Faveon--Dano, Dano, you shock and alarm me. No longer am I surprised that your waking thoughts fill your sleep with strange, if not with impious, dreams. I implore you to restrain your thoughts, your vivid imagination, lest some harm come to you. You well know that your ideas are contrary to the teachings of our sacred priesthood, who are the expounders of our Holy Writings, which declare that in the beginning Andûman[a:], through His love for His ignorant children instructed the gods to commune with them, that thus they might gain knowledge, but as they grew wise they also grew so arrogant and impious that they sought to wrest from the gods the secrets pertaining to sacred things. Then Andûman[a:] wrathfully forbade His Messengers to hold further communion with His sinful children. In the beginning there was no death, but for their sins Andûman[a:] decreed that henceforth death should serve as a constant reminder that the Creator is greater than the created. We being the created cannot, without sin, question Andûman[a:]'s laws, hence, dear Dano, we should not only willingly submit to the will of our Creator, but as obedient children, we should humbly revere the hand that smites us. Death having come to the children of Ento because of their impious desire to obtain a knowledge of sacred mysteries, it does not appear reasonable that even you, our beloved prince, may have been admitted into Astranol[a:], and the Holy Writings mention no other realm of living ones. To my mind, your dream partakes of the nature of the hallucination which recently possessed you in the lecture hall. You then insisted, and still insist, that a foreign-looking woman spoke to you, and even touched you, yet no one save our fanciful friend, Lēta Verronadas, imagined that they saw or heard aught. Certainly, it was nothing more than the effect of a too highly excited imagination, to which, I confess, I, too, occasionally am a victim. It appears that Lēta is becoming subject to these annoying seizures, and his friends are somewhat anxious for his health, which really appears excellent. If my very practical remarks have served to becloud your usually serene countenance, you will forgive me, and may Andûman[a:] forgive if I, too, am sometimes filled with fear and bitter regret that inevitably death is drawing near, that even in my youth I may pass into oblivion. Were it not impious, gladly would I welcome a belief in a possibility of a continuity of existence. Alas, we have no hope, or slightest indication, that after death has seized the breath of our life, we and our beloved ones ever shall meet again. So, my friend, it will be well for us to strive to be thinkers and workers, not dreamers of dreams which have no foundation in realities. Your heavy sigh finds an echo in my own heart, and I fear that my face like your own tells the secret of our sorrowful thoughts, so the signal for our return to study comes in good time to end this profitless conversation.