It's raining in the morning. I can see the water move through the leaves, as if passed tenderly from one to the next. Luckily, little of it gets to me, though my pelt feels uncomfortably moist. I shake myself off vigorously as I stand, striding about the camp while the others mumble quietly upon awakening.

"Good morning!" I yell over the patter of the rain on leaves.

"Good morning to you too." Vivian yawns. "How are you?"

"I'm great!" I tell her. "Nothing like a little rain for flowers, right?" My petal wings flare as if to comment on the statement, which seems to amuse Vivian. She looks down with disappointment. "If only that were the case for all of us."

"Something wrong?" I ask.

"Rain." she says. "I've always hated rain."

"Well, with your fiery portal thing, I guess it makes sense. Maybe you've just become one with the flames."

"That's very poetic, though I doubt it's the case." she snorts. "I just don't like being cold and wet."

"You should become one with the rain," I tell her.

"Now you're just being ridiculous."
"Nope! Natrina and I had to meditate all the time with our mother. It's more useful than you think it is, I promise."

She snorts, unconvinced. "Well then. How do I... 'become one with the rain'?"
I sit down on the wet grass and close my eyes. I hear her thump down into the grass and open my eyes to find hers closed. "That's good. Now imagine your heartbeat slowing down. As you do that, imagine that the rest of your body is also slowly coming to a halt, everything becoming quiet and slow." I say, trying to force my voice as calm and low as it will go.

She nods, and the rest of her body grows very still.

"Now, see with everything but your eyes. Let your senses reach out into the earth and let your soul mingle with the magic residing in the planet."

She gives no indication that she heard me, but I can feel her breathing. I sit down next to her and the two of us sit in silence for what seems like hours. There's a harmony that comes with meditating in a group. I remember it fondly from other days with Natrina, and I find myself suddenly homesick. I can tell Vivian feels the negativity too, because I feel warm fur pressing against me in the rain and though I know she must not be meditating deeply as I am, I press back into her because she's warm and comforting.

"What are you two doing?" says Aislyn, tilting her head as I open my eyes.

"We were meditating." Vivian says, bile in her voice, "Until you showed up."

"Sorry!" Aislyn says. "I didn't mean to interrupt."

"It's fine. We should get on the road anyways." Vivian gets up and shakes the water off her fur. "The rain is coming down faster now. We want to find somewhere to shelter if it gets too bad."

"Alright. I'll tell Natrina. Natrina?" She bounds off in the opposite direction and returns with my sister, who has a stick in her mouth.

"Is that some type of secret medicine stick?" asks Vivian in an attempt to be nice.

"No, I was drawing something in the dirt. I'm trying to understand what Aislyn's been telling me about my dreams. Something about... a combined mental scape due to cosmic interference?" Natrina says as we begin walking, though she's looking upwards at the rain instead of down at us. Her steps are far apart, as if she's barely stepping at all and instead merely prancing across the clouds.

"That's right!" Aislyn says, bounding along to keep up.
"I understood about half of that." I say quietly.

"We can explain, sometime." Aislyn suggests.

"Maybe on the return trip." I offer.

Aislyn shrugs it off as we continue, and luckily for us the rain begins to lighten. I listen to the birds overhead and watch flocks of them come and go. Some are probably leaving for warmer places. Fall is really setting in now, but so is the final leg of our journey. In fact, by Aislyn's calculations, we're almost there.

"Hey." Vivian says, "That was very... interesting. Thank you for meditating with me."

"Usually our mother told us stories to serve for exposition, but I'm not as good as she was." I say, "I'm sorry about that. Glad you enjoyed it though."
"I think you did a good job," she tells me.

Up in front of us, Aislyn stops. "Hello?"

Vivian braces, but this time the creature coming from the bushes is friendly (unlike the ambush almost half the journey ago, and the subsequent ambush by some commando Canira, and that one tribe who thought that we were the spawn of some unholy deity sent to slaughter them all). It's a tawny Canis with ears that stand straight up. His tail is curled and his fur is thick, giving him a very brawny appearance.

"You. The green one." he says, looking around Aislyn.

"Me?" Natrina asks.

"Gash spoke of you. He's a little dreamer, that one. You must be here for him."

"W-we..."

Aislyn chips in, "We are! He's very important to our mission. You have to understand."

"I do. Come along."

The Canis trods quietly through the forest, his ears pricked and his whole body on the alert. "I apologize. My team is not here. They ditched me for a squirrel." His voice is playful, "Those dirt wading mudpuppies are barely away from their mother's side. Why anyone has to train them at this age is beyond me."

"Are you sure you shouldn't be watching them?" Vivian asks.

"They'll be fine. You wouldn't be." His fur bristles, "There have been attacks. Creatures dark as the night itself come and slit our children's necks as they sleep. They are seeking something, yet we know not what."

All of us exchange an uneasy glance, knowing exactly what the creatures are. More importantly, we need to get the Canis of Trust out of here fast before more innocent lives are lost.

The Canis leads us into a large clearing, full of little houses built of sticks and leaves, many built on top of each other in a precarious kingdom of little rooms. Canis and Canira, both the same tawny brown color, wander the village freely, exchanging jokes as the younger ones playfight and talk happily to each other.

It looks peaceful.

"We're here." the guide says. "He'll be expecting you. He's in the third floor over... that way." The guide gestures to a large structure leaning ever so slightly to the side, propped up by two trees. "Good luck!" He heckles, walking away back into the forest.

I move to my sister. "Why did he say he's waiting for you?"

"That would be because he is. My dreams... have all been about the same Canis lately. We've become close friends. His name is Gash, and he's the Canis of Trust." she explains, her voice is giddy with excitement.

"You didn't tell Vivian or myself that. We would have appreciated it, you know." I tell her, trying to hide how hurt I am at being thrown out of the loop.

"It doesn't matter now. We're finally here!" she says, tail wagging, and she dashes off to the house with her head ducked in. I suck in a breath, trying not to let my frustration with her show, and follow her to the house. Aislyn looks back at us as she follows along hastily, then her head drops.

"I'm so sorry to both of you." she says. "We really didn't tell you anything."

"No, you didn't. I'm not angry," I lie, "I just feel hurt. I thought we were all kind of in the same group here."

"We are!" Aislyn says. "It was just her dreams! She didn't think about telling you two."

I think of another time, when I didn't tell Natrina about my dreams and... oh Verhamera, we really are both so much alike.

Padding along somberly, I walk up to my sister, who is entangled with another Canis. She looks like she's about to either break down laughing or crying. Overwhelmed with emotion, she pushes her head into his fur, tail wagging furiously. "I'm here!"

"Natrina! I've been waiting!" he tells her, his head on her neck in turn. As they pull away, he looks at all three of us with bright eyes. "Well, if we're finally all together... let's go save the world!"