Dusk Rising

Five.

Dylan

Not even in my dreams was I getting what I wanted. I knew that I was sleeping right now. I remembered everything. Recalling every single word that Lecia had spoken through the tears and the tremble in her voice.

There was no way that I would forget a single one of those words. As she spoke them, every single one carved a scar on my heart, and chiseled itself on my bones. They were like blades that tore at the very center of me.

And as bad as it hurt, I wouldn’t want it any other way. These words were possibly the very last things that Eren may have thought or spoken and I, I , I just couldn’t deal even in this dream-like place.

When Tristan had held me there on that bed and he called the doctor over, I wanted him to not just put me to sleep, but to put me out of the misery that I was feeling. If sleep was all that he could give me, well I had no choice but to accept it.

I remember feeling something there though, something strange. Stranger than just the pain. There was no name for it because I didn’t have any experience with it, but it was oddly appealing.

There was something about Tristan’s touch that was reassuring and that was probably the only thing that was grounding me to life at that point, but for some reason, as I was waiting for the doctor to do whatever it was he was going to do, I picked up on every single wolf near me.

Odd, how someone who had never even seen another wolf. Never known what it was like to be around other wolves. To never even be allowed to show my wolf to others, to even know how to tell that was what I was feeling, sensing, but I knew. I felt every, single, wolf.

Rae was there, but I was able to hold her at bay because, even in all the pain I was feeling, I was still angry with her. Angry that she had let this happen, that she hadn’t protected him.

A jab came swiftly into my arm accompanied by a warm sensation that flowed through my veins and the screams began to fade. That was when a few wolves felt much closer to me. It was like I could feel them. Not the way that I felt Rae, but similar somehow.

I knew that I was fading because my body was beginning to feel heavier and I felt a strange humming coming from Tristan and I could feel him and his wolf tense up. Whatever the doctor had poked in my arm was working fairly quickly.

My head was heavy and I leaned closer to Tristan’s shoulder to help hold me up. It was then that I caught sight of Nico and I saw that he looked so defeated and I hoped that it had nothing to do with me.

Right before I closed my eyes, I tried to pull on the connections to see if maybe, just maybe I could be them, the ones who I could feel, peace at knowing that I was going to be okay, so I did what I thought might work.

As the room was getting dark, I felt as if there were small little connections or chords, so I pulled on them. I pulled to tell Lecia that I loved her. I pulled to ask Nico to forgive me. I pulled to thank Tristan for saving me. And I pulled to beg them all to let me see Eren in my dreams.

Citrus and spice were the last things I thought of as I felt my eyes seal and I felt my head fall fully against thick shoulders. But still there was nothing. It was like being in the clinic back on the pack lands. There was just me and the dreams that I didn’t wish to see.

It was Rae’s voice that filled my head as I sat in this room that I knew I had never been in before. Rae seemed prepared to deal with me. She spoke softly at first and at the beginning I wanted nothing more than to burst out of that room and find Eren.

But her voice kept on. No one in this world knew me the way that she did. No one may ever know me like that. Rae had been with me from the time I could remember, so I had to try to remember that through everything else.

She was strong, and resilient, and persistent in a way that I had never been. Rae had always been that for me. Rae had been everything I could never be and even though I knew she wouldn’t hold that against me, I felt the guilt flood in.

“Please,” I whispered to her, to me, to everything and everyone. “Please just let me see him.” Things were silent for a while, and then it was Rae’s voice that filled my mind, but also sounded like it was coming from all around me.

“There is so much to tell you, my precious one. So many things will be changing and while I will help you along the way, I can not do it all for you.” I imagined that Rae was in another room speaking to me through a microphone.

Closing my eyes, I let her words sink in and flow over me. I hated that she spoke in riddles sometimes, but a part of me knew that she had another choice. I wasn’t sure why I felt like that all of a sudden, but it felt, right.

Talking to Rae was easy. It was as simple as thinking or feeling something and I had no idea if there was a better way of reaching out to her, but right now I felt as if I had to actually say the words out loud.

Annoyed that I had so little control over anything, even in my own damn dreams, I found myself crying as I thought the words I wanted to say and the questions I knew I would ask that would go unanswered.

“Why?” I asked, knowing that she either had no answer for me, or didn’t know what else to say. “Why is this happening to me? Why can’t you tell me about all of the things that I should know?”

Rae seemed to be thinking. I felt her inside of me and that part of her that hid behind the hesitation I was so used to made me feel nauseated. There were parts of me that were used to this feeling, but that didn’t mean that I liked it.

“Sweetling, what I can tell you, I have always done so. And what I couldn’t I tried to find the best ways to either help you find the answers or to help you to learn about them on your own.”

Imagining Rae standing in front of me, not being inside of me, being a part of me was something I have done so many times. She was my only friend, my constant companion for my entire life and I had wished that she was separate from me so that I wasn’t actually alone.

In my mind, Rae looked like a particular human movie star that I saw in a movie one time. She was tall and curvy with flaming red hair. She was strong and powerful and made everyone around her feel comfortable and inferior just by being present. And she would be beautiful beyond measure.

Right now, even in this dream where nothing else existed beside me, I tried to imagine that. Imagine her. But the second I let myself try to force that, I immediately felt the shift and tried to imagine Eren.

“Why can’t I see him? Why can’t I even dream of him,” I asked her, because I knew that she was listening to me. She was here with me. Just like she always had been, but I had no idea what she would tell me about this.

To my surprise, in my dream where I had been previously been utterly alone, a small silvery white wolf appeared. Eyes as dark as the ocean at dusk stared at me so intently that I forgot what I had just been thinking.

Something about this wolf felt so familiar to me, but I was sure that I had never seen her before. As she sauntered around the little space around me, I noticed that her fur was not just silver or white, but it seemed to shine and radiate multiple colors like that of a gemstone that I couldn’t recall, but had seen in some of the small shops around the pack lands.

I knew she was a female and while she was a stranger to me, I didn’t feel afraid or scared, in fact, I felt strangely happy about her presence. For a few more moments she just seemed to observe me as she circled me. Unsure if we were not going to be able to communicate or not, I just waited and watched.

Finally, the slender wolf walked right up to me and sniffed. Well, that was completely unexpected and I had no idea what I was supposed to do, so I spoke. “Uh, hi. My name is,” but I didn’t get to finish because she suddenly spoke.

“I know exactly who and what you are,” she said as she took a step back and sat on her haunches. Well damn, I had no idea how she was feeling about this. There was no emotion in her voice so I just pushed on.

“Okay. Great. So, since you know who I am, would you like to tell me who you are or maybe what you’re doing here.” The beautiful wolf just c****d her head to the side and I had no idea how to take that.

When the she wolf spoke again, this time, her voice sounded different. It also felt different, it felt like a caress this time. “You know who I am, little one, you’ve just never seen me like this. This is just one of my many previous forms.”

Rae? Could this truly be Rae? No way! Rae was a big beautiful red wolf with longer hair on her tail and on the tips of her beautiful ears. This wolf, while beautiful, was definitely not the wolf I had come to know and love.

Sure that she must have seen me beginning to lose my composure, she ended my fall into, well, how do you fall into anything when your already asleep and in this sort of dream-like state.

“Relax little one. You really do panic quite fast and you will need to learn how to control your emotions better as things continue to progress.”

Thankfully, in this dream or whatever the hell this is, my mind or Rae or, both of us, I guess, had made sure that there was something for me to sit on. And I didn’t just sit on it, I essentially needed it to hold me up entirely.

Words just tumbled out of my mouth and my mind wasn’t really working at all to try to make the things falling from them make sense. “How are you, wait! I don’t understand. You sound like. And feel like, but you can’t be. She is. Wait, you’re the wrong color.”

I have never seen a wolf smile, but I was pretty sure that I just watched this wolf, Rae, this Rae wolf smile at me. Or, at least I think that’s what she was doing. Gods, I felt like I was losing my mind. Or maybe I had actually lost it and this is where my mind would end up staying.

“Dylan, you will be learning so much about yourself and about your wolf. There are stories of how we came to be, and how each of us gets chosen and bonded to our human counterpart, but even we do not fully understand it at times.”

What is happening right now? I mean I understood the words that she was speaking, like directly into my head, but I was just so overwhelmed and tired. I was just so tired of not being about to understand why things had to be so damn confusing.

Not knowing what to do, what to think, how to get what I wanted, I just leaned further into the chair back and let the tears begin to fall. I was done with all of this. I had no control over anything, I had no way of figuring things out on my own and I was just so, so tired.

I felt the large muzzle of the beautiful she wolf rub against my hands that were clasped over my face. “I just don’t know how to do this,” I whispered to her through the soft sobs. “How can I do this when I don’t know how to do anything on my own.”

Even though this wolf was slender, she was by no means small and she wrapped her body around me and my chair as best she could. Still rubbing against me, she softly licked the side of my face where some of the tears had fallen.

“You are not alone, our precious girl. When you wake up you will see that. Even here, now, you were never alone. And when the time comes and you have learned all there is to know, we will be here for you through it all, princess.”

And I leaned on her as her words wrought more tears from me. I sucked up her warmth greedily and threw my arms out and around her neck. She was soft but strong and I let that strength hold me up.

For right now, I would stay like this, in this place where I may not be happy or have what I wanted, but where I feel safe. And this is where I stayed until all the tears were gone.

Eventually, I heard my name being called somewhere in the distance and I felt the wolf raise her head. I had no idea how long we had stayed here like this, but I felt her shifting.

“It’s time to go back now, but remember. You have not nor will you ever be alone.” And with one last nuzzle, she licked my cheek, and everything seemed to go dark again. It seemed like only seconds passed when I blinked and opened my eyes.

I saw that I was back in the same room as before, but things looked much different. There was a small table near the door that had four seats, all filled with people I knew, and when I felt a warm hand squeeze my own, I looked over and saw Tristan sitting there beside me.

And while there was still a tremendous amount of pain there in my chest, I breathed through my nose and inhaled it all. Because Rae was right. I had not been alone, and if that was the only thing I could count on right now, that’s what I would do.