved around to assess her from all angles.

"What..." he began, but fell speechless.

"This is a sort of physical manifestation of our dream," she said.

"Okay, it's kind of interesting, but, why?"

"Don't you like me this way?"

"I'll take you any way I can get you. But it looks kind of..."

"Inconvenient? I'll say! But there's nothing I can do about it."

"You mean...?"

"That I'm stuck this way? Yup." She was still smiling playfully.

"So..."

"So it's all your fault." She pouted at him.

"My fault? What..."

"What did you do? It was your dream. I went along for the ride. And this is where it took me."

"But what can I do?"

"You mean you want me to shift back to normal?"

He nodded, still practically speechless.

"You can take off that silly torc for one thing. I don't know why, but when you are wearing it, I sort of lose control."

The way she said it made him grin, and he said, "Well, that's good to know." But he had the torc off in an instant.

She flexed her parts a bit as if to remind herself what and where they were, then dreamed herself normal. She got out of bed and went to him, and gave him a kiss.

He put his arms around her and said, "Definitely better." Then, "But how come this hasn't happened before?"

"It has."

A puzzled look crossed his face, followed by dawning understanding. "Oh."

"The first morning I woke up in snake form. I crawled out on the balcony and hid in the tree." She pointed to it through the window.

"The next morning I woke up with bat ears. There were bats outside. I went out and stood on the balcony to see what was up, and suddenly I had batwings too. So I flew home.

"But both times I didn't come out of it until you came out of your dream. The second time it was easier, because I got you to take off the torc."

"I remember that. But why didn't you come back? I mean, why did you leave me?"

He looked so forlorn as he said this that she had to laugh. But she said, "I was too afraid you would think we had to end it. I thought I could figure it out and not have to worry you."

"But you worried me anyway. And you didn't figure it out."

"That's about the size of it."

"So what do we do now? Do I have to hang this up?" He gestured with the torc he still held in his hand.

"No, I'm fine when you have it on as long as we don't go into the dream. And now we know that when we do, all you have to do is take it off afterward."

He was visibly relieved. Dema said, "If Sedna were here she'd be scolding you. The torc is symbolic. The power is in you. All it does is give you a way to focus it. You could learn to do without."

"So why does it free you when I take it off?"

"When you take it off, the dream ends for you. You drop the lingering connections. You shouldn't have to, but you do."

"You mean if I wanted to I could make you stay in an altered form?"

"You wouldn't want to. And my guess is that you couldn't do it if you did want to. It had to be an unconscious thing, because it required my trust. It was only because I trust you so completely that it happened at all."

"But still, if we dream together it could happen again. You could wake up as the bat-snake-fish thing."

She nodded. "At least I didn't wake up as a tree."

He stared at her. 

"Yup," she said. "Been there, done that."

A little later they were having breakfast together. Cern had been very quiet. Finally he said, "Maybe you were right. Maybe we shouldn't dream together any more. Not if there's a chance you will turn into a tree, or something worse."

Dema shook her head. "We're not going to give up that easy. Neither of us will let anything bad happen, now that we both know what's going on. If I get in trouble, I just need to tell you about it. Before I didn't want to freak you out. Now that's not an issue. When I come back tonight, we'll figure out what to do."