Dema went down to the Jeep to get her pack so she could freshen up. It was interesting making love to a man with antlers. Even if they were an illusion. She kept expecting them to get tangled in the bedding or shred the mattress.

She was finishing up in the bathroom, standing in front of the sink, when Cern came in and put his arms around her. She could see him in the mirror. He was still wearing the torc, but something was wrong. It took her a second to realize what it was. No antlers.

She turned to look at him. Face to face, the antlers were still there, looking as real as ever. But in the mirror... 

She turned to look again. They weren't there. She paused to think about it. The illusion was his projection. The image in the mirror was not really him. So, no antlers. She hadn't noticed, but ghosts probably didn't have reflections either.

He pulled her gently toward him until she was leaning against his chest.

"Why so pensive?"

She didn't know how to respond. She hadn't said anything to him about the antlers. Before he had put on the torc, he hadn't known about the illusion he was projecting. Now that he was wearing the torc and the illusion was so much stronger, if she couldn't see them in the mirror maybe he couldn't see them there either. She might be the only one who had ever seen him as the stag-horned man.

She turned to face him, looked him up and down and fingered the torc. "Just like the Dying Gaul," she said. "But you are definitely not dying."

As if to prove it, he gave her a lingering kiss. Then he took her place in the bathroom, and she went into his kitchenette to start a pot of coffee. And thought about the night before.

She knew why putting on the torc had brought him a surge of shaman awareness. It had history. It linked Cern to his shaman ancestors, who had worn it through generation after generation. His grandfather had known that for Cern it could do what a vision quest had done for Sedna and so many others. Or what a bullet hole had done for her.

Dema knew that Cern, with his sense of connectedness in the forest, was already familiar with what Sedna called the first level of shaman awareness. What the torc had done was to raise him to the second level, the awareness that his spiritual connection was not fleeting, but eternal; that he was not simply carrying on the tradition of his ancestors, in a sense he was his ancestors. As she was hers. 

That was what he had meant when he had put on the torc, and suddenly said he knew who he was, and who she was as well. He had become aware of them both as spiritual beings, and knew that the connection between them was somehow deep and eternal too. The night they had just spent together had only made them both more sure of that.

Now, though, it would be up to him to carry through and attain the third and fourth levels. But she could help. And Sedna. Sedna, with her deep knowledge of shaman lore, could be a surrogate for the grandfather he had known all too briefly. She needed to introduce Cern to Sedna.

Cern joined her over coffee. He was dressed for the office, but was still wearing the torc, so his antlers were in proud display.

"Are you going to wear it to work?"

"Now that I have it on, I'm almost afraid to take it off. I might really break it if I tried. And I'm still in awe of its power."

"Not its power, your power, Cern. All it does is help to release it."

"Okay then, I'm in awe of the power in myself that it's releasing. Everything I look at I see in a fresh light. I want to experience all the parts of my life that way, and learn from it."

Dema sipped her coffee. Then she said, "I want to see you this evening then, and find out how your day went. And I want to take you to meet Sedna."

"Your grandmother."

"That's right. She can help guide you, help you know what to look for, what there is for you to learn." 

She reached for his hand. "In fact, she can help guide both of us. There's something going on here that's new for me too."

"You'll be going to your office today?"

She nodded. "I need to get those samples I collected to the police lab, and write up what we found. I want it all in the files in case Estes starts acting up again."

They finished up their coffees and began moving toward the door.

"See you tonight, then."

Another lingering kiss, and they went their separate ways. For the time being.