"Don't be ridiculous, Portia," Sarah said, coming to a stop in front of me, her face beaming awe and delight. "It's the faery ring! This is part of the magic, although I have to admit I've never heard of rain faeries. Still, even you can't dispute that this is something well out of the realm of normal!"

"Oh, I admit it's not normal to get high off of fungus found lying around on the top of a hill, but it's certainly nothing that can't be explained by an understanding of chemistry, medicine, and biology." I thought for a few seconds, my eyes narrowing as I mulled over a possible explanation. "It could have been Hope."

"It could have been what?"

"Who, not what. A woman by the name of Hope. Perhaps she was real after all. It's entirely feasible that this whole thing was a setup, you know. She may well have known that there was a fungus here with properties that left someone susceptible to hypnotic suggestion."

Sarah fixed me with a confused gaze. "Someone named Hope hypnotized you while I was gone?"

"It would explain the delusion about the rain cloud. And the lights could have been the hallucinogenic starting to work on my synapses. Yes. I like that hypothesis. I am willing to bet that if Hope hadn't heard you coming up the hill, she would have tried to rob me. It's probably some sort of a scheme to fleece innocent tourists. We should definitely report this to the police, after we go to the hospital to get checked out, naturally."

"Portia, you're not making a lick of sense," Sarah said, shaking her head and pointing to where the fantasy cloud hovered over me, still gently raining. "I have not been hypnotized, nor am I under the influence of any drugs, hallucinogenic or otherwise. You have a cloud over your head, raining only on you. You are standing in the middle of a very famous faery ring, and you ate something that grew out of that ring."