Nighttime while sailing was the most beautiful thing Alice had ever seen. The sparkle of the stars reflecting countless times across the ever moving waves was hypnotic. She wished that she could walk upon the waves just so she could join the dance.

"Will you, won't you, will you, won't you, will you join the dance?" She sang, raising her hands above her head and twirling around, once, twice, three times for good luck. Her laughter rang across the deck and the sailors that had taken the night duties rolled their eyes and shrugged. For months now they had sailed with this odd young woman and most of them had gotten used to her. A few made the sign of the evil eye and muttered darkly about women on boats, but the weather held steady and the complaints became a minority.

Nearly all the sailors had watched her odd behavior at one time or another and the fact that she was quite mad had become common knowledge. She would burst randomly into song while dancing along the deck with an invisible partner. Or she would run up to one of the sailors, golden curls tumbling everywhere and brown eyes sparkling. He would be half in love with her until she opened her mouth and announced that the clouds seemed sad that day, would he say a few words with her to cheer them up? And there she would stand, waiting for an answer until Alec came to collect her like the handler the captain had deemed him.

For the most part they had come to avoid the strange young woman. "Let Miller deal with her," they grumbled. "Cap'n put him in charge of her and it can stay that way." Which was exactly how the two of them had planned it.

Alice grinned with real pleasure at the great trick she had played upon almost the entire ship. She wasn't completely ignorant of the dangers a woman traveling alone could face on a ship full of men. And so she and Alec had used the fact that she was odd and given to flights of fancy to her advantage. She would let loose the thoughts in her head, pretending as though she couldn't control them or differentiate them from reality, and Alec would feed the crew's desire for a bit of gossip afterwards.

They almost completely avoided her now and she had the perfect excuse for Alec (she simply couldn't think of him as Mr. Miller even if he still insisted on keeping their names formal) to be able to spend a large amount of his time keeping her company. They had told the captain the truth of course. Alec had insisted. She had been afraid at first that he would be angry, but instead he had burst into laughter and congratulated them on coming up with a solution for keeping the men away from her before he did.

And so having grown into her sea legs quite splendidly, she could sing and dance by herself beneath the moonlight without anyone bothering her. And dance she did! Every night she twirled and swayed beneath the stars, celebrating her new life. Well that was how her nightly dancing tradition had started. She closed her eyes, not fearing falling off the side. With her eyes closed, she could feel a pair of arms wrapped warmly around her, fingers making lazy patterns up and down her back. His fingers were rough, the thought came unbidden. She sighed softly, never wanting it to end.

She still dreamed every night. More and more often she dreamed of the man with two voices. Any words that he gave to her were still lost upon waking, but the inflections became more and more clear. Joyous, angry, determined, lost, hopeful, but most of all tender. The tenderness in his voice would wrap around her like a butterfly's cocoon until it shredded around her as she was pulled back to the waking world, leaving her alone again.

And so she rarely let herself sleep. Instead she played under the stars, singing and telling herself stories. She kept a journal of her journey. Well it was supposed to be of her journey, but instead had become filled with speculations. What did his eyes look like? How does one man have two voices? And why was she convinced that she knew what his fingers felt like?

This part of her madness (for really what else could it be?) where she could swear she felt his touch was fairly new. It had started shortly after beginning her voyage. She had awoken from one her dreams upset as normal. But instead of opening her eyes she had squeezed them shut, trying to keep the tears from pouring out. And for first time, she had felt those invisible arms cradle her close. Felt safe and warm for first time since the dreams had started. And so she retreated into it more and more often. It failed more often then it worked, and Alice had spent most of her alone time curled up praying for a dream rather then paying attention to reality.

"You are dangerously close to falling overboard. Stupid girl," a voice right next to her ear informed her. With a small shriek of surprise her eyes flew open. She whirled around trying to find the source of her shock, but no one was in sight. As she turned and her eyes hunted for her mysterious visitor, her foot caught on an unseen rope and down to the ground she went, landing squarely on her back and elbows.

"You all right Miss Kingsleigh?" called one of the sailors. A small group of them were heading towards her at a quick jog. The first one that reached helped her to her feet, peering in her eyes to make sure she wasn't concussed. "Did ya hit your head, then?" he asked.

"No, no, I'm fine, really," she said embarrassedly. She held up her scraped her arm as proof. "All the fall was right there and really it could be much worse." She continued to look for the person who had caused her fall to begin with, but the three men who had come to assist her were the only people in sight. After reassuring them again that she was fine, the sailors headed back to their business, leaving a bruised and confused Alice behind them. She flopped down on the ground, without hurting herself this time.

"So now I'm hearing voices. Absolutely wonderful," she groaned to herself. She looked up at the stars, half hoping to find an answer. "Is this punishment for playing tricks?"

"Doubtful," said the same voice from somewhere above her head. She shot to her feet as swiftly as a puppet being pulled by its strings. She knew that voice. It was so familiar.

"Who are you? And where are you?" she cried out, craning her neck in an attempt to look for her mysterious stranger's hiding place. A heavy sigh floated out of the air.

"Turn around and look at the mast," he replied. She stared at the mast in confusion. "Oh very well," sighed the voice in disgust. A butterfly that she hadn't noticed in the dark took off and flew directly in front of her eyes. It delicately landed on her nose, wings barely fluttering.

"Is this close enough for you to see?" the butterfly asked. She crossed her eyes in order to see it better. It was a beautiful shade of blue, just like the butterfly she had seen when first leaving England. But it couldn't possibly be…could it?

"Speechless? That's such a rare thing for you I almost wish he was here to witness it," the butterfly remarked dryly. She gaped for a moment longer.

"Well it's not every day that butterflies talk to me. In fact, it's not any day so I'm afraid you'll have to forgive my lack of speech," Alice replied. She stared at it for a moment longer, trying to let her shock sink in. "Am I dreaming?"

"Why do you always believe that you are dreaming? Quite a foolish way to look at things," replied the butterfly taking off from her nose and landing back on the mast. She uncrossed her eyes and tried to take in what was happening. She was having a conversation with a butterfly. A mostly one sided conversation, but a conversation none the less. Wait, something he had said wasn't quite right…

"Wait a moment what do you mean always? You act is if you know me!" she spluttered in surprise. The butterfly stopped moving for a moment. It made Alice wish she was artist, she wanted to paint it…him, that voice was definitely male, and name the painting something pretty and impossible.

"Ah, so that's the why of it," he mused softly, as if to himself. Before Alice could ask him what he meant by that, it took off from the mast and landed delicately on her shoulder.

"As far as knowing you, we have met all ready. In fact, you called me by name, stupid girl," he informed her, voice full of haughty, superior knowledge.

"Absolem," she whispered, remembering how she had known that was his name. How she had dismissed it as her imagination and then forgotten about it.

"Yes," he answered. "And you are definitely Alice. In fact, I think you might be becoming even more Alice then you all ready were."

"I know your voice," she murmured, her voice trembling with confusion. "Why do I know your voice?" She pinched herself on the arm like father had taught her. Once, twice, but the talking blue butterfly stayed exactly where he was. Once more, but Alice did not wake up in her cabin.

"All right," she said softly. "Not a dream then. But that still does not explain why I know your voice." Dreams! That was it! His was the biting voice from her dreams. "I've dreamed about you. I never remember you afterwards, but I've dreamed of you."

"I assume that you do not remember any of your dreams then?" Absolem asked, seeming curious instead of bored for the first time since this insanity had begun.

"Just voices. Sounds…the way they make me feel. And how I feel when they're gone. Every night I dream, and every night I cannot remember. I try and I try until I am ready to pull my hair out by its roots, but I just can't remember. I was so convinced that it meant nothing, just fears of travel, still mourning my father…" She looked down at the butterfly on her shoulder. "Yet here you are, real. This can't be a dream. My dreams aren't like this. Well I don't know that they aren't like this since I don't remember them, but this is too real and the pinch isn't waking me-"

"You're babbling," he interrupted her, now sounding amused. "All though I think I can safely assume where you picked that habit up from."

"Are you going to actually tell me what any of your cryptic comments means or is it a guessing game?" she asked, starting to feel frustrated. "Here you are acting as though you know so much about me when all I know is your name."

"Hmmm," said Absolem. "I do actually feel rather bad for you. It must be getting quite repetitive." He took off from her shoulder and landed neatly on the deck. And this time even though his words still make any sense, they felt right. She did feel as if she had done this before and he certainly seemed to know her. And if he was real, maybe the other voices in her dreams were real as well.

She gasped, a deep intake that was harsh in sound and feeling. Her heart seemed to stop beating as she felt the blood drain from her face. Her breath was caught in her chest and for a moment she knew she was going to faint. And then her breath released and she was dizzy, but she would not let herself faint, not when she was about to find out what might the most important thing in the world.

"He's real too, isn't he?" she asked, her voice twisted and wound with hope and tears, joy and terror. "The man with two voices is real. I hear him and my heart hurts. When I close my eyes, I feel a person, I feel hands touching me, and arms holding me, and I think that they might be his."

"Please," she begged, her voice breaking under more emotions then she had realized she was carrying with her. "Tell me who he is?" Absolem remained silent for a minute and the world seemed to teeter on the edge of his barely moving wings.

"What would you call a situation that is completely impossible, cannot be explained by any rational thoughts, yet still exists?" he asked her. She blinked, taken aback by the change of subject. She started to scold him for it, but an unknown instinct told her that if she challenged him now, she would never get the answers she was looking for. With a deep breath, she forced herself to let go of her curiosity and thought carefully about his question.

"Magic," she said finally. It was the only answer that made any sense.

"Magic," repeated Absolem. "It's as good a word as any. And would you agree that it makes sense that magic must have and follow its own laws in order to work?" She nodded, fascinated by the idea.

"Then listen well, girl because I won't repeat myself. There is magic in what you're doing. Making your way in a world that discourages, nay forbids women to take care of anything besides hearth and home is a magic all on its own. I could answer your questions, tell what you cannot remember. But that would be breaking the rules. To stop you from finding your own path would destroy all of the magic and you will never find what you seek. You have to find where you're going on your own, with no assistance from anyone else whom the magic has touched."

"But…I don't even know what I'm looking for," said Alice, feeling thick and dull witted. The world was moving so fast that at the moment it seemed quite possible that she could lose her grip and fall so far down that she would never find her way back.

"Exactly the point," he told her. "If you knew what you might find, what would be the point of the journey?" Alice absorbed this statement for a moment, a sad awareness in her eyes.

"If I spend the whole journey looking at one tree, I'd miss the entire forest," she said. She had closed her eyes against her surroundings earlier, straining to feel those phantom arms not caring about anything else that might be in front of her. If he had not chosen to speak to her, she would have missed the otherworldly butterfly. She often chased Alec to bed early o the pretense on wanting time alone with the stars, but she had been ignoring her dear friends the stars in favor of chasing a dream.

It wasn't fair, she silently wailed. She longed for that dream so much it was a fist around her heart squeezing until she wasn't sure if there was room for anything else in there. Despair, she realized with a start. She was giving in to despair over a dream! Yes it was a dream that might be real, but it wasn't enough to give up on everything she had gained. How could I have let this happen she wondered? A good clean burst of anger raced through her, singeing the edges of the obsession that had clutched her tight.

"Poetic and apt," he replied. "It's very interesting that you forget things so easily, yet at least you seem to grow smarter each time all though I doubt you'll ever really get past dim witted. Is it safe for me to assume that this growing intellect means that you can figure out what you need to do next?"

Alice stood up and brushed her curls out of her eyes. She reached her hands up to the sky, catching her friends on her fingertips for the first time since leaving home. Her father would be so disappointed to see her this way. Trying to run away from life and hide in a dream! It's time to grow up Alice, she told herself firmly. Her anger was like a cleansing fire, destroying the shell of misery she had captured herself in. She felt so similar to how it had been after Hamish's proposal. Fierce and proud, nothing would stop her, not even herself. And no lump on the head this time, she thought mirthfully. There was magic at work here? Then she would prove herself worthy of it. After all there must be a reason that this was happening to her. She held her head high, her poise queenly and strong.

"I need to live my life instead of hiding from it. I need to make the path instead of hoping it takes me where I want to go." She smiled at Absolem, a smile full of pride and strength, a smile that could rival the sun in its beauty and brightness "My life will be a journey, not a destination. Just like I planned before I started obsessing over these dreams."

"Bravo," he said. "And now if you'll excuse me, I have other journeys to make." He brushed off her disappointed expression with a flutter of his wings. "We'll see each other again. Fairfarren, Alice."

She watched him fly away for a few minutes, feeling much more Alice then she had months. And in celebration, she danced again under the stars, this time with her eyes wide open and her heart full of joy.