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Hemming felt strangely gloomy. The sun was setting on another day, and as its white light struck the horizon and burst into reds and pinks and oranges so did the wolf's thoughts. Things that had seen so clear before, so obvious, were becoming tangled and confusing in the hazy light. The previous night he had not slept well, dreams of a past life clutching to the edge of his subconscious and preventing him from ever falling as deeply into his sleep as he would have liked. The thoughts that riddled him now were not bad ones, merely unfamiliar ones. Though he might have felt them before, as if in passing, he had never dwelled on them, and it was this very act that made them confounding. The fading light seemed to facilitate their emergence from the shadows, and as the male scrunched wet sand into neat little piles they danced like ghosts within his mind. They were elusive creatures, sneaky beasts that Hemming did not particularly trust.
It seemed as if he was living the perfect carefree life, the days characterized by little more than happiness and personal growth, and yet the male did not feel as if he was contributing anything. He thought fondly of his time helping Dawali to build the town hall, but even that, now, seemed rather insignificant. He tried to pass the heavier feelings off as a product of lack of sleep and being alone, and though he had convinced himself that they were mere creations they did not fade. Perhaps it was a sort of culture shock, his days previous to life in AniWaya being so different to the ones he lived now. His way of life had shifted considerably, from surrounding himself with books and burying himself in them to not having read a book fully for months. Other wolves were his friends, now, replacing letters on a page with living, breathing beings. His previous reclusion had kept him responsible to no one but himself, but now he had others to stand before. Living in a tribe was certainly more interesting and more fulfilling, but still there seemed to be a hole within the wolf, rendered visible only in the dusky light, and in solitude. His Spirit Guide was often quiet, in between bursts of blabbery, and now she seemed even more ruminative. Surely, she felt things more deeply than did Hemming, and perhaps she even understood them.
He was not building anything in particular, but by now his long fingers had created and smoothed three little domes of sand, in a triangle formation. The repetitive task gave him time to think, and realizing this, he started to consider a more complicated structure to pull his mind away from feelings that should not even exist. What were they, anyway? He knew that his last meeting with Anu had strengthened them. Here he was, at last, with someone that would consider him a friend. With her confession had come the realization that there were a few canines in these lands that would also call him friend. The feeling that welled up within the male was one of immense happiness, but also immense dread. Deep down inside, Hemming was worried that he would let them down. He could only see this apprehension as shadows, though, and though the outline of the bad feeling was evident he could not make out its real form.
As Dagrun nestled her little feathered body closer to the crown of his head, the wolf started to make little ridges of sand between his three domes. It would be a fortress, and soon it would have a moat and three towers. Hemming had not yet figured out what it would be defending.
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[html] Hallo thar! C:
It had been a good long time since the arctic wolf had crossed the borders of his packland. He had come to feel centered there, letting the events of his life unfold around him, without the youthful wanderlust urging him to explore. The most recent excursion he had taken had ended in a cruel encounter and a month's healing from the mauling he received. But he was better now, and more importantly, he needed some new scenery to stir up the stagnation he had been stuck in for too many moons.
Since he had learned how to shift (so late in life!) he had continued to assume the hulking werewolf form, forcing himself to grow accustomed to walking upright, to having hands and feet instead of four paws, to looming over all before him. He had always been big for a wolf, but he had never seen an Optime as large as himself before. Broad shoulders, barrel chested, shaggy black and white fur hanging lank from his stooped body... he felt as silly as a bear trained to dance, teetering on its footpaws for the amusement of all who saw. And there was still a color of guilt and shame to his expression, since he had been raised to shun all things werewolf. It was mortal sin to play human, even if his Optime form had the swayed back and bent knees of the old-world shifters, nothing clean and civilized here.
The one saving grace of his abominable genes was that since he had shifted, he no longer felt the dreams closing in on him... In his two-legger form, he no longer suffered from his narcolepsy. And that was the one reason he had not immediately reverted to his most comfortable way of life - because without the constant yawning and the ever-present danger of collapsing into sleep without a moment's notice, he might actually come across as a normal creature. If not for his ice-pale eyes and bold black markings, he could fit in...
The sun was setting around him, washing his tangled white mane in warm oranges and pinks, reflecting oddly in his pale blue eyes. He paused for a moment, ebony-daubed tail waving slowly behind him as he lost himself in thought. He would have liked to show his mate this. She was fond of the colorful side of nature, and it would surely lift her spirits. She seemed to have thrown herself into her alpha duties again, working herself to exhaustion... Part of it was his fault, having shut himself away from the world, forcing her to take care of him like a child. But they had made amends since then, and yet, she still scarcely came home, only to fall right asleep and leave before he awoke.
It occurred to Slay then that he was not alone; a soft, wet scraping noise was caught by his swiveling ears, and the lumbering werewolf turned curiously to see whom he had interrupted. At first glance, he thought the older grey male was his packmate Lubomir, even down to the yellow eyes - but their faces were different, and this wolf was accompanied by a small bird. Slay grew still, pale eyes studying the bird with interest. He was a superstitious creature, believing in the extraordinary and the paranormal, and had heard tell of spirit animals and partners. (In fact, he had suspicions that he himself was accompanied by such an animal, but it only appeared in his prophetic dreams...) A deep stirring in his chest told him that this was no ordinary bird... and that he was only seeing her because she wanted him to. "...Hello," he rumbled, holding his hands palm-upwards in a gesture of peace. He was not entirely sure who he was addressing, the bird or her werewolf partner. He would see who answered.
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Yay, hi! 
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Worry would drift away and float back like the waves, riding up onto Hemming's thoughts and pulling them back into the ocean. He hated feeling like this, he really did, but there was no barricade that would stop the hazy mist of dreamer's dread. Each object around him took some figurative form, and the world was spelled out in poetry. The darkening sky was a symbol of the time that was running out, the fine grains of sand saying something about the impermanence of self. Hemming felt as if he had slipped past the tender skin of the real world and was drifting around behind the scenes, watching the worn cogs and gears that made the Earth spin and the birds fly. The mechanisms of life, of feeling, and their rawness was suddenly evident and suddenly overwhelming. There were sharp edges within every single living creature, hidden from the world by whatever form their flesh might take.
What did Dagrun think of him? The dusky male had never thought of it before, at least any more than in passing, but now the question seemed to have a gravity to it that he could not escape. All of a sudden the perceptions that others had of him became important and influential, and though Hemming had essentially been told that he was valued he somehow doubted the idea. It wasn't that he felt as if he shouldn't be cherished, not at all, but just the unfamiliarity of the feeling made it absurd. He (at least he thought) had never been prized before this, and so why should he be now? With the misplaced feeling came a sense of responsibility that had never lingered within him before. He was a wanderer, true, and he loved to put new earth beneath his paws, but deep inside he was as resistant to change as everybody else was.
If he had slipped into the hidden workings of the world, a ladder was being dropped to him now. Hemming had been tracing a line through the sand with his fingertip to make a moat when a voice slipped past the rubbery skin of real life into the glass shard jungle of his mind. The slender wolf turned his head toward the creature that had formed the word and merely stared for a moment. Had he slipped so far in that he had come out on a new side, where creatures were similar to the ones from where he came, only different enough to make it seem like a dream? The wolf before him was huge, with markings unlike most anything that Hemming could even imagine. In the odd yellow and pink light that bounced across the waters, the other's eyes were almost otherworldly.
Hemming contemplated him for a moment, amber eyes watching the large creature as if to find some clue that he had drifted into a dream, before replying tentatively, "Hello." A finger lingered in the sand, ears were perked forward, and mouth stayed partly open after muttering the greeting. Dagrun shuffled her feathers a little and seemed to scrutinize the other for just a moment with her beady little eyes. She was one of short attention, though, and quickly turned her eyes back to the sky, watching things that only birds could see.
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[html] ooc: Phooey, I'm so sorry I let this thread slip through the cracks!! ;__; Your writing is beautiful, by the way...
When the stranger and his otherworldly bird did not startle or flee, he let a sheepish smile flit about his countenance, self-conscious under their scrutiny. He swallowed nervously, running his broad hand through the white snarls of his shaggy mane. "I... didn't mean to intrude," he murmured, voice deep in his chest. His timbre was so unfamiliar to his ears now, lower than he remembered it being. After a moment's hesitation, he sank to his haunches, squatting before the sand to be on the same level as the other wolf. He hated being stared at.
The dying sunlight was dappling the ground, adding painterly hues to the two werewolves' fur. It was so still, so peaceful and yet - it felt like the calm right before the drop, as though something were about to happen. Perhaps it was the sun's descent into darkness that gave him that impression, or the niggling feeling of urgency towards something he could not put words to. Change was abundant, though. He had already changed his very form, risen up onto two legs after five years of rejecting the gene he'd been born with. Truly, none were more obstinate about not changing than Slay. Was he finally realizing, as some mid-life crisis struck, that a little change would not be the end of the world?
"...Your bird," he finally said, ice-pale eyes deep with concentration. He did not want to ask too personal a question, for he could sense that she was some extension of this wolf - and indeed, sense that she was a "she" - but curiosity was such a driving impulse... "She... reminds me of someone. Someone I've only met in my dreams." He rested his chin on his palm, tilting his head at a vaguely quizzical angle. He had trouble remembering the dreams when the Animal was there. He knew the creature did it on purpose, too.
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[html] No worries! Thank you, your writing is lovely!
In the end, did it really matter what others thought of him? His answer would be a tentative yes, as a man's reputation was one of the few things to outlive him. The idea of having to make a positive impression was a burden, and though Hemming seemed to have done it without thinking much, that weight was starting to become real. In fact, it was one of the few things that seemed real at this moment, as the sun reached out its shaky light-beam arms to the horizon, the dark night in tow. As the male's fingers lingered in the sand as if tethered by some unremarkable thought, as Dagrun watched the sky with a nonchalance that was almost enviable, the rest of the world seemed heavy. It was the only word the wolf could use to describe it, the only adjective he could grapple with and win. The sand was pushing up on him, the sky pushing down, and the air was wrapping around his face as if it was a kidnapper trying to smother him. Words, fragmented lines of poetry and thought, drifted through his mind, and the wolf thought briefly and vacantly, Maybe it is a kidnapper. The earth spun around and every living creature had no choice but to go with it, they relied on its sustenance, and they were practically unable to leave its gravity. Hemming and the rest of the kidnappees spun around endlessly, and many of them - the tawny male included - had fallen in love with their kidnapper.
Other realities became secondary, and despite all the laws of physics that Hemming had read about and failed to understand, time seemed to stop. Perhaps this night was a dream, the only place where wolves could, albeit temporarily, escape from the hard lines of physical law. Though this scene was surely something strange, especially for the wolf who was so prone to cheerful fantasy and levity, Hemming felt as if it was completely commonplace, a sure symptom of muddled dreaming. Through the pores of the real world he had gone, and now he was wandering in the dream world. The other's coat, though not an impossible coloration, was surely caused by the magic little glitches the brain was so wonderfully prone to. His eyes seemed to contain all the stars of the heavens, the nebulae and the miles and miles and miles of empty space that lay between them. What a lonesome place, outer space, what a strange quality to have trapped within flesh and layers of living cells. In a flight of fancy so wild that Hemming was not sure in which world he sat, he wondered if this wolf was a representation of the universe, turned inside out so that the cosmos swam inside and, well, what really was on the outside of the universe? Perhaps there was a universe that lingered within each living creature, and the reason that theirs was expanding was not dark energy but an all-you-can-eat buffet in another dimension completely. Something about the air, the sky and this strange wolf before him made the thought seem worth thinking, though perhaps it was not.
Hemming still had a very poor understanding of what Spirit Guides were. In some way, he knew, he and Dagrun were connected, but in what manner he had no clue. Surely she was not truly a part of him, for he had lived so long without her, or, perhaps, she was a part of him that had grown and budded off right before their union, as if the journey that the AniWayans took to find their Spirit Guide caused them to grow it themselves. She was rather unlike him, too, at least on a shallow level. At this moment he felt as if they were conjoined, but awkwardly, as if part of his brain reached up through those scrawny little legs and established itself within the body of a bird. He could feel her feelings, and were they not often his own? Was she the manifestation of a part of the wolf that had previously been within his own mind? It was hard to say, hard to think any thoughts that did not have fragile gossamer edges, hard to come up with an idea that held any water.
When he spoke of her, Dagrun turned her black eyes to the wolf, ruffling her feathers quietly. For a moment Hemming could tell that she was surveying him, and it seemed completely plausible that Dagrun had a secret night life that he didn't know about. It was another of his questions of the spirits; were they stuck in their physical manisfestations, or were they able to weave through the fabric of reality and of imagination, dreams, with equal ease? The idea was compelling, the other male's contemplative gesture making a feeling swell up within the gray wolf, as if he might have some kind of evidence that Spirit Guides were not stuck in their earthly form. As if to help the wolf remember, as if the name might prompt a sudden remembrance, Hemming said gently, "Her name is Dagrun."
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