Remember, those who listen in the dark, it was not meant to be this way. Evil came from the Ink and stained our fur, tainted our hearts, turned things meant for good — one of the Whispers passed to those in need

Wolves do not hunger in dreams.

Food is bountiful, of course, large herds of elk and deer with pelts sparkling like snow moving like glaciers through the forests and fields, easy pickings for wolves that do not tire. But they are optional, almost a form of entertainment. Their bellies never rumble, their mouths never hunger, their limbs never shake with need.

The wolves of Tatalune had found when they first arrived in the Dream that much time was freed without the need to hunt, leaving them time to sleep, play, and tell each other stories for as long as they please. At first the change is welcome, a restful time to do as one wished to do but never had the chance. But as nar and ser rise and fall in the sky, as the seasons change, as one gets used to a life where time need not be measured in hunger or need.

Time begins to slow. It no longer matters how long one spends basking under ser's gaze, or exploring under nar's, or rolling rocks into a stream simply because the splash they make is pleasing. There is no need to go out and track the herds because there is no longer any need to bring one down to eat. And if no one tracks the herds, then no one knows the exact day they start to migrate and the seasons change.

But what then, does that matter either? Season turning into season only means what pretty thing one might look at, for no drought threatens fire, no lack hangs over wolves in icewalk. No, the wolves of Tatalune pack are free to lose their careful track of time because there is no rush. It is safe. It is wantless. It is the Dream.

And without need, what does a wolf become?

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At the top of the canyon, the walls of rock give way to hills that are grass instead of scrub and rock, and the fluttering forms of deciduous trees dot its sides. Kaone leads her towards them, seemingly not minding how close she trots beside him.

The stand of trees turns out to be an orchard, branches laden with fruits of many shapes, scents, and sizes, and the air is thick with sweet and ripeness. As the coolness of the canopy's shadow slides across her fur, broken into dancing spots of light where ser peeks through, she slows to look about. To her surprise, she spots the purple spiked fruit, ballow, from her favorite legend, the many-beaded cluster of ithe that gives legendary wolves energy, and the large-bellied kum sought after for its tangy taste.

Aulka pauses at the base of a tree stuffed full of oblong, bright yellow fruits that she has never seen or heard of before, sniffing at one that hangs from a low branch. It has a sharp, acidic, and tangy scent, strong to the nose but not entirely unpleasant.

That's a lemon, Kaone says from somewhere ahead. Toxic, but it won't kill you.

Pulling her snout away, she trots to catch up, licking the lemon's scent off her nose. Why grow toxic fruit?

Kaone tips his head from one side to another. They're mentioned in one of the old legends Maikai likes to recite. In his dreams, he collects all the fruits and things he can from legends.

Oh. Aulka casts a glance at the orchard around her and the various fruits hanging from branches. What a strange thing to collect. With a thoughtful rumble, she asks,Why are we here?

Instead of answering, Kaone guides her to a large tree set aside from the others that has an odd-looking vine climbing up its thick trunk. The vine is wavy with wide, green stems, each wave having a small barb on the end, and all across its length there are no leaves. At the tip of the vine hangs a fruit similar to the lemons, except the color is lighter and it seems to be wrapped in petals with long green tips, almost like spikes, but soft.

Crouching, Kaone leaps an impressive height and snags one of the fruits in his teeth, holding it out to Aulka with a wave of his tail. When she takes it, he smiles. A good snack cheers the soul.

She tilts her head and puts down the fruit at her paws. We don't need to eat. In a Dream, there is no hunger, like there is no pain or sickness...save for Maikai's state.

Doesn't mean we don't have to. His tail is wagging now, a marginally faster side-to-side swish than before, and he lets his tongue loll out of his mouth in a large smile. Call it my thanks for healing me.

She looks at him then at the fruit. She needs no thanks—she will always heal him and anywolf she can as per her healer's pledge—but the gesture is nice and she isn't opposed to trying, so she offers a smile.

Lowering her head to the fruit at her paws, she gives it a good sniff before tentatively sinking her teeth into it. The skin is soft and easily gives to her teeth, peeling back when she pulls, and the flesh inside is pale-gray with many little seeds inside.

The taste is nothing like she's ever had. It's sweet like the berries she sometimes adds to her meat or the rare calf still feeding on mother's milk, but without the tang of blood or burst of bitterness. The seeds give the flesh a pleasant yet slight crunch, adding to the refreshing coolness sliding down her throat, and she decides after another bite that she likes it.

Good? Kaone mumbles around his own fruit, juice and seeds caught in the short dark fur of his muzzle.

Perhaps it is the dappled light swaying across his pelt and face, or the comical irony of a wolf eating a fruit as a snack instead of a ceremony, or the recent fright of loss lingering in her pelt, but the sight of him—a Shard that knows strange things about the Dream, nose deep in the too-bright yellow skin with the succulent sweetness from it coating his snout—makes her giggle.

Kaone flicks an ear, tilting his head, tongue swiping in all the wrong places to clean off his muzzle. What?

Her giggle turns into a laugh which makes him start, and soon both of them are laughing, faces sticky with fruit juice and noses full of its scent, like two packmates enjoying the heat of the day instead of Healer and Hero on a quest to save the Dreamer of their sanctuary.

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What is your favourite memory?

Kaone hurms contemplatively in the back of his throat, the sound blending in with the swishing of the grass, made both by the wind and their legs as they make their way ever towards to Maikai's star. To their right, the hills sloped steeply into green vallies, and to her left, they struck upwards to the point of the mountain only a day or two's journey away.

Hard one, Kaone murmurs, stepping around a burrowing owl's hole. To pass the time, she and him had been passing light, innocuous questions between them, and it has been a pleasant distraction from the worries of life and dreams in her mind. I suppose I am quite fond of the time me and Maikai swam an ocean.

Ears pricked, Aulka casts a questioning glance to the coal wolf at her side. 'An ocean'? Isn't there only one?

He grins, tossing his head back so that his scarf and cape flaps away from his face. In the real world, yes. But you see, this one was in a Dream and not nearly as long as a real ocean. Why we decided to swim an ocean in a Dream I don't recall, but we did and the strangest things kept happening!

A chuckle rolls under his words as he speaks. First, the salt kept making us sneeze, and it felt like something was tickling our paws. But when we looked, there was nothing...except huge feathers floating on the surface. They must've been three wolf-lengths wide and two bison long!

Anyway, after that we swam into a school of dried, smoked meat, and endured a vicious storm of pollen. Kaone rolls his head in a circle, movements thick with amusement. Later, we found out that Maikai's littermates had been playing with him while he slept, feathers, bottled pollen, smoked meat and all.

Aulka huffs with laughter, picturing the disgruntled realization on a tiny Maikai's face. Did he tell them his dream?

Kaone nods, smiling brightly. Oh yes. They had a good laugh about it too. He chuckles again and nudges her, head almost playfully cocked. What about you? What's your favourite memory?

Still smiling, she lets her gaze sweep out to the landscape around them as she thinks. What a silly question it is, for she has many that are favourites for different reasons, all of which are tinted heavily with loss for many more reasons, but all the same she searches for one with a distinctive song.

One time a Shard with the ability to shape ice stopped by our pack for an icewalk. He loved coaxing the ice from rivers and branches into little sculptures, and I found it ever so fascinating.

She had found one hanging by but a thread of ice to the tip of a branch, tiny icy wings spread perpetually in the first moments of flight, and she still remembers how she'd stopped and stared, little mouth open with awe. What a little wonder it was. But what I would beg him for was to go down to the frozen lake and make shapes and curves of ice for—

Aulka stops. It is here where she realizes that this memory is not safe and innocuous, that it too is tainted, that she doesn't want to speak of it. But it is too late, the words already formed, and they slide out of her mouth as if they want to be heard despite how they feel like bone shards across her tongue. —for us to run up and slide down, around, and all over. It was the best icewalk we—her voice falters—we ever shared.

And ever would share now that they were dead, the glass sculptures of their souls suspended in her memory like that tiny ice sculpture, forever just about to fly. Forever just about to grow. Just about to live and do and breathe and be. Just about, but never to finish.

A touch to her shoulder brings her back and Kaone's warm eyes shine with compassion. That's a lovely memory, he says, soft. Sounds like all of you had a lot of fun.

Unbidden, whines rise like bubbles in her throat and she pops them one by one until she can speak without a quiver to betray her. We did. She takes a breath, fighting to keep her ears up and a smile pinned to her muzzle. Apologies. I shouldn't have—it—

He touches her shoulder with his nose, stopping her. There's nothing to apologize for, Aulka. You grieve still. It hurts. Don't try to hold back the flood water from draining to avoid swollen river banks.

Licking her nose, she averts her gaze to the valleys below. Should he know the weight of the flood water locked behind her ribs and the state of her riverbeds, would he say such a thing? She shakes internal fur and the thought from her mind. Let us talk of other things.

For an insect's breath, he studies her, gaze somehow piercing, but he does not press and instead shrugs and starts to walk again. Bug on the wind. He looks back at her as she trots up to him. What season is your favorite?

Tucking whimpers under her pelt and grief to sleep, she puts her focus on the lighter things. Worldfire.

Nice one. It's a beautiful sight.

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Nar rises high in the night, pale fur spreading the tender, nurturing gaze only a mother can wield across the landscape, and marking the coming close of a day spent in quiet companionship, laughter, and smiles shared over rare fruit.

Aulka stretches her neck up to the great expanse above, relishing the cool mountain air in her fur. A cascade of stars fills the dark sky, some bright with closeness, some dim from distance, and the Great River flows diagonal to the horizon, gleaming with purples, blues, and pinks. In the real world, it would not be so clear or so colorful, but she likes it this way, in the Dream.

With her eyes she traces the Great River to the peak of the mountain that has been growing steadily closer, and the golden glow of Maikai's star. Almost there, she thinks. Hang on for a little longer.

Shaking out her fur, she lowers her head and stretches her stride until she catches up with Kaone. As they crest a curve in the mountainside, Aulka murmurs a quiet gasp.

Below, in a small dip, the grasses are still, the wind having gone to sleep, and hundreds of fireflies rise from stalks and other hiding places to flicker and wink and swirl like a sky of tiny stars. Some are yellow, and flash the brightest, some are orange or red like the fire they're named after, some are green or pale-sky blue, creating a rippling, dancing show of lights.

Walking among them only strengthens the feel of stars as the fireflies eddy around them like mist as they pad past. This is...beautiful, Aulka breathes, turning her head this way and that.

Stunning, Kaone agrees, his normally chipper voice hushed. When they reach a cluster of boulders to shelter dreamtime in, Kaone rests his head on his paws and says, Did you know that this is how the world is supposed to be?

Aulka flicks an ear at him, head tilted, and he continues. The Dream is only an embellishment, a reflection, of our world. It's all that it should be without the struggles we face and a little bit more. He nods at the fireflies on the mountain side and the night sky, both filled with stars, This is all real.

She looks around at it all, the fireflies, the colorful Great River, Nar set far above, and thinks about how unlike it is to the world of hunger and pain, death and blood, too tight crevices and no escape for the unfortunate, that she knows. Maikai must thinks the world is a beautiful place.

It is, in peace.

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Aulka wakes to a presence.

It's not oily and cold like a Coren's, or warm and known like a packmate's, but something in between. Raising her head from under her tail, she looks about, first to Kaone still curled up to her left, then to the rocks sheltering them, and finally out to the field where the fireflies still twinkle.

And there, not too far away, is the shape of a wolf. Not any wolf, but her mother's shape, with the seven Healer's feathers tucked behind her right ear, the slope of her muzzle, the extra puff of fur around her shoulders.

Ama? she woofs softly into the night. How is she here? Why is she? Kaone stirs beside her, and, not wanting to wake him, she rises to her paws and slinks out from under the shelter of the rocks and towards her mother. When she is several bounds away, she stops and sniffs. Familiar warm scent of herbs and thrushes and lingering pine fills her nose, but she hesitates. Ama? she woofs a little louder.

Owna turns, dropping a bundle of herbs, and runs towards her, sweeping her into a warm, tight hug. Oh, my pup! There you are at last.

Aulka inhales her mother's scent, feeling the thud of her heart, leaning into the strength of her shoulder where she has hidden herself time and time again, and pulls back, tail wagging. Ama, why are you here? Her tail slows and ears drop as the skree of Coren echoes from her memories. It's dangerous.

With a quiet huff, Owna touches her nose to Aulka's cheek. My pup, did you think I would not notice your absence? Of course I would follow my dearest star. Her eyes darken. I will not lose you, too.

Aulka's heart gives a flutter and a pang, and she presses the top of her head to Owna's shoulder, leaning her weight into the gesture for a brief moment before pulling back. I'm not going to be lost. I only leave because Maikai's sick and I must heal him. I—I'm sorry I could not tell you before I left. There were Coren... A jolt hits her chest and with ears flat to her skull, she looks up at Owna. Don't tell me you come all this way with Coren on your tail, all alone!

Owna flashes teeth at the mention of Coren and tosses her head. No Coren will get in between me and my pup. With a huff that marks finality, she turns towards the way they came. Come, let us return to where it is safe.

Aulka shakes her head, paws rooted to the dirt. I must heal Maikai or else the Dream dies, and us with it.

A sadness slopes Owna's shoulders and she faces Aulka once more, ears back. And the duty befalls my precious, Dream-dubbed pup. She heaves a sigh. If you must. But first, I have something you must see.

But... Hesitating, Aulka throws a glance towards the cluster of boulders and the vague outline of Kaone's ears poking out from the shadows.

Sliding her muzzle under Aulka's chin, Owna guides her gaze away. Come. It is not far, and I will not keep you long. Let your companion sleep.

Would Kaone mind if she went, just for a little while? Surely he would understand; it is her Ama that asks, and Ama is the only one she has left. Lingering one paw in the air, she drops the rock of her decision into the waters of life. How it ripples, she hopes will not harm.

I'll be back, she woofs to Kaone, hoping he hears somehow in his dreams, and with that, she lets her ama lead her down the hill and to the left, out of sight.