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My impulse, at that point, was to go back to my room and hide away from everything and everyone. I felt more tired than anything else, although I also felt uncertain of how everyone really felt about... No. That wasn't true. The welcome was real. I was the one who didn't know how I felt. I was the one who still felt alienated, but not from the tribe. My paranoia was entirely personal.

I stayed in my seat as I watched them file out, trying to reconnect myself with the rest of them, the way it was last night, before I fell apart. I couldn't do it. The thing that had been whispering to me slithered more of itself into my mind, and my eyes changed to obey its vision. I saw Frank looking belligerent, and Dreamweaver angry at me for making her worry about him. I saw Moonsong plotting to poison my food, and Stellamara using her mind to direct the others into an attack on me. Rainmist would probably try to drown me. Heartsinger and Darkstar would plot some strange fetishistic torture, while Oaknail readied Albion to slay me by a thousand razor-sharp slashes. Oray and Starshine would help make sure that my car was never again found, and Unicorn would help everyone coordinate alibis to keep them all out of court.

"Max?"

Lightwing's voice was soft, and I turned toward her. Those beautiful blue eyes held me as they had before, offering only help and care, if I could trust her. Or trust myself.

The breath I'd held captive finally escaped. "I guess it's over, huh?"

"The call is over, Max. Are you okay?"

Before I could answer, I felt Darkstar's forepaw to my shoulder. "I'm going to help get the shop set up. _Are_you okay, Max?"

"Not sure." The room had emptied out by now, save for the three of us. "I was really..." I took in a deep breath and let it out slowly, finally starting to nod. "Yeah, I'll be okay. Nothing that some really heavy drugs and a few years in a psych ward wouldn't cure."

The lynx smiled softly at me. "I'd kiss you to make it better, but I have the feeling you might freak out worse."

My laugh wasn't entirely forced. "Sorry. Guess I'm not as cool as the rest of you."

"The hope was to make you laugh."

"Worked."

"I'll leave you in good paws then." He got to his hindpaws, glancing at Lightwing. "I'll see you both later, eh?"

I nodded once more, then looked back to the Husky. "I think I must really be crazy."

"Why?"

"Promise you won't laugh?"

"I won't laugh."

Another deep breath, and I told her as much as I could about my brief descent into PsychoLand. Her expression didn't change, unless it was to look somewhat more serious than before.

"Nope. Not laughing." She stood, offering her forepaws. "Let's get you out of this room."

Without another word, she led me back down the hall, past the guest rooms, past the living room, through the dining hall and kitchen, to a bricked back porch area of wooden deck chairs, tables, tall overhanging trees, and the very welcome presence of soft breezes and quiet. She sat me down and then, cupping my face in her forepaws, she kissed me. With her closed lips against my own, I felt a tender yet powerful emotion, a willing of strength and comfort, a sense of the deepest trust and affection. I think I made some little grunt of surprise, or perhaps pain, or confusion. When she broke the kiss, she again focused her eyes on me, holding me there for several seconds.

"Max," she said softly, as if tasting my name, "I want you to stay here, close your eyes, take slow, deep breaths, and try to count how many birdsongs you hear. Any of them, all of them. Keep breathing and counting, while I go make tea. Then, I'm going to bring it back here, and I'm going to find whatever it is that is hurting you so badly, and I'm going to yank it out of you, and I'm going to kick its fucking ass." She left another short kiss on my lips. "Start counting."

Amazing how many different sounds can be heard, even in the supposed quiet of a forested area, and even by the ears of a collie my age (measured more by mileage than years). I was intent enough on the task that I almost didn't hear the Husky padding up to me and setting something down on the nearby table.

"Is it safe for me to open my eyes now?"

"It'll probably help you to drink your tea without spilling it."

I silently conceded the point. On the table lay a small tray with two steaming mugs, a honey pot with dipper, and a small shallow bowl with some lemon wedges. "That tea isn't going to start melting my reality, is it?"

"Max, what--"

I waved a forepaw at her. "Part of a dream I had before waking this morning."

She looked at me for a long moment. "This thing has really put you through the wringer."

"Been a long time coming."

"Why do you say that?"

Reaching for a mug, I thought about it. "I'm not sure. It just seemed to be what I'm feeling." I hesitated, feeling foolish. "I don't get tea very often. Is there etiquette to this kind of thing?"

"How did you take reality-melting tea in your dream?"

"My son prepared it for me. He had also brought me a bagel and a schmear."

"Did you eat it?"

"No. I think it melted with everything else."

"Dreams are like that." She gave me a gentle smirk and began handling the honey dipper quite deftly. "What else are they like?"

"You really want to know?"

"If it was anything like what you told me in the conference room, I'd probably better hear about it. Melting reality, you say? I know Rainmist didn't put any of that type of mushroom into the stew." She added honey to both mugs, squeezed a lemon wedge into each, stirred them, set down the spoon, and handed a cup to me. In case I ever needed to fix a cup of tea, I'd now learned at least one method. "So tell me how to go about melting reality."

"First, I'd have to find a working definition for reality. I'm not even sure I can see it from here." I sniffed at the tea, finding a sweet, fruity blend, with honey and lemon (obviously). A little too warm to sip, so I couldn't use that to avoid answering. "Okay," I said at last. "I'll try to piece it together."

Lightwing was very patient with me, waiting for me to fill gaps in the images. I had no idea how much of it might have been the dream, imagination, or some peculiar mixture of the two. It didn't matter, of course, since the imagery was the same and, let's face it, obvious. I was curious to know whether the taste of the tea in my dream presaged the flavor that I was drinking now, or if I had conveniently overwritten the flavor of the dream-tea to match what I was drinking now. Chicken, meet Egg.

"I don't need to bring out Sigmund Freud or anyone, right?" the Husky teased me.

"Not unless you want to make something out of the image 'wood'."

She smiled. "Welcome back, Max."

Shaking my head gently, I said, "I have no idea where all this paranoia comes from."

"Maybe something really is after you. Just not what you think, or the way you think."

"That wants some explanation."

The Husky sniffed the tea, also seeming to find it too warm to drink just yet. Moving the mug away from her muzzle, she regarded me with something that my poisoned mind tried to label as irritation or disgust. It was probably more like her trying to make up her mind exactly how to give me the explanation I'd asked for.

"Not everything in your life is what you think it is," she began. "At least, that's what I discovered for myself. Magic is everything it seems; I still believe that. Not everything is as magical as it seems."

Waving a paw, shaking her head, she sighed an apology. "Short form: I was deceived by someone who used my way of looking at things -- thinking of things as being magical -- as a weapon against me. Do you remember me telling you that Darkstar told me of the stories of Dragonfly, how they weren't really part of Mi'kmaq Medicine Stories, but that other tribes had them? My paranoia, my tormentor, was a male who used my interests, my magical beliefs, as a way of getting into my head and my heart, and he turned everything against me."

It's not an exaggeration to say that my heart hurt at those words. Even the black, twisted shape of Glover's shroud sat up to take notice, perhaps trying to discover a new weapon to use. I wanted to reach out to her, but the darkness stayed my paw. I raised my cup to my lips, finding the liquid still hot but not too hot. The flavors reawakened my tired palate, and the honeyed warmth felt good on my throat. More than that, my actions caused Lightwing to sample her own brew. After a small but apparently fortifying sip, she began again.

"He claimed to be a Cheyenne Medicine Worker, and perhaps he was. He certainly had a backward charm to him that made it easy for me to believe his stories, his claims to being ostracized royalty, meaning clan-based royalty, and maybe even his lies about thinking that I might have Cheyenne blood in me somewhere. That, he said, is what gave me my 'Medicine Power' abilities -- intuition, speaking with my Spirit Guides, my vested interest in what is magical in the world." Another headshake. "I ate up every word."

After she had paused for a time again, I asked, "What happened?"

"For everything in the world, he proselytized, there is a light and dark side, whether it's magic, the Force, or duct tape. He began to warn me about the dark, the evil things, things that were trying to hurt me, because I was more powerful than I thought, and that power made me interesting to The Dark Forces." Her voice emphasized capital letters in her words. "I began worrying about anything that might possibly be unusual, strange. My world of magical things began to feel threatening, even genuinely dangerous. Certain furs seemed suspect, and I avoided them. I wore a talisman on a thin hemp strap around my neck, to emphasize my connection to my Spirit Guides; even though it was under my shirt, it represented a kind of mental warding, like a cross against vampires is supposed to be. I started thinking that it was dangerous to believe in magical things, or to see too much beauty in a world that was filled with things that might kill you... or worse, claim your soul and doom you for all eternity."

She turned her magnificent blue eyes back toward me, a crooked smile on her muzzle. "That old line about 'which is the greater fool' comes to mind, doesn't it?"

"When did all this happen?"

"It started late in my college years, and it continued for a time after them." She sipped at her tea, but not out of any delaying tactic. She was back to herself, and the tale was once again a story for her. "I backed out of grad school, lost a promising job, lost a promising relationship... What's that song lyric about 'paranoia strikes deep'?"

"He really did a number on you."

"It took a few years to figure that out. I'm just glad that I finally did."

I turned my body toward her. Glover's shade followed me. "How? What happened?"

"It wasn't some grand revelation that made me all better, like swallowing a magic potion." She managed to smile at me. "Or drinking the Kool-Aid. I've been part of Timewind for eight years now, and I learned from them before that, and I was working on myself even before that, especially because of what this furson did to me. The final break between me and the alleged Medicine Worker actually came from him. I figured out that he was lying to me, and I tried to get in touch with some of the people he had told me were part of his life. One of these was a Catholic priest who, according to my Pseudo-Shaman, had succumbed to his sexual wiles and worried what would happen if his -- the lying Medicine Worker's -- mother were to find out."

She held up a finger, shaking it gently in the air. "I forgot an important part of this story. We had met through a third party, who was online with me and knew this guy through having met him at some gathering or other. This Medicine Worker... oh, hell, who knows what name he's using now, but let's call him by something distinctly non-First-Ones. How about Bert?"

"I like it. Rhymes with 'perp'."

This got a chuckle out of her, and she continued. "Bert never got much into technology beyond a phone, a land line, or so he claimed. I wrote paper letters to him, although I doubt there's anything in them more incriminating than my own ignorance. The point of that is that I never met him in fur and bone, just as a voice; he lived some distance away, and we never seemed to find a way to meet."

"That didn't make you suspicious?"

"Not at first. There must be a point where trust and naivete share similar ground." Another head-shake. "He was a skilled huckster, until some of his stories started having little holes in it. The priest was one of those. Supposedly, Bert lived with his aging mother, and the small-town priest would come by to look in on her, just to be neighborly. After, Bert would seduce the priest, as if to prove that his magic could control even a God-botherer."

I sensed something trying to settle on my shoulders again. I tried to ward it off with some more tea.

"Somewhere between kindness and deviousness, I cooked up a plan. I found the number for the only Catholic church in the rural area, introduced myself to the only priest there, and said that I wanted to make an offering in the name of Bert's mother, to thank him for looking after her." She smiled wryly. "Guess who'd never heard of her?"

"Nice. Did you confront Bert?"

Lightwing shrugged. "Not right away. That particular story had been so outrageous that I sniffed it out fairly easily. I took some time to see what else I could think of that I could catch him out on. He was slippery, but I was able to confront him with several at once. I saved the story of the priest for last, and he tried playing the moral outrage card, cutting me off, forbidding me to have any further contact with him, effectively 'disowning' me, refusing to help me find my Cheyenne roots... By the way, those DNA testing kits are worth the money." Another wry smile. "Bang goes another illusion."

Another sip of tea as I considered. "You had to have been very strong to get through all that."

"Strong or stubborn, depending on your definition. I was pretty aimless for a few years after Bert. I was still feeling paranoid, but for other reasons. I was no longer worried that I was being pursued by evil forces, but I wasn't sure I could feel the happily magical aspects of the world anymore either. Things began feeling neither bright nor dark but just... gray. The magic that we talked about last night? It was still there, waiting for me to notice it again. I was the one who still felt haunted, or hunted, or that something was after me. Or maybe nothing."

"How did you come to find Timewind?"

The Husky managed a smile much more like the one that I'd first seen in the barn last night. "The usual thing is to say that Timewind finds those who need the tribe as much as the tribe needs them. That gets back to the feelings of magic that I love, and it helps me rewrite my personal history with practical optimism." Her soft chuckle made me smile back at her. "You'll find those two words used prominently in the newer editions of the Manifesto, along with other attempts to be positive without using empty slogans and vapid affirmations."

I set my mug down, nodding. "I thumbed through Glover's comb-bound copy"

"Oaknail is right: The original edition is not the best introduction to the tribe. When I was first exposed to tribal ideas, I read the edition prior to this one."

"Updating the dream?"

"More like providing observations about more recent happenings in the world, applying the tribe's collected wisdom in the form of support for dreamers who are starting to lose the dream." She smiled again, her eyes so inviting that even Glover's shade retreated a little, in fear of being permanently banished by them. "It was Rainmist who found me first, actually. Some time shared at a co-op near the city, random conversations, some coffee meets. She sussed me out pretty neatly, and she found the right time to offer me a copy of the Manifesto, explaining that she'd helped to write it, so she wanted my opinion of the work."

"Sneaky."

"You hadn't guessed that about her already?"

"Now that you mention it..."

Another chuckle from the Husky. "I read it, and I was lucky enough to start remembering what the magic was like back when it was real for me. I still didn't really believe it all; as I said, I wasn't going to drink any new Kool-Aid after the garbage that Bert pulled on me. As you might imagine, I didn't meet 'Rainmist' first. Her given name is no secret, but I'll let her decide if she wants to tell you. For myself, I go by Troi Knowlton when I'm out in the world."

She watched me closely at that point, and I gave myself an even-money bet that she could read my expression like a book. "Okay," I admitted, "that does start to sound like something cultish. I think I get the context, but maybe you'd better explain it to me."

"Think of Starhold like a retreat, a sanctuary from the rest of the world. Part of what makes it so rejuvenating is our camaraderie, our sense of family, along with our sense of being wholly ourselves here. I can be 'Troi' to everyone, just as Ezequiel is Ezequiel. When we call him Unicorn, when they call me Lightwing, it's like another level of intimacy between us. Choosing the tribal name is about giving yourself a name that might feel more true to you than the one that you were given at birth. There are things that Troi has to deal with, that she has to be when she's 'out there in the world'; Lightwing can set those things aside and use the time to reflect upon herself, perhaps to help Troi know how she feels about things. Ezequiel can set aside some of the persona he presents as a lawyer and let Unicorn come out to play."

"You make it sound like you're pretending to be someone else when you're away from Starhold. Like you have more than one self."

"Don't you? You were Detective Luton an hour ago, but yesterday, you were Max." She seemed to blush a little under the black-brown fur of her mask. "You were Max last night. 'Detective Luton' is an official sort of figure, someone who follows 'rules and regs,' right? Max is who you are when you take off your badge."

I had no means to disagree, nor did I want to. I didn't want to be "Detective Luton" right now, and I thought how good I felt last night when I wasn't having to be "official." Maybe the tea was melting some of my reality after all.

She set her mug down and turned to look at me directly, her ice blue eyes warmer than ever toward me. "Max, you feel like something is after you, that this fear has been a long time coming. Maybe it's more real than you think, but it's not like evil things trying to grab at you. It's that sense of nothing, made worse by the way you discovered Airdancer. Let me ask you outright: When Stellamara said that she saw something on your shoulder, something telling you lies, what did you think? No, change that... what did you feel?"

It was there. I felt it last night, this morning, even now. Something slithering around my shoulders, something with a voice that wasn't sound, wasn't even words. It was, as my mind had labeled it, an Idea. It was after me, had been for a long time, but now it was where I could really tell that it existed, that it wanted me to give myself over to it. How do I talk about that kind of crap without sounding completely crazy?

"Max?" Lightwing took my forepaw into her own, squeezed. "What did you feel? Look at the feeling, give it a word."

The more I looked into her eyes, the more I had the sensation of that thing, that Idea, that tiger-shaped shade, slinking around my shoulders. I felt myself starting to shake, and I couldn't understand why. This was all so stupid, so crazy, this doesn't happen, normal furs don't feel like this, ordinary furs don't have things on their shoulders, or think that something is after them, not normal, not sane...

"Max! Word!"

"Terrified."

She leaned over quickly, her arms moving to grip my shoulders, and my own forepaws shot up to grip her just as closely. I closed my eyes tightly, and I heard a high yipping sound, a whine, like a yowen scared of the dark, imagining terrors that couldn't possibly be there, because bogeys and monsters and demons are all fiction, all tales made up to scare us, like that fake shaman did to Lightwing, and she deserves so much better than that, and we're not yowens after all, and what am I doing holding her and trembling so much, and why was I...

The whispering in my ear was real, and it was soft, consoling, bringing me back to myself. Where had I been? That was a ridiculous thing to think. I was right here, sitting on this large porch, with Lightwing, sharing tea, talking... I hadn't been anywhere, had I?

"Ledge," I heard myself say.

Lightwing did not reply, just held me, her strong forepaws still pressing tightly against my back. My nose was at the ruff of her neck, and the scent of her helped to calm me. I thought of last night, when she held me, pet me, let me cry. I didn't think that I wanted to cry now. I just wanted to stop feeling like I was so... so very...

Terrified.

I gave Lightwing a squeeze, which she returned, and I slowly extricated myself from the warm embrace. She pulled back, but she took hold of my forepaw with hers, clasping gently. She seemed in no rush, and I let myself fall back into my chair, eyes still closed, listening to birdsongs, counting them, feeling what was around me. I still felt something at my back, my shoulders, but I tried to explain to it that Max wasn't at home to anything that Detective Luton might have been working on last week. I might have to deal with it on Monday, but not now, not today... and not here. Not in this place.

Giving her forepaw a little shake, I gathered up enough breath to say, "Okay. I think I'm back now."

"How can I help, Max?"

I managed a smile. "It seems like all I'm doing is asking for help."

"Shall I remind you of the Three Steps to Becoming?"

"But I'm not a member of the tribe."

"Why should that stop you from Becoming?"

I opened my eyes, finding myself looking at the bright sky, a lush forested area not far beyond me, and the sense that I could almost forget about anything beyond the boundaries of these many hectares of land. It was, as Lightwing had called it, a retreat from the world. Or, perhaps, just a place where someone could let a good cup of tea erase what hurts. A place where...

"A place where you can dream," I said softly to the sky. I felt Lightwing squeeze my forepaw with her own.

"I think you're getting the idea," she said. "How're you feeling?"

"Like maybe drinking the tea isn't the same as drinking the Kool-Aid." I turned to look at her, the beautiful mask on her face, and those amazing eyes within. A smile appeared on my muzzle. "Maybe, like Starshine said, we can just pretend."

"Pretend what?"

"That I'm just Max."

"One change," the Husky told me. "You're not 'just' Max. You're Max. There's a lot involved in being Max, and I've enjoyed getting to know him. Now..." She rose from her chair, getting me up on my hindpaws as well. "Let's get these tea cups back into the house, and then I'll show you what dreaming can be like."

As she led me back to the kitchen, I felt something on my shoulders, realizing that it was the faint touch of breeze whispering through the trees. I wasn't sure what it said. Maybe I would hear it better later.