"Naia!" He sent his appeal to her again. "Naia, it is that Jason whom you knew as Jasor who commands that you return again to your flesh. In Zitu's name, beloved."
The rainbow figure writhed. It seemed to quiver, to hesitate and sink slightly back toward the unconscious body beside which Gaya kept up her work, with darkly troubled eyes; so that there was some relaxing of that binding cord.
"Jason!" Croft felt the thought impinge against him.
"Jason, who loves you—who claims you—who shall claim you yet," he returned, driving each word into her perception with the full force of his will.
"What do you here?"
It was a question, a wondering interrogation. He answered it truly. "You know of my sleeps. In them my spirit leaves the body. It visits many places. Now sleeps my body in the Zitran pyramid, yet is my spirit present to watch over you and guard you. It was not Zilla called you into the pool, but your own troubled spirit, beloved. Go back into your body—in the name of the love you confessed to Gaya; go back."
"But—why—am I not myself?" a second question faltered to his perception.
"Yes, you are yourself always," he returned. "Yet this is the real you which speaks to the real me, beloved. Look beneath you, and tell me what you see."
For a moment nothing was said ... as the form beside him turned down its eyes. And then a startled response: "Gaya—she bends and works beside a form—to—to which I seem in some way connected. It—Zitu! Azil! It is the form of one like myself!"