Ritual disclaimer: I don't own ‘em. No infringement is intended or implied. I'll send ‘em back in fairly good condition when I'm done playing with ‘em. And I won't make any money off ‘em, either. Just fun.

A lot here depends on your definition of reality. No movie has been made of "The Witches of Karres," though I'd love to imagine it had been done, and nobody but the author, James Schmitz, ever read the sequel to that book, as it was destroyed in a fire. But the movies used as section headings are all genuine, and each has some relationship to the content of its section.

Cast of Characters

Written under the influence of: Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young: So Far; Crosby, Stills and Nash, CSN and Deja Vu; Heart: Little Queen, These Dreams; Foreigner: Best of Live; Jim Byrnes, That River; Derek and the Dominos, Layla; Lovemongers: Whirligig; Nancy Wilson, Live at McCabe's Guitar Shop and Jacqueline Du Pre, Impressions. (And a couple of nice guys whose voices kept after me until I started to type every day...)

Dedicated to all fanfic writers, sung and unsung, and to the shows, characters and writers that inspire them.

The opinions of characters within this fanfic concerning this fanfic or other fanfic belong to the characters and are not necessarily the opinion of the author of this or any other fanfic. (See note about reality, above.)

Fiction is the stories we tell ourselves. Reality is what we remember. Metafiction plays with both, breaks the rules, creates new rules. It goes one step beyond ... or more. If there's a fanfic rule that isn't bent or broken or warped here, it's not for want of trying.