He examined the television as he adjusted the dish. The patterns of the static seemed to make a sort of sense to him. He adjusted the angle several more times and he had it perfect.

"There you go." He said as he backed away from the dish.

"Amazing!" the peddler exclaimed.  He looked at the cables and inspected all the items at hand.  "Just Amazing.  What can I do for you to reward for this service?  All those little actions really add up."  With the satellite operational, his equipment more than just paperweights.  A few of the locals stop nearby to examine his wares.

Noi came back near with a long scarf around her neck with many bright colors, "Were you able to help?"

"Yes, I was."  He replied to Noi.  To the peddler who now seemed like he might make some money today, he added more.  "I'm not sure what reward you can offer, but what I really need at the moment is a charger for my cell phone."  He said.  He pulled out his cell phone and indicated the charging port.  He only hoped the man had something compatible squirreled away somewhere.

The merchant looked the phone over and reached into a bag of jumbled cords.  He had locked the cords together at one end.  The tagged ends were color coded and appeared to be a multitude of power cords.  With some squinting and eyeballing and a couple of quick tries he is able to nail down a cord that fits and he grabs the other appropriate color coded end and plugs it into the working laptop.  The charge light indicator on the phone comes on and he smiles, "We are in business.  These phones usually take a few hours to charge up.  I can leave it right here for you if you wish to roam around some."

Greg was truly excited that he could get his phone charged here like this.  He suddenly felt like he had a new lease on life or something.  He turned to Noi.  "Well, what do you think?  Leave it with him and roam around some?  You can show me around this place.  But you seemed to take me right here to see what I could do to help.  Anyone else around here I could help?"

"I'm sure there is someone else that could use the touch of helping hands," Noi said and coaxed Gregory into following her around the small town.  While they walked, Noi showed Greg the various shops and homes.  The place, without much in the way of electricity, was overall more vibrant than many of the places from back home.  People talked to one another more, people did things with their hands.  Noi pointed out that some people were plowing fields and that while they would probably like the help, that he might be more of a hindrance to them.  

One of the town weavers was staring at a machine that wasn't moving.  The loom seemed to have broken somehow and there were a few people around talking about it and looking over its parts and pieces.  Noi translated a little, "This is a replica of another one in town, so it should be working, but they are having trouble.  You can look and see just as much as they are.  They say they have been struggling with it for about a day."

Greg smiled pleasantly at the women hovering around the machine.  He looked at the parts and pieces and the housing assembly.  It would be helpful to have the replica in town to compare it, but he suddenly felt he needed a good challenge to keep his mind off of his predicament.  He concentrated on the parts and tried to feel how the whole machine should fit together and how it should work.  As he concentrated on the machine he asked Noi the most basic of questions...

"Noi?  What is the function of this particular machine?  I don't want to make any mistakes here."

"Of a loom?  This is how clothes and blankets and the such are made.  Do you mean to tell me that you can operate a cell phone and a laptop but you don't know what a loom is?  What do they teach you across the ocean in America?"  Noi laughs a little but offers to show Greg a working loom across the other side of the town. 

"That pile of pieces makes up a Loom?"  asked Greg.  "Hmm.  It certainly is mechanical in nature, but it is not something I am familiar with.  Just a moment."  He says and looks over what has just been described as a 'Loom'.  He examines the various components with his eyes and imagines how the whole thing works.  He was sure he had it but....you never took chances with people watching.  "Yes, thank you.  I would like to see a working model before I put this one together."

Noi takes him to another weavers house.  An old woman deftly operates the loom weaving threads back and forth and putting the threads together to slowly form what might turn out to be a large blanket with an intricate pattern.

Greg looks at the loom with interest and his mind begins to dissect it, disassembling it into its various bits and pieces as he had seen with the other one.  This machine worked great.  It seemed to do so many simple things to make the final product.  And it took some skill to use, which was interesting.  You could not simply feed it thread or yarn, or whatever material you liked and turn it on.

Greg nodded and was lost in thought.  His eyes seemed to glaze over as he considered the possibilities of the Loom and how it was made, how it functioned.  He did not notice, not really, when Noi took him by the hand and led him back to the other women across town and to the original loom, with its pieces all over the table.  But when he arrived he noticed with a start that he was there.

His heart was pounding as he examined the bits and pieces.  There was more to do here than any of the women imagined.  He saw what it could be, what it should be, and also what was before him.  If he had a different part here or there....if he could change that piece...if he had a different material for that piece with greater tensile strength but with the same flexibility...
It could use any material, even metal threads, or nanofibers, to make a final product.

He wished he had his phone so that he could take notes.  He saw how the loom could be changed, downsized, its form and function altered greatly to actually create sheets out of carbon nano-threads and...

Then he saw that everyone was looking at him.  Some of the women were whispering to each other.  In the end, he did not have any of the bits and pieces, any of the new materials, the housing unit and the central block structure, or the electronic components that would be necessary to do any of the things he imagined.

He picked up the screwdriver and got to work.  In very short order the entire loom was finished.  The machine was a work of art and a masterpiece, dedicated for its stated purpose: to make cloth.  He was sure every piece was present and accounted for. He had nothing left over and needed nothing else.  

He stepped back from the table and looked around.  "It should work perfectly now."  He said with a bit of disappointment.   Even as he spoke though he could feel some movement through him.  Serpent-like dragons leapt from his chest and danced an intricate dance towards the loom and as they approached the loom they disappeared.

No one but Gregory saw the dragons and one of the women started immediately to  give it a whirl  The loom quickly started to produce a garment but there was much murmuring and talking as the threads started to take shape.  "Something is wrong," Noi said.  "They say that it is not producing the correct pattern and the threads coming out of the machine are not correct."  As the fabric continued to spin the sky grew dark overhead and on the woven piece the beginnings of a rain cloud were taking shape.  When it started to rain, the woman wailed loudly.  "They think it is cursed.  What did you do?" Noi asked nervously.

Greg leaned over to Noi and whispered to her.  "I have no freaking idea!  I didn't try to do anything.  I...I just saw what this magnificent machine, this...this loom could be made to do if it was constructed slightly differently.  Well, very differently actually.  The basic design has so much potential.  I guess I just hoped it would do more than simply make cloth.  I wanted to make it something special but did not have any of the resources to change it in any way."

He stepped forward to look closely at the loom as the weaver spun the wheel.  In this model the colored thread were fed automatically as the wheel was turned and the base threads moved up and down to create the alternating gaps.  There was no allowance for patterns unless each of the colored threads being fed from the side were multicolored.  But he could see they were not.   He tried to see what was different about it.  What made it do this.  Were the clouds making the pattern on the cloth?  Was the weaver making the pattern and it was creating the clouds?  Were the weavers' actions consistent with what was happening?  Was the loom acting on its own?

It was an expensive fine-thread loom; he could tell that there would have to be many different types.  The different colored threads that were fed through the rising and falling thread framework were automatically tightened by a thin wooden bar as the weaver turned the wheel.  There were less steps in this loom than a more basic model, and there were a greater variety of options.  The product could be as wide three feet or as narrow as one inch.  But the basic design restricted the patterns.  Looking at the cross-thread colors being used here, there should be a multicolored sheet of cloth, but the colors in the cloud being created were not the same as the threads being used.  Where was the red thread?  The green?  The base thread framework was pure white, presumably to soften the effect of the added colors.  There was definitely something going on here.

He concentrated on the loom, how it worked, and how it could be creating that cloud pattern.

Greg saw nothing out of the ordinary.  It looked as a loom was supposed to look as far as Greg knew and understood.  The dragons must have had something to do with it.  The same dragons that had repeatedly jumped into his phone before.  Although they weren't the same and instead of the flash of bright light that Noi and her brother created, it was changing the weather.

Greg looked at his hands and then back at the loom.  He turned to Noi with a strange expression on his face.  It was a mix of confusion, realization, and curiosity.  He hugged Noi and then held her at arms length by the shoulders.  He spoke quickly.  "I have some slight ideas as to what is going on here.  Just some vague ideas.  I've been wrong so many times in my assumptions in the recent past that I've just got to test it out to see if I'm finally right about something.  Lets get back to that peddler, the one charging my phone.  I've got an idea.  If I'm wrong then no harm done.  If I'm right I will at least confirm my suspicions."  He turned, took Noi by the hand, and pulled her along as he made his way back to the street peddler where his phone was still charging.

He waited until he was done with his current customer.  He was surprised at the number of people standing around looking at his wares now that he had a working satellite connection.  When he got his attention he started right in.  "I think I can improve your connection, sir.  If you will allow me to work on your satellite dish a bit more, I think I can get you access to satellite  up-links and unrestricted, world-wide communications; possibly even unlimited movie channels for you television sets here."  He was unsure why he said that last bit, but he was anxious with pent up excitement.  

He stood there and looked at the set-up again.  He remembered what the inside of the receiver looked like and imagined what it could be; what it could become.  There was a lap-top computer nearby and the appropriate cables.  He saw a PC, though it had a sign on it that he could not read.  He assumed it was not functioning, but it might have the parts he needed.  If necessary he could turn on the Wi-Fi hotspot capabilities of his cell phone.  He thought of what he knew of satellite communications and what he could learn if he could get access to one.  The possibilities flowed through his mind like a tidal wave.

He looked around as if in a daze and considered what happened with the loom.  If he was right, if he was right....

He saw the video camera.  He moved to the laptop and opened it up.  It was an older model and did not have a built-in web-cam.  But he could jury-rig the video camera if he had to.  He could program the appropriate drivers for the interface.  They could have video-calls anywhere in the world here for free.  This vendor could make a fortune.  He would have to hack some systems to get satellite position information.  He would have to hack a lot of systems, assuming he was right...

The vendor was talking.  "I'm sorry.  Um, what were you saying?"

"It would be great indeed if you could accomplish all that, wow," he expresses many more sentiments in his own native tongue.

Greg turned towards the vendor, open mouthed and nodded. His mind was still awhirl with ideas and possibilities. He looked for as many tools as he could and gathered them in one place, somewhere he thought might make a good work surface. He was very excited to see the soldering gun and the spool of solder. He eyed the three unconnected PC towers but then blinked.

He asked Noi to translate for him as he went. He needed to ensure he did not take apart anything that was truly useful. He felt blessed when two of the PC towers did turn out to be non-functional. He considered their models and what treasures would be inside.

He moved the functioning laptop to a corner of the table. This time he would keep track of everything he did. He needed a program to maintain the design and looked through the applications, dissatisfied with what he found there.

He went to his plugged-in cell phone, turned it on and activated its hot-spot feature.  He then went to the laptop and plugged in the code to give it internet access. He examined the specs for the lap top and frowned. It was just barely capable of handling the programs he needed.  He hoped it would do the job.

It took him fifteen minutes to download the right programs and then log into his own PC at home. He loved the cloud. It enabled access to his desktop from anywhere. He then download his customized CAD program to the laptop. Now he could design the set-up here and work it out on the table as he went.  He also opened a calculator window to help with the math and to keep track of the various formulae that he planned to use. He then sat back, looking over the items around him.

He opened the PCs, exposing the motherboards and other components. He slowly striped one of the motherboards for his use, being sure to note what he was taking out. He then disassembled the satellite dish receiver again. He moved the television so he could use it as a display.

He began looking through the massive number of cables and selected the ones he knew would be useful and separated them from the ones he hoped might be useful. He breathed a deep sigh of relief to see an HDMI cable in among the bunch. The television had a port, so did one of the PCs. He hoped the video card was working. As far as PCs go, those were common points of failure. He moved the rest of the cables out of his way.

He plugged in the soldering gun and picked up ohm meter. He moved the video camera next to the lap top and then he really got to work.

It took him four and a half hours to assemble everything, and that included putting the evolving design into the laptop, pulling down schematics of various chip-sets and other components from the web, and downloading and installing several different drivers. He had to hack and then modify two drivers due to incompatibility between components, but that was not the really tough part. He knew hacking the satellites would be the hardest.

When he thought he was ready he pulled some firewall programs from the web, tweaked them quite a bit, and then pulled up a table of satellite frequencies from a familiar hacking website. He isolated the programs and then started the trial and error phase.

It took him another hour to find the transmission pathways he needed for his world-wide communications platform. He thought for a moment about how he had come to this country to begin with. If he could somehow find that dragon within him and force it into this system it might be able to be like some sort of one-way teleportation device.

He had to be sure that no one would detect his intrusion and felt there might be some holes in the security. He combed through the various programs and ran a few simulations, tweaking the programs and plugging the holes as he found them. He then hooked up the video camera and customized the needed drivers.

He had thought he would have needed to use the laptop itself, but was happy to see that the components were there within the available PCs. He put the finished product together and knew he had to reboot the PC before it would work.

Before he did that he considered the entire project. The dish was going to connect with the satellite in geosynchronous orbit overhead. From there his program would penetrate various other satellites, piggybacking on their own signals. The web was quite extensive and he had avoided those satellites he knew were the most likely to detect his intrusion. The video camera/web-cam setup had already been tested with his cell phone connection, so he knew that worked. The television-entertainment satellite network had already been tested, so he knew that worked as well.

After he rebooted the system there should be a network connection for nearly unlimited internet access on the hacked Sprint network as well as telephone and video phone access. A USB hub would allow anyone access if they could plug in their phone. A utility program allowed the user to pick and choose from hundreds of models of phones for compatible driver downloads.  His phantom security system should mask those phone calls, all data usage from the Sprint network, as well as the use of the system for movies and television.  But he had no way to account for the expertise of others.

The one drawback was that it could be used for either television and movie entertainment or data and phone calls, including video calls.  He would need a separate dish and receiver to include all three at once.  But as it was now, four people could be using their cell phone while a fifth could be making a video call.  If smart phones were used, data service would be available. And now the laptop was set up for internet access through the system as well.

He turned off the hotspot feature of his phone and turned his phone off entirely. He saw that it was fully charged and put it into his pocket.

This was the moment when he thought his power, whatever it was, would take affect…if at all. He concentrated on whatever was inside of him, trying to sort it all out, and then rebooted the system.   There were no dragons during the process, no special effects for his eyes only.

It started up, the first good sign.  The Windows 7 System looked an acted normally.  The additional task bar icons indicated some additional functionality and the stall owner was all too eager to try it out.  As Gregory was working on the system people gathered.  The rain went away and Television suddenly  launched to life on the laptop screen.  Channels flipped around and a cell phone rang on the table.  The Stall owner flipped it open and looked at it curiously.  It displayed some strange numbers and clicked off.  

The gathering crowd of people were of two minds.  One set wanted to see the miracle of technology and entertainment.  The hush of hoping for a Bollywood production entered into the throng.  The other set were out to find out who this Gregory person was and what he did to the loom.  What kind of dark magic was the foreigner bringing to their community?  Noi was close at hand but looked a little concerned.  "Gregory," she got his attention.  Gregory could see the channels flipping by and the cell phone on the table rang again.  The stall owner looked at it and shook his hand at the phone and let it ring.

"Gregory, some of these people are really mad.  I'm afraid we should find a way to get out of here."  She point away from the crowd.  Gregory sees one of the stations on the television for an instance.  An American news station showing some guy bursting into flame and then turning it off and floating in the air.  The people of the crowd struggle to see what was being shown and to understand what was being said.

Gregory nodded to Noi but was a little confused at what he was seeing.  He felt as if something was missing.  He was transfixed on the news channel for a moment but stepped forward, motioned to the vendor to be sure it was ok to do so, and picked up the ringing phone.  "Just one moment."  He said to Noi.  He looked and listened to the phone, trying to make sense of it.

The phone seemed to be picking up some interference or at the very least some cast off signals from the computer.  Perhaps one of the components that he messed with had a loose wire.  The news came round again and it seemed that on the other side of the globe in his home country, they news had caught up with someone who had special abilities, like him and Noi and others, but wholly different like him and Noi and others.

It was a shock and a pain when the world suddenly burst into a brilliant display of blackness and filiments of light behind his eyes.  A similar sensation from one he had felt when he was much younger and a bully clocked him across the head to prove some point that he was bigger.  The bully in this case was an individual as well, but part of a much larger angry crowd that had suddenly turned into a mob, against him.  He was loosing consciousness from the blow to the head, but Noi was on the other side of him and put her hand around his eyes.

Even through the slits of her fingers and the blackness of near unconsciousness, the brilliant light of her power illuminated the landscape.  Greg found himself squinting a little as he hand left his eyes and she was pulling him along.  "Come on, it was the only thing I could think of but I may have made things worse."

"Damn!  What the hell?"  slurred Gregory as he followed along as fast as he could.  He did not understand the crowd's reaction.  To him it seemed do random.  He was angry, really angry.  And he did not often get angry.  He sometimes got scared, and in this situation it was probably the more appropriate mental or emotional state, more survival oriented.  

Greg always had difficulty reading social cues.  The crowd certainly had some negative issues with him, and obviously because of what he did to the loom.  But that did not give anyone the right to hit him like that.  He had thought that he left that sort of nonsense back in grade school.  He had thought that they should see him as someone special, someone that can help them in some way.  He had tried really hard to help them in any way he could. 

He understood thugs and why they might try to hurt him, well, that was not exactly right.  He understood that there were bad people and that they may try to hurt him or others.  But what confused him the most was that he got the distinct impression that these were not bad people.  Why would one of them attack him?  Why was he being chased by the crowd?

On top of all of that he could not get his mind around what sort of ability he might have.  All the clues he thought he was following turned into dead ends.

He was very angry, totally confused, and physically hurt.  "It's a good thing I don't have that fire-man's powers.  I'm fit to burn these people alive!"  He thought to himself.  He almost wanted to stop and just fight them.  But he had never been one for confrontations.  Best to keep on the move.

He followed along and pulled up beside Noi.  "Where are we going?"  He asked. 

"We should just ride the train to the end of the track.  I think maybe it goes to Chiang Rai."  Noi pulled Greg along towards the tracks.  The distant thunder of the train sounds so far away.  Noi looks anxious.  Her eyes glance back towards the town.  Greg's eyes can't help but trace back towards town and no one is there... yet.

"We'll just need to hide until it gets here.  I can never go back," her voice cracks a little.

When Noi found them a hiding spot Greg felt his head and came away with a little bit of blood.  The object he was hit with must have been blunt or a fist.  The area was tender and swollen.  He was still pissed off.  "What was that all about?  I, we...we helped them.  Why would they just hit me and come after us like that.  It makes absolutely no sense at all!!!"

"Since when are emotions supposed to make sense?  Something about that loom has stirred them up.  Evil magic.  I wonder if what we can do is magic.  Where would this magic come from?  Why now?"  Noi tries to drag Greg down the tracks explaining that it would be easy to board the train further down than near the normal station stop.

"You're right that emotions make no sense at all, to me anyway.  Yet we all have them, myself included.  And the existence of magic is just pure nonsense; absolute poppycock!  Evil or Good, magic cannot exist in the world.  There must be some other explanation...."  And as he was pulled along he stopped talking.  Emotions did not make sense to him, despite that he himself felt them all the time.  His own emotions just did not correspond with what he saw in others.  There had always been a disconnect and he even had very little understanding of his own emotions.  But that was a perfect analogy to the existence of magic as well.

Emotions existed despite his lack of understanding.  So too could magic exist, he supposed.  But it did not have to be magic in the mythical sense.  It could be some cosmic power, some elemental force that has entered the world that defies easy explanation.

Gregory Simmons was just as clueless now as when he was back in his apartment.  He was lost in a world full of mystery that had added a new and unfathomable component.  He followed clues, just like he had all his life with regards to social interaction. Nothing made sense to him though.  Give him a math problem, no matter how complex, and he could solve it in minutes.  Give him a bin full of components and the patterns would sort themselves out into a fully-functioning computer.  He could discern the potential patterns of electron signals, even predict celestial movement of planets...the patterns were so obvious and predictable.  But there were no concrete patterns to social interaction and behavior.  Nothing fit tightly into a box or category, on either side of an equation.

The girl next door who had, in retrospect, tried to get close to him in eighth grade was still an equation with no solution.  Her motivation at the time was not clear, despite his questions.  Somehow his simple questions drove her away.  Now, as he tried to understand the motivation of the crowd, of the very people he had helped with the loom, with the computer equipment, he was still at a loss.  

He felt like an alien, like someone completely removed from everyone around him.  It was a feeling he lived with most of his life to one degree or another.  And like all the times in the past when this feeling became overwhelming, he just tuned everything and everyone out.  He followed along behind Noi, but he let go of her hand.  He did not want to touch her or anyone.  He wanted to be alone but knew he would be lost without her.  She was the only thing he had here in this foreign land.  But he so desperately wanted to be alone.  

He could not understand Noi or what she wanted.  He could not understand why she was with him, why she was helping him.  He wondered why he even cared.  He stumbled but caught his footing and did not fall.  He did his best to keep up with her.

The train pulled in, Noi jumped onto the back of the train and pulled Gregory along with her.  She was tense and stared at the front end of the car where a large metal door was unmoving.  The compartment in the back of the train seemed to be used for some general storage and there was someone asleep on a stack of cardboard boxes.  The train started to move again and Noi relaxed.  "We ride to the end and we find another way to get you back.  How does your magic work?"  Her questioned seemed rhetorical as she was staring out the door of the moving train while the other passenger slept on.

"Your guess is as good as mine.  No, it's better actually.  You can control your power.  I have the distinct impression that I have no control over mine at all.  It seems totally random.  I suppose I absorb something of people's powers when I'm near them.  How to use that I have no idea."  He sat down and put his back to a wall.  He did not know what to do.

The train jostled them lightly back and forth.  Noi was silent while she considered the question.  She saw Gregory's eyes slip down a couple of times.  Gregory seemed to lose control over his own consciousness as the train rumbled along.  Gregory awoke sometime much later when the sky was darkening.  Noi herself looked like she was in and out of consciousness.

The man who was asleep on the cardboard boxes was awake and smiled and nodded at Gregory.  He said something in his own language.  Noi was obviously not with it to translate.  The darkened landscape outside was barren but somehow different than that of the more southern regions.  Outside the boxcar that was their vehicle, Gregory could make out a town in the distance that the train tracks curved into.  They were reaching a destination.

Greg just shrugged at the man and gave him a confused expression.  As the train began to slow down, Gregory Simmons reached over and shook Noi awake.  "Hey, the train is going to stop shortly.  Any idea where we could be?"

Noi groggily woke up and Gregory could feel and see small dragons leaping from her body to his when he was near.  They were familiar like the ones that had run towards him when he absorbed her power for the flash of light.  Noi looked out of the train car towards the lights and rubbed her eyes.  "Sukhothai, I think," she said at last.  "The old capital.  We can get a place for the rest of the night and then get to the airport just north of the city."  Noi wakes up some more, seemingly excited by the prospect of being in such a place and having made it safely away from the southern ports of Thailand with her precious cargo, Gregory, in tow.

The passenger speaks again and Noi converses with his for a short bit, "He seems to think you are part ghost with how white your skin is, but that you must not be an angry ghost since you sleep so quietly.  He has family in outside of Sukhothai and invited us to dine with them.  Do you like rice and curry, Gregory?"

Greg pinched the bridge of his nose and considered what was happening.  "Curry?  I thought that was Indian, um, style food."  He said.  "Um, actually I've never really had it before.  Sure, I'll try it."  But the he fell silent.  He considered the familiar dragons that came from Noi.

"Curry is quite prevalent in our food," she says as a matter of fact. "I think you'll like it." The other passenger says something excitedly which Noi translates as along the lines of "turning the heat down just in case."

"Hey, something just happened.   As you were waking up I felt...I saw...well, I think somehow I might be able to..."  But then he fell silent again, still in thought.  "I'm not really sure actually.  Um, never mind.  Sure, lets try it.  By the way, what are we going to do at the airport?  Are we going to catch a flight somewhere?  I have no ID or anything.  And no money."

"ID will not be a problem.  If we explain that you got into trouble while vacationing here, we can get you back to America and probably free of charge."

"Wow.  That would be awesome.  But they would have no record of me coming here.  There are no plane tickets, no paper or electronic trail to follow.  If I were in their position I might think that...I was a spy or something.  If that makes any sense."

But as he spoke he concentrated on the dragons that just went into him.  Could he feel them within?  He was not able to before.  Could he tell what they could do, he could imagine well enough.  He did not want to create any flashes of light....but somehow he thought he might need to have an electronic device to use her power.  When he absorbed Dok's fish-transformation power it had been Noi that turned them into fish, he thought.  He tried to remember each time he, himself expressed a power.  Was it through some electronic device?  

The first was the video cameras and televisions in the store in Boston.  Then his cell phone in Noi's store...the loom, not a device but still mechanical in nature.  And the dream...he had infused a robot...Simmons Robotics...Perhaps that's the key.  He had been trying to express powers without the use of a device and that is why he has not succeeded.  And he could not very well try to get his cell phone to flash with this man here.

"Or a prisoner who escaped trying to find his way home like in some of the novels," Noi smiles at herself.  It seemed to her to be the perfect ploy.  "You don't remember how you got here, someone must have taken you.  And you escaped with the help of some locals.  It works for me.  We know who the bad guy is quite easily.  With luck, someone will go and take care of him and perhaps spare some people in the future.  We rest for a night and then, work towards your flight back home."

As the train comes to a stop at its destination.  The other passenger disembarks and encouraged Noi and Gregory to do the same, to follow him.

Greg considered her idea.  "Well, it certainly seems like something from a novel.  And I must say, what we've been going through sounds like one too.  You think you might be able to join me in the trip to America"  He asked as the followed the passenger.

"I cannot," Noi said.  "For you to get back it must appear that you have been here against your will.  I am not here against my will.  I am Thai.  I will remain here and try to understand what has been happening,  If I can."  Through backstreets and fields towards a collection of houses in the fields.  There are lanterns burning, dimly illuminating the places.  The smell of food is carried on a breeze.

A dozen or more people come out of the houses to greet the trio.  Their words are unintelligible to Gregory, but Noi offers some slim idea of what they are saying.  Mostly greetings, questions, news about the family, etc.

He thought about heading back to America without her.  "You had some sort of vision the other night.  When we woke up you talked about Burma and the Bago Yoma Forest.  That was how we go back to America.  This was not part of it, was it, a plane trip?  I think you are supposed to come to America with me, and not by plane.  Doesn't Thailand share a boarder with Burma?  Maybe we should cross the border instead and go there."

"Sometimes a dream is just a dream.  I've had dreams before the beginning of this year.  Sometimes they are only there to inspire.  And maybe you'll be back through this area again and that will be the way.  And perhaps the paths have changed.  With the problems in the village, the correct path to the future may be the one we are currently on.  Try to enjoy the evening, in a day or two you'll be breathing the air of your home once again."

"Noi!"  He said perhaps with just a little too much urgency.  "As much as I want to get home, and believe me when I say that is at the very top of my agenda, somehow I feel your destiny is somehow entwined with my own.  I say we go to Burma, if we can.  No, wait, what am I saying?  'If we can?'  Of course we can!  We can, can't we?"  He asked, somewhat confused now.

"It has become entwined, and it is now unravelling.  My part is played.  Tomorrow you will feel better.  And once you are in your home country again, you will be even better.  This is my home country.  My brother is far to the south now, and I fear for him.  If the fates have destined for us to meet again, then we will,"  She smiles and touches his cheek, lightly.  The festive and happy mood of the small event that surrounded them, took Noi around to meet others.  More people arrived even later into the night.

At one point as absolutely exhaustion was over taking Gregory and he struggled to keep his eyes open.  He was half in a dream and half out.  He saw some dragons.  The excitement was not enough to bring him from the dream, nor was he entirely certain that they were not a part of the dream.  The ethereal little beasts were touching his fingers and it felt like he was rubbing his hands over a smooth hot stone.

Greg tried to focus without waking up as he felt the little dragons. He knew that he could tell them apart now.  He had done so before.  If he were dreaming, so be it.  If this was really happening, then so much the better.  He tried to name them and recognize where or who they came from.  He tried to recognize what they could do.   He felt them with his fingertips and then with the palm of his hands and hoped to get some sort of response from them as he both thought about them and explored them physically.

The dragons defied his ability to identify or distinctly touch them.  They slipped past his grip, but felt solid all the same.  Who and or where they came from was undefinable.  They appeared to materialize not far away as though from thin air, and run towards him all the same.  Greg slipped into some dream of home and he roused himself long enough from the dream to see the last few dragons race into him and then they were done.  He had acquired something within him, a truth of the dragons, but what he had acquired he had no definition to.

The night was warm and the place that he had been put up in was peaceful enough.  It was a night of some tossing and turning, but he was rested enough when the morning light came.  Noi was talking with some people outside when he awoke.  They were discussing something in their language and she smiled at him when she saw him.  "Greg someone is passing through the place this morning.  He is some kind of self proclaimed Bodhisattva, but I think he is merely one of us.  We have enough time to meet him before we go to the airport if you would like."

Greg perked up at that news.  "Um, yes.  I would like to meet this..b..um, this person."  He said, realizing he could not capture the pronunciation she had used for the name or title.  "What does he claim to be able to do?"  He hoped that if someone's power was displayed during the meeting that no one here would chase them down with torches and pitchforks.

"Not sure," Noi shrugged.  She led Greg around the land.  People were gathering around a man.  The ragged looking Asian was sitting among several baskets.  One of the baskets shifted and a snake rose its head a little.  The man said something soothing to the reptile and it lowered its head.  The lid of the basket lowered and the man began to take on a golden glow.

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