DAY

I read Wendy Xu's Tidesong. A witch-girl's magic summons a sea-dragon who can take human form: an attractive but amnesic boy... but is romance possible with a shapeshifter who doesn't know his true shape or history or even name?

A dream-journal I ordered arrives: Journey of a Dream Animal by Kathleen Jenks. I read it decades ago and recalled intense Jungian dreams--one of very few dreamers like me. Would some fit the World Dream Bank? Start taking notes...

DREAM

I'm at the airport, in the express line at customs. Shapeshifters like me have diplomatic immunity, so we get express treatment. But human frauds claim to be shifters when they're not, so we can't just be waved through; the staff must check. Genuine shifters, whether in our native furry form or human form, are marsupial. We have a (ahem) diplomatic pouch.

It's where we keep the Jewel of Continuity--the crystallized record of our experiences. We secrete long-term memory like milk, growing the gem in layers like a pearl. Long-term, removable storage.

Not all are precious stones, but mine is--a ruby near as big as a walnut. Worth a fortune, and theft does happen. I need to be cautious.

I hope the gem's just a backup, so if it's stolen, I won't go amnesic. But what if it's my only copy of those memories? Without my ruby, would I be me?

• Airport security gate: haven't flown in years, so this has to be symbolic. Is it the Gate of Dreams?
• Diplomats shapeshift to human form: in Tidesong, the sea-dragons send a diplomat to land.
• Illustration: when I woke, I wasn't sure what form I'd had--humanoid, kanga-like, other? Dream-me didn't care: as a shifter, my self-image was based on aura, body language and voice, not looks.
• Diplomatic people with marsupial pouches: Australian science fiction writer Cherry Wilder, in The Luck of Brin's Five, portrays her marsupial aliens as less sexist and less aggressive, as they all have pouches and share childraising.
• Jewel in my pouch: East Asian dragons as in Tidesong often carry a pearl. Though without a pouch or opposable thumbs, you have to hold the gem in your teeth! Awkward and accident-prone.
• Pearl-like layers: this seems like a dream journal, building up patterns. Kathleen Jenks's Journey of a Dream Animal?
• Memory backup: Rereading Kathleen Jenks's dreamjournal 40 years later may force me to revise my opinions. How true is unassisted memory?
• Ruby: Jenks's journal mentions Tolkien's elven-rings. Cirdan the Shipwright gave the Ring of Fire, bearing a ruby, to Gandalf: "with it you may rekindle hearts in a world gone chill." I publish my rather elvish dreams to rekindle hearts in the early 21st Century reductionist, reactionary chill.
• Mind my treasure: am I underestimating the value of my own dream-journal?
• ACTION: back up the World Dream Bank, and my journal; they are lobes of my brain. Losing them would be... lobotomy. And not just a personal loss. It's of value to others too. Even if, like Jenks, I don't quite believe in it--or me.

I wonder now if the ruby backing up my data is a dream version of a phone. Humans--pouchless, placental mammals--seem hell-bent on outsourcing our brains, going around with our vital memories notes and contacts hanging halfway out of our butt pockets or lost in our purses. Marsupiality would be wise.

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