"I had a dream," Shane admitted, eyeing his cereal suspiciously.

Dustin was already halfway through his bowl, but the frenetic speed at which he was shoveling cereal into his mouth didn't keep him from commenting. "Like, Martin Luther King Jr. I have a dream, where everyone's happy and playing together and everything's good, or like a weird dream where zombies were having a tea party?"

It did keep his comments from being comprehensible. But then, Dustin usually managed that even without the cereal. "It was weird," Shane said at least. "But no zombies. Skyla was there."

"Skyla?" Dustin repeated, as though Shane was the one who had said something strange. "Like firebird, battlizer power, Skyla?"

Shane rolled his eyes. "No, Dustin. The other Skyla. The one I met in shop class while we were drinking tea and watching zombie heads roll."

"Yeah?" Dustin paused in his effort to inhale his breakfast in less than ninety seconds. "I don't think you've mentioned her before, dude."

He knew where he was headed. He didn't know if it was right, but it was a place to start. He needed to get back to that chimney. The only remnants of a burned out old house, the brick chimney stood slightly out of place in the dark woods.

His lips twitched as he remembered the last form in which Skyla had appeared to him. A phoenix, a firebird associated with an old chimney... A chimney that was the sole survivor of a fire that had probably changed someone's life.

Whoever they had been, he'd bet they never let birds nest in their chimney again.

"What's your name?" Shane asked the girl in the carseat, hoping to keep her calm in the middle of a burning car that could explode at any moment.

"I'm not supposed to talk to strangers," she informed him. Yeah. She seemed pretty calm to him.

"Your mom tell you that?" he asked, tugging on the door.

The girl nodded solemnly.

"Well, the next time she tells you not to talk to strangers," Shane told her, grunting as he yanked harder on the car door, "tell her not to crash her car, okay?"

The girl thought about that, then frowned a little. "I don't think my mommy will like you very much."

"Yeah," Shane said with a sigh. "I get that a lot."

"Everything okay, Shane?" Marah asked, looking genuinely concerned.

"Yeah, I just have some things to think about." Shane caught Dustin's eye and suddenly remembered his attempt at kindness. He grabbed his backpack to retrieve Dustin's cereal.

"Here, man. I um, got you some more cereal," he said, passing it over. "It's, uh, a little crushed. Sorry about that."

Dustin took the box gingerly, gave it an experimental shake, and watched impassively as the cardboard dissolved in his fingers. The box, having been subject to more abuse than those felt pennants they sell to rabid fans at baseball games, had finally given up on any effort at maintaining structural integrity and now lay in a little heap of dust on the floor.

"Thanks, dude," Dustin said matter-of-factly. "Remind me never to lend you cash."