Chapter 10: Lightfall.

I sleepily blinked my eyes open and groaned. I don’t know how long I was in the dream plane, but the Cirkee had held me there for ages. I had a feeling the other wolves had thought I had gone into a coma.
I stretched and my paws felt something like dry grass under them. This told me that I was right. They had either thought I was terribly sick, or that I was in a coma and had put me in one of the sick dens. A nice one from the feel of it, I once again reminded myself to find some way to thank the Tyr for how kindly they had treated me.
The sick den was dimply lit with light coming down from the entrance tunnel. I yawned and stood up, I had been out for a quite a while and probably needed to eat. I stood up and stiffly walked out of the den and through the entrance tunnel. I noticed the sides of the tunnels didn’t scrape the sides of my chest like they should have. I must have been out for longer than I thought I had been.
I entered a largish cavern with a fire burning in the center of the floor. It had a low ceiling and the walls of the cavern were dotted with paths to the sick dens, and on the north end of the cavern was a larger tunnel that lead strait to the main cavern if you didn’t turn off on one of the numerous smaller tunnels that intercepted it along it’s course.

Laying placidly next to the fire was a large white wolf with blue marks painted around his eyes that signified him to be the second in command of the healers. I grinned when I saw him, I knew him quite well. His name was White and he was one of the friendliest and the brightest spirited of the Tyr, despite not having the gift of prophesy that so many of the Tyr possessed.
As I padded into the cavern white lifted his head and returned my grin.
“ I knew you’d wake up. Some of the less experienced healers said this time your ailment had gotten the better of you, but you’re a tough one Dusk. It takes a lot more than some sleeping sickness to get the better of you.” He said getting to his feet and padding up to me. Out of the force of habit we both dipped our heads to each other in typical Tyr manners.
“Ah, but it’s taken a lot out of me this…this…” I stumbled along, searching for the word.
“ Round? Session? Time?” White asked. He was more than used to the way words tended to get just out of my grasp.
“ Yes, Time. It’s taken a lot out of me this time. How long was I out for?”
“ A couple of weeks.”
“That long? Damn, I’m almost tempted to say you were a fool for not listening to those other healers.”
“ Huh.”
“ ‘Huh’ indeed. Now, I think I need something to eat. Is mistress L’en out leading a hunt tonight?”
“No, Wolverine told me that she decided that someone was stealing from the food again. She’s guarding it right now.”
“ Aw, ravensbane. So I suppose that means I get the bland rabbit food they reserve for us invalids?”
“ Yes, and it isn’t rabbit food Dusk. It’s plants, good ones, they’re better for your than meat anyhow. If you tried eating a haunch of snowboar right now you’d be vomiting it up in half an hour.”
“At least the snowboar tastes better going down…”
“ Dusk, I’m going to have to make you go lie down. Obviously you aren’t in your right mind, grumbling about the fare that our sickly get.” White said grinning broadly. He knew how much I detested the herbs and other plants they fed the sick wolves. I sighed and padded back to mouth of the tunnel to my sick den, keeping a half formed sarcastic comment to myself. There was no use pestering White, he’d only decide to let some of the half-crazy female healers-in-training at me.
White chuckled and then padded out of the cavern. No doubt to go get the rabbits food for me. As he left through the main entrance a healer-in-training who had been waiting just outside the entrance, keeping track of who entered and left I assumed, came in and took White’s place. When she was me her eyes took on the addlepated look some of the females got when they were around me.
I rolled my eyes and went into the sick den to escape the gaze of the healer-in-training. I flopped down on the floor and wriggled around a little until I was comfortable.
With nothing else to do or think about the events of the ‘dream’ came back to me. I thought about the Kyrnin who had been there. She was certainly a mindful. The emotions she evoked in me and the confusion that I couldn’t help feeling about her and her abilities brought a tangle of emotions with them.
I was attracted to her a little. I could feel that much, but the rest was too tangled up for me to sort out. But despite the tangle I could tell some things. First of all she was a world walker, not a powerful one but her eyes had revealed her. She could step between worlds if she needed to. That explained how she could move around the dream plane so easily, and how she could touch the flow. To her it was just another world.
But how she gotten to the flow so quickly, or wounded the Cirkee so badly was a puzzle to me.
The thought of who I first thought she flashed into my mind and I almost laughed. I had thought she was Penelope right out of the Song of the Change, and again the thought that that maybe the high-lady now walked the planet again had come darting back. I chuckled at myself, Rodain was certainly a different wolf but there wasn’t a chance she could be Penelope.
The Song of the Change was just prophesy mumbled out by a dieing wolf, even the Tyr admitted that it was probably more insanity than true prophesy. Never the less, it made an excellent song.
My thoughts again wound their way back to trying to figure out Rodain. For some reason the name sounded slightly familiar to me. Though I couldn’t place why. Like the words I tended to forget it hovered there just out of my grasp. I gave up, frustrated, and shifted my position in the soft grass and let my eyes drop half closed.
I lay there bored out of my mind listening to the noise outside. There really wasn’t any besides the distant, faint crackle of the fire. It was beginning to seem that this mindless boredom would go on forever when I heard White return and dismiss the healing student. I stayed in the den for a moment just so it would be certain she was gone.
“You can come out now Dusk, she’s gone.” White yelled down the hole to me. I got up and padded out to join him. He was standing by the fire again with a hide with various plants and ‘medicinal’ herbs on it laying in front of him. He pushed it forward with his muzzles signaling that it was for me.
I wrinkled my nose and hoped the herbs didn’t taste too strong and started on my meal. At first I nibbled, but something about having food right in front of me after not eating for so long made me ravenously hungry. I had quickly moved from nibbling to wolfing down the mild plants in front of me.
As I finished my meal White spoke.
“There’s an eclipse tonight. Wolverine told me that she overheard the starwatchers talking about it earlier today. If you feel up to it you can come up and watch.”
I half choked on the last bit of leaf I was eating. An eclipse. The moon ‘dieing’ and being tainted with a red shadow. While gave me a concerned look.
“I guess that’s a no then,” he said somewhat sadly “ I was hoping you could come watch it with us, but since you aren’t feeling all that well then I understand after all you have been-“
“ No! I’m feeling fine. I was just a bit surprised. I’ll come.” I said quickly, cutting him off.
“ Well, If you say so.”
“ I say so.”
“ Heh, Dusk, you’re as resilient as a Kyrnin. You have any relatives from there?”
“ Well… I… No, I don’t.” I said quietly. I was innerly kicking myself. I hated lying to any of the Tyr, and I especially hated lying to White. This time had been the truth, but it dredged up all the memories of the lies I had had to tell to protect my identity.
It made me feel guilty inside and out to think that since I had shown up as a ragged half-grown cub nearby their hunting ground the Tyr had treated me with nothing but kindness, and that all I had given them in return were my lies and my meager services a teacher. But I had to lie. If I didn’t I’d be living out in the snow, probably dead.
“ I think I’m going to go lay down for a bit.” I said, trying to shake the guilty thoughts from my head.
“Alright, do you want me to wake you in time for the eclipse?”
“ Uh…sure. Look, I’m going to go back to my real den now. I’ve got it all sorted out just the way I like it, and none of your female students will be nosing around to gawk at me.”
White just shook his head with a look that was something like amusement on his face. He looked ready to say something but a low moan from another of the sick dens distracted him. He dipped his head in a polite good bye and I returned the gesture.
As I passed out of the room I heard White calling to the sick wolf. I wondered for a moment who it was and then shrugged off the thought. It didn’t really matter.
I headed down the tunnel a ways until I came to a familiar left turn. I took it and crept down a narrow passage. It was pitch black and only from familiarity could I find my way, there were no sounds of hustle and bustle to guide me. Not many wolves lived down this way.
I carefully counted the entrances to other tunnels until I came to the fifth one on the left. I made another left turn and started descending. The passage wound down and down until things grew lighter. A phosphorescent moss-like plant covered the walls and shone a soft blue light trough out the tunnel, which had begun to level out. It soon widened into a small cavern with three dens in it. The first two dens were abandoned. The third was mine.
It was quiet down there. And little lonely, but that was why I had chosen it. I like the solitude, it gave me time to think. And quiet.
I padded into my den and laid down. I wasn’t sleepy. I had been sleeping for two weeks. But I did need some time alone to think, and to try to understand what all that had happened had meant. It was all too convenient. The moon ‘dieing’ at the same time this world walker had really stepped into the world of dreams.
I stared at the chamber with it’s soft blue light and couldn’t help thinking to myself, What if the Song of Change is real? What would it mean? Just because one line is true are the others going to follow through?
I didn’t know the answers, but I had a feeling that I was going to find them out soon.