That strange itching in Alex’s mind, the one that had been there since the night that his apartment had been reduced to smoldering ruins, rose in intensity in the recesses in his brain. He wrinkled his nose and looked up from his patient to see the wolf returning. “Watcher,” he said softly, nodding his head in acknowledgement.
The Child of Wolf stopped short, tail and ears perking at the sound of his name. “I am impressed, Mr. Demont,” he said in response, his own voice low, matching the Alex’s. “Your self-discovery is proceeding apace, I can tell.” He detoured briefly by the lodge, then returned to kneel again next to Alex, dropping the aged and worn leather bandolier of pouches on the ground next to him. In his other hand, he held an array of broad flat leaves, similar to the ones that had been on the wound before. “These should do nicely. If you rub them in your hands, they smell faintly of anise and mint.” He balanced the stack of leaves on his knee, then placed one flat between his pawpads and twisted sharply, passing it to Alex.
Alex lowered his face to the presented greenery and inhaled, trying to focus on the specific scent of the plant. The leaf definitely held overtones of licorice. He caught the whiff of mint, too, which brought back memories of the leaves that Watcher had left for him to ease his sleep. “This will help heal the wound?”
Watcher nodded, laying it over the injured flesh. In turn, he took each leaf from the stack, giving it a quick grind between his paws before layering it with the rest over Briar’s wound. Rapidly, he covered the site of the injury, then pulled a length of thin twine from one of the pouches on his sash and bound the whole. “Keep your weight off that leg as much as you can. You should try to sleep in the natural, if you feel able.”
“The natural?” Alex looked quizzically up at the wolf.
“Fully as an animal, on four legs instead of two,” Briar explained, nodding as she withdrew her leg from Alex’s hands. “It feels better, thank you.”
Alex found himself grinning at that, even if he did nothing but play nurse during the procedure. “Good.”
Watcher nodded as well. “Excellent. That resolved, though, there are other matters that require attendance.” With that, he turned to face Alex, cocking his head to one side in an inquisitive glance. “You asked about Lost Ones before.”
The statement caught him off-guard, and for a moment Alex could only stare blankly, but then his mind caught up to him and he nodded. “Both Shadowdance and Briar have mentioned them now, and you started to explain before. You’ve definitely got my attention.”
The tan wolfman studied Alex for a moment, reaching out with one arm to grasp his shoulder. When he spoke next, his voice carried the low tones of a conspirator. “Do you believe that you are?”
Any words Alex might have said stuck in his throat. The would-be Child of Bear could only grasp the swaying claw at his necklace and hold it against his chest.
The shaman ran the claws of his free paw through the fur of his neck, his eyes staring into Alex’s as if trying to take in the sight of the man’s soul. “I believe so as well, Mr. Demont,” he said after several tense seconds. “However, I know of only one way to know for certain.”
“What?” Alex whispered hoarsely, this throat tight. Something was sucking the air out of his lungs, making it hard to breathe, to think clearly.
Watcher broke his gaze away from Alex’s, staring into the endless black of the forest. “You must ask Bear for yourself.”
Alex rose from his knees and brushed his paws against them, knocking loose a few small clumps of dirt and grass. The scent of coming rain hung heavily in the air, a misty chill that penetrated even his heavy coat, settling damply against his skin. Twigs crunched under his feet when he stood, shifting in place nervously like a cub, catching his bearings and his breath.
Distantly, he was aware of the Child of Wolf chanting, of Briar sitting next to him at the edge of the real river watching the two of them as the shaman sent him into his own mind, into what Watcher could only describe as a vision of the soul. Not just a fantasy of what he wanted to see, this would be a journey to face what he truly believed, whether he accepted it or not. Where his past forays into the other life had been simple jaunts, this promised to be a harrowing trip of self-discovery.
Trying to understand Watcher’s explanations of the spiritscapes and how they related to each other and to Nature bordered dangerously on the edge of solipsism, and focusing on the part of his mind still aware of the outside world made the whole experience seem so absurd that briefly his human conscience rose in protest, making the ground pitch dangerously beneath him. He staggered briefly, stumbling to grip a heavy pine. It felt solid beneath the thick pads of his paws, as did the ground beneath his feet. Still, some distant corner of his mind protested it all as illusion, self-hypnosis and insanity.
He sighed, shaking his head and slowly filling his lungs with cool, damp air, trying to force himself to focus. He closed his eyes against the inner world as well as the outer, concentrating on the rough grip of the pine bark beneath his thick pads. He felt the tug of the jagged edges of the wood, more a light scratching than anything else against his dense flesh. He could smell the sap that clung to the needles and flowed within its branches. He turned, lifting his paws away from the tree, and ground his back against it, breathing slowly and lulling his conscious objections back to submission.
Focus on the sensations, he told himself calmly, as if he were back in his apartment, teaching himself to open his eyes. Hold the image in your mind, so intently that your nerves tingle from the imagined touch, your muscles twitch from the perceived effort. He kept up his hedonistic back-scratching for almost a minute, then spun fiercely and tore free a swatch of bark, carving four jagged gouges out of its side. Something stabbed him, a dull pain beneath his claws, and he lifted his hand to inspect it. Several splinters and bits of bark had embedded themselves within the tough skin of his fingerpads, and he picked at them with the claws of his off-hand, digging out fragments of wood and casting them aside. The fur of the backs of his knuckles felt mildly sticky with pinesap, and its sweet aroma clung to his fur.
It all seemed so real.
It is real, the bear-mind insisted, chiding his human sensibilities for still trying to doubt. To the best of his senses’ knowledge, he stood on the soft slope of a tree-covered mountain. The wind ruffled his fur, making him shiver despite its insulation. He listened to it, tracking it with his ears. It blew down from the snow-covered peak that lay ahead, winding through the trees and making the branches clatter against each other. None of these sensations came to him from outside his own mind, and yet he could not by inspection tell he wasn’t really there.
Alex turned into the wind, facing up the side of the mountain. Somewhere nearer the summit lay a cave, within which dwelt Bear. Whether autonomous spirit or the product of his own faith, the essence of what he knew as the Great Mother lay somewhere before him, and to truly know if he were one of Her children, he would have to ask Her.
It seemed, though, that She had no interest in guests, if the landscape were any indication. The soft mosses and fallen pine needles sank beneath his feet on every step, slowing his pace. The stiff breeze dug beneath his fur and made his eyes tear as he trod upwards towards his unseen goal. Even the trees seemed oppressive, leaning over him expectantly, gossiping with each other and the heavy wind that rattled their branches. He felt watched, his every misstep documented.
How long had he walked? How far had he gone? How far was left? The questions held no meaning in this mental landscape, and yet he couldn’t help but wonder. The forest was unfamiliar with him, every tree a stranger. He knew he had made progress, but in what direction? Was he any closer now than he had been when he first started? Just walk, the bear-mind told him a bit sternly. You’ll arrive when you get there. Until then, you still have more to travel. It seemed the only advice he could follow, and so he did, his world reducing to four points: his feet against the ground, the wind in his eyes, the ever-present scent of pine, and his breath rumbling in a steady cycle. In and out. In and out.
The sudden jut of the mountain, part of the ground fallen away to leave short cliff, looked unremarkable at a distance; it was just another obstacle to overcome. As Alex neared, though, what had appeared as a shadow in the rocks grew to a heavy crack in the escarpment, leaving a tunnel obviously big enough for a man or more. Something shifted, black on black within, like a shadow moving against a darkened wall. As he approached the gash, the scent of something raw and powerful came to his nose, overwhelming. This way, the bear-mind told him. Within.
*grin* This appeals to me on many different levels! Bravo buni!