"We're both desperadoes now," Howie murmured

"I suppose we are," Jo-Beth said. "But it's all right. Nobody can separate us."

"I wish that was true. "

"It is true. You know it is. "

She raised her hand, which was still locked in his, between them.

"Remember this?" she said. "That's what Quiddity showed us. It joined us together. "

The shudders in her body passed through her hand, through the sweat that ran between their palms, and into him.

"We have to be true to that. "

"Marry me?" he said.

"Too late, " she replied. "I already did. "

They were at the Lake's edge now, but of course it wasn't Michigan they saw as they looked out into the night, it was Quiddity. It hurt, thinking of that place. The same kind of hurt that touched any living soul when a whisper of the dream-sea touched the edge of consciousness. But so much sharper for them, who couldn't dismiss the longing, but knew Quiddity was real; a place where love might found continents.

It would not be long before dawn, and at the first sign of the sun they'd have to go to sleep. But until the light came—until the real insisted upon their imaginations—they stood watching the darkness, waiting, half in hope and half in fear, for that other sea to rise from dreams and claim them from the shore.