Elijah goes off to the area where he saw the airship rise in his nightmare, and finds a traveling carnival there, under the shadow of an airship with an envelope decorated to suggest a fish … though it's nothing like the horror of his dream. While he's there, he observes that the people seem to be excessively, stangely happy. He also spots a small golden-furred feline cub, whom he follows, and he learns that her name is "Mena". He gets several odd feelings about this cub, that she might not be quite what she appears to be, and he has a confrontation with "The Lady of a Thousand Faces" – yet another manifestation of Amenlichtli. Elijah refuses to turn Mena over to the Lady, and takes flight, going to the woods and entrusting Mena to Ariel to lead her to safety. He then goes back and attacks the airship, which has transformed back into its nightmare form: a gargantuan, bloated corpse of some undersea fish, which explodes with foul gases when Elijah cuts its hull.

Elijah wakes later, back in the town, being tended by Inri. He learns that Mena simply vanished without a trace. He also learns from Ariel that Srinala is a living being, but that her origins may well be artificial … and that she is maintaining a link with the Dream Realm, and that a permanent break of that link may be difficult.