Chapter 9

I woke up later, I guess I was tired after all... wink. Eliza was snuggled to my side, tracing gentle patterns in my chest hair languidly with one fingertip. Of course, she knew exactly when I was awake... "Yes, I can see your dreams, but I prefer not to. Dreams are like hallucinations, they don't make much sense. I prefer just to gather the emotional content of the sleeping thoughts. Would you like me to wake you up if you start to have a nightmare?" I pondered the question a moment, and told her "No. I would rather my brain do what it wants. However frightening a nightmare is, it is always a relief to wake up- maybe that is their purpose, to make reality prefered over dreams." She tucked her head against me and murmered into my shoulder "You are so intuitively wise." I thought about tickling her in various places, and had her shreeking and laughing without touching her. She mock glared at me, and growled " I am so going to pay you back for that! Settle down, and I will tell you how my day went, after you 'disappeared'.

"After you dived into that panier, the Sheriff sort of went insane. He not only thought you had vanished, but that I had turned into someone else, as well! He had thought I was a runaway, of about 14- that was what the 'vision' he was having about us was registering on his brain. Oh, and you were a sleazy bearded biker stereotype, with tatoos and open greasy leather vest, and missing teeth. Instead, you disappear in a three second interval, and when he looks back at me, I am Me, not some blonde waif, in the front seat of his cruiser. I mean, he is not as flexible minded as you! It is a good thing he had an inate respect for women, but even so I had to endure handcuffs and a ride in the back of the car, this time, down to the station. The only thing is, they couldn't find anything to charge me with, and there were no reported runaways of the description he gave, and the whole disappear/reappearing aspect of the report were just too much for the Real Sheriff to take. We called him a Sheriff, but actualy all the law around here are Deputys. Deputys doing the Sheriff's Patrol. They asked me questions for about four hours- I played dumb, said I was the one the Deputy had pulled over on my bike, and put in his patrol car. Luckly for both of us, they don't have video cameras in the patrol units around here yet. I bet it is in next years budget though! It was my word against his, and ordinarily his word would have carried more weight, except for the part about two people vanishing, and one appearing. He still would have tried to charge me with something, but he was honest enough to admit that he hadn't even had a reason to pull us over in the first place, except for the runaway who didn't exist, and the biker who seemed to be me, a woman ... He was so confused, and frusturated! That was a really wonderful idea you had, diving into the panier, but how did you know you would be in notime in there?"