Chapter 9: Rodain.

The dream came almost as soon as I was asleep. It was like I closed my eyes and then I was in it. None of the soft, dreamless sleep that usually buffers the period between when you are awake in dreaming. I was just…there.
It was black. Everything around me was black. A faint light seemed to come from somewhere and I could see just fine and there was defiantly a difference between the ‘ground’ and the ‘sky’ but I couldn’t tell quite put my claw on it.
I had had this dream before. Several times in fact. But it had never been this real before. Before this it had only come and then after a few flashing seconds it had burst and I would find myself in another dream. A normal dream.
This was certainly not a normal dream. It felt real in some way. And I felt…aware in it. I knew it was a dream but it felt like I was really there in some way, while I was not here at all. I shuddered at the thought.
“Hello?” I called into the blackness to distract myself from the here-but-not-here feeling. Nothing replied. I wasn’t surprised.
I tried to take a step forward and found me feet caught in the ground. I tried to pull them out and it was like pulling them out of a tar pit back home, except the ground had no texture to it. It just was.
I managed to get free of the ground and took a few steps forward. The ground felt soft of me feet and I could feel my paws slowly sinking into it. I didn’t want to get stuck again so I had to take another step. I realized that I couldn’t stay still for long or I would sink. I didn’t know how long I would skin. Maybe I would sink forever and ever. In this weird dream place that seemed a lot more possible than a firm realistic bottom would be.
So I walked on. I didn’t have to walk fast, the sinking was actually pretty slow. But I couldn’t stop for long, the blackness may be slow when it came to sinking was as hard to get out of as tar was if you sunk past your paws.
I don’t know how long I walked. I assume it was a while, but I couldn’t tell. The dream place didn’t change. At all. I might as well have been walking in place.
At one point during this endless walk things changed, not the world but something inside the world. I couldn’t tell just what at the moment, but I could feel something was different. Then I managed to figure out what it was. Up until that point I had been walking in complete silence, not even my pawstepps made any noise, but now I head something. I strained my ears to hear what it was, and began to walk in the direction of the faint noise.
As I grew closer to the source of it I could begin to make out what it was. It sounded like a song, a sad one, but I wasn’t close enough to distinguish the words. I walked closer to the sound.
Then something appeared on the horizon. I couldn’t tell what it was but it seemed what the sound was coming from. My walk tuned into a trot. I wanted to see what this thing was.
When I drew closer to it I could make out it was a wolf. At first I thought it was a white wolf with back stripes but as I completed the last few yards I realized what it really was.
It was a male wolf. His coat was mostly white except for faint golden swirls and stripes that laced themselves in with the white. He was about the same size as Masiaka but a lot thinner, I swear that I could count every one of his ribs.
I stopped about a yard away from the wolf, I didn’t care about sinking anymore. The eerie sight in front of me occupied my entire mind.
He was standing in the blackness with his legs halfway sunk in, and to my relief he didn’t seem to be sinking any more. But out of the blackness snaked tentacle like tendrils. They wrapped around him, holding him still and pulling at him. Some of them writhed like they were alive.
The white wolf didn’t fight them. He stood still, with his head bent low and his eyes closed, His body braced against the pulling blackness. He was singing in a cracked voice the song I had heard earlier. I could understand the words now, not that it did me much good. They were odd.
“…First moon dies and Penelope walks again…” He sang to himself. One of the black tentacles pulled at him. He stumbled a bit and then righted himself before anything could happen. I stared for a moment in utter confusion, then he stumbled again against the pulling blackness. I felt that I couldn’t let this, whatever it was, go on.
I lunged forward at the tentacles with snarl and bit into one. My jaws sunk into it as if it were water and I ended up biting my tongue. I let go of the tendril with a yelp of pain and took a step back from it.
The white wolf’s head snapped around and his eyes flew open. He stared at me for a moment, blearily, as if wakening from a deep sleep. The eyes sent shivers through me. One was ice blue and the other was brilliant gold. From behind the bleariness a sudden clarity broke lose in those eyes and they widened with great surprise.
“Penelope!?” he said with a tone of disbelief in his voice.
I shook my head.
“I-I’m not Penelope. I’m Rodain, ” Was all I could say.
“ Rodain?” he asked in his cracked voice and then shook his head and gasped In pain. I looked and saw the tendrils tighten aground his chest, cutting off his air. I growled fiercely and jumped foreword and tried to bit through one again. Again I failed.
“That *gasp* won’t work *gasp*,” he said. “You’ve got to*gasp*.”
He began to choke and couldn’t continue speaking. I franticly thought for an answer and clenched my eyes shut so I would have fewer distractions.
The moment my eyes were closed I formed the brook without meaning to . Except, it was more than brook now. It was the whole ocean.
I was in the middle of an ocean of the elements and I could touch all of them. They surrounded me but I found that they weren’t drowning me. I was in perfect harmony with them. I felt for the one I needed and I found it. It wasn’t one I had ever touched before and it burned to the touch but I knew that it was the only one I could use to destroy the blackness.
I formed a picture of the darkness around the white wolf and fed this burning elements into it. From somewhere distant I though I heard a sound like a scream and then, the image of the blackness in my mind popped. And there was nothing there. I released the element and slid out of the ocean and back into the dream place. I opened my eyes and let the awareness of the black world sink in.
The ground was firm under my feat how. I didn’t sink in it. My ways were out of it. In front of me the while wolf lay on the ground. His legs were above ground now. The black tendrils no longer surrounded him. He was bleeding from a few places and was panting and gulping down air but otherwise he was fine.
I was surprised to fine the inside of my mouth hurting and I tasted blood on all side of it. It felt as if I had grasped onto a flaming stick and had burned my jaws. My own blood trickled down my throat and I gagged. My legs felt weak and I would no longer stand. I collapsed to the floor, retching.
The white wolf looked over at me and stared for a moment, and then struggled to his feet and padded to me. He lay down beside me and gently nuzzled me behind one of my ears in a comforting way.
“Thank you dreamwalker,” he whispered softly and then laid his neck across mine.
I laid there awkwardly, trying not to gag from the taste of my own blood. I wasn’t used to being touched this way by a male. It felt strange, but at the same time good and I didn’t really want to move. So I laid there, feeling confused not only by the events that had taken place but by this weird male with his white and gold coat and strange, chilling, eyes.
I tried to sort out the events that had happened in this not-dream and found it impossible. I gave up and let myself fall into the lull of peace this place now had. Whatever that was here that had been wrong was gone for now.

“Where are we?” I asked after some time had passed. I can’t say home much, maybe it was minutes, maybe it was hours.
“The dream-plane. Dreamwalkers can enter here to reach out to others.” He answered.
This answer didn’t make it any less clear than mud to me. But I let it go. I was beginning to feel better, and I was enjoying this now.
“So you’re a…Dreamwalker?” I said.
“ Yes and No,” he answered “ I am slightly different from most Dreamwalkers. What comes to most through years of practice comes to me naturally.”
“Uh…what is it that comes through years of practice?”
“Correctly walking the dream plane.”
“Oh…ok…”
“ Oh, you don’t understand. Well…let me think. Ah. Here’s an example. Can you see terrain yet?”
“ Terrain? You mean like rocks and bushes and grass and stuff? Well, I can’t see any of it here considering there is none here.”
“ You can’t even feel it yet? You can’t be that inexperienced.”
“This is the first time I’ve been here more than a few seconds.”
“ What!?” He said jerking his head back up from my neck in surprise. “But then, how did you touch the elements? And in enough proportion to kill the Cirkee? Only very…very… damn. I lost the word. What’s a word for having done something a lot of times and being very good at it?”
I stifled a laugh and the white and gold wolf gave me a sheepish look.
“ I forget words some times. Will you please give me the word I want.? Please? It drives me crazy when I can’t remember the right word.”
I thought for a moment at what word would fit there and finally found it. I grinned, turned my head and looked at him in they eyes.
“Experience. That would probably work.” I said.
“Ah, yes. That’s it. Only very experienced Dreamwalkers can touch the flow normally. I assumed you had talent, but not that much. Almost make me think…hmm. “ his voice fell into a mumble and he squinted at me for a moment.
“Your eyes. They’re different colors,” he said.
“So? What has that got to do with anything? Your eyes are like that too.”
“ I think… I think I understand now. Forget about it,” He said and then paused thoughtfully and after a moment spoke again. What’s your name again? Rodain you said?”
“Yeah, my name is Rodain. What’s yours?”
“Dusk.”
“ Dusk? Weird name for a guy with fur as light as yours.”
He shrugged and tilted his head back as if enjoying an unseen breeze. Then his nose twitched like he had smelled something and he abruptly stopped and jumped to his feet and began to run.
I got to my feet to follow him but a few feet away he stopped and looked over his shoulder and yelled to me.
“No! Don’t follow me. Get out of here Rodain. The Cirkee is back. We’ve got to get out of here. Go back to where you came from!”
I stepped back whimpering in confusion. My paw struck the ground which was soft again. I felt malice seeping into the land around me. Dusk was right. I had to get out of here. I turned around and ran.
This time the blackness seemed almost angry with me. It actually pulled at my paws. I ran harder, trying to suppress the feeling of nausea that hit me every time one of my feet hit the ground. I panted heavily as I ran and blood dripped from my mouth.
I ran for what felt like hours. But nothing changed. Nothing. I ran long and hard and didn’t stop no matter how tired I was. I felt my steps faltering. I couldn’t keep it up any more and the black ground was still there. Still angry with me.
I Closed my eyes and tried to focus on finding the flow. I found it but I didn’t bring it into my mind, because I noticed a thin almost bubble like wall separating me from it. I knew that I could go through the wall and be in the ocean again, but something about the wall made me think that maybe it was the solution rather than the flow.
So in my mind I made myself lunge out and attack the wall. To my surprise it popped easily and I felt the whole dream plane burst around me with it. I felt myself falling through what seemed to be emptiness. I let myself be at peace as I felt awareness creeping away and then suddenly back at me. I knew I was waking up and a few minutes later I felt myself aware of the physical world.
I flickered open my eyes and began to yawn but then yelped loudly in pain. I began to shake and whimper. I tasted blood and knew instantly that my mouth was burned.
I tried to quiet myself and explain away the burns. My mind thought franticly for explanations but I couldn’t come up with any. The only one that worked at all was that the dream had been more than a dream. That it had some way been real.
And that explanation scared me half to death.