I wanted to sleep tonight. I wanted to dream. It didn't have to be something beautiful... It could be mundane, or even ugly, and I would just be happy it was mine.
But magic had its own plan for me.
Between fistfuls of sleep, a story is taking shape. It starts as a tangle of shadows, brambled and barbed. Slick words flash out of the darkness like silver-bellied fish at the lake. They rise from below tonight, up through the dark, smooth floor. I can't make out the words yet, but I can grasp the hulking shape of it, and I know-- I know tonight's story has teeth.
Sister is sleeping beside me, her heavy breath tickling my withers. I slowly slip from our tangled embrace, careful careful not to wake her. Her lips are twitching with roiling dreams of the ocean. Not the ocean everyone knows, but our ocean. Mother's ocean. I imagine in her dream she's running, cutting through the lush air like an unwieldable blade, and as I softly-slowly leave the room I'm smiling for her and her wild dreams, and her wild heart.
I step into the streets, into the cool moonlight. Furfur is with me. I only know he's there for the bond between us, for he clings to the shadows and moves without a sound. We don't share words, as usual. He doesn't ask me where I'm going, I don't tell. The truth is, and I think he's aware of this, I don't know. We walk like this for some time, weaving through the alleys studded with moonlight and shadow.
When Furfur suddenly growls at something behind us, I whirl around and lower my head. Later I will be surprised at how quickly I moved, and maybe a little proud. I must look far older than I am, when I use my horn as a weapon and not a compass. It's all instinct, and adrenaline. I'm poised to kill, although I don't even know if I'm capable of such a thing-- but whoever approaches doesn't need to know that.
Furfur is hunched down in front of me, hackles bristled and teeth bared. "Who's there?" I call into the darkness, carefully hiding the tremor in my voice. But the tone of it curls up at the end, like a mutt's tail. I hear what it sounds like, all girlish uncertainty, and it makes me cringe. I decide not to say anything else, not yet.
@
