"You shouldn't have done that," Nada reproved her, returning to her natural form. "Now we're both falling to whatever horrendous fate awaits us below."

"But I couldn't let that stage fright do that to you!" Electra protested. "Especially when I know he didn't see your panties. I was facing that way all the time, and he wasn't there until he yelled."

"That's a consolation," Nada said. "But what I meant was, if something happened to me Dolph would have to marry you. But it's no good if we both—"

"That's horrible!" Electra protested. "I don't want you to die instead of me!"

"Look," Nada said reasonably, "we can't both marry him, and I don't even want to. But it's his choice, not ours. Since we know he'll make the wrong choice, it behooves us to make the choice for him."

"But we're friends! I couldn't think of—"

"Your niceness is all too likely to cost you your life, and me my happiness," Nada said. "It is time for desperate measures. We have to eliminate one of us, and we just had an easy way to do it. But now we may have eliminated both of us, and that's no good either."

"Maybe you're right," Electra said, biting her lip in the way that wasn't permitted to princesses. "I guess I just wasn't thinking. But oh, Nada, I just had to try to save you!"

"I would have tried the same for you," Nada confessed. "Still, we have to get sensible sometime."

They were still falling, but it seemed to Nada that their descent was slower now. She remembered that this was the gourd, where things were not necessarily quite what they seemed. Was it possible that they were not both about to be dashed to pieces below?

Electra peered down. "There's a river!" she said, some of her brightness returning. "A very pretty one."

Nada looked. There was indeed a river, which glistened in the sunshine. At the moment Nada wasn't inclined to question how there could be sunlight way down here below the corkscrew swamp path; the river was beautiful in a crystalline way, with many perfectly-cut facets. "I agree."

They continued slowing, until at last they came to rest on the river bank. Now the crystals of the river were large and bright, sending lovely splays of light in a number of directions. "What a beautiful Crystal River!" Electra breathed.

"But now we are off the cookie path," Nada reminded her, getting practical. "We shall have to look for it, for we don't want to be forever lost here in the gourd, no matter how beautiful this part of it is."

"Yes, of course," Electra agreed, chastened. "But I'm sure the corkscrew is here somewhere."