Now that the two new towers were complete, all the humans seemed to rush inside and claim it. Before long, people had filled the sky walkways, and were shouting and singing and throwing things down. A set of musicians had set up in front of the towers, and the whole town had turned into a big raucous party.

　　Martin and Kumbanaka had both gone back to their lairs, showing disdain for the noise.

　　As Fred looked on, he remembered something. "Hey, Kumbanaka, Martin, you gotta second?"

　　They assented, so Fred continued. "Do you guys know what a periscope is?"

　　"Pera scope?" Kumbanaka asked. "No, what a strange word."

　　Martin spoke up. "As a master of language, I`ve never heard the word exactly. But I can deconstruct it. Peri- can mean great, or top, and other things, in several languages. I`m not sure about -scope in this context."

　　"Okay. I remember it. I know all about it. And I don`t know how."

　　"Well, alleviate our curiosity, Oh Great Spirit. What is a pere scope?" Martin asked.

　　"It`s a tool. For seeing around corners. Using mirrors inside a tube. Kinda like microscope and telescope."

　　"I have not heard of those things either." Kumbanaka offered.

　　"Hmmm," said Martin. "Mirrors, or glass, inside tubes. There are great astronomers that built such devices. Sometimes to massive scale. Your use of the words confirms that -scope refers to the tube with glass, and the prefix suggests how it`s used?"

　　"Yes, that`s right!" Fred said, happy that Martin was engaging with him. He had wondered if "periscope" was a figment of his imagination, or if Martin would accuse him of that.

　　"A periscope is a tube, with a mirror at the top and bottom. Both mirrors are turned 45 degrees, so when you&"

　　"Degrees?" Kumbanaka asked.

　　"Oh, yeah, do we know what a degree is? Is that a word here?" Fred wondered.

　　"Another new word to me, Fred." Martin said. "But in context it`s clear that you mean a measurement of rotation. But we don`t know how far 45 is."

　　"That`s what I`m saying!" Fred exclaimed. "I keep having more memories. From my& previous life! I know lots about how air works, and now I know about degrees, and periscopes. Am I getting all my old memories back?"

　　"Fred, I cannot say." Martin spoke. "Did your Jim voice not explain this to you?"

　　"He said that he and Aeru got me from& They used a borrowed spell. They don`t know where I came from. Mebbe a soul well, mebbe somewhere else. Jim doesn`t know."

　　"Amazing. And disturbing. 500 souls taken from& somewhere unknown." Kumbanaka mused. "I worried that you might get into magical mischief, without our guidance. I never considered that the planet itself was taking such risks."

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　　"Yes, desperate measures taken by desperate beings. Foolish, powerful beings. I`m starting to re-think our relationship, Fred. What if a god comes to retrieve their stolen property? Where would that leave us?" Martin asked.

　　"I bet I did come from this well of souls, though. I don`t remember worshiping any gods, before. I just wish I knew how much more remembering I have to do. How much I can do. I mean, I`m not trying. These words just come to me."

　　They were all quiet then, for a minute. Finally, Kumbanaka tried to reassure Fred. "These things you`ve remembered are good things. Good, useful information. No memories of trauma or loss. I fail to see what you have to worry about."

　　"I concur." Martin agreed. "It is said that no one escapes childhood without trauma. But you have. At least, you are not burdened by traumatic memories. Count yourself lucky, Spirit."

　　"Yeah, all right. Thanks, guys. Have a good night."

　　The humans partied hard, late into the night, but they did finally settle down around midnight. That`s when Fred got more tenants. First, a big spider, black and yellow and big as a man crawled in. It went to the Front Zone, chose an empty lair, and started spitting webs everywhere. Fred could see that it was already green, so he turned his attention to a second visitor.

　　This was& something. Something weird and oozy. It dripped into Fred`s domain through the tree shaft, dribbling down the wall, until it formed into a viscous pile at the entrance to Martin`s lair. Fred heard Martin shifting around in his gold piles.

　　"What is that smell? A jelly?" Martin asked.

　　"What`s a jelly? Is that a jelly?"

　　Martin moved out of his gold piles, crawled to the front of his lair, and peered down his long snout at the jelly. "Yes, that is a jelly. A Black Acid Jelly, from what I can see. And smell. Don`t let it move in next to me."

　　The black jelly didn`t seem to be keen on the dragon, either. In a bunching, oozing shuffle, it moved past the tree and up the ramp as fast as it could, which wasn`t very fast. At the ramp`s top, it turned down the hallway to the Lined Hallway Zone. When it finally got to its chosen lair, it moved to the middle of the room, and turned yellow.

　　Fred used his magic site, and saw that the jelly wanted a natural looking cave, with lots of stalactites and stalagmites and loose rocks everywhere. It wanted the cave to be pitch black, too. "Easy enough," thought Fred. He gave the jelly the lair changes it wanted. It turned green, and immediately started wrapping itself around a stalagmite, to hide itself. Fred was really getting used to these creatures, and how to handle them. At least, he assumed he did. He had a dragon, and lots of other creatures besides, now.

　　Having two new creatures show up at once was exciting, even after the tower building and the big human party. So Fred thought about spending the rest of the night quietly, laying about with Shelley. But he felt too amped up, like he wanted more to do. And he thought again about stretching out his domain, and possibly giving Martin a place to land.

　　So, without overthinking it, he started from the tree shaft, at the top, and began digging small tunnels just under the surface, radiating up the slope. He wanted to "see" and understand more of the mountain, if nothing else. As the dug tunnels radiated farther apart, he found he had to branch the tunnels, making more of them, so he could see every inch of the mountain slope. If he`d thought about it, he`d once again have marveled at how fast he could dig now. And how easily he could dig multiple tunnels all at once.

　　Instead, he marveled at the life he found upslope. It didn`t take long for his digging to encounter a huge forest, spread across the slope of the mountain. Tall conifers seemed to cuddle close together. Fred identified pines, hemlocks, cypresses, firs, spruces, redwoods, and yews, all in a glorious sprawl, stretching further than his current domain in every direction.

　　And within the forest, deer, bears, lions, skunks, squirrels, and oh so many birds of every type and hue. It was nighttime, and even darker under the tree canopy, but Fred was sure that morning would show him a symphony of color. Many creatures were sleeping, and many were active. Life was everywhere. Fred thought that it was as if he was walking only a short distance, and stumbled into a busy city.

　　Pushing through the ground under the forest, he found himself adjusting his tunnels to wind through the dense tree roots that seemed to bind the whole mountainside together. Along the way, he found two separate cave entrances. It was exciting to find them, but when he checked them out, he found them shallow, and boring, just home for various nesting critters.

　　Then he found some sort of building. It was very, very old, and completely fallen down, nothing more than stacked stones covered in moss, really. But still it was exciting and mysterious. "Now here is something Martin can investigate for me," Fred thought. "But I`mma let him get some sleep tonight."

　　As the night gave way to the first lightening of the sky, Fred realized he still felt a bit disappointed. He thought it`d be great to find a big flat rock that Martin could perch on, and he`d pushed his domain a long way upslope. But he`d found no such rock, so far. And while he could easily imagine making such a rock, the forest was very dense, with no real clearing for the rock to rest in. On top of that, Fred kinda imagined that Martin`s perch would be the kinda place where Martin could see everything for miles. But the trees of the forest were quite tall, as far as Fred could tell.

　　Back in the main part of the domain, Fred`s attention was grabbed by a man. Well, a humanoid, tall, dark, and freakishly monstrous, now that Fred was having a good look. It looked like a cross between a dead guy and a spider. It certainly looked like a spider, the way it was crawling down the wall of the tree shaft. Fred watched as the creature (he was now pretty sure it wasn`t a man) crossed under the tree and headed for the ramp (the sleepy fairies all clammed up and got as far from the creature as they could).

　　The creature wound up in the Lined Hallway, in another empty lair. Fred looked at what it needed. What it needed was a graveyard. Compete with mausoleums and headstones and mist and grave dirt. Fred didn`t have any of those around, so he set about making the best facsimile he could. After a few minutes, the creature seemed to like Fred`s efforts, and turned green. "Good. Good enough. I don`t want to make actual graves for this thing. I`m not sure I even could."