Meriwa’s dreams had started pleasantly. She’d been hunting the chinook salmon that were headed from the ocean to the rivers nearby to spawn. The strange fish had tasted good, large and bloody as she caught them between her jaws.
She chased them until she was tired and sated, ready to go home.
And then she’d returned to a house she didn’t recognize, where the walls were made of sweet, musky wood and a fire was already burning in the hearth. But it was the small children playing on the rug that made her pause. They were chubby little things, toddling but no more, and they had tiny webs between their fingers.
Just as she went to them, they were gone.
Vanished.
As if they had never existed at all.
By the end of the dream, Meriwa felt like she had to claw her way out of it, as thoug
