We three bike up into the hills--the Young Cynic, Linda Evans from that TV soap Dynasty, and me.

Linda knows the area well; she says "The best campsite is just past that truckstop diner, up on that hilltop." I worry we'll get hassled or even attacked, but she says it's safe, and since she means Ethics, I take her word.

Along a ridge now. The sun rises--from the west! Behind the mountains still, not quite up here, but a fiery red-gold sky, and trees on the ridge are in sunlight--gleam with backlit halos.

Magical, with house lights still on, like jewels in a visible setting, unlike night, when the lights float alone like stars, or full day when colors go flat and the sparkle's gone.

Hikers stand spangled on the hill slope around us, in the fields, and they glow too with points of light and a line of psychic blue fire round their bodies. I see a man who's slightly ME! He has, for a moment, an antler-crown or -halo of light.

And then all the fire flashes fiercely as the Sun reaches our ridge. "I can see why people up here believe in magic" I say over the wind to Linda Evans. I still think they're a bit credulous, but I have to admit such effects are beautiful, whether magic is true or just a trick of the light.

Within minutes, as the sun rises fully, the halos are glared away.

We reach a Gothic house high on the ridge and explore it. I find it a gloomy place full of spooks, though Linda tries to enthuse--to appreciate its rooms of stone, rooms of water, rooms of ice...

Quiet threats escalate to spell-casting--an open war.

My co-worker Bob gets caught in an ice-grotto and gets transformed; his flesh grows watery and runs like candlewax. In the cold, he congeals to an abstract fountain.

Long after the war, I know, a troop of child explorers will find that room, and him, and wonder what he is--not even recognizably human.

But he's not alone in that. We all shapeshift like crazy.

Even the Sun and Moon get into it--slink from their posts and start measuring different times. The Moon slips behind the earth and hides there for days, orbiting in the shadow. Every night for a week the Moon swims dim and red--eclipsed--for she's following her own Moon-time now, without the Sun to restrain her.

Human calendars get a bit confused.

But in the end we win. Peace! Postwar reconstruction...

So now I'm Linda Evans, wandering this mansion so like Dynasty's, but ruined...

Upstairs I find a cupola where I can see the whole estate, and realize it's ALL creepy, ugly, sordid, not someplace I want to live in. I just don't want to fix this up. I want to MOVE.

So I leave. Walking through the woods, I meet one last shapeshifter, an ally during the war. He's dressed in the requisite tights and cape. Prewar, I wondered, but now I understand all that Spandex--it doesn't bind you during shapeshifts.

He walks along with me, and we talk about the heroic life.

His dog is with him; she's a shapeshifter too. But if she shapeshifts, how do I know she's really a dog, you ask? Easy. That dog, in every form she takes, feels so doggone doggy you could never mistake her for ANYthing else. She wears an adorable doggy sweater and doggy cape...

And Superdog has a pet cat, with her own superhero cape. Supercat has a pet, Supersquirrel, who has a pet, Superhamster, who has a pet Supermouse...

Wait... what have I done with mine?

NOTES IN THE MORNING

• Linda Evans + caped heroes: though never mentioned, it's hard to avoid her other famous role: Wonder Woman.
• Linda Evans = ethics: well, ethics and ESP! Here's why. Two weeks ago I dreamed Linda Evans was a beautiful ballet-teaching sheep. Next day I saw Dynasty. Linda Evans's crooked husband snarls "you're either a wolf or a sheep in this world" and she walks out on him--her parting line is "Well, then, I am a SHEEP!" Ethical... and predictive.
• So what's the dream saying? It's warning me of micromania--minimizing the extraordinary--the opposite of megalomania. Over the last two years I've replicated J.W. Dunne's famous Experiment with Time, and found that just like his dreams, mine are frequently predictive in small, unspectacular ways. I've discounted the achievement just because magic's subtle. But it's not just a trick of the light. And we can act on that extra data: the future can be changed. Maybe just nudged toward the light. But is that trivial?

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