For a moment she was transfixed. She threw her head back, mouth open but unable to make a sound. When finally she was able to sob, to release her breath, the breath became a moan that trailed off into a whispered word.

"... Gaby ... "

It was utterly dark. Cirocco reached down and ran her hands through thick hair, down to Gaby's neck, over her shoulders. She squeezed the smaller woman between her legs, and Gaby kissed Cirocco's belly, her breasts, her neck. Cirocco felt the familiar heavy breasts sliding over her, the wonderful weight pressing down on her. Her hands greedily explored the impossible solidity of Gaby's body. She heard Gaby's breathing next to her ear, smelled the special complex of scent she knew to be Gaby. She wept.

In her dream, Cirocco closed her eyes again. She saw tears in Gaby's eyes, and a smile on her lips. They kissed. Gaby's black hair covered their faces.

She opened her eyes. It was getting light. Gaby still rested on her. They made meaningless noises at each other as a dim twilight stole over the land. Cirocco saw the beloved face. She kissed it. Gaby laughed quietly. Then she put her hands on the sand and lifted herself onto her knees, straddling Cirocco. She held out her hand and got to her feet, pulling Cirocco behind her. The ground clung like flypaper. She had to pull hard to get up. When she was finally standing, Gaby turned her and pointed down. Cirocco saw her own body reclined on the sand, unmoving.

"Am I dead?" she asked. It did not seem an important question.

"No, my beloved. I am not the angel of death. Walk with me." Gaby put her arm around Cirocco and they started up the beach.

In the dream, they spoke to each other. They did not use sentences. A word here and there was enough. Old hurts, old joys were brought out, held up to the yellow sky of Iapetus, cried over and laughed about, and tucked carefully away again. They spoke of things that had happened a century ago, but nothing of the last twenty years. The two decades didn't exist for the old friends.

At last it was time for Gaby to go. Cirocco saw that Gaby's feet no longer touched the sand. She tried to hold her, but the smaller woman kept drifting up into the sky and, in the manner of dreams, all Cirocco's movements were too slow and ineffectual to prevent it. It was a sad time. Cirocco cried for a while when Gaby was gone, standing there in the restored light.

Time to wake up, she thought.

When nothing happened, she looked down at the beach. Two sets of footprints led to where she stood, tired and discouraged.

She closed her eyes and slapped her cheeks. She opened them to find no change in her situation. So she started back along the edge of the water.

She watched her bare feet as she walked. They made new imprints beside the two trails going the other way. Where the Woozle Wasn't, she thought, and could not remember where that came from. Getting senile, Cirocco.

Her body was a short distance from the water, up where the sand was dry and fine enough for filling hourglasses. It reclined with its head on the pack, its hands folded on its belly, and its legs straight out and crossed at the ankles. She knelt close to it. It breathed slowly and evenly.

She looked away from the body and down at ... at herself. At the body she was living in. It was completely familiar to her. She touched herself, rubbed her hands together, held a hand up and tried to see things through it and failed to do so. She pinched her thigh and watched the skin turn red.

After a while she reached out and touched the body on the forearm. The body was other, not self. It was an everyday dichotomy, with a disturbing twist. What if the body sat up and wanted to talk?

It was definitely time to wake up, she decided.

Or to go to sleep.

She reached back into a century's experience of living from her gut as well as her mind, and found a non-verbal notion tickling the back of her head. There was no use in trying to think it out. Sometimes, in Gaea, this was the only way to deal with life. Things happened here. Not everything could be explained.

She allowed her instinct to take over. Without thought, she closed her eyes and toppled forward, turning as she fell. She felt the brief touch of the skin of the other, a singular but not unpleasant sensation of fullness-something like the sensations of pregnancy-and rolled along the sand. She opened her eyes and sat up, alone.

The tracks in the sand were still there. Two sets led away, one returned.

She moved on hands and knees to the harder, wetter sand nearer the water. Selecting one of the smaller prints-high-arched, five toes clearly visible and digging in-she ran her fingertips lightly through the depressions. She moved to the next print and lowered herself until her nose almost touched the print. She scented Gaby quite distinctly. The prints of the larger feet did not smell at all. Her own prints never did. Cirocco's sense of smell, though inhumanly keen, could not distinguish her own spoor from the ever-present odor of herself.

She might have thought about it longer, but suddenly she smelled something else, quite far away but unmistakable. She grabbed her pack and sprinted at top speed toward Tuxedo Junction.

EIGHT

Robin nattered on for almost a rev.

Chris had expected it, and didn't mind. The little witch was riding high on a wave of rejuvenation. Part of it was chemical, the result of mystic compounds still surging through her blood, entering every cell and working their changes there. Part of it was psychological, and entirely understandable. Robin looked five years younger, but she felt better than she had in ten years. The result was something like amphetamines, something like manic-depressive psychosis. The highs were Himalayan and almost unendurable, the lows sharp but mercifully brief. Chris remembered it well.

It was no longer so exhilarating for him. When he visited the fountain it felt just as good as it used to, but the feeling didn't last, and was replaced by pain within a few revs. He felt it beginning along his spine and on the sides of his head. He didn't mind that; it was simply growing pains.

Robin chirruped out most of her life story, unable to sit down, pacing the pentagonal room he had built and coppered with remembrances of her. Chris simply sat at the table in the center of the room, nodding at the right places, offering noncommittal responses when it seemed polite to do so, and contemplating the single candle before him.

Eventually she wound down. She took the high stool opposite him and rested her elbows on the table, looking at the candle with eyes brighter than the flame. Slowly her breathing quieted and she shifted her gaze from the candle to him.

It was as if she was noticing him for the first time. She made several attempts to speak, and was eventually successful.

"Sorry," she said.

"Don't be. It's refreshing to see somebody so exuberant. And since you tend to be close-mouthed, it saved me a lot of questioning."

"Great Mother, I sure babbled, didn't I? I just couldn't seem to stop, I had to tell you-"

"I know, I know."

"Chris, it's so ... miraculous!" She looked at her arm, at the tattoo blazing forth on it. For the hundredth time she rubbed her skin in disbelief, her face showing that small remaining fear that it would rub off.

Chris reached for the fat candle, rolled it moodily around on its base, watching wax drip down the sides.

"It is wonderful," he agreed. "It's one of the few places Gaea can't touch. When you go there, you realize this must have been a pretty damn wonderful place to be, a long time ago."

She cocked her head and looked at him. He could not return her stare.

"Okay," she said. "You asked me out here to discuss something. A proposal, you said. You want to tell me what it is?"