TW: There is a brief mention of suicidal ideation, not graphic or in depth

In this chapter, Stephen talks about Taoism in a way that is completely oversimplified, at best, and absolutely ignorant at worst. This is intentional, and not a reflection of what I, the author, think of Taoism. It becomes very important later in the story, as "out of left field" as it may seem.

"So dreams really show you different universes, huh? Neat."

Mobius put one hand behind his head as they walked down the cracked road, thoughtfully rubbing his fingers through his hair. The sun was beginning to sink in the sky, but the temperature was still sizzling hot. Cicadas and crickets screamed their songs almost louder than the birds. A wavy mirage floated from the asphalt, though the forest on either side of the road helped give them a little shade.

"Yep," Stephen replied to him, "They're all just windows into the multiverse. It surprised me when I learned that, too."

"That can't be right," mumbled Christine, shielding her eyes from the sun with one hand. "Some of them are too spot on about your subconscious to be about other universes. And what about dream archetypes?"

"Dream archetypes? You mean like everyone seeming to have the same kinds of dreams?"

"Yeah."

"We must all be looking into the same universes, then. Maybe the universe where people lose their teeth all the time is close to this one. I mean, the dream I just had is obviously where all your weird school dreams come from, where you forget that you were supposed to be taking a class all year."

Christine just grunted, unconvinced.

There were a few tidbits of ruined civilization left the further up the road they went. They walked past a small, stagnant pond full of wild ducks, dead trees, and aquatic plants that must have been part of a now overgrown golf course. On the other side of the street was dilapidated house or two, one with a skeleton hanging out on a porch swing. Stephen, lulled into a sense of security from Tvania's clean neighborhood, thought it was a convincing Halloween decoration for a second, until he remembered with a shudder that they couldn't have cleared all the bodies away. Christine saw it too, gasped, and instinctively moved to walk on the other side of Stephen, putting him between her and the house. A little flush of warmth swept through him knowing that she'd automatically gone to him for protection. Mobius, of course, didn't seem to care, but he noticed their fear.

"Don't worry," he said. "The library is clean. Just a few more blocks."

After a long, pregnant pause, Mobius piped up again.

"You know, I've had this dream-more than once-that I was a banana, and that everyone I knew was a banana, and we were all just slowly rotting-"

"Yeah, that's another universe."

"Wow."

Christine burst into laughter.

"No," she said. "No way."

"Christine, America and I passed through a universe where everyone was made of paint. I'm totally willing to believe there's a sentient banana universe out there somewhere."

After a few more minutes, they reached the ruined entrance of the tiny public library. Vines slithered up the walls and the columns of the building, obscuring the bronze plaque above the entrance except for a 'W' at the beginning of the sign.

The little alarm bells turned on in Stephen's head again, but he had to turn them back off, for now. They had to hurry. They needed all the sunlight left to gather what they could from the library and make it home before dark.

Sunlight reached most of the nooks and crannies inside the library, but he saw where the big, beautiful floor-length windows had been smashed open and rain had ruined several shelves worth of books. Clean was a relative term, in this case. There were no dead bodies, at least. Birds fluttered around near the high ceiling, leaving streaks of poop along the walls where they had built their nests, and the outside vines crept slowly but surely through the open windows. There were no books behind the outer shelves at all. They'd been cleared out.

"In here," said Mobius, leading them to a closed off room in the middle of the library, where the windows stood intact. No critters or rain or plant life could get in. A group of useless, dead computers sat in the middle of the room, gathered together like they were having a confidential meeting. The Tvanians must have done it to make room for the books, which they'd stacked along the walls and tables lengthways instead of up and down. They were covered with clear tarps and a couple of fire blankets to keep moisture away.

"Wong would have a fit," muttered Stephen under his breath, with a little smirk.

"We tried to keep everything organized like it was on the shelves," Mobius explained, taking off the blankets and tarps. "I know I saw some poetry and philosophy in here somewhere."

"What exactly are we looking for, though?" asked Christine, a twinge of impatience in her voice.

"Just try to get a sampling of everything," Stephen said. "Greek, East Asian, Indian, some modern philosophy, Shakespeare, even. Whatever you can carry."

He placed the Cloak of Levitation on the floor and spread it out.

"My Cloak can carry about a goat's worth of books, probably. Don't want to tear it."

They found the poetry section and started loading down the Cloak with whatever they could find, careful not to accidentally get different versions of the same thing.

By the time they were done, the sun was setting low in the horizon, giving them just enough time to get home before dark. The twilight had brought out some scavenging animals already. Christine yelped and nearly dropped her books when she saw a mother possum waddle out from under the checkout desk as they were leaving, carrying a small army of tiny babies on her back. The possum didn't seem disturbed by their presence at all, not even speeding up as it ambled past them and out of one of the low, broken windows. If a possum wasn't afraid of people anymore, Stephen didn't want to know what coyotes and stray dogs would think of them.

As they left the building, arms and Cloak loaded with books, Stephen turned around to take one last look at the sign above the door, its first letter gleaming golden in the setting sun.

He rolled his eyes and put his books down for a second. If it would make him feel better, then he might as well show the little alarm bells that nothing was wrong.

"What are you doing?" asked Christine.

"Just give me a second."

He lifted his arm, and with a single wave of magic, ripped all of the vines off of the sign to reveal the name of the library.

He almost wished he hadn't.

Stephen stood there, speechless, staring at the sign, hoping it didn't actually say what he thought it did, praying maybe it was a different town with the same name.

"What is it?" asked Mobius.

"Stephen?" Christine walked up next to him.

The plaque read, 'WESTVIEW PUBLIC LIBRARY' in big, brass, capital letters.

"The Scarlet Witch," he muttered. "She's here. Or she was. Or she still is. I'm not sure."

Christine's eyes grew wide, but Mobius looked more confused.

"What's a Scarlet Witch?"

"What's a-Mobius, how do you not know? She's a nexus being, she exists in every single universe. Incredibly powerful witch with telekinetic and telepathic powers? At least one of them is insane?"

"I don't know everything about my own universe, even," he said. "There are tons of nexus beings and nexus points out there, I wasn't assigned to look after every single one of them."

"Okay, all right," Stephen muttered to himself again. "I have to think about this. What do we need? What do I do?"

He paced around frantically, like a tiger stuck in a cage, accidentally kicking his stack of books over.

"Hey!" said Mobius, trying to pick them up again without dropping his own books. "These are kind of priceless, here."

He stopped pacing. "Mobius," he said, "You have to try to start getting people out of this universe."

Mobius dropped one of his own books on the ground.

"What?" he gasped. "Why?"

"This place is dangerous. The Scarlet Witch killed these people, I know it. It has to be what she's doing to Loki, too."

"First of all, there is nowhere else for us to go," he replied. "There is no safer place for us to live. If we go somewhere with people, we risk exposing ourselves to another version of the TVA. It's insanely difficult to find a habitable apocalypse."

"Well, something found you, anyway." Stephen picked up his books and hurried down the street, Christine and Mobius following.

Mobius continued as they walked. "Second of all, there's no way we can fit hundreds of people through my tempad again. It was a longshot the last time we did it."

"There's another way out. We just have to go back to my universe, get America, come back-"

"No!" Mobius's firm tone made Stephen stop in his tracks. "This is our home, Stephen, do you understand? We're not running again. This is our home. If I had any kind of magical powers, I'd die trying to protect it. I don't want to ask that of you, because it's not your universe, but it means everything to me. To us."

Stephen became quiet and thoughtful before he answered. "I apparently already died trying to protect this universe."

The haunting, high pitched yowl of a coyote echoed down the road, followed by others that were disconcertingly closer.

Without a word, all three of them, plus the loaded down Cloak, made their way back to Tvania. Christine wore a look on her face that Stephen couldn't quite read. It was as if she couldn't decide whether to be scared or furious.

Stephen slept soundly that night, to his surprise. There were no little sleep paralysis demons nipping at his brain to wake him up, no more weird dreams with the Ancient One. The silence of his subconscious was a little unnerving, actually, like the quiet spot in the middle of a tornado.

He was awake and up at the first rooster crow, ready to use every bit of sunlight to start researching. There was no more daylight by the time they'd gotten home and they'd dumped all of the books haphazardly all over the kitchen table. To Stephen's dismay, Sylvie was already up and leafing through a book of poetry.

"Some light reading?" she asked, shooting him an incredulous look. "Who's this 'Maya Angelou' person?"

"It's complicated, Sylvie," he said, taking the book from her and putting it down on the table. "I had a … vision … that this is what I needed to help Loki heal."

She took a deep breath, took one more glance at the table, then let out a long sigh and rolled her eyes.

"Sorcerers," she muttered under her breath. "Always so bloody cryptic."

She walked away and left through the sliding kitchen door, to the backyard. She gathered some sticks and dead leaves in a pile and took a book of matches out of her pocket to start a small bonfire, to heat up some tea or washing water, he assumed.

Stephen stared at the chaotic pile, wondering how the hell he was even supposed to start. The Ancient One hadn't given him the slightest direction, besides two vague genres of literature. He figured the best way to begin was to sort everything by geography. He started looking for the Greek philosophers, trying hard to feel like this giant pile of flowery words and idealistic prose was actually going to do something useful.

The Ancient One was right, though: he couldn't defeat the Scarlet Witch, not with any power he knew of. He'd let America show Wanda the consequences of her actions and the Scarlet Witch had destroyed herself. But how in the hell was she still hurting people here, and why?

As he was organizing and ruminating, Christine came out of the den. She looked like she'd had a rough night, with bags under her eyes and an expression that screamed, 'Don't talk to me until I've had my coffee'. Maybe the little demons had started nipping her awake, now.

She sat down next to him, not offering to help or read, or saying anything at all for quite a while, then put her head in one hand like she had when she'd told Stephen about the divorce.

He stopped organizing. "What?" he asked.

"You don't know what you're doing, do you?"

More daggers. A knife to the gut, actually.

"I know what the Ancient One told me to do."

"In a dream," she said, her voice low, growing angrier. "You took a nap and then had a dream about your dead master, because you're grasping at straws and want to listen to someone who would know what to do. That's what your dream meant."

He scoffed, growing angry himself. "Pardon me, but you don't know how the multiverse works. America said-"

"America?" Christine took her head out of her hand and looked at him like he'd slapped her in the face. "Please, please don't tell me that everything you know about the multiverse came from a fifteen year old girl."

"No, actually, some of it came from you, from a different universe," he sneered. "So there. Stop telling me I don't know anything."

"Okay, then explain to me how-" she paused, then picked up a random, thin paperback from his pile, "Plato's Phaedo is going to do a single god-damned thing against the Scarlet Witch. Maybe if you threw all these books at her at once-"

"Enough!" he yelled. Sylvie looked up from her fire and stared at them through the sliding glass door. "You are ignorant, Christine. You have no idea how ignorant you are. You always do shit like this, you know?"

She opened her mouth and drew back in surprise. "Excuse me?"

"You act like everything is my fault when you're just looking for someone to blame, to make the world less scary. You blame me for the octopus thing destroying your wedding, and probably for your divorce-"

"Oh my God, Stephen!" she shouted, standing up. Mobius wandered in slowly from the living room, a very concerned look on his face. "I never, ever said any of that. You're putting words in my mouth. You're the one who makes every freaking thing about yourself. You're the only one who can do anything right, aren't you?"

"How dare you complain about me being the one who can do something when you're the one who annoyed the shit out of me until I agreed to take you here?"

He regretted that instantly. Mobius's expression grew distant, like he'd been told someone had died, and he slunk away back into the living room, avoiding Stephen's gaze. He was pretty sure Sylvie had heard him, too.

Christine's face grew bright red.

"Fine. I will do something. I'm going to check on Loki, and then I'm going to go out into the village with Mobius and have him find that guy with the nasty infected boil that we met, so I can drain it and clean it. And then, I don't know, maybe I can help anyone else around here who needs a real doctor instead of a wizard who just calls himself one."

Stephen bit his lip until he tasted blood. "Great," he said, slamming a few more Greek philosophy books down onto the top of his pile. "Have fun being useful, Christine."

Christine stomped upstairs, rustled around angrily, then stomped back downstairs a few minutes later with the duffel bag slung over her shoulder.

"Let's go," she called out into the living room, then marched out the front door, slamming it loudly in Mobius' face.

Mobius waited a second or two before opening the door again, giving Stephen one last sad glance that he tried hard to ignore.

Stephen lost track of time as he angrily flipped through his books. He read everything, but nothing really stuck. He was trapped in a vicious cycle of skimming a sentence, reading it two more times, flipping to another chapter, doing it again, then getting frustrated and throwing it into the 'read' pile. Socrates and Rumi and Rudyard Kipling and Shakespeare all blended together in his head and made one homogeneous smoothie of philosophy and poetry.

He was glancing through Tao Te Ching and Other Taoist Writings when Sylvie's voice startled him.

"Find anything?" she asked. He didn't even realize she'd sat down next to him, his head was so full of mush. She fiddled with one of the books from the discard pile, twirling it flat in circles on the table.

"You do realize it's nearly lunchtime?" she said.

Stephen perked up and looked outside. The sun was high in the sky now, and though the house was growing very warm, a breeze blew through the open and broken windows. He heard the sounds of Tvanians gathering outside, smelled the smoke of a cooking fire.

"It's only porridge today," said Sylvie. "No eggs. Coyotes got into the chicken coop last night and we're down a dozen hens. Would you like some porridge, though?"

"Yes," he said. She went outside and returned with two steaming hot bowls of corn-and-oat porridge.

He put his book down and slurped it down greedily, not realizing how incredibly hungry he was.

"Did you hear Christine and I arguing?" he asked, ashamed of himself.

"I did," she replied without a hint of anger, strangely. He thought she'd be beside herself after hearing what he said. She slurped a little more from her bowl. "You guys are a thing, aren't you?"

Stephen nearly choked on a piece of corn. "No! I mean, we used to be, but not anymore. How did you figure that out?"

She smirked at him. "That's how couples argue. They know right where to stick the knife."

For some reason, he didn't expect her to be so observant after only seeing her bulldoze her way though the house most of the time.

"I figured as much, honestly," she sighed, eyes growing weary again, but still with a smirk on her face. "It's always the woman who wants things done, isn't it?"

He scoffed. "Uh, no. That's kind of sexist, don't you think?"

"It's true though. As soon as I saw you come back with a woman, I thought, 'She's why he came.' I was right."

"Well, yeah, but-"

"It was the same way with Loki and I." Her face fell and her expression grew distant. "We were both captured and brainwashed by the TVA. I knew something was wrong, even though I couldn't remember a thing, but he would have been perfectly happy to keep being a slave if I hadn't been around."

"Really? I thought Loki led the rebellion?"

"He did. After I convinced him that something was off about the TVA: the fact that they gave you a number instead of a name, that no one knew where they really came from. He rallied everyone to fight and made the plan of escape, but not if I hadn't known the TVA was evil. Without him, though, I would have simply died there. I don't think I would have been able to keep going much longer."

Her face was so despondent that Stephen knew exactly what she meant by that.

"I'm glad you kept going, though. For everyone's sake."

He finished his bowl then went back to impatiently flipping through his book. He sighed angrily a few times and skimmed rapidly through the Tao Te Ching part to the poetry in the back.

"I kind of hate Taoism," he muttered.

Sylvie looked at him with the slightest amused expression. "I'm sorry, what?"

He groaned. "Buddhism and Confucianism I totally get. Confucianism is all about rules and laws and how to live, and Buddhism believes in lessening the amount of suffering in the world, but Taoism? Taoism is just like, 'Oh well, horrible things happen, can't do anything about it.'

"Look at this quote here, from Lao Tzu," he said, holding the book up for her. "'If good happens, good; if bad happens, good.' And another gem, 'Stop thinking, and end your problems. What's the difference between yes and no? What's the difference between success and failure?'" He shrugged and slapped the book back down on the table. "That's the Taoist philosophy in a nutshell. It's baffling."

Sylvie stared at him still, her smile growing wider, but no less confused.

"So say a Taoist is walking down the road," Stephen continued. "He follows the Tao perfectly and his chi is all balanced and all that junk. He sees a tiger prowling in front of him, coming closer. Does he run? No, he doesn't. The perfect Taoist would say, 'How beautiful! A gorgeous tiger is coming to eat me! It's all just part of nature.' And then of course the tiger runs at him, grabs him, and starts eating him. The Taoist says as he bleeds out, 'Fantastic, this is exactly what was supposed to happen. I am following the Path just like I'm supposed to.' The perfect Taoist would rather just die than do anything to change his situation. It makes literally no sense to me."

Her grin had gone from confused to mischievous, spreading from ear to ear as she placed her chin on her hand.

"So was that rant racist or xenophobic?" she asked.

"Neither!" he exclaimed. "It has nothing to do with culture or race, I just really, really don't like the idea that you should simply accept everything bad that happens to you. It's all just so wishy-washy, too. 'Was I a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or am I a butterfly dreaming I am a man?'"

"I would absolutely love to hear your opinions on Christianity," she said, narrowing her eyes. "Ooh, or Islam. Do Islam next."

He shook his head with a laugh.

She chortled and leaned back in her chair. It was the first time he'd seen her off guard, and it caught him off guard as well. There was something about the mischievous smile of hers, those eyes, that felt so utterly familiar.

An invasive thought unwittingly popped into his head, but once it had, he couldn't shake it. Sylvie and a healthier Loki had quite a few similarities between them; their stature, body language, the hair, the green eyes, the temper. He didn't want to think about the implications of that. It couldn't possibly be what he was thinking. They were lovers, after all. But, it was Loki … from everything Stephen knew about him, he wouldn't be surprised if Loki was truly that twisted. On the other hand, Thor hadn't mentioned having another sister besides Hela.

"So, how exactly did you and Loki meet?" he asked as nonchalantly as he could. "You were just coworkers at the TVA?"

"Oh, no, it's sort of complicated, I guess," she replied, a bit reluctant. "The first time we met, he had been caught by the TVA, but he agreed to help them capture me, I suppose in exchange for not pruning him."

"Why you?"

"What do you mean?" She was guarded again, that switch inside of her flipping back on. Her grin was gone.

"Why did the TVA think he could help them capture you?"

She looked away from him and shrugged. "I don't know. They just thought he was clever, I guess. Why?" she added that last word more as more of a warning than a question.

Stephen decided not to press the issue with her. If his hunch was true then it wasn't going to help, and if it wasn't then he'd embarrass himself. Plus, if he said it outright, he had a feeling he'd wake up with a knife in his back.

"Oh, I was just curious, that's all."

Stephen placed his book into the growing pile next to him and started in on early modern Western philosophy.

Sylvie stood as if she'd forgotten to put out the fire in the backyard.

"I'm … going to go chop firewood for a while. Or see if they need help reinforcing the chicken coop."

"Have fun," he said without looking up. She left Stephen alone in the house with his seemingly endless pile of books.

The light was dying and Stephen simply couldn't read another word. If he had to look at one more of Kant's Critiques his eyeballs were going to fall straight out of his head.

He wanted more than anything to trust his dream and the Ancient One's words, but now he was starting to think Christine was right. It all felt like a wild goose chase. And it was far from a harmless distraction: Loki was still in bad shape and would only get worse the more time he wasted.

The Ancient One, dressed ridiculously in a golden paisley dress, popped back into his mind, holding the crumpled test paper and staring at him with such earnestness he couldn't look away.

"Cheat. Death. Stephen."

What in the hell did that mean? Was it literal? Metaphorical? Metaphysical? Stephen agreed with Sylvie, now: sorcerers were too bloody cryptic.

Christine and Mobius's footsteps approaching on the porch echoed loud in the hall. They both came into the foyer, Christine still lugging her enormous duffel bag, looking bedraggled, like they'd walked twenty miles across the desert. Her hair, no longer in its usual nice bun, fell around her face in dark, sweat-soaked locks. Mobius looked painfully sunburnt.

Stephen opened his mouth to say something sarcastic, but stopped when Christine threw him a piercing glare. She went slowly to the door of the den, then paused, barely looking at Stephen as she spoke.

"Find anything useful?" she asked, with extra venom.

"Oh yeah!" he replied, matching her anger with chipper sarcasm. "Lots of stuff!"

He caught her rolling her eyes before she disappeared through the door and slammed it.

"Christ," he muttered, putting his head in both hands. "She was like this all day?" he asked Mobius, who leaned on the mildewed kitchen wall, thoughtfully squinting at nothing. He only shrugged.

Great. Mobius was going to play that game too.

"Where's Sylvie?" Mobius asked, sitting backwards in a kitchen chair, like he was a dad about to have a heart-to-heart with his son.

"She felt antsy, I guess. She left around lunchtime, said she was going to chop wood or fight coyotes or something."

"I'm surprised she left for so long."

After a moment of uncomfortably avoiding each other's gaze, Stephen spoke again.

"I'm really sorry about-"

"I don't want to talk about that," Mobius butted in. His leg bounced restlessly up and down. He said he didn't want to talk, but it sure looked like there was a lot to say. "All I want to know," he continued, "is if you're actually getting somewhere."

"I am," Stephen lied as convincingly as he could. "I really think I can start seeing the bigger picture, here, and putting it all together ... " Stephen trailed off before he made a fool of himself. Mobius nodded, but his face was as blank as stone. A trait leftover from being a detective, Stephen suspected.

"Can I ask you something about Sylvie?" said Stephen, looking around to make absolutely sure she hadn't snuck back inside.

"Yeah?"

"Are Loki and Sylvie … how do I put this … are they related?"

Mobius's leg stopped bouncing, but his expression didn't change. His poker face, far from concealing anything, gave away his shock.

"No," he replied, after a too-long moment. Such a simple answer felt like it needed something tacked on to it that Mobius wasn't saying.

"I mean, it's obviously none of my business, but-"

"Don't," said Mobius quietly. "Don't even suggest something like that. Gossip-lies-spread like the plague around here. And if Sylvie found out it came from you … " Mobius leaned forward in his chair, completely serious, " … I couldn't guarantee your safety."

"I figured as much," Stephen replied. So there was something to his hunch, but Mobius was just at tight lipped as Sylvie. A moment later, Sylvie's boots came clomping through the backyard and the sliding glass door opened and shut. Her sun-kissed cheeks couldn't compare with Mobius's sunburn, though she looked just as sweaty.

She glanced between Mobius and Stephen suspiciously, then headed upstairs without a word to either of them. Stephen realized that since she'd been gone half of the day, there was no one looking after Loki. He hoped Sylvie hadn't automatically expected him to do that. He had been a surgeon, not a personal care aid.

"Everyone keeps asking how he's doing," said Mobius, sounding more tired than Stephen had ever heard him. "They keep asking when he's going to get better. I've just been saying that you're working hard on it, that it'll be soon, that everything's going to be fine, not to worry." He shook his head and put his chin on the back of the chair with a sigh.

"These things take time, Mobius," said Stephen, and meant it. "It's an odd case, but I doubt anyone else would have been able to know where to begin."

Mobius nodded, but his discouraged look didn't fade.

"I can't think of leaving this place, Dr. Strange, after everything we've been through," he said. He wiped some sweat from his burnt forehead. "The living can be tough here, and I imagine a really nasty winter will be hard on us, even with people around that know how to survive rough winters. Despite that, I just can't imagine going anywhere else. Not now."

"I understand," Stephen replied gently. "It's gorgeous, and you fought hard for it. I get it. I would feel a lot better if everyone left, but I want you to be able to keep your home." Stephen put his last book away in the pile, now just as chaotic as it was when they'd dumped all the books on the table the night before. "Thank you for having faith in me, Mobius."

Mobius's face softened at that, and his smile was genuine.

"Who else could I have faith in but a guy who's saved the universe?"

"Half of it, technically," Stephen corrected him with a mirthless chuckle.

"Doctor Strange? Doctor Palmer?" Sylvie's call came from upstairs, loud and tinged with uncertainty.

Christine immediately popped her head out of the door of the den. All three of them raced upstairs.

Reaching the top, the hallway was so dark Stephen nearly fell through the hole in the floor. Sylvie had a few candles going in the room, but the light was still pitiful. Dark clouds outside covered the light of the sunset, turning it to night within a few minutes. The meager candlelight on the bed table illuminated Sylvie and Loki's face, her brows furrowed with worry and his eyes and cheeks as sunken as ever. Loki's shallow, strained rattle whispered into his oxygen mask.

"Feel him," said Sylvie, touching his forehead. "He's cold."

Christine and Stephen, their animosity temporarily forgotten, went to either side of the bed and felt his skin. He was cooler than he should have been, for how hot it had been that day. Christine got a thermometer while Stephen checked his pulse.

"His heart rate is fast," he said, after a minute of counting, "but I don't think it's faster than when we first got here."

Christine's thermometer beeped and she took it out of Loki's mouth. "Ninety seven point five. That would be pretty normal for a human, and it's only a little cooler than his first read, but I don't know how hot Asgardians are supposed to be."

"Not to mention he's technically a frost giant," he mumbled. He took the candle off of the table and examined Loki closely. His trembling was worse, but they'd also run out of saline to give him the day before. His body sucked up moisture like a parched desert.

"Something's wrong," Sylvie whispered, a tremor in her voice. "I know something's wrong."

"I know he looks bad," said Stephen, reminding himself not to say anything stupid, "but I think he looks about the same as when we got here. And I'm sorry, but I didn't feed him or give him water while you were gone, I wasn't thinking of that." He put the candle back on the table.

"I gave him water, but he's still cold," she insisted, voice edging towards hysteria. "I'm telling you something's wrong."

Christine said, "I can go back and get more saline-"

"He doesn't need saline!" she exploded, surprising everyone. A moment later, as if she'd willed it, a crash of thunder boomed nearby, startling everybody again.

"It's going to rain. Thank God, maybe it will cool down a little," said Mobius with a sigh of relief. He turned to Sylvie and put a hand on her slender shoulder. "I'm getting the rain barrels out. Everything is going to be fine. The doctors know what they're doing." He gave Stephen a pointed look, then headed downstairs and out the door.

"Sylvie," said Christine gently, "He's dehydrated, that's all. It's been disgustingly hot the past few days. Just give him as much fresh water and broth as you can get in him tonight."

"And, if you're willing, Christine," Stephen added, "we could possibly sit up with him in shifts tonight, just in case?"

"That's fine. Sylvie, what do you think?"

She looked back and forth between the doctors, her worry seeming to ebb a little. The first fat drops of the thunderstorm splattered on the balcony outside. Finally, she nodded.

"Good," said Christine, the tension in the room easing, as if it had dissolved in the rain. "Stephen, since it was your idea, then you volunteer to take the first shift, right? Because I'm completely exhausted."

He smiled. "Sounds fair to me. You were the one being a real doctor all day."