It didn't make sense to Cait that she couldn't breathe. She was a perfectly healthy person except for a unique monthly cycle that no woman in her right mind would envy. She ought to be able to breathe and she should be able to see. Well, all right, she could see, but everything she saw was white. It was a whiteness she felt sure represented purity. A purity she wasn't sure she could bear.

She came to realize that she was floating. Dead, she thought. That's it, I'm dead. I'll never see Flash again, or Myna. The cat she could do without, she reasoned, but sometimes tormenting it had proven amusing.

Dead was something amazing to think on. She'd been sick before, violently so. She'd been beaten, wounded, bloody. Never dead, though. It was stupid to have jumped into Turtle Pond. There was power there, but water drowned foolish Garou as easily as it would drown anyone else.

Something tugged at Cait's body. Had she been in the open sea, she'd have sworn it was a shark attack. There was pain and a sudden, repeated wrenching that pulled her. She felt constricted; unable to move her arms and legs and the whiteness she saw turned gray, murky. There was a tremendous sucking noise, deafening ... until there was nothing. No sound. No pressure. If she hadn't been dead before ... ? She gagged. She could feel the water in her mouth and a startling freedom of movement.

Dreams-of-Spirits, a voice spoke to her, inside. That hadn't happened since she'd been given her Garou name. Dreams-of-Spirits, you've gone through the Nexus. Find Tisman Black Rose.

Cait pushed upward and broke the surface of the pond. The sky was lighting with dawn and she shoved wet, black hair from her face. She looked for Simon on the shore. When she saw he wasn't there, and that no sound of Spirals screams of victory greeted her, she clambered out onto the bank of grass. She thanked Gaia that the sun was rising, otherwise she'd have been cold as well as wet.

Taking a moment to compose herself, she decided the best course of action was to put some distance between herself and the Nexus of the water. She stood, and began to head in the direction the sun was rising.