The battle was over. We killed every Draco. The fallen angels were the Dragon’s army since he and they were expelled from heaven. He has surely been weakened. In regards to the Mark-Steppers who escaped to the mainland, we are not too concerned. Mark-Steppers are born into this world every day. When they’re alive, they’re Minions. Call them Minions, call them Nephilim, Mark-Stepper, or what you will; they wear the Mark of the Beast and serve the Dragon. They’ve lived among us since time immemorial and are evil. Their actions do not take into consideration anyone else, and you can find these people anywhere. We believe the amount who escaped from the Borderland will not impact significantly what the world currently endures anyway. I mean, the Nephilim didn’t escape from the Borderland. They already live among you.

Before leaving for home, we took a closer look at what was going on at the docks. By now all the Nephilim, minions, and Mark-Steppers were gone. Now, festival goers were boarding and making their way to the mainland and on to their next festival. I hoped so anyway. Although our festival may be memorable, it's fairly safe to say it wasn’t because we hit the ‘Summer of Love’ vibe we were shooting for. I hope they were able to stay true to themselves, and maybe take their experience with them and share it with others. Get the people talking.

While I was standing there, I saw Mike waiting in line to board a boat. I supposed Leita had not gotten through to him? Oh boy! That made it more urgent for me to get home. I started off immediately.

When I got home, Leita was already there laying in bed with a far away look in her eyes.

‘How you doing, babe?’ I asked.

‘What? Oh Ethan. I didn’t hear you,’ she said, returning to earth. ‘I think I had a good day. It was just very surreal’.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, I found Mike sitting by the door this morning and he finally agreed to do a meditation with me. So we begin the meditation. I give him a pretty good dose of psilocybin, and I start preparing him, just like I’ve done hundreds of times before, just like Doc showed me, and I get him to this place we always try to take our patients. It’s the place where you agree to meet your fears. It involves looking back a little further in your life, and I get Mike to do this, and all of sudden he drops out of the meditation, and tells me he’s fine’.

‘What?’

‘Yeah, and he’s completely straight all of a sudden,’ Leita continued. ‘Ten minutes before he was looped. I know; I’m trained to recognize this. He was stoned, and now he’s straight.

‘He tells me thank you. He now understands his purpose and he has to leave.

I was totally confused. ‘Wait a minute,’ I said to him. ‘What just happened here?’

‘Then he sat me the counselor down, and said he had been suffering from a blockage and I helped him get past it. He knows how to completely cope with his situation, as he now can place it in the context of his existence and it will be managed without further interruption. His words’.

‘He told me I was good at this work and should continue. He said I was a natural healer. Then he stayed another 10 minutes or so, I think mostly to reassure me he was fine, and left’.

‘Well, was he fine?’ I asked.

‘Yes. He was totally fine! Yesterday, he couldn’t stay focused on my face. After the meditation, he was completely engaged and focused. I’m trained to recognize that too. It was just like talking to you or Doc, and he had a look in his eye like he was laser sharp focused’.

‘What did Doc say about all this?

‘I don’t know!’ Leita replied. ‘I haven’t been able to talk to him yet. He was sick this morning. I had to do the meditation on my own, and then when I went to tell him about it, he wasn’t home.

‘Do you know where I found him?’ she continued. ‘I was looking all over the place, and someone said they saw him down by the stream, so I run down there, and there he is sitting in a canoe with Tara and Tasha.

‘Doc,’ I yelled, ‘I have to tell you about Mike’.

They were moving downstream by the time I got there, and he just waved to me. No-one seems to know where they went’.

‘And you say Tasha was with them?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well that is good news,’ I sighed. Tasha would live on through eternity as a transcended being. Tara would see to that. I had been putting off my grief for Tasha and knowing she was with Tara relieved me tremendously. It was her time to leave and she did it heroically.

‘That’s not everything,’ Leita continued. ‘Raven showed up upstream a ways, and started chasing the canoe from the shore. He kept calling for Tasha to come back. I heard he chased them until the stream turns towards the ocean. That’s quite a distance.

‘Kate finally went to find him. She said he was sitting on a rock exhausted and inconsolable. She used the word defeated. All he would say is they wouldn’t be coming back. What do you think he meant by that?’.

‘They’re not coming back,’ I said.

‘What do you mean?’ Leita asked.

‘Tara is the shepherd to the New World. I told you about her. Doc and Tasha have transcended, sweetie. It’s what Doc wanted, remember’?

‘You mean they’re dead?’

‘Well, in the sense that they’re physically dead, yeah, but they’ve transcended into the new world. Old school, but that’s what they did. I think the quest is over. I’ve taken care of my business and from the sounds of things, you’ve had remarkable success with Mike, and helped Doc find passage to Enlightenment. I’d say a job well done’.

‘I don’t know if I like the idea of Doc being dead,’ she said, a bit clingy I thought. ‘I wanted to talk over what happened with Mike, and I want to spend more time with him’.

‘We can find him in the New World’.

‘It won’t be the same,’ Leita said, somewhat petulantly.

‘It’ll be better!’ I said. ‘We can vibe with him as long as you want’

Vibing is when you connect with someone because you like their vibe. It can be friends, relatives, new acquaintances, whatever. What you’re doing is you’re kind of hooking up with these people to share space and time. You’re living with them side by side through space and time and sharing each other’s experience by being connected. You’re not physically connected. You connect in the abstract, which is never too intrusive, but you still share each other’s experience through the vibe. You can jump more into each other’s vibe whenever you want, but you’re always connected to the experience. It’s pretty cool. If you want to know the truth, it’s like having this huge security blanket wrapped around you.

Anyway, it’s not like they won’t be able to talk to each other in the New World. If Leita likes this space and time so much and can talk Doc into coming back, there’s nothing stopping us from doing just that.