i'm told that to be human i must stand still
you can try your hardest, but i never will
As the induced sleep carries her under, she fitfully begins to dream, succumbing to the wild effects of the flowers.
---
When she awakens, she first knows confusion. Groggily, she lifts her head from the crushed stalks of flower and grass, peering around her with a hazy gaze. The first thing she notices is that she is alone, the others who had come with her nowhere to be seen. She finds that curious, even in her foggy, half-asleep state. Wrong somehow, as though she had woken in a world not her own.
After a moment, she pulls herself to her feet. With a stretch and a wide yawn, she shakes her shaggy frame roughly before padding forward a few steps. She is warily curious as she attempts to discern what might have happened. What might have come to steal away her compatriots.
She smells smoke, but at first this does not alarm her. It is familiar, carrying with it the weight and warmth of her father and brother, reminding her of them (just as the sea reminds her of mother). But as the smoke grows thicker and the sound of crackling louder, she recognizes danger. Recognizes that this is not her family. That there is no safety and security here.
Perhaps this is why everyone had fled, but why would they leave a young wolf pup to sleep in the blaze? Perhaps they had not seen her?
Or perhaps there is something terribly wrong here.
Her instincts tell her this is not right. Horses do not simply disappear. Perhaps she dreams, her body slumped in a flower strewn meadow. Or perhaps she had been abandoned before an inferno.
Whatever her instincts might scream at her, she knows only that this feels far too real, the heat growing much to intense. And so, she does what any clever young wolf would do: she turns and flees.
But she is too late. She had dallied too long in her indecisiveness and the hungry flames had eaten their way around the edges of the meadow. The edges of consciousness turn ragged and dark as fear begins to settle, a nameless dread curling in her gut. Her body begins to feel leaden, her mind sluggish. The terrible curse of a nightmare that feels too much like reality. The terror that eats at one until limbs become useless and slow.
The fire licks at her, and with a yelp, she snaps out of it. Turning, she runs again, flollowing the ragged edges of the blaze. As her prison grows ever smaller, she realizes she is entirely surrounded.
She retreats to the center of her prison, slumping in defeat. Tilting her head back, she releases a forlorn, melancholy howl into the sky, but she knows it will not be heard. In the way of dreams, she knows no one will come.
Perhaps it would not be so bad to be consumed by flames. Perhaps it would not hurt as she feared. But as the smoke begins to overcome her, bringing a ragged, hacking cough to her lungs, she wonders if the fire will even have the opportunity.
Then, just as she has nearly lost hope, she sees a break in the flame. A thin tendril of hope is all she needs, and she grasps it. She does not pause to reconsider, instinct driving her forward, commanding her to survive. She leaps, flame singing the heavy fur protecting her skin. The charcoaled earth burns her paws when she lands on the other side, but she stumbles heedlessly forward. Her breath comes raggedly and her lungs burn, but she pushes onwards. Away from the flame. Towards life.
Until she comes to a small stream, a haven in the midst of such a nightmarish hell. The water stings her blistered feet, but she splashes in anyway before collapsing into the cool, life giving liquid.
The flames could not reach her here. Eventually, when they had greedily consumed all they could, they would starve. Perhaps by then she would know what to do.
---
It takes her a moment to realize she is awake. That she had slipped into sleep in that dream and awoken here in this meadow. The one age had first fallen asleep in, surrounded by all the others.
ferran