Chapter 89Of Dreams and Dawn

There were dreams. Short dreams without much coherence. Chaos in my mind that slowly ceased and brought peace to my soul.

First I was in a forest, where I walked for a long time, the sky gradually became brighter and the trees started to bend rhythmically. But when I reached out for a tree, it would stop in it's movement and feel like a normal, if oddly bended, tree.

Every step, the trees would move. Almost as if they were seen through water.

That faded to black.

Next I was among rocky mountains. And with every step I took, rocks rose up to meet it. When my feet left them, they'd fall again. It was almost like walking in air. If I waved my hands, mountains would move to where ever I was pointing. But in a way they didn't feel like big mountains, it was like seeing something small up close rather than something big far away. All perspective felt disjointed. I jumped with both feet at once, curious if the rock would catch me. It didn't. I fell.

Into another dream.

Into water. I was underwater, but everything looked like it was frozen in place. Plants didn't move, neither did fish. I was quite interesting to see and it gave me a sort of electric feeling. As if I was doing something wrong. But I could move, I could swim through it and watch everything from any angle. There was even a large, huge fish with an open mouth just there. Its deep dark blue skin was almost black in this light. It looked smooth rather than the scales I normally saw and it was as big as a small house.

I was swimming in front of it when it suddenly started moving and ate me. I just got pulled into the stream, sucked in by it's large mouth.

Darkness again.

Then a rushing sensation. Falling through the air of sorts. But it didn't exactly feel like I was falling down. More falling along. When I saw clouds in the distance I realized I was sort of gliding towards them casually. As I moved closer, they parted and let me through, cleaning the way so to speak. When I looked behind me, there was a ripple in the clouds where I'd been. A growing ripple that had split up even the bigger ones.

I could steer a little and made zigzags that spread out from me to infinity. Even spirals and other shapes spread out so beautifully behind me. Some of them got swirls behind the corners I made, others shapes sometimes smoothed out. I headed into a big cloud to try a horizontal loop when lightning struck.

The light was so bright it blinded me, and when I opened my eyes again I was in a village somewhere in the forest with some trees still in sight.

It was nowhere I recognized, though it might have been Stonesthrow. The houses were simple and... empty. When I walked closer to one of the houses, it burst into flames. There was no better way to describe it, it came from everywhere. Inside was an inferno, all the wood was burning and the roof had almost immediately been consumed. Now, when I looked around, other houses were bursting into flame as well until I couldn't even see the trees anymore because of the fire.

Then, when I got closer once more, the fire moved away. Leaving nothing but blackened, burnt wood or stone. It wasn't even warm when I touched it. Even though the fire was raging all around me, it felt like it had been burned a long time ago. But the fire returned immediately after my hands moved away.

It roared.

A strange sensation on my hand made me wake up. My arm was wrapped around Deirdre and, something, was touching my hand. At first I panicked a little until I realized something was licking it. A rough tongue across the outside of my fingers. I opened my eyes to see what was waking me.

The white wolf.

Though there were probably more white wolves in the forest, for some reason this just felt so completely the same beast, that I didn't doubt my feelings. It licked gently and only stopped when I moved my head up to look at it. It looked at me for just a sliver of a moment before it looked up. I followed it's gaze and realize that the sky was light with the pre-dawn glow.

It woke me on purpose.

I looked back at the wolf and nodded to him in thanks. It just moved away without any show of understanding, but I felt, I knew, that it had understood my gratitude. I blinked to wake up a little bit more. Probably another half-hour to actual dawn, but it was better not to risk being there late. In fact, I preferred being there early to see if anyone else had any dangerous plans that we could discover.

I woke Deirdre with a soft kiss on her lips and a caress over her cheek. She kissed back and looked at me with a smile when I pulled back slowly.

"It's time."

She nodded and got up together with me. She looked around and sniffed the air, frowning in thought. "Has anything been here?"

I smiled. "Yes, a wolf."

She looked at me with curiosity. "I take it you've seen it?"

I nodded. "And before as well. It woke me up."

She smiled a little. "Strange. Shall we go?"

I nodded and we headed off back to the main gate. With the sun just below the horizon and tension in the air.