The smells, however, were amazing... elegant, not overbearing, maybe meats and cheeses, the fresh aroma of bread mixed in with a few faint spices. My stomach actually growled. The conversation had a nice, low roll to it, which lulled me into sleep like a lullaby. I fought it, though, wanting to know more, watching the woman move from one cluster of people to the next, talking, her hand lightly brushing another, or running over an arm, in a comforting, friendly manner.
They all seemed to get along, to be having nice, easy conversation. I didn’t see laughing, or anyone acting out or up, but just calm conversation, friendly by all appearances. The sight brought comfort, even though the drink, and the woman’s brief presence, had calmed me and made me pain free.
I figured I should find myself thankful for the mercy they’d shown me. All that could make this better was if they had also saved my wolf. I struggled to get upset, not knowing where he was, if he was alive or dead. I thought that, earlier, someone had told me he was alive, but with my thoughts the way they were, I couldn’t remember. The words from below floated to me, more so as I closed my eyes. They did play out like a nonsensical song in my mind as I fell back onto that blackness, the ever-coming blackness that plagued my current existence, taking more of my time, I could only imagine, than my waking states.
Lex, I thought last as it swallowed my consciousness up.
Chapter Seven
I dreamt of my wolf again as I slept. Or, at least, it seemed a dream at first. Later, I may have called it a meeting of consciousnesses, more than the fevered nightmare I’d had last time. Either way, whatever it was, he appeared as my wolf to me, and in the state I’d left him last in reality, right before the vampire rescuer had scooped me up and taken me away.
This time, no woods, glorious and otherworldly or otherwise, were there as a backdrop. Rather, he stood beside me while the two of us were surrounded by a stifling darkness, as if in the middle of nothing at all. There was no temperature to feel, and no shadows or even shades of grey to see. I couldn’t hear so much as white noise outside of the sound of his breathing or mine; which one, I wasn’t quite sure. There existed only the two of us in this place, only I couldn’t see or feel myself. Nothing touched me, and I touched nothing. That sense seemed not dulled, but turned off, as if I only observed, was only a consciousness at first.
Regardless, or most importantly, I could see him, and from the look of love in his eyes, he could see me in this dreamy haze of pitch. My emotional reaction came back into my awareness first, bringing me back into the body I still couldn’t see in my view of things. His fear hit me like a wooden stick against a tight drum, me being the head hit, of course. The tightness of his body, his rush of emotions, made my body vibrate and then shiver, resonating his anxieties and dread. Even together in this state, I reached out for him with a hand I wasn’t exactly sure existed. A blur of flesh color, my hand I surmised, slipped right through the mirage of his body when I gave the act my best attempt. This just made things worse for us both. I don’t know how or why, but it did.
All my life, when I was scared or in need, my wolf would appear in my dreams and curl around me, a physical and warm shield against the world. He would feed to me, through our connected psyches, the ideas of protection and being loved, cherished, making me feel as if I mattered in this world, had a purpose, as if there were indeed a point to my suffering, and something I could eventually offer back to those who suffered like me. Being of use to others had always been important to me, and as both a motherless child and then an adult orphan, with no family, that basic, everyday usefulness often could be hard to come by on a steady basis.
Now, maybe because I was not in peril, at least not any that the vampires would let me feel anyway, he came to me, and I couldn’t touch him. I could only feel his rising panic, and the tightness it rendered in my core. I couldn’t take or offer, only witness, and I hadn’t a need for that. I needed answers, hopefully ones that brought about reassurances as to his state of being in this world. Simply, all I needed was to know for sure that he was alive, also healing from his injuries.
I kept trying, urging him to come closer, even if only in my mind, as the silence of this dark world grew as deafening as the white noise that didn’t exist. It made no sense, but I ached to hear something beyond this rush of breath, and strained my ears, in fact. They hurt, though for the most part, I couldn’t feel my body, not really, though I sensed it was there, and had moments of physical response to emotions, but it all was too fleeting to be real, if that made sense at all. I couldn’t describe it even to myself, this state.