But it wasn't me, she thought, feeling like an interfering grain of sand in the works. All that happened years and years before I was born. Now we understand about peace and friendship, and about respect for nature and for each other. That's what the Ark is all about.

Then what are you doing here? the stars accused. If the Ark is all peace and friendship why did you run away? Go back.

“I can't,” Ruth wailed out loud. She shivered at the loneliness of her voice in the still, unfriendly night. “I can't. I don't belong there.”

But you don't belong here either, the cold stars seemed to say. Ruth crumpled onto the ground and wept for loneliness and hopelessness.

The next thing she knew, she was in the middle of one of her dreams. She was inside the body and the feelings of a boy, which was a strange and uncomfortable place to be.

Somehow she knew that he was the same boy she had dreamed about often before. Only this dream as clearer, clearer than any of them had been before.

She - or rather he - was standing beside a river, reaching out his hands towards a girl, clothed in a simple tunic of fur, whose red hair flowed untrimmed down her brown back. The boy was saying goodbye, but she would not answer. She turned away, her face like stone, and in the end he splashed across the river away from her.

Ruth felt his pain as if it were her own. He was leaving happiness and freedom, going to something he detested and dreaded. She tried to struggle with the dream body, to force him to turn back, to cross the river again, to run after the red-haired girl before it was too late.

“I have to go ...” he muttered, and another man ahead of him on the trail turned and said, “What's that?”

Ruth woke with a jolt, the moon full on her face. She felt cold, and lonely with a loneliness that was not hers alone. On the slopes below were lights and she could hear voices. For a moment her dream self welcomed them as friends. Then she remembered and staggered to her feet. She was Ruth. There was no one in the wilderness but herself. Had the people from the Ark found her? She turned and began to run.

The Dream closes in

“STOP!” The command thundered in her head and Ruth stumbled and fell to the ground. Running feet crunched the dead leaves. Then she was picked up and brushed down with gentle hands. “There now. There.”

It was one of the Healers, Ruth couldn't see which in the shadows that danced around their torches. The rest of the group who crowded around were all in the blue uniform of Communicators, and with them ... her heart missed a beat... was the Warden himself.

“Let me go, please. It's no good.”