The next day Dema reported in at the DEA and Cern checked in with his law firm, and they both began settling into the routine. But that evening Kore was full of questions again. 

"I've been thinking about what you said all day, about the Green Man, and the ghosts and vampires. Then at the clinic Mom started telling me more about Gaia. I thought she must be some sort of queen of the ghosts, but Mom said no, she's just a personification of the way evolution works. What the heck does that mean?"

Cern took the bait. "You know about Darwin and natural selection, right?"

Kore nodded.

"Well, that works right down to the atomic, even subatomic, level. Given whatever circumstances, if something can happen, it will happen eventually. But some circumstances are more favorable than others for it happening sooner."

Naga was nodding vigorously, and Cern deferred to her.

"First of all there has to be a flow of energy," she said. "Without that, nothing happens at all."

Kore gaped wide-eyed, already out of her depth, so Dema jumped in to explain. 

"It's like a still pond, where the water settles down until it's flat, without a ripple."

Naga nodded and continued. "Then if a breeze comes along, ripples form, and they can spread around, reflect off of the shore and form patterns."

Kore understood this metaphor. "Or in a brook with running water there can be a pattern of little waves around a rock or a reed."

Naga smiled at her daughter. "Yes. The pattern is constant, even though it's not the same water." 

"So, life is like that? The flow of energy sets up patterns, and we see the patterns and think they are physical objects?"

Cern, Naga and Dema all nodded and smiled.

"But what about the still water? Why doesn't that just go away when there are no patterns?"

No one spoke for a moment. Then Sedna broke the impasse. 

"Because it isn't there in the first place."

Kore stared at here grandmother for a moment, once again dumbfounded. 

Then Dema said, "Grandma means the still water analogy represents an absence of energy. If there is no energy flow, there is nothing. What we think of as still water is not really still. It is itself a pattern of energy, a ripple effect. The stillness is an illusion."

Kore still looked puzzled. She said, "I know I missed a lot spending ten years as a snake, but come on."

Naga said, "Your ten years as a snake goes right to the heart of the matter."

Sedna nodded and said, "Truth is, child, you know what we are talking about better than the rest of us. Talk is just talk. Words are just words. And energy is just a word we use to talk about something we know. And you know that you are you, and you have been a snake, and if you have been a snake then you could be just about anything else you can imagine."

Kore said, "Oh. So right now I imagine I am sitting here with all of you."

Several nods. "And we all imagine the same thing, so here we are together."

"And Gaia is the sum of the imaginings that make this planet."

"And there is an even bigger sum of imaginings that make the universe."

"So why the talk about Darwin and natural selection?" Kore was looking at Cern, so he replied. 

"Because the sum of all imaginings isn't a static thing. It evolves. It evolved suns and planets and life and us being who and what we are. And one way to describe all that is to say that energy flows and forms patterns and resonances that persist and grow more and more complex. And part of that is us sitting here talking about it, using words like 'pattern' and 'resonance'."

"And the point?"

"The point is that we care about all this. If we didn't care about it, then it wouldn't be happening. And Gaia is sort of the sum of that caring for this planet."

Kore said, "Geeze, Cern, that's deep. I like it."