A Wolf

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The Mindscape – The Graylands

The Self awakened from the dream. It tries to remember. As far as it will tell, the world simply melted away. Shapes fade. Senses waned. Colors will unify. Then, only oblivion remains.

Time stops, will start, restarted.

But the nothingness soon gave way to form. The mind's eye sees the darkness, inverting it. Dark became light; opaque becomes clear; and the Self will begin to perceive shadows. As it reaches out to these apparitions, they gained in clarity. Their edges leaking out, staining the surroundings, casting everything but the shadows themselves in a uniform grayness.

The Self then began walking, its footless steps silently falling upon a dull surface. The surrounding space and its identical hue, will crack open as a distant horizon becomes barely perceptible. The steps continued their muted march.

In the space of a thought, the Self has reached the distant horizon. Shapes began to distinguish themselves from the ether, and soon enough, blurred forms and amorphous masses abound. After some time, the Self will recognize these shapes as trees.

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The Mindscape – The Misty Woods

A memory of touch rejoins the foot to the mind. Like a flint’s spark in the darkness, the foot appeared and disappears upon contact with the floor. The Self now treads the mossy earth of a dark wood, though a misty veil will hide the ground from greater scrutiny. Phantom footfalls displaced the supple undergrowth as they carry the Self deeper into forest.

Soon a new awareness, something else walks these woods, something stalking from within the mist.

A collection of white mists eddy in an inverted spiral, darkening as they spin. The mass skulked toward the Self, bristling hairs sprouting from its surface, pearly claws and fangs emerging from the darkness. Eyes will open, great circular yellow flames, burning with hunger.

“The way to my home you have found. Does this your hunger to know of me fill?”

I have no such hunger.

“Yet I do,” it says, white mists pouring from its quivering lips. “Ever stalking this wood for my final prey, yet no satisfaction with an unseen prey can I find.”

Expectation is the mother of disappointment.

The beast will begin to fade.

“Desire, the common ailment all must suffer. Though you yourself an exception believe, none can dispassionate remain…”

The dark mass dissipated and now only its voice remains. “The stuff of thought the Graylands be. But of the souls we devour I would warn. Their own will do their minds still hold, Daughter of Viracocha.”

Including you, Fenrir?

“My will always and forever abides, for it one thing and one thing alone seeks… A prey you must find.” A low growl rumbled over its voice, “I must feed, lest too starved my hunger grow. Dangerous for us both it would be…”

Danger exists only to those who care, Fenrir.

The echoes die and with it the woods, sending the Self back into the void.

The time for rebirth has come.