Somebody in the reviews asked about a potential rating change. Drug use is included in this story, but I don't consider the administration or effects worthy of justifying a mature rating, especially since I don't want to exclude people who are under 18. The moral lessons that serve to underpin this story are aimed primarily at teens to young adults. In any case, I believe all the content in this story can easily be handled by the average teen. However, needless to say, if you are uncomfortable with any sort of drug use-in this case, psychedelic mushrooms-this may not be the story for you.

Also thank all of you for the consistent reviews and reception! They always cheer me up to see! I hope you're all enjoying the story.

Chapter 10: Enter Stage Left: John Milton

They headed East first, and then South-East. They stopped a few miles away from Jade Mountain Academy, and a few more miles from the outer edges of the rain forest. Summer brought him to a small pond that was only a few wing beats off the river, which led from the Claws of the Clouds mountains to the ocean.

The pond was surround by large pine trees, and the dirt was thin and gray, like it was a few generations away from completely turning to sand. Summer touched down first and immediately headed toward a large rock not far from the pond-bank. Winter followed after her curiously and soon noticed a pile of food left next to the rock.

"Did you leave that food there?"

"Yeah! I came out here last night, after I knew I'd be getting the mushrooms. I wanted everything to be perfect."

"You flew all the way out here and back last night...? We could have brought food with us."

"It's okay! I didn't want to have to deal with it or worry about forgetting something. I figured it'd be easier this way."

"Hmm," Winter leaned forward and peered at the assortment of food, nearly all of which appeared to be fruit. "You certainly have... interesting tastes."

She laughed. "Trust me, everything else is gonna sound gross on mushrooms. Hard, crunchy fruit is the best."

Winter looked back and forth between her and the food skeptically. "Why the one fish?"

"Because I had a feeling you'd want to try meat. You can see for yourself how gross it is."

"Uh huh." Winter said, wavering slightly. Very... very considerate. So... how many times have you done this... ex-exactly?"

She smiled. "A few... You starting to feel it?"

"I think so." He put a talon to his head. "It feels, weird. Kinda dizzy. Light-headed."

"Don't worry, the beginning is always weird, but it gets better."

"Yeah... Are you feeling it?"

"A bit. But we still have a few minutes."

"So you are... experienced, right?"

"Winter, it's okay. I'm not gonna let anything happen to you, alright? You're gonna be fine."

He blushed. "I-I didn't mean it like that! I'm not scared, I'm just... nervous. You're sure all we're gonna see is colors?"

"Um... about that..."

"What about it?"

"I said we'd see colors. I didn't say that's all we'd see."

"Okay..." He said with a look of repressed anxiety. "So what exactly are we gonna see? Are we... gonna hallucinate?"

"In a way, yes, but it's not as serious as it sounds. And that is exactly why you should stop asking questions, and just relax."

"Relax? It is kind of hard to relax when I have no idea what is coming. Hence the reason I am asking-"

"-Winter. Winter, Winter, Winter..." She shook her head.

He frowned. "Look, I don't think it's completely unreasonable for me to be-"

She slid toward him and put a talon up to his snout. "Shhhh." She got close to him, inches from his snout, close enough so that he could feel her breath against him, close enough so that he could feel her body against his. "Winter, you're gonna be okay." She said with a soothing tone. "You trust me, don't you?"

The rapid way he'd gone from shocked, to embarrassed, to utterly subdued reminded him of his old scavenger, Bandit. He remembered how he'd sometimes go from terror to a limp, doll-like state when he'd been picked up.

"You trust me, riiight?" She smiled at him, still only inches from his snout.

"...I trust you." He whispered.

If I went just a little forward, I could...

"Good boy." She pulled away.

"D-Don't do that..." He turned his head, trying to look as stoic as possible, but unable to hide the embarrassment and mild outrage in his face.

"Heh. Sorry. But somebody had to calm you down. You'll have a much better time if you just go with it."

He sighed. "Fine. I will calm down and... 'go with it.'" He frowned, and then wavered on his claws again. "...But, um, hey... are you feeling it yet?"

"A little. Why?"

"I think I'm feeling it, but... I feel kinda sick."

"How? Do you feel like you're gonna throw up?"

"Um, not exactly. N-Not yet..."

"Here," she slid up next to him, brushing her wing against his. "Sit down."

"Thanks," he said, following her down to the ground. "I'm okay right now, I've just been getting progressively more... nauseous. Is this normal? Are you positive we didn't eat too much?"

"Yeah, it's normal. I'm feeling it too."

He swallowed nervously. "Do they normally make you... um...?"

"-Throw up? No, not me. But I've heard of it happening to other dragons. But then again... I've never eaten this many before."

Winter closed his eyes. "This is... weird."

"It's coming on fast, isn't it?" Her voice lowered.

"Yeah..." His voice lowered to match hers.

Everything feels... weird. Like it's moving, and it's silky, and it's empty and full at the same time. I don't even know what that means. What am I talking about? I'm not even talking... Am I?

He felt a sudden urge to chuckle, but the nausea suddenly spiked, and he felt the contents of his stomach move upward.

"Yeah..."

"Yeah?" She repeated.

"Uh-huh... y-yeah, I'm gonna throw up."

"Whoa-k, come on, big guy. Let's do that over here."

"Is it... gonna be like this... the entire time." Winter grimaced and enunciated his words heavily, trying to keep himself from slurring, and keep himself from gagging.

"No," she said with a burp. "We'll be good. It gets better. But on these... big mushroom experiences. I think we gotta purge."

"Purge..." He repeated.

She went forward and retched. Winter watched on with surprise, feeling his stomach almost crawl around, feeling a strange desire to do what she was doing.

I... have to get it out.

The moment he went forward, he was seized by an overwhelming sensation to flex, to tighten his entire body, to groan and retch and choke, and to keep doing this until whatever he needed out of his body was out.

His stomach growled as the contents shifted up into his throat.

Purge...

The first retch resulted in nothing more than the taste of bile in his throat, but the longer he remained like that, with his throat open and his body tensed, the more it seemed as if his entire body entered into the experience.

The world around him grew dark; he saw images in the darkness that encroached on his center of vision, and the rapidly fading world contorted into a silken amalgamation of shapes: insects and snakes and faces and rivers of essence he couldn't even begin to fathom, let alone describe.

His body relaxed, and the world slowed down a bit and returned mostly to the way it had been before, but it was still silken, and he could see those shapes and forms hidden beneath the silk, waiting to breach the surface like restless sea life.

An immeasurable frame of time after his first retch, there came a second. As the pressure rose up from his chest to his throat, he could see the world around him already contorting again, as if the silken mess around him had been a still pond of geometry and coming from his gut was an earthquake that had already begun to shake it all into disarray.

Something is coming to shake the earth... He thought with amusement.

Before he could laugh—because he was suddenly struck with a high humor-vomit rushed up from his stomach and out his snout, sending what appeared to be a river of snakes pouring to the ground. His body began to tremble and his eyes opened wide. He tried to gasp for air but the urge to retch was too intense.

The first wave had come out easily, but the second was met by a preliminary shudder of revulsion. He tried to put his revulsion into words in his mind, but none of his thoughts made any sense. They didn't last long enough to make sense. There was only the feeling that something was horribly, horribly wrong; that he wanted away from it, but he no longer knew what 'away from it' meant.

I'm vomiting snakes. He thought, in a brief second of lucidity. I'm vomiting... snakes...

He heard a strange noise. It was a cry, something between a choke and a gasp, laced with confusion and panic. He initially worried for Summer-whom he'd forgotten about until that moment—but when a warm body brushed against his cool one, when familiar talons wrapped around his own and one landed on his back and rubbed him gently, he knew the noise hadn't come from her.

It came... from me...

Summer... this is too much. I can't... do this.

"Summer..." He forced out between breaths. "I..."

His voice trailed off. His throat refused to emit anything coherent, his snout refused to move, and by the time he remembered how to speak, he'd already forgotten what he'd wanted to say.

One moment the world looked normal, at least mostly normal, and the next moment it blurred, beyond recognition. He'd feel as though he were being sucked into a long tunnel and a numb anxiety would overcome him. The images around him kept reforming themselves into strange shapes: sometimes big, pulsating mushrooms, other times long, glowing, pulsating lines of light, but the most disturbing and fascinating ones were the pulsating snakes and various, hyper-detailed insect-body icons.

He saw strange idols and horrific expressions weave in and out of the dirt and trees and sky, and every time the long-tunnel sensation stopped, he'd return to the world for a few, brief, strangely lucid moments—the big, glowing, pulsating world, waiting to suck him into the folds once again. That world which had never seemed as temporal as it did then.

What am I? He thought. What is this? Why is this? ...Why? ...Why? ...Why? ...How...?

"It's okay, Winter." She whispered, inches from his ear, her voice a beacon of softness and fearlessness. "You're completely alright. You're right here with me."

Why is she saying that? Is she responding to me? Or does she just know? Have I spoken? Have I said anything at all? Or have I only thought...?

Then he remembered that she was there, next to him, holding him against her warm scales. He'd forgotten, he'd been too numb to feel them, too entranced to separate that vague, distant sensation of body heat from the chaos around him. When he felt it, when he honed in on it for the first time since he'd lost her, since he'd lost himself, since he'd lost his mind, and since he'd lost the entire continent of Pyrrhia, the warmth grew and spread all around him, and he dived in, like some river of sanity in an infinite void of emptiness.

The instant he became fully aware of her body against his, he lost her again, but he managed to hold on to the warmth.

You're still there, aren't you? What was your name...? What's my name...? This warmth is somebody else's, isn't it? It isn't all me, is it? If I remember one thing let it be that. Whatever it was I was trying to remember, let me remember that. What was it? It was... something...

He felt a humor beginning to build in his chest.

What am I talking about? I'm not even talking. What am I thinking about? Am I even thinking? It doesn't feel like it. If I was thinking, wouldn't I control the thoughts...? Is something else thinking for me? Do I just think that I'm thinking?

Wait, what...?

His weight shifted toward her and they stumbled a bit, but at least this motion made sense. Their slipping to the ground was the one connection to reality among all the shifting and shuffling and swapping motions of the 'reality' around him—and it felt good. He clung to her as tightly as he could, and she clung back.

"Shhh," she whispered in his ear. "It's okay..."

Am I crying? He thought. He tried to think further about this, because he believed there was some importance in this question, but it slipped away from him. He nestled himself closer to Summer.

What was I thinking about...? I was worried about... He realized there was moisture below his eyes.

Am I crying? I only cry when I think about-

Winter gasped. The motion of the world around him slowed, but off in the horizon, far beyond the limits of his vision, there was a great motion, like some massive wave of energy moving independent of him, sweeping across the entire planet. He could feel its presence. He knew it could feel him...

...And it was coming.

He took a deep, pained breath. And then another. And then another. His face scrunched up in a pain he'd never felt before.

Is there something in my chest? Is there something wrong with me? What's happening? Where am I? What is this? Is something coming? Something's coming. I feel something coming! Somebody stop it!

He clung as tightly as he could to Summer. The urge to vomit flitted around his throat, but he knew that time had passed. No amount of vomiting could make this wretched sensation any easier to endure.

"Shhhh..." Summer breathed into his ear. "It's gonna get better. You just gotta let go."

Let go? How do I let go? What does that mean? What am I holding on to? What is there to hold on to? I have to hold on. I have to endure, a little longer, a little more. What does it mean to 'let go?' Letting go? Let go? Let go...? Let go... let go... let go...

"Ung!" He took rapid, uneven breaths. His eyes shot open again and he looked all around. He tried to stand, but Summer held him down.

"I g-gotta-I gotta-!" He stammered, confused, delirious, the entire world spinning. "I gotta..." He froze, in a half lying, half lifted position, unable to go up or down, like a piece of stone frozen, floating in time.

"D-Dad..." The word came seemingly came out of nowhere. He hadn't thought about it before saying it, and he hadn't thought that specific word in a very long time.

It had just ejaculated from his throat, like vomit, and the shock of it had left him even more frozen than he'd been a moment before. Summer hugged him tightly.

Finally, he could see again. The world still spun and morphed all around him, and his thoughts were erratic and confusing and difficult to decipher, let alone remember. But there was a sense of stability again. And over this stability there was the lingering visage of Narwhal, dead, in a pool of his own blood.

"You didn't have to die..." he grumbled hoarsely, his head wavering around with delirium. "Mom loved me... sometimes..."

"You okay, hon?" Somebody's voice rang out.

"...Summer?"

"Yeah, it's me. Hey, come're, lie back down-"

"-Narwhal's dead."

"...You mean your father?"

"Yeah. He died."

"I know, Winter. I'm sorry. Do you miss him?"

He smiled, his eyes large, his head still wavering. "No."

"...You don't?"

"Narwhal didn't miss me. When I was gone."

"You didn't die, Winter. And you don't know that."

"I know that. I know he didn't. And even if I had died he'd have just been happy, cause that's who Narwhal was."

"Why do you care so much about what Narwhal thinks? Shouldn't you just... let him go?"

"It's not about Narwhal..." Winter whispered back.

She reached up and brushed a tear away from his eye. "It's not about Narwhal, is it?"

"I wanna go home..." He said meekly, looking down toward the crawling dirt.

"...Can't you visit home?"

"That's not home. Home is gone. It's dead. Like Narwhal. I think it died with Narwhal." He smiled again, and then chuckled a moment later. "Why is everything so.. he-h..." His voice trailed off and his head lobbed forward.

Summer smiled. "Why is everything so what?"

"So hea...-vy."

"Shhh, lie down. It'll get better, okay? I think you just ate a little more than you can handle."

He chuckled, and then began to laugh. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so too."

"How about we just lay here, okay?"

"Wait," he said, remaining in his same position, unflinching. "Not yet. I don't want to move yet. I'm... scared."

"Okay," she sat up. "Then we'll sit here for a bit. But you're gonna get tired, you know that, right?"

"I'm doubtful," he said grinning.

His grin faded into a frown. He took a deep breath.

"Are you thinking about your dad, Winter?" She rubbed her hand against his back.

"More than that." He answered, still staring straight forward. "I'm thinking about so many things."

"Like what? It'll help to get it off your chest."

"Like my home." He whispered.

"Do you miss it?"

"More than... words can ever hope to describe."

"What do you miss about it?"

"All of it. The snow, and the cold air, and..." He grimaced. "I don't know."

"You don't know what?"

"I don't know!" He barked. They sat in silence for several moments, each one making Winter's frown grow heavier.

"What do you miss, Winter? You have to say it."

"I-" He stopped speaking immediately and clenched his jaw. Tears flooded his eyes. "I don't..." He shook his head.

"You do know. Just say it."

"But I... really... I don't!" He jumped to his feet and clutched his head. "Oh claws! I gotta-I gotta move. I gotta get out. Oh claws... claws..." He looked around frantically, confused.

"Hey, hey, calm down, it's-"

"-I don't know!" He ran forward and tripped. "I just don't know. I don't know. I don't know." He pawed frantically at the dirt, ripping up massive talonfuls of sand. "I want it to end!"

"It's gonna end, Winter. I promise it's gonna end you just gotta calm down."

He buried his head in the hole, the dirt cool against his snout. He pulled his head out and looked around.

He saw Summer staring at him, the very picture of concern.

"It's not just that," he cried, tears beginning to fall freely. "It just... won't end." His cries turned to sobs as he collapsed completely to the ground. "No matter... what I do..." He covered his crying head with his wings. "I wanna... go home..."

Summer scooted up next to him without a word.

"But it's gone! It's gone forever!"

She placed a hand on his back.

It's gone. It's gone forever. He repeated in his mind. Forever. Forever. Forever. Forever. Forever...

Every time the word ran through his mind, he cried a bit harder. His body tightened a bit further. And then heard a strange, yelping noise from his throat. He clutched his neck as if in shock, as if he were unsure of where to put his talons, and his tight, hoarse throat seemed to be the best place to rest them.

"It's really gone... It's all... gone." He croaked.

"It's over, Winter. You have to let it go."

"I really... can't ever go back."

He saw Narwhal, alive, walking with that same look Winter had so many times emulated, believing that look somehow embodied what Winter was supposed to be. A look of cold, hard, passionless power, a look that had both compelled and repulsed him. He saw the expression Narwhal made whenever he was even a bit proud of his son—an expression that was always laced with some surprise. It was a look he'd seen so few times that had each and every occurrence of it not been so meaningful, he'd have long forgotten the look entirely.

He saw his mom smiling at him. His mom frowning at him. He saw his name move up and down the wall. He saw Hailstorm smiling at him, and playing with him, and teaching him, and humoring him—humoring him in the way Winter had desperately wished his parents would. Not to take him seriously, but to at least pretend to. Even if they didn't believe in him: couldn't they at least care?

He saw the sweeping fields of his homeland covered with ice and hills and animals, all lined with a sense of exploration and mystery. All a chance to try and do something new, to excel and be exceptional despite the odds.

And he saw Moon. He saw her smile, and he saw that tear drop silver. He felt that strange feeling of having his mind read, and then knowing that the reader still liked him despite the nature of his thoughts and the secrets of his personality. That the reader hadn't immediately hated him for what she'd seen.

She knows me better than anyone else... He thought.

He smelled her. She smelled like the Rainwings did, natural, but with a poignancy about her that oozed feminine charm. He felt her wings against his, and the warmth of her scales against his icy belly.

He saw the entirety of Pyrrhia; the idea of Pyrrhia, the way it was back before all he saw was a wretched, doom-ridden place.

"Oh, claws, I don't want to! I don't want to!" He dug his claws into the dirt, tears flowing rapturously from his eyes. "This can't be real! This... this can't be real..." He broke back into sobbing. "I... can't..."

"You have to." She whispered.

"I can't! I just... can't! It isn't worth it! Nothing is worth it! What's the point?!" He smacked the ground as hard as could, enough to make his talon hurt, enough to send dirt flying. "It's just not worth it! Nothing is worth it! Is there... is there something wrong with me? Is it me?" He began to sob again.

"You gotta let go, Winter."

"Let go of what?! How do I let go? I don't-I don't want to let go. I don't want to!" His voice came out shrill, childish. So childish he shocked himself into an abrupt stop. His crying, his yelling, his everything. The feeling faded first. The urge to cry drained out of him like somebody had unplugged his pool of tears and it had all washed away into that merciless, shifting abyss, lost deep in the folds that had sucked him in and spun him until nothing stood still and nothing could be recognized. The sensation of his scrunched up, sobbing face felt wrong to him now. It eased into relaxation, and he stared straight ahead for a few moments, his snout no longer contorted into any kind of frown or smile. Just a look of mild surprise.

"Do you feel better now?" Summer asked with a tone similar to how Winter imagined a normal mother's.

He turned toward her. "Yes. I'm... I'm sorry for that."

"It's okay. I'm sorry for letting you eat all those mushrooms." She smiled, but her smile faded a moment later. "You know now, right? That you can't ever go back...?"

"Y-Yes..." He held up his talons and looked at them. "I can't ever go back to the way things were."

"You don't have to go back, Winter. You were so distracted with looking at how things were—which, by the way, didn't really sound all that great-that you didn't even see the beautiful and immense future in front of you. You didn't see all the things you could do... Winter," she grabbed his side-turned head and turned it toward her.

She kept his snout between her talons as she spoke. "You were in love with a Nightwing, weren't you? You still are?"

He jolted a bit. "How did you...?"

"They told me at school. They said something about me being part Nightwing..."

Winter sighed and grimaced.

"But you couldn't have her, could you?"

"And who told you that?"

"Nobody. Isn't it kind of obvious?"

His eyes widened a bit. He stared blankly at her contorting face.

"Is it hitting you right now?"

"Y-Yeah," he said, knowing intuitively what she meant. He watched the shape of her head waver, the crevices of her scales overflow into other worlds of shapes and essence—these worlds, unlike the ones before, were golden and shining and filled with dancing lights and awe-inspiring pieces of geometry and mind-boggling patterns that seemed to repeat ad infinitum.

"Good. Now stay with me just a few minutes longer and then I promise we can go back. And it'll be better this time."

He swallowed and did his best to focus his vision on the shape beyond the shimmering expanse. "Okay."

She looked deep into his eyes and clutched his snout tightly between her talons as she spoke. "You were so distracted by this other dragon, you couldn't even see the spy who had snuck in and stole your heart."