there is a shadow of a dream about you

Something was wrong.

No, not wrong… different?

Unusual.

He blinked rapidly and gave his head a quick shake, as if the motion would clear the haze that felt wrapped like a living pressure around his skull.

Where was he?

Standing on a mossy patch of stones, he lifted one dark paw and then pressed it down against the rocks, testing the solidity of the earth beneath his feet. Expecting… what exactly? For them to shift, to cave beneath the weight of his body and swallow him whole? To ripple like water and dispel the illusion of structure? The gentle pads of his paw touched stone and felt soft moss, and the earth did not fall away beneath him. He lifted his other leg and tried again, and still – no change.

Element whined as a sense of unease rippling down his spine and causing the darkest fur along his spine to stand on edge. Why was he uneasy? He took a few more tentative steps forward, like a doe learning to take its first steps, only he was not under a watcher mother’s gaze. His ear’s flicked as he turned his head to survey the area and saw nothing but a vast sweep of mountainside. No, he was alone. Alone and… lost?

Was he lost?

Another whine escaped him and he stopped his cautious steps, standing rigid among the rocks. His head felt filled with morning fog; it pulsed across his vision and threatened to envelop him entirely. Would that be so bad – to just stand statuesque among the mist and let it wash over him? He wasn’t sure. There was fear and uncertainty brewing in his belly, in stark contrast with the dispassionate fog lacing gentle tendrils through his mind. He stood paralyzed by the warring experiences happening within him, staring out before him in wide-eyed wonder.

I am… here?
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The matriarch had informed @Dirge along with @Altair of her intent to travel briefly away and see if she could find anything else beyond their present reach. None had come to the mountain they resided on, and so Hydra took it upon herself to search elsewhere for any other answers she might find. She asked @Lyra to look after the mountain without a name along with them, only to travel to another. Strangest of all was no new canine scent to be recognized along the way. It was most curious... and unlike the Wilderness she had sought to be Queen of. That, to her and several others, she had been.

Well, it might make things that much easier for her to do so here. Protector of her family, certainly; but she was a woman who always aspired for more. 

By the time she arrived to Stone Mountain, she sought a fresh source of water. She did not think it would be so difficult to find—the only thing Hydra could not seem to find were more wolves. It was the singular reason she had traveled alone; the truth of it was that Hydra had begun to imagine the three of them somehow alone in this place. That the howl she had heard some time ago was but a figment of her imagination. Her son was out there, she had thought—had she been wrong? 

No. That, she could not believe. 

A whine caused her ear to swivel. At once, she was at attention; her gaze swept the scene, her ears pricked. Was it a trick of the wind, or...? No, another whine; Hydra loosed a curious one, herself, then, as she made way toward the direction of it. Could it truly be another wolf? The wind not in her favor, she could not know (yet); she would find out.

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The faint sound of a curious whine came towards him on the wind, accompanied by the strange scent of another. He had thought he had already been frozen in place, but as the scent swept across his senses something in him shifted. What had been a low simmer of fear in his belly boiled over, pouring down into his limbs and freezing them in place. Fear was a strange thing, running so cold and so hot together.

Again a shiver rippled down his back and he released a shuddering breath he hadn’t realized he had been holding. His teeth chattered and he gave a quick shake of his head again, still feeling like the fog had its hold on him. He couldn’t think clearly – and someone was coming.

Where am I?

Every time the thought drifted through his consciousness it felt like it just moved past him, impossible to engage. There was some kind of weight to it – beneath it? – that he could not bring himself to investigate. Something lurked among his thoughts, distant and heavy and sluggish.

He took another ragged breath, struggling to get the air past the tightness in his chest. Unable yet to make sense of words when he could not make sense of himself, he whined again, quietly, fearfully, eyes locked on the ridge before him the wind trickled over.
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The matriarch heard him again, and was encouraged to move all the swifter. Tired though she was from traveling here, it seemed one thing that remained with her was her endurance... and her strength of will, too. Hydra was determined to find the wolf behind the voice, and so she would. It took some time—there was no scents to go off of. It was as though the wolf here had not wandered the paths of this mountain at all, what with there being no trail to follow. 

She moved up a winding path, and when she curved around its bend she saw him there. He was near a ledge, as she could see the path went no further than where it was he stood. Pausing, she observed him; one ear cupped backward as she attempted to ascertain if he was alone. By the sound of it, yes... she did not yet step nearer to him, not wanting to unnerve him. What she could smell was fear, and this caused her to become alert. 

Hydra did not know it might be her that caused him any anxiety, nor did she believe that. What she knew now was that she and her family were not alone in this place. And perhaps this wolf had answers. “You there,” she greeted in her low drawl, “what is amiss?” First, though, to address the fear; if they had an adversary, well, she figured she ought to know.

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Time ticked forward in an unsteady rhythm – wasn’t time supposed to be steady? He found that trying to count the seconds as they passed was a skill that escaped him, as if he could only get too far before they disappeared into the mist inside his head. He was unsure how long he stood before the figure appeared, ghostlike in his vision.

No, not ghostlike. Real. Solid. He squinted for a moment, locking his eyes on hers just briefly enough to see if he could sense anything behind them before lowering his gaze to a more respectable level. There had been something in those eyes – she was not just part of the mist.

Words came to him next, and time fluttered again like an unsteady heartbeat. He was unsure how long it took him to respond while he rolled the question around in his head, trying to make sense of the sound of another’s voice. “I…” a pause, another shiver while he tried to find the words, taken momentarily aback by the taste of his own voice on his tongue. “I don’t know.” He glanced at her again, another fleeting sweep of his gray eyes across her own to once again confirm she was really there.

His limbs still felt locked in place, and he was growing ever more convinced that this time if he tried to move his legs, the stone and the moss would not let him. He glanced down at his paws, expecting to see a swath of green moss having grown over them, securing him to the earth. There was nothing but dark fur – no restraints. The earth was not holding him hostage. So why was he so stuck?

“I’m…” another pause, jerking this time, as the heartbeat of time tried to find a more rhythmic pattern. “I’m not sure why I’m here,” he admitted quietly, more to himself than to her. Saying it aloud set something else in motion inside him that spun in his gut, twisting uncomfortably. He could not help as another small whine escaped him, barely audible and almost pained. He felt young, and lost, and acutely aware that he was somehow neither of those things.
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The furs along her nape seemed to lift as his gaze found hers, but she relaxed when his gaze shifted. Not too bothered by it in the first place, given the circumstances and their location, it was more instinct that dictated her response than anything else. He spoke then, and she considered quietly to herself. Was not knowing good, or was it bad? On one hand, there did not seem to be an immediate threat—on the other... well, if there was, he did not seem to be aware of it. Shifting her weight and moving forward to investigate around them, she could smell no predators... of their ilk, or otherwise. 

“May I?” she requested, taking a step toward him though waiting to go any further; he seemed unsettled, and she wondered the cause of it. She could smell no blood, and a good look at him revealed he had not been attacked recently. What, then? His next words were more cryptic, as Hydra thought on them; licking her chops, she drawled, “what a profound thought. Is this more existential in nature, then?” A bemused smirk, not knowing he meant it in the literal sense. Sighing softly, she revealed more candidly, “not many are fortunate to ever find out. The best thing for us to do is live, then—and see if we can.” 

Hydra was no peacekeeper, and poor when it came to helping others in the matter of the heart. It was likely a poor attempt at comfort, but it was an attempt nevertheless. Her gaze searched him for any indication that she may have somehow helped, shifting her weight. His whine caused her maternal instincts to stir, and the matriarch raised a foreleg as though she intended to step closer to him without his acceptance of it. But she thought better of it, placing that same leg down and waiting, first, for him to allow her near.

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Her presence gradually began to add some structure back to his world. It was as if a heat was rising off of her, baking away layers of the mist and leaving room for solidity to slower shimmer into existence. “May I?” He blinked once, realizing he had been entranced by the way presence drifted from her and added depth to this new world. She’d spoken to him again, and he shifted his gaze from the air around her to her legs as she took a step forward. Element gave a quick nod to express permission of the approach.

Focusing on her words helped to melt some of the ice in his limbs, and he shifted his front paws tentatively, wincing at the tightness that had developed in his shoulders while he had stood, for who knows how long, still as the nearby mountains. He parsed over her words, feeling something else shift into place as the well worn grooves of language made themself known to him again. "That's part of the problem", he started, wavering between a growing feeling of self-consciousness and the more overwhelming desire to figure out what was happening. "I feel like I've done it before." Another shift, all four limbs this time, still unsteady. "-The living part, that is." That didn't make sense, and the words poured heavy from his mouth, suffused with that strange weight he could not make sense of.

He glanced from the ground towards her again, locking on the raised foreleg as she seemed to contemplate whether to come towards him or not. He was struck again by the fear, which had reduced back to a simmer but boiling over again as he wondered what her touch could tell him. What if she walked towards him, reached out, and he just... disappeared. In his current state it felt possible, as if his grip on this plane was still tenuous at best. Feeling both afraid and more than a little desperate, he lowered his head towards her, expression meek and wanting. "I just showed up here," he tried to explain. "But I'm not sure how long I've been here", he added quickly, unsure how to elaborate further. "I was just... somewhere else before. A long time ago."
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Once he consented, the matriarch did not dally; she moved closer to him, snuffling at his furs none too quietly. No trace of other wolves, and oddly no trace of this place, really. Her features did not betray the disconcertion she felt, and now his own words seemed to ground her. “Of course you have,” she recognized, withdrawing to get a better look at him. He was a physical, real thing—that was a relief in of itself. There had been no illusions she had faced, but it had simply been herself, her husband, and Altair. Her son, her son was out there... she would find him, too. “I have, too; or, well, I am. Life has not ended,” she hummed. Death was a thing she remembered providing to others when they transgressed against her, her family—her pack. 

It was his next words that caused Hydra to ponder further. She remembered waking, entangled with Lyra now; the strangeness of it all. What that must be like, for someone to wake entirely alone, if he had. Hydra neared him once more, offering him the stability of her presence to start, at least. “I am Hydra Ostrega,” she introduced then, “I awoke under... similar circumstances,” she began to explain, thinking in silence for a moment as she gazed into the horizon behind him and before her. Looking to him, she asked so as to be sure, “you are alone here?”

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At first touch, the tension that had coursed along his skin turned to static; a shimmering, vibrating sensation across his body that caused him to exhale sharply in surprise. “You’re real”, he murmured quietly, voice tinged with awe as he pressed his snout to her shoulder and took a breath of her. He felt a deep pang as the moment they inspected each other passed and she withdrew, the sudden distance causing an ache he did not understand. The pause was enough time for him to feel sheepish of his words; of the relief they contained that had been brought by this stranger.

The static shimmered once more and the beating of time once again lurched closer to falling into a rhythm as he listened to her words. "You did?" he whispered, taking a small step towards her again. "Do you know why? Or... when?" he added rapidly, growing eager at the possibility that she may be able to give him more information. He stopped his approach when she asked his name, derailed momentarily by the question being voiced aloud. He'd already asked himself this, felt confident in the answer, but was unsure why. "Element," he offered. Another pause as something clicked into place inside him, displacing more of the mist. "My name." He knew he'd spoken a truth, but oh, it was only the surface, wasn't it? "I'm alone. I'm pretty sure. I haven't seen anyone but you. I... remember others. I think. But they feel like a dream".
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His epiphany was met with something of a smirk, perhaps the first readable emotion to have crossed her features throughout their interaction. “Of course I am,” she confirmed, “as real as you are,” she hummed lowly. He was real; she could feel him, see him, smell him, hear him. His questions following made perfect sense to ask, and she answered them readily. “A few days ago,” she acknowledged, thinking on the passing of time here. “Why, though... no,” she shook her head. “I have spent some time wondering, but it was time wasted; why seems less important than what is to be done about it,” and she already knew what she would do. 

 But it felt wrong to leave him out of it. To leave him alone again. She had work to do... and perhaps that work might help him. “Element,” she repeated, “you need not be alone any longer. My family I have found takes residence upon that mountain in the distance,” now she turns to stand parallel to him, gesturing to the snowy peak in the far distance. “I seek to rebuild. And to continue to find the things that have been lost. And if you would like,” she drawled, looking to him now, “you may join me in this venture.” Her tail swayed slowly behind her. She would not be offended if he did not, but... perhaps they could figure things out together, along the way.

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It happened with her words - "as real as your are" - and suddenly the creaking, grinding gears that had been protesting so loudly slipped into their proper grooves and worked in unison. Time stopped moving in its irregular, arrhythmic heartbeat and found normalcy, the seconds following her words behaving as seconds should - briefly, and passing. He took another full breath, body shuddering as the static became wholeness and he became... something again. Himself, surely, but what version?

"A few days..." he repeated, musing over the concept of days as they began to make sense to him again. "You said you woke up also. But you had family with you? Or you found them over the days?" This lit some hope in him; he could feel the sparking of it as warmth as it tried to displace the anxiety. Her next offer fueled the hope, lighting it ablaze as he followed her gaze towards the snowy peak in the distance. As he took it in, a flash of memory struck him - a dark mountain wrapped in shadows, high peaks, a previous beginning so long ago, when someone else had met him at a mountain's borders and offered him a home. He had the feeling that déjà vu would be no stranger to him while he adapted to... whatever this life was.

He looked to her, seeing the remnants of the smirk on her maw and matching a fraction of it himself, head tilted timidly. "I lived on a mountain once", he said quietly. "However long ago. It was my first home". His tail, still and stiff throughout the whole encounter thus far gave a single fluttering wag. Realizing that maybe wasn't a direct answer, he raised a brow and forced a fraction of a smile on the same side. "Meaning I like them". Maybe still not clear. "Meaning I'd like to join you. In finding. Or rebuilding. Both, I guess". More importantly, in not being alone in this strange new world.
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“I woke up alongside my sister. My mate and my son... they found me,” she drawled, “and I called for anyone else. One of my eldest answered,” she hummed, “but he has not found his way back yet. Osiris is his name,” she informed, “with emerald eyes and tawny furs,” she remembered fondly. But it was not enough to simply remember; she wanted to see him again. Watching Element, she observed his gaze turn faraway; she wondered what was upon his own mind. Family of his own, perhaps? The answer came soon enough, and her tail waved. 

She was happy to have him come home with her. Kindred spirits in the new unknown, he could at the least rebuild and become a part of her family himself. It was a new dawn in their lives, one they could walk into together to explore. She took a step forward to begin to lead the way, and drawled, “I was born upon one myself,” she recalled fondly, “and I was a Queen there,” that much she knew. Some other details were strange, fuzzy; faces, names, moments in time... though the harder she tried to focus upon them, the more distant they felt. 

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It did not strike at his heart to hear her mention her mate and her children; his draw towards the dark female was a form of desperate attachment, that of a drowning man clasping too hard to the neck of the first one to try to save him. Part of his mind - his rational mind, forced into quiet withdrawal in this strange and foreign world where it had not yet found new purpose - tried to warn him, to not hold so tightly to a stranger he knew nothing about and nothing of. But was drowning really so far off an analogy? He'd awoken in a fog, paralyzed, stricken, stuck to the spot. This stranger was his first breath, this self-titled Queen who had approached him without hostility and had not taken advantage of his fear.

"That sounds..." He realized he was not sure what to say. His mind momentarily reeled and he sat back suddenly, plopping on his haunches and frowning as he looked away from her and to the ground. To wake with a mate and a child. Something in his heart lurched - memories again of whispers in his ear, cold nights with warmth at his side, and the presence of another dancing before him, never quite his but never quite not. His heart ached suddenly for the things he could not recall and his ears flattened as he shot Hydra an apologetic glance. "I'm... missing something", he voiced sadly, unsure of how to elaborate. "I'm sorry if it leaves me vague. But I'm glad you didn't wake up alone. " But she too was not whole, it seemed, as she spoke of her missing child. "I'd be happy to help you look for him," he offered earnestly. A moment passed as he debated what to add, before finally settling on "I don't quite remember what I've lost yet. I can't tell you much about myself other than the fact that I know..." what to say, actually? His ears shifted, pressing back against his skull once more. "You said you were a Queen. I don't know that I ever would have called myself a King, but I know that I meant something. To... someone. To some place." Again, the sound of a far off waterfall echoed in his ears, and he was briefly consumed by the struggle of trying to place it in his memory. He glanced toward her again when the moment passed, something sad and sheepish flashing across his maw.

What was he trying to say? To prove? What was it he so desperately was looking for in this stranger's approval? He stood, ducking his head below hers briefly in a show of faith. "I mean to say that I know there's something I can offer. I can't articulate it yet." A moment of anxiety again, as he felt himself notch another mark of trust into this stranger who had approached him in the fog. Who are you. "Will you show me?" He finally asked, unable to keep a hint of pleading whine out of his voice - the last remnants of the terror he'd been trapped in escaping in his words. "The place you found, and the other's you know." Further proof that things here could be real.

That he existed among others in this world, this strange world he'd awoken in.
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Hydra listened to him try to remember, and felt that familiar feeling of frustration for the absence of what she felt she had once known so clearly herself being gone to her. There, in her mind, but somehow out of reach. “We will find the things we are missing,” she assured not only him, then, but herself, “one way or another. Be it sooner, or later,” here she nodded firmly, believing it for herself. In her life, the truth had always found a way to reveal itself; she did not doubt that even in this place, that at least would stand true. 

And as he continued, she hummed, stopping when he had and expressing, “well, you mean something to me, now,” she informed, her tail swaying behind her, “and that might not mean much to you, but in becoming one of my own you become family to me and mine. That is what my pack has always been to me,” she drawled. Blood or not, they were all protected by her—by tooth and claw. 

They would find out what all he could provide, but, “as long as you can hunt,” she grinned, “that is what is important. The rest will come—or else can be learned,” her tail waved again, then. “I can, and I will. Come then, Element. To the next chapter of our lives,” she invited, gesturing to her side. Once he was there, she would lead the way to home.

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The assurances the dark leader offered him were a lifeline, and he held tightly to the words. His head throbbed with discordant thoughts, memories of prior obligations bubbling to the surface but turning to vapor. Every time he tried to focus on one, to nurture it slowly and give it proper shape, it dissipated. Trying to make sense of the thoughts mattered - but what mattered more right now was the chance he was being given. An opportunity for safety, for structure, for company in this strange new world where the rules did not make sense to him.

Just beginning to soften as the fear inside him dwindled to an ember, he stood again and gently tapped his peppered snout briefly to her chin. "Thank you". Further words escaped him and he could only offer a small smile, and an "I can hunt".

At least he thought he could. He'd hunted before, right? Of course he had. ...right?

Well, he'd find out. Trying not to worry too much about it, he fell into step at her side and followed.
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