As for Raina, her experience upon finding herself on the other side of the mirror was, shall we say, different from Buffy's.

For one thing, a Shaggy Dog pretending to be a man (Or was it a man pretending to be a Shaggy Dog?) greeted her.

"I'm Jeremy." He or it said as she stood in the center of the twilit plain, which felt like a stage just waiting for the actors, the sets, the lights, and the audience to show up so that it could get on with business. I say "center" because no matter where she stood, she felt like she was in the center.

Raina looked down at Jeremy, who was scratching behind one ear with one booted foot, paw, ummmm, whatever. "Did you just say something?"

"Yeah, I said, "I'm Jeremy"." The Shaggy Man/Dog repeated. The foot went down and he sat looking up at her, ears perked expectantly. "Jeremy Fitzgerald. Like, I live here."

"Good for you. I'm Raina. Raina Dashinzky." She said absently while scanning the horizon around her in a slow whole body turn. So much for going through the looking glass – obviously Mr. Carroll had lied. There was nothing here that resembled a Jaberwocky whatsoever, not even so much as a Bread and Butterfly! Though it had been a while since she'd read either of Carroll's books dealing with places hidden in plain sight, she had the distinct feeling that Mr. Carroll never ONCE mentioned a dog that looked like a man or a man that looked like a dog in his travelogue as experienced by a little girl named Alice.

Particularly one that called himself Jeremy Fitzgerald.

Clearly, Mr. Carroll and Mr. Lewis plus, several other favorite childhood authors, most of them British, who had reported hidden wonderlands tucked away down rabbit holes, in the backs of old furniture, and behind mirrors over fireplaces, hadn't known what the hell they were talking about.

Either that, or her meds were getting frisky again.

Seeing a distinct shortage of White Knights, or much of anything besides the dog, mentioned earlier, and a whole lot of little footprints in the gray dust that coated the floor of this extremely boring world behind the mirror, Raina started walking towards the entryway she'd entered, intending to go back through the door (which was slowly pulling in upon itself in midair) that was a mirror or the mirror that was a door, return to her motel room, watch stupid early-morning t.v., and forget the whole thing ever happened.

"Yo!" There was a tug at the bottom of her old Navy P.T. shirt, "Down here." Jeremy had it between his unexpectedly formidable teeth and was tugging insistently. "Remember me? The dude who needs to shave every two hours?"

"What?" Raina paused mid-step, one foot already through the quietly rippling surface.

"Blondie's already gone ahead, but, like, I have a feeling you're more what's like, needed."

"Needed? For what?"

The dog sneezed. As far as dogs go, it was a little Old English sheepdog as mingled with say, a Schnauzer and a near-miss with an old Hollywood werewolf – in other words, a mutt in a cheap polyester uniform who sounded like Shaggy from Scooby Doo, another childhood favorite of Raina's, "Follow me, and you'll find out."

"Weirder and weirder." Said Raina, but she followed "Jeremy" anyway as panting with a child's idea of what a dog's tongue looks like, he sauntered away from her on all fours, following a trail entirely made up of little footprints across the featureless, horizon-less gray plain where the dust rose under her feet only to billow back down in slow motion behind her for what seemed like hours.

Until…

…she caught sight of a group of children standing on the first change of ground she'd seen in this place of flat eternity.

She followed the Shaggy Dog up the slight, rolling incline, joining them as they stared off into the distance at what looked like a stationary tornado.

Dimly aware that the washed out looking hollow-eyed children surrounding them bore scars of disease, violent deaths, neglect, and decay, she crouched down beside the Jeremy dog, whispering, "What the hell is that?"

The Jeremy dog rose, Raina following him. He was now a short, dark-haired unkempt little man in a torn and bloody security guard's uniform badly in need of a shave. He gestured with a distorted looking hand that was neither hand or paw, but something in-between, "That, dudette, is our only protection from HER."

"Who?"

"Whoaahhhhhhh, dudette! Never say HER name out loud, that's bad jujubes!" The little man shoved his strange hands deep into the remains of his pockets, "Say that little bitch's name out loud and she'll get in and like, turn the kids on you if you do." He turned, nodding miserably at the crowd of rapt little scarecrows that stood transfixed around them. "Blondie broke him when she asked him who he was – he doesn't like to remember!"

"Blondie? You mean the girl who came through the mirror first?" Raina asked. The tornado was giving off blue sparks as lightning played across it's madly spinning face.

"Yeah." Jeremy Fitzgerald suddenly morphed back into mutt, which she now realized was a giant plushy somewhat worse for wear, "I'm just a dog, and he's a big asshole most of the time, like the lunks who used to pull my underpants up over my head every damn day in the high school gym locker room. But he's the only one here strong enough to keep HER out and the kiddies are getting restless without him."

He crouched at Raina's feet, looking up at her pleadingly from big cartoon eyes, adding "Like, dudette, I've see you, in the dreamtime, when he, no we all sleep, so he knows you. Fix him or we're all toast?"

"How?" Raina.

"I dunno!" the Jeremy mutt threw back his head and howled, "Just go in there and DO SOMETHING while I hold HER off!"

"In THERE?" Incredulously, Raina pointed at the stalled tornado.

"You got it, dudette!" Jeremy as man stood up and began clumsily jogging away from her, "Just go on in there and like, deal with shit while I buy you time!"

Speaking of time, or one upon a time, or more likely, time upon a once, in a fairy tale written by a man who knew the truth when he saw it even if it was a lie, there was a tin soldier who through no fault of his own, was lame.

One day among his brothers as they marched and drilled across the nursery floor, he looked up and saw a ballerina upon a music box.

So of course, he drilled and struted before her in a vain attempt to gain her heart, only to be ignored.

But occasionally in the telling, (just occasionally) the ballerina spots the lame tin soldier first, climbs down from of her painted pedestal, and throws her arms around him, exclaiming, "Mój skarb, skarbie, my treasure, my darling!" – only to be separated by the demon that lives inside so that the tin soldier blindly limps away, leaving the ballerina to wonder what she'd done wrong.

But sometimes fairy tales take on lives on their own, spinning out of control away from their creators, even as others add their own demons in a fine mist of pain and blood, inside and out – so that the ballerina picks up a sword, and goes down the rabbit hole, the storm drain, or into the labyringth in search of her toy soldier, without finding what she went looking for, even as she finds what she went looking for, leaving the ending up for the reader to decide on their own the exact meaning of "happily ever after".

Frisky meds or not, Raina Dashinsky, the scion of a long line of tough Chicago Polish babulas, grannies, deliberately walked into the maelstrom, armed only with a set of dog tags.