'Is it a kind of magic, then?' He was fascinated and intrigued that the tiger had experienced this elevated state, and wanted him to feel it, too.
'I guess you could call it that. But one very dangerous to the young, or to anyone who doesn't know what they're doing.'
'Have you ever eaten them?'
'No. I've smoked marijuana, which is safer….. But Kalus, these can't possibly be peyote.'
'Why not?'
'Because if the tiger had eaten them he'd have gone crazy: he wouldn't have understood. He wouldn't have been able to think it through.'
'And maybe for that same reason he wasn't afraid. You still don't see it, do you? An animal's mind isn't less than ours, only different. He lives in his world as clearly, and understands it as well, as you and I. He is not a half-wakened child.'
'Well, assuming all that's true, and that this is peyote. Do you think you're ready for it? Because I promise you, it would take your mind to places it's never been. It could be very frightening….. Now you're scaring me.'
Indeed, he had all but stopped listening, gazing instead with fixed intensity upon the mystical substance before him.
'I want to try, Sylviana, if only for the pains it cost me to bring it here.' He looked at her intently. 'Where Avatar leads, I want to follow if I can.'