I have to kind of get up and give myself a shake every now and then, like a snoozing dog, or one of those cartoon characters rattling himself back into shape after a piano or a brontosaurus falls on him, if the dragons and I are in the caverns. But if we're outdoors and we've started early and it's a nice day, I'll suddenly wonder why it's getting dark and why I'm so hungry and I'll realize we've been at it for twelve hours or more. (Dragons eat about every third day, I think.) Part of this is the headaches — they're confusing — Martha calls it fuzzying, and she's right, it's like they rub up your brain till it looks like a sweater a cat's been clawing — it's not just that they hurt, although pain can make you stupid too, even if it's a pain you're used to. I wish I could figure out what Bud isn't telling me about not getting headaches.

And I guess I've grown up strange, probably as strange as Lois, in my own way. But I was already strange four years ago when I met her, when she wasn't quite as long as my hand. But — if you're asking — I wouldn't have any other life. (There. That's how I feel.) I wanted to work with dragons, and you can't get any more working with dragons than this. Some of the old lifers here are about the only people who still treat me like I'm normal — without thinking about it, I mean. Even a lot of the Rangers are a little, I don't know how to put it, awkward. Wary maybe. I should be a freshman at some college this year, hanging out at the student union and drinking beer. I was too young to drink beer much when I met Lois, and I can't now, because of the headaches. You could say that while Lois has finally got to return to her people, my reward has been to leave mine. But it is a reward, even if it's a little complicated.

Hey, it's late. The fire's dying and I think my battery is too. Even Bud's eyes are almost closed: just a glint where the lids meet in the middle. I'm going to shut up now and get some sleep myself.

EPILOGUE

I wrote all that five years ago. (So, yeah. I've got all old and gross and legal-adult and everything. Deal with it.)

It's taken that long to get it through the Searles' lawyers. When I wrote it I hadn't even thought about the Searles'-lawyers aspect. I was only worried about trying to tell the story as well as I could without looking like any more of a moron than I had to — plus what people like Dad and Eric would think when they read about themselves. I wasn't trying to hurt anyone's feelings (although I admit hurting the Searles' feelings didn't bother me a lot) but where do you start, or where do you stop, telling the truth?

But it's the Searles that were the real problem. Somebody told me what I'd written was going to have to go through some legal stuff and I said "whatever" and went back to my dragons. Then it took months to hear any more — but I'd never been happy about trying to write the story of Lois' early life so I wasn't sorry that it went away for a while. Then we started getting legal letters. At first I thought, Drop dead, I'm not changing anything, and then I thought, Hey, great, it's not going to get published after all and go out into the world and be read by strangers . . . and then Dragon Drivel came out, or whatever dumb thing they finally called it, which is the "sensitive" version I mentioned on the first page, and it was even more gruesome than I'd expected. So then I thought, Well, okay, I'll have a try at changing what the Searles don't like — or I'll try to change some of it. Our lawyers had helpfully highlighted what they thought were the most controversial bits.

And I did try. But then I thought, I'm supposed to be nice about the Searles and their psychopath son when I'm not being nice about my own family? And if I start being nice about everybody all that's left is the me looking like a moron part. So then I went stubborn all over again and said "drop dead" officially, and our lawyers translated that into legal speak and . . .

So it's been five years. And I didn't change anything after all. Our Friends got involved and it was all going against the Searles — even I felt a little sorry for them — a little — they're stuck in their own reality warp which they have to make everyone else agree with, except almost nobody does any more, however much money they spend. But I suppose it's hard saying "yes okay our son was a rotten evil creep."

Rereading it now — now that we've finally got the go-ahead, which gives me the grisly opportunity to have a fresh attack of second, or two-hundred-and-sixty-fourth, thoughts about doing it — what I remember most was how OVERWHELMINGLY shut in and squashed and paranoid it was, Lois' first two years. Even "claustrophobic" sounds kind of loose and easy, compared to what it really was. I know, I said this at the beginning, I said I didn't want to go back there, back to that tiny cramped heavy scared space, I didn't want to have to live through it again to write about it. But it gets worse with time, not better. I can feel the walls leaning on my elbows and my head is suddenly the only thing keeping the ceiling up as I reread what I wrote. Even though mostly things didn't happen, you know? Mostly they were still just days . . . and oh-by-the-way the crazy, appalling obsessiveness of every one of those days. Necessary? Sure. Fascinating? You bet. A fun time? No cheezing way.

I also keep thinking about all the stuff I left out. Maybe I left the wrong things out, you know? Too late now. I can get back there even less now than I could five years ago, and I'm not going to try.

Which reminds me of the conversation I had with Eric after I'd given what I'd written to him to read. He didn't say anything immediately when he gave it back, although that wasn't necessarily a good sign. Eric's got human lately, by the way. He's got a boyfriend. Yup. Boyfriend. He says himself (I told you he'd got human) that it hadn't ever occurred to him that he was gay. He knew he wasn't very interested in girls and then just didn't think about it any more — maybe he was just 100 percent animal oriented — and Smokehill or any place where you're dealing with tourists all the time is not going to improve your opinion of the human race. Then one day Dan kissed him and (he says) it was like . . . oh.

He looked at me and I waited for the blast. It's not like he's not Eric any more, although the expression on his face was a lot more sardonic and a lot less toxic than it would have been before Dan. I tried not to shuffle my feet.

"Yeah, okay," Eric said finally. "Fair's fair. I was pretty much a bastard in those days and I was more of a bastard to you than to most people. But you were . . . bless your little pointed head, you were such a lightning rod for it.

"I don't deny anything you've said in here" — and he gave my manuscript a flap — "but there is other stuff. Like that your self-absorption was way beyond spectacular long before Lois." He brooded, continuing to give the big wodge of manuscript little jerky flips. The middle pages were starting to stick out from the rest. I probably wanted to be mesmerized by this because I didn't want to listen to what he was saying, but I did think about what was going to happen when those middle pages finished slithering out and you know how the harder you grab on to the outside the more of the middle waterfalls out. Maybe Eric and I could bond some more over putting them back in order. I don't think so.

"The best thing about YOU when YOU were a kid was that dog," he said. "That was a really nice dog and you did a really good job with him. So there: was that in your favor. Outside of that . . . you were so convinced you were the center of the universe — and the worst thing was you were right. You were the only child of the directors of the Institute, and the directors of the Institute were the rulers of the only universe that mattered. You bled arrogance like a slug leaves a slime trail."