@Towhee 

...they said she is not here, she has risen. 

Waking up in the world Wraen had left almost three years ago was odd, but not very surprising. When you are no longer tethered to the material plane and the confines of your mortal body, the perspective on things changes. Nothing feels impossible anymore. You have access to the secrets of the ethereal world, they no longer feel mysterious, inexplainable or unlikely. You even have the freedom to shape your own bubble of imagination land and time from time cross into someone's elses. 

Which after some stretching and yawning, and taking in the surroundings more carefully, was what had happened. The forest, the place looked very much like Sun Mote copse, the home of Firebirds, except here and there one could see inconsistencies in the otherwise picture perfect image. Blurring of the edges, vibrations in the fabric of the fantasy, when a new thought or idea came to the sleeping mind dreaming this. She could see distant figures of people she did not recognize talking with one another, there was a small pocket of sub-reality playing out a scene from, what appeared to be somebody's childhood. 

This is new. Wraen thought to herself, when she began to walk. New in the way that, while she knew she was her own being, she did not really know, whether she had been invited in somebody's dreamland or was she someone's figment of imagination. She would find out eventually.

"You did? Geez, I do not know, how you will ever recover from that trauma," Wraen remarked grinning and rolled her eyes. Time had passed since she had seen Towhee - her grumpy/blunt/straightforward/no nonesense friend, who save for white hairs here and there had not lost an ounce of her will to live. Out of courtesy Wraen did not ask, how many times the old gal herself had told Death to... go and do better things with her time, because every meeting with a maker is a deeply personal one. 

"Yeah, I always have wondered, why the hell they call it "love-making" - have you not?" she said, looking in the distance, but feeling glad that guests of dreams did not have to witness every single thing their hosts conjured up. "It is messy and there are no aesthetics about it, really," she went on. "And those fruits of the process are also very painful to have in the end," she side-eyed Towhee. "But, what do I know," I died a virgin. "You tell me."

"Well, them finishing is, when the most awkward part begins," Wraen pointed out, scrunching her nose. "I wonder, how many pairs have been attacked and eaten or seriously wounded, while they still cannot detach from each other. I have never heard of any - therefore it may be so that no one survived to tell the story," a shiver ran down her spine, which was funny. All things considered - death was the last thing she should worry about. You could not die twice, right?

"Well, in that case your ass is probably the most boring thing in the world if no one else has tried to tear a third hole in it during all this time," Wraen shot back, laughing, remembering the event as if it had happened only yesterday. Those had been fun times. "But - frankly speaking - those guys were not good enough for you anyway. Towhee - you are a prize that has to be earned. If they needed just a warm body to hang on to and take off some frustration, there are plenty of moss covered trees in the woods."

"Is it, really? Meerkat was a very easy kid to have, wasn't she?" she furrowed her brow trying to remember any details about the girl, but save for the sand-coloured coat, nothing really came to mind. "But Bronco was a real pain in the ass. A kid more full of himself I had never met before," she recalled. "I wonder, how he is doing now," she thought to herself, making a mental note to find him next. She caught change in Towhee's expression as she mentioned children, which made Wraen wonder, what it was that was weighing her old friend down. 

"OOOH - where? What?" Wraen asked excitedly, stomping her forepaws, tail wagging.

"No, I can't," Wraen shook her head, smiling, but feeling very happy about Towhee, who had continued to live the life she had been given to the fullest. Being a ghost, having any regrets about things she had not accomplished in her life here was pointless. To her death had simply meant one chapter of her life ending and another one beginning.

Though, if asked, what it was like and what she was doing today, she would not be able to explain. Death has always been and will always remain a mystery to those on this Earth. In a way she was and was not figment of Towhee's imagination. In a sense that she could not tell her anything that her friend did not already know or could comprehend about death. Just as it is with love, childbirth, death of a close person, your own death is also something you have to experience to truly understand.

But having always been the most pragmatic of the two, Towhee did not ask any of those questions. Instead she told about naming a landmark after her. "I love it! Would you want to go there now?" she asked excitedly, disappeared for a moment and then appeared again, looking a bit disappointed. "Sorry, apparently teleportation is only available to the ghosts," she said. And while Towhee was alive, her spirit was tightly bound to her mortal body.  

"Why so - what happened?" Wraen asked, feeling sorry for her friend. "Your old, grumpy cantankerous self could not catch up with the youth, who understand nothing of life?" she teased her gently.

"My favourite memory was... is..." Wraen stopped short, brow furrowed, clearly making an effort to find something specific. However, the more time passed, the less convinced she seemed until with an utter look of confusion, she met Towhee's golden gaze and said: "I don't know. Really. It is strange, how I lived to see many springs and had so much going on, but there are not any details left. I kind of know that things happened, I recall feeling happy, sad, angry, frustrated - all of the myriad of emotions that are there, but I can't remember why and how it happened. 'Cause... when you are here - it no longer matters. It mattered that you were there for a while and that they are people that still remember you."

This had turned out very long, but it was no clearer to her than it was to anyone else. She had been proud of being good at keeping a library worth of information inside her head. Now... it was not exactly gone, but not readily accessible to her either. "You know... at the place, where I am... you kind of exist in a state of permanence. It is just one very, very, very long moment for me and the longer it lasts, the more my life as a being here fades," this was a sad thing to come to terms with. Though until Towhee had asked about memories, Wraen had not been aware of this. "You are here and you remember me and being here with you means..." she fell silent and then lifted her paw to touch Towhee's forehead.

The scene around them morphed and changed and all of a sudden both were looking at a scene beside a lake and much younger selves. "This is, how we met for the very, very first time. Look at us! I have to admit you did not impress me much then," Wraen said. Towhee was fuming and angry, Wraen had no clue, what was going on and was trying to comfort the perfect stranger. Neither cared, nor liked each other very much at the time. And who would have thought that they would become good friends years later. "I think that I can go through memories, where you are also playing a part," she explained her earlier experiment. "But it seems that you can take me to any corner of your dreamland. Where to next?"

"I cannot tell you any more than you already know," Wraen replied. "Being dead is just the same experience as being a living being. Words do not do it justice and interpretations may go very, very wrong," she smiled at Towhee, knowing that were she in her friend's place, she would hate the vague description. How was it possible not to tell? A more younger and impatient self would even assume that they knew, but simply did not want to tell. That greedy witch!

"What I can tell you is, that universe is a big place and you get either the paradise you deserve or you choose. Making sense of it is pointless. It is... a well functioning chaos there, so, when you are good and done with everything happening here - though I have a feeling that the Earth might die long before you decide to kick the bucket," she grinned. "Then be prepared to the next big adventure. You do not have to fear it at all. It is easier than falling asleep," in the end she had revealed more than she had intended, but it could also be that the very same ideas might have entered Towhee's mind and she had picked out the pieces that corresponded to, what she felt. 

"A story... a story... ain't you a bit too old for that?" she teased her gently, glints of humour dancing in her eyes. "I think we should rather find that frog prince of yours," she got to her feet, inspired by a sudden idea and a memory. A long, long time ago, involving them three - two spinsters and a young mom - having a hags-only evening in a nearby bog. "Though I have to admit, I would rather like to dare you to lick a frog. Leave the prince stuff to the young folks," she stuck her tongue out playfully and winked. "I will need something fond to remember you by, when I return back to, where I came from. AND, whenever YOU will see a frog, you will always think of me. That way I will be immortal," how do you like this diabolical plan?

"Well, where you end up is entirely up to you," Wraen shrugged. Funny really that even a dead person still has very little clarity about the secrets of the universe as the living. She could talk only of her experience and having a chance to bend and twist the fabric of reality to her liking, meaning that her paradise was not necessarily, what others wanted to be. "I always liked the idea of me becoming one with the earth again. I think it is kind of neat to think that there is only one version of you and, when you die, there won't be anyone exactly like you again," she mused, looking up to the sky, which - now that you observed it carefully - was in a very interesting perpetual state of sunrise and sunset, with moon and the sun facing each other and thousands of stars between them. 

"Do you know, what is the funniest thing of all? That never occurred to me, while I was away. Whether there is some sort of a next step for dead souls? I exist now, but, who knows for how long? What if... slowly and surely I too will fade away and - I dunno - become a stardust or something like that. What then? Will I as stardust remember being a Wraen or will that no longer matter to me," she spoke her mind and then realized that Towhee, who was of more pragmatic sort, would find these kinds of musings that led nowhere useful. "Well, this is your party - you make the rules," Wraen laughed, enjoying the idea of being Towhee's frog. "Maybe I could become your next familiar, mhm? You had a bird before, right?" she asked. "Except as a frog I would not be able to live for too long without water. Which means that in order to have me around permanently, you would have to become aquatic," she laid out the plan in a serious tone, while her eyes were fullof laughter. 

"Do you know what - never told you, when we were living, but I always thought that with your looks and your bad temper, you would make a perfect Hag of the Swamps," this almost rhymed. "You would turn men into toads and you would lure little kids in with promises of sweets and food, and then... turn them into little turtles. In case they got greedy, disobedient or started to talk rude stuff to you, of course," and as she said this, the scenery around them changed. Now the she-wolves were sitting on a small, grassy island in the midst of a forest with tall, moss-covered trees, stagnant, green water full of algae and some other nasty stuff. Even the sunlight that managed to break through the crowns of the trees had a greenish hint. And in the background you could hear a chorus of frogs and birds and occasional soul-shattering screeches of an unknown type of animal. 

"Like it here?" Wraen asked, closing her eyes and thinking hard. The light dimmed and all of a sudden thousands of fireflies lit up like little stars. "I think this is a bit better," she looked up at her friend and smiled. 

Wraen had always liked the idea of familiars, but she had never formed such a close relationship with any other species than her own. When you were one of the apex predators in the area, your choice of friends was very limited. Anyone smaller and weaker than you or simply something you usually hunted and consumed for sustenance had a potential to become prey, when hard times would hit. There was always an option to spare your friend, but then what would happen, if you ate his aunt, uncle or a close friend by accident? No, better mix with your own kind only.

Anyone bigger - let's say a bear - meant that you could become their dinner dish and she did not think that any friendships could last for very long, if you had to always wonder, whether that best friend of yours was looking through recipes of, how to cook you best. And then there were cats, who despite their small size, are claimed to be plotting murders and world domination plans. It suddenly occurred to her that Towhee had not specified the way her alien friends had died and, while she suspected that it was not likely of her deciding to snack on them one day, she did not dare to ask either. What if that was true? It would spoil the mood of the dreamscape!

"Well, if you want to have a long-lasting friend, choosing a bird - does not matter, whether it is a wren or anything else - is not a good idea. They are notorious of dying of heart attacks suddenly. Just scare them the wrong way and they will drop dead," Wraen said, thinking now that the paradise of the birds must be full to the brim. The winged critters were just as good in reproduction as they were in dying. "I would rather... well, what do a ghost know," she cut her attempt in giving an advice short, laughing. After all it was Towhee's own business on, why she preferred the company of animals of other species. "Care to tell, how you communicated with them? I have always had a feeling that they must have some sort of language," why else they would have brains. "But I had never thought that there may be a universal language that all animals understand."

The next question left Wraen silent for a longer time, because she did not have a ready answer to that. Her green gaze followed the flickering lights of the fireflies above the green and brackish waters of the swamp, and tried to come up with a feasible explanation. Had it been lack of wanting? No, not really. Had she not cared enough? That was far from truth, why else would she have sought Towhee out now. Had she not been able to? Truth to be told, trying to push through the veil had never occurred to her before. "I do not have a satisfying answer to give," she sighed, giving her friend a look full of sympathy. "Dying for me meant cutting all the ties with this world and disappearing in the next. I cannot say that "life"," funny way to put it, because it was not exactly like that, "is the same as it is here. You kind of let it go. Accept the fact that this is it and then just go with the flow." 

"Umm... I think the best way to put it - at least to understand my experience - is the difference between you and your reflection. When I died, I became that reflection. Almost like myself, but something very important missing," she went on. "And the longer time I spend here with you, in your company, the more like my old self I feel. The emotions, feelings are more real, the memories are more acute. But you do not realize the difference, when you are there. There... you are always content, peaceful, existing in permanence," she told and then grinned slyly. "You know, what - maybe I am a ghost vampire that feeds off your life energy!"

Ptero had always perplexed Wraen and she was glad that in this plane they could communicate with each other more easily. She wondered, whether Towhee truly had hearing in the dreamscape or, since this all was probably taking place inside her friend's head... maybe they were not talking at all in the regular sense of the term. They were exchanging thoughts with one another. She had a quick idea to suggest them trying to talk without opening their mouths, but Towhee had already changed the subject and she let the idea go. 

"If a mad person is a very happy too, I would choose madness," she quipped. "Because reality of life is grim and boring enough. You have to exist in a world, where it is far too easy to do bad things. Being good costs you nothing, but it gets tiring sometimes..." she sighed. "Oh, do you know, what is the best thing about being dead?" she gave a dramatic pause, the sound of drumroll in the background would have added to the effect. "You no longer have to work there. With no body that demands you to sustain it, you have an awful lot of free time to decide, what you want to do and when? And a lot less stress too," she grinned. 

"As much as I value the honor of becoming one of your kids in the next life, I am not sure I believe the concept," Wraen said, thinking about the offer. "I mean, even if I came back, I would probably not remember anything of my previous life and I would grow up to be a very different person. I think... I still have no idea, how the universe works, but having another chance at life... I don't know... And with you then turning to dust, when you die," she referred to Towhee's earlier mention of her own belief in non-existence of the afterlife. "And having no intention of returning... nah. I will rather you offer this - you postpone your cessation until you have seen my paradise first. IF you do not like it, I will bring you to the best stardust gritter there is and make sure that your former self is scattered everywhere. What do you say?"

This would also solve the issue of Towhee not having any more children. Though Wraen had her reasons not to believe her. Meerkat had already been one kid more than Towhee had ever planned or expected to have. 

Life was not an easy walk in the park. Wraen yet had to meet a person, who could claim the opposite. She was tempted to counter Towhee's argument with a "but without darkness you would not know, how to appreciate light" type of uplifting quote, but she felt that this was not the right moment. After all, if your life is a dumpster-fire with new tires and trash thrown in to feed the flames constantly, the last thing you want to hear is the many uses of fire. Such as "oh, you are not cold at least" or "when life is like a trash-can on fire roast some marshmallows". In fact, such statement would make things even worse, because you would be more aware of, how much better life was before all the shit happened. 

She also suppressed the urge for Towhee to specify, what the problems were. Firstly - had she wished to load this on her, she would have done it already.  Secondly - Wraen could not help solve any one of them. She was just a ghost and an old person too. She suspected that the troubles of younger people or those of the future (Towhee was such, because she had continued to live good two and a half years longer by now) were similar, but not the same. "I wil say something that is totally over-used, but there are worse things than death. When you die, your problems are over," she told her, but no one had never really come up with anything better that had the same essence. "Isn't it so that the older you get, the less agitated you get about issues? I mean, you are now older than me," she stated and realized that this had come out a bit teasing. "But, when I was five, I had feeling that certain events were bound to repeat themselves. Because people in their very core do not change," she said.

"Just promise me that you won't go on living alone like a hermit," she told her. "Hags are not good on their own for too long. Because first they start to cackle and the next thing you know they are building dens of meat and bone in the forest and luring little kids in to eat them," she referred to a wolf equivalent story about "Hansel and Gretel". "I do not mean you marrying again, just keep visiting people and socializing - that's the best way, how to live well and avoid cackling."

Wraen's understanding of crap in one's life was broader and - yes - it also included death of children and good friends. She had been spared the first, though she had witnessed the anguish Eljay had gone through, when he had lost first his wife and then his first-born son as well. Death - of course - hit you hard and came as a surprise most of the times. But let's draw parallels with grannies, who are 60 and older. It is a time, when your friends start dying and by 80 you visit more funerals than birthdays. It becomes so common that in the end you may spend 5 minutes shedding tears for the dead and the rest of the funeral comparing, criticizing and discussing the choice of flowers, pastor, flowers brought and - of course - the food. Because people will come and go in this world, but a good feast is a certain way to make them eternal. Again Wraen did not say any of this, because as a dead person she could not longer fully understand the fears of the living. Everyone was dead in her reality and as far as she knew - no one could die twice. 

"Well, I am very happy of you, my bad-tempered hag-friend," she pressed her shoulder against Towhee's as she said this. "I think most do not achieve one third of that in their lifetime," she told her. "Which reminds me - I never asked you - what are the names of your kids? When I left, you had..." she took a contemplative pause, trying to make the math work. "I am 100% sure of a Meerkat and... OH, weren't you..." married to a man three times younger than you?  Wraen decided not to ask that, because Towhee had said that she had given up on men and married life. "Yeah, I have not the slightest idea, how many kids you actually have. I have been gone for - I don't believe for that long - and you are already a grandma. Geez, how time flies," she chuckled. "Toss in some of your grandkids as well, so I know, who to haunt next," she grinned. 

Towhee's declaration of becoming "eternal" made Wraen smile and she let out a deep sigh. If her friend was this, what had she left behind? It was disheartening to realize that no particle of hers had a direct connection to her and that her story had had only one volume. What's more - the moment her sister passed away - she liked to think that Maia was the one to remember her the longest - Wraen's presence in this world would shrink even further. Two years on from her death and her whole 5 years of life, full of adventures, emotions, growing up, colours, friends, ups and downs, a lot of everythings, had already shrunk to "dead aunt Wraen, who liked stories". One more generation down no one would probably even remember her name or that she had ever existed. After all, hadn't this happened to the great Redleaf matriarch March Owl as well? How much she could tell about her? Save for random facts that may or may not have been true?

Then she wondered, should she care about this at all? It was not like she was going to return here, right? Even if she was, then it would not be the same life. And she would not be the same person. How many hundreds and thousands of wolves before her had lived and had died and no one thought about them at all. The universe was full of souls and not once had it occurred to Wraen to ask, what their experience was, what they thought? Because now, realizing that she was not "eternal" in the sense Towhee meant it made her immediately question, what was she then? Temporary? "You know, when you are dead you no longer search for meaning of life," she said, when she noticed that the silence between them had dragged on longer than it was polite to keep the conversation going. "The more vampirize your life force, the more I feel those doubts and questions creep up on me," she shuddered. 

"Time does not exist for me, so whether it is an eternity or just matter of seconds - it does not matter," Wraen pointed out laughing, but there was a hint of doubts in her voice. She was no longer sure, if it was a good thing. Having your own hourglass with sand trickling down gave one a sense of belonging. Unfortunately outside Towhee's dreams Wraen no longer belonged on this side of the veil. This was painstakingly clear to her after this conversation. There were no regrets in dying, but she yearned to feel, what it meant to be alive. Even here she could feel life pulsating right next to her, while she was just a faint echo in comparison.

A tremor went through the dreamscape - Wraen looked around startled, as the background featuring night-time swamp began to fade away at the edges. It probably meant that Towhee may be about to wake up. Or - as she had said now - their conversation had come to a close. If Wraen did not want to be trapped inside the folds and pockets of her friend's mind (though she would not be totally against it, for the sake of fun of it), she had to prepare to leave as well. "Well, the world became a better place, when Meerkat was born. By being mom to so many more after that, I am sure that you have all your karmic debts of previous lives settled," she smiled. "Of course, if you believe in that kind of stuff," she added. 

"It was good to see you, my old friend," Wraen got to her feet and stretched. Not that she needed it really, but out of an old habit. "I won't make you a promise that we will see each other again. The universe is a big place after all," she said, looking up at the starlit sky that was still clear and visible, even while the ground and the forest around them began to disintegrate and disappear. "But I will give you a blessing - have a good rest of your life. Live it well, do, what you like, and have many more sunny and happy days than those with rain and sadness," she moved to give Towhee a hug, if she let her. "Have a good death as well. Without pain and suffering. At your favorite place, belly full with meat, surrounded by loving family members and the sense of completion," it may have come out a bit more complicated.

"And the last one - wherever you end up after dying, may it be a very good place to be to await the next big adventure."

"If that is, what you want - why not," Wraen laughed, burying her muzzle in Towhee's soft fur and sighing. Tears were welling up in her eyes as the emotions spilled over her heart and flooded her being with both great love for her friend and the grief of having to leave her. At this moment she would give up anything to have a chance to wake up next to her friend, greet the new day and see, what it brings. But as a ghost, she had no god to turn to, no power of doing anything. She was just a reflection of what she had been.

She did not wish to break the moment, therefore she did not say anything for a long time, hoping that this would never end that their paths eventually diverting in different directions would no happen. But then she could not stop time. Not for her friend, who had still so much to do. Sniffling she retreated and wiped away the tears. "Why are goodbyes so damn hard?" she asked rhethorically. She did not want to be remembered as a sobbing mess, but this was exactly, what she was now. 

"Thank you for this," she thanked for the dream, her form slowly disintegrating and then just like that the dream was over and she was gone.