Brilliant light shot up to meet him so that he had to close his eyes against the glare. Then, slowly, he opened them again. Much like the sensation of stepping onto cool lawn after having walked barefoot on scorching concrete, pain was swiftly followed by almost unbearable pleasure. Before Marc's gaze a soft greenness stretched away from him into graceful rising slopes and cool shadowed hollows--artfully like a display of green velvet in a shop window. On the rise of the most distant knoll stretched a forest of strange trees which held at once a cathedral of stateliness and a feathery pliability. Weaving slightly with the breeze they were mindful of nothing so much as a handful of royal plumes stuck into the earth at the whim of a bemused child. The Valley of The Subconscious Mind.... Marc knew instantly where he was; he'd been there often enough before. He glanced around in search of some movement, some flash of animated color. But there was nothing. He started up the rise, stretching his long legs purposefully before him. Surely she would be there, probably among the trees. But she was not. Nor was there any sign of her. Marc moved to the crest of the knoll where the trees were the thickest, but the far horizon proved to be obscured by a blue mist that swirled and disported itself in the way of something alive. He stood there for a long moment, turning slowly, watching anxiously for any sign, but there was none. Finally he sat down, braced his elbows on his knees and rested his chin in his hand. Disappointment welled inside him--and hurt too; always before she had been right there to meet him at the moment of his arrival. * * * * * He stiffened with a sudden, dreadful thought: what if Toffee wasn't there at all? What if she had ceased to exist? Wasn't it possible since she was only a product of his imagination? He stood up and again scanned the horizon. He bent down to peer into the shifting frontiers of the mists. And then it happened. It was low and mean and sharply reminiscent of a similar agony which had befallen him in another time and place that he couldn't rightly remember. Grabbing himself uninhibitedly he doubled forward and sat down heavily on the ground. Then it was over as swiftly and surprisingly as it had begun. The air rippled with musical, feminine laughter, somewhere behind him. Marc swung around. Lovely as ever, her mist-textured tunic only served to cast a cool greenish tint on the flesh of the outrageously perfect body beneath it. As she moved from beneath the trees, her flaming hair fell loose about her shoulders, as free and wild as the spirit it adorned. Though her full red lips quivered with laughter, the real laughter was in the depths of her green eyes. She paused for a moment, then ran forward and sat down lightly at his side. She eyed him with mischievous amusement.