[Encaitare]

By the time Wilhelmina reached the lecture hall, which was, of course, on the opposite side of the campus, the exam was just about to begin. The troll teacher moped at her. "The Environmental Protection Agency threatened to sue us to Valinor and back if we didn't stop cutting down the rain forests to make so much paper for this class."

"I didn't know there were rain forests in Middle-earth."

"Apparently there are," the troll shouted sadly. "So for your final, you just have to fingerpaint a nice picture. Everything you'll need is on your desk."

Wilhelmina went to the desk and found a large piece of paper and pots of paint in red, blue, and yellow. Sighing, she tucked a stray piece of hair behind her ear, took off her rings, and dipped her fingers in the paint.

Actually, it was quite fun. She didn't feel young, as the teacher had implied, but there was something satisfying in the act.

On one half of the paper she painted Mr. Swanky at the beach, complete with little sunglasses and a drink with an umbrella in it. On the other half, she drew a fairly accurate depiction of Anakron getting crushed in an avalanche.

Suddenly, her nose itched. Maybe fingerpainting wasn't so fun, after all. As she indiscreetly wiped her messy fingers on the desktop, she noticed the late Doctor Hookbill's perky blonde nurse coming though the door. The nurse tossed her hair and handed a note to the teacher.

"Ms. Brochenbach," the teacher screamed across the hall, "you've a message from the Grand Anakronist. He says that Dr. Freud is now fully reassembled and will see you now so you can finish your psychological evaluation. Only if you're done with the exam, of course."

"All done," she said, cheerily gesturing ith paint-stained fingers at her magnificent work of art.

~*~*~*~*~

Dr. Sigmund Freud was much less fragmented this time, but just as annoying.

"And how has the patient been?" he asked, scribbling on his notepad before she even opened her mouth.

"She's been just fine," she said mockingly. "She just took a final exam."

"Perhaps... suffers from... multiple personality... disorder," he muttered as he wrote. Then he said louder, "Do you think you did well?"

"I suppose so," she said, reclining on the couch. "I got to fingerpaint."

Freud lit a cigar and smoked it with relish. "Tell me about your painting."

Wilhelmina very much hoped he wouldn't try to glean some asinine profundity from a fingerpainting. "I painted Mr. Swanky at the beach, and Anakron being crushed by falling rocks," she said matter-of-factly.

"Sharp contrast... of... peace... and violence," the doctor said to himself. The sentence was punctuated with a loud boom in the distance, yet he didn't seem to hear it. "Any unusual dreams since we last met?"

She decided not to tell him about the dream with her parents -- she knew he'd have a field day with that one. And was that another booming sound she heard? "No, none. I haven't had any dreams at all."

"You know, everyone has dreams," he said. "We just don't remember most of them."

"How fascinating," she replied, listening closely for another noise.

When the next sound came, now more of a crash than a boom, Dr. Freud nearly jumped out of his chair. The cigar fell from his mouth and burned a hole in his pants.

A few seconds later, a large ape punched a hole through the wall of the office.

"Queen Quon?!" Wilhelmina shrieked. "I thought she was dead!" Atop her head, Mr. Swanky poked his nose out from him hat-house.

"Begone! Begone, you gorilla creature!" Freud shouted at Queen Quon, waving his arms in what completely failed to come off as a threatening manner. She picked him up in one enormous fist and tore him into pieces which fell to the ground and began to creep about the room in an attempt to reunite.

Queen Quon then turned her eye on Wilhelmina. She reached out with two thick fingers and plucked the hat from her head. With a triumphant bellow, the monstrous gorilla turned and loped off.

"Mr. Swanky!!!" the old woman cried. On the ground all around her were the creeping pieces of Dr. Sigmund Freud. She located a hand, and a head -- luckily, Queen Quon had not demolished the psychologist quite as much as Dr. Hookbill's botched attempts at medicinal practice. Picking both parts up, she carried them to the desk and found the evaluation form and a pen. As quickly as she could, she checked off the "healthy mental state" box and thrust the pen into the disembodied hand.

"Sign it!" she demanded.

"But--" protested the head.

"Do it!" she shrieked. "My best friend has been ferret-napped, and I don't have time for this! Sign the form or I swear I'll impale your skull with my walking stick!"

The hand hastened to do so, and even stuck the form in the doctor's outbox.

"Thanks, Doctor!" she said, and then she ran out through the hole in the wall.