I awoke in what appeared to be a small lodge house.

This I knew because as a kid we had toured replica native villages on school trips. We had to write up papers on them in our fifth grade year, I was a highly competitive over-achiever as the second son. I made Mom take me back to the village so I could get everything right for that paper. The entire over-achieving thing went away when my parents divorced during my sixth-grade year.

Childhood complaints be damned, I was now in 1822 and in a lodge house somewhere in eastern Nebraska.

And I had no clothes.

I really like clothes, particularly when I wake up in a strange lodge house. It’s not that I have a problem with nudity, I just like that security in a strange place.

Brin was there.

He was nude also.

Brin was always nude so it wasn’t quite the same.

I couldn’t hold a thought.,

My shoulder and my side were on fire, I think I had lost a lot of blood. I think I had an infection. My packs were there, I dug in and found my first aid kit. I ate down a low-dose codeine from a sampler pack, some horse penicillin followed right behind.

I rolled over and someone was offering me water, I drank it and lay down to explore the dream world again.