Sometimes people writing about having a dream will say something like, 'they woke up, but it was a dream instead of being awake.' But that's wrong. That's not how dreams are at all.
Aridha didn't suddenly come to consciousness in her dream. She was just...there. As if she'd always been there. She didn't remember anything outside of it. It was, she would think later, disturbingly like being awake.
She wasn't sure where she was. It was dark, and warm and humid. The ground she was sitting on wasn't like normal earth or stone. It was soft and a little moist. Moss maybe, but warmer. There was a sound. A repeating, low-pitched whooshing noise. Something breathing heavily. Something big.
High above her, a silver-white ball of light appeared. The moon hung there. Only...then a black dot swerved down its surface and Aridha frowned, trying to see what it was. Something moving between her and the moon? Or something ON the moon?
Then the moon blinked. Underneath it a jagged crack opened in the sky, lined with mismatched teeth that glimmered in the moonlight.
...it's time.
In the light of the...the moon? The eye? Aridha could see the bare silhouette of a monstrous head. A snout, shaggy fur, tusks, antlers, all hinted at without ever quite being completely revealed. It almost seemed to change, moment to moment. She'd see the curled horns of a ram...then it would blink and when its eye opened again there would be branching stag-like points. Its other eye was swollen and closed.
Aridha jumped to her feet, almost losing her balance as the ground undulated under her for a second.
The monster looked up...and far, far overhead Aridha could feel the moon. The real moon. Not a light in the sky but a PULL.
"IT'S TIME!!"
The beast did not speak, but Aridha understood it all the same. A thunderous cacophony of roars and bellows and shrill cries and shrieks all screaming the same raw exultation. Tonight RUN it would HUNT be free again, after EAT what felt like forever.
It reached out with talons, each of which seemed as large as Aridha's whole body...and stopped.
From the darkness around the monster something flashed with a pure metallic gleam. When Aridha squinted a little she realized she could see it there...thin vertical lines that passed between her and the creature. What was it??
The inky midnight black over their heads parted, and the MOON was there with them. Aridha felt the pull herself now; some corner of her brain still remembered the old days in caves, alongside rivers, hunting with rocks and sticks. RUN. HUNT. EAT. It was heady. It was freedom, of a kind. Forget everything, be no one and simply live.
But that same mad light illuminated something else. Around the beast were thin silvery bars, woven like a cage that came up from the ground. The ground that was pink and vaguely purple and smooth, yet soft. It reminded Aridha of her first time cleaning a kill after hunting; the organs of the doe had looked a little like this. The cage was clearly unnatural though, erupting from the 'flesh' at her feet. Even so, it seemed pitifully fragile looking compared to the creature's size and strength.
The exultation of anticipated freedom soured instantly to a frenzied rage. With a multi-voiced roar of fury it threw itself at the bars; tore at them with claws and talons and teeth and spines, gored with horns, battered with cloven hooves. Each time it was struck, the silver bars shone white for a moment, but they did not bend. Not even a little.
Aridha wasn't sure how long she watched. There was something hypnotic about seeing the creature captive, witnessing the transcendence of its wrath. Finally, eventually, it paused. She turned...not sure how to leave, or if she COULD leave, but satisfied that the druids' handiwork would hold. This time at least.
"STOP!"
She paused. Was it...addressing her? Slowly Aridha turned to look back. Its vast lunatic eye bulged at her through a gap between the bars, at head height.
"LET ME OUT!"
There was a mountain of difference between simply observing it while it seemed unaware of her presence, and facing its undivided attention. Its desire was like a physical thing; a line with hooks snagging at her clothes and skin, trying to reel her in.
"Nnno," she managed to reply, pushing the word unwillingly past her tongue and lips. "I won't have yeh be usin' me tae hurt people."
The bars turned white and STAYED white. Aridha realized it was pushing against them, all at once...straining to push through them to bend them to break them...to get to her. They didn't budge.
All the while that white eye loomed, bigger around than her head, perfectly round. Staring unblinking.
It took all of Aridha's courage, combined with her sheer stubbornness and spite, to turn her back on that monster. Even contained as it was.
"STOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOP!!" it thundered in a choir of animal wails.
"I'm not letting you use me," she repeated, trying to keep the quaver out of her voice. The old man hadn't mentioned this would happen!
"YOU. USE. ME."
Aridha shook her head, took a step away, then stopped. Wait. What?
She looked back.
The eye was still there, but she saw something behind its round-wide glare. Desperation.
"What are you talking about?"
The eye rolled in its socket, then focused again on Aridha's.
"LIKE BEFORE. LIKE NOW. YOU. USE. ME."
And the eye, like the moon, was a pull...and Aridha felt herself being drawn insideto where she was running through tall grass a spear in one hand while two wolves bounded just alongside her. They'd been the first cubs of the wild wolves who'd been lurking around her tribe, sneaking away with scraps but kept at arms length by hunters and their fear of fire. Most of the cubs had taken after their parents, but some...some had been more curious. Playful and endearing in their infancy, they had tumbled into camp and swiftly charmed tribesmen. The other wolves abandoned them to their fate, but humans had picked up where wolves left off. Now they hunted with them, lived with them, ate with them...where an intense flash of awareness detonated behind her eyes as she realized all at once what was being suggested.
"You...want me to tame you?" she asked, numb with shock.
The bars flashed white again.
"RUN. WITH ME. HUNT. WITH ME. EAT. WITH ME."
It took her a second, with that baleful mad eye beaming at her, and the distant pull of the moon overhead, and the weirdly organic 'floor' she was standing on...but Aridha started to understand.
With me. A partnership. It would sacrifice ALL freedom for SOME freedom. She would lead the hunt, guide the hunt...and it would be there with her. Not free, but not trapped. And for her...well, she'd felt its strength. Its uncanny vitality. Could it be hers?
Would that be enough to kill the thing she hunted? The creature that had attacked her? Should she turn the curse against itself?
"How?" Aridha asked.
"REACH INSIDE."
She hesitated. The thing in there was made of mouths and claws. "With...my hand?"
"REACH INSIDE."
It made sense. It couldn't reach out. If there was to be a bridge between them, one she controlled...she'd have to make the first move.
"Rana would not approve of this," Aridha moaned...and slipped a hand between the bars of the cage, poking into the formless black that writhed inside.
Something seized it.
Aridha woke up suddenly, the very cliche of someone startling themselves awake out of a nightmare. She sat up with a cry and snatched her hand back, but because her hand wasn't being held by anything, it whipped back and smacked into a wall with a thud. She yelped and pressed the sore spot to her mouth.
Then she remembered where she was and called out, "Rana?"
"We are ready mi'lady. I must warn you though that we will need to push on well past dark, it will be tiresome for some." he says frowning at those that will take turns walking.
