Arrow Lake The terror you feel in quiet moments is not misplaced, just mistimed

In the calm warmth of a sea off the coast of Florida, Dragomir floated with the rest of his bloom. They numbered several hundred and seemed to all be in sync as they drifted along, bells pulsing to a silent beat. He let his tentacles swing through the water just ahead of him as he bobbed in place, followed by frilly oral arms that reached and swept any stunned plankton into the mouth at the bottom of his bell. As he buoyed along in this manner, consuming plankton and expelling the waste all from the same orifice, he found himself wondering, what is the point of all this?

That was one of the last times Dragomir would visit one of his hundreds of different realities outside of dreaming, for he was brought abruptly back to the present by a strange sensation around his sealed eyelids. Without consciously dictating it, the wolf cub awkwardly scrubbed at his face with the side of one of his pudgy forelegs. When he resettled himself with a yawn, he did so with a startled blink of two denim blue eyes as blurry images suddenly began to register, blocking out the images of his roaring imagination.

He couldn't make out much except for how bright it was, an unpleasant feeling he met with a squeak and a squint. But besides that, it was all much too interesting to close them again. All he could do was stare wondrously up at the indistinct blots of light and shadow that made up the thicket's canopy.

Forward dated to April 12 for something new to write about.

Regardless of any orders of resting or re-dressing, the flaxen farseer had hobbled back to the Falls-nestled thicket. Faint wincing stoppered within her throat, muted as her aches went unheeded; what if Dragomir was choking on loam again? What if the skirmish’d went worse? Aure had huffed and thanked the stars that the lurker hadn’t been of more brawn; otherwise, she might not be straggling through the evening for her thicketed children.

Her twin, ivory and impish, loitered about at the entrance, as if he’d known her stubborn manner and had been awaiting. “Dōna mandia! Jurnegon iemnȳ.” Vonn greeted her with a glad gleam, nudged her along, and went on his merry way. So, inside she went; and inside she looked.

The next thing to greet Aure was a vision — Drago, all sapphire and open eyes, Isi grumbling to follow suit  ( or so she thinks ). Tears crested within her own, unbidden, as a tender reverence softened the haggard features of her worn face. Meant to call for Verx, to beckon him to come and see, but left that thought to her brother’s moseying — to fetch him, perhaps?

Instead, Aure, softly staggering, made her way over to her bleary-eyed son and crooned, crescenting to nibble lovingly at the tuft of his brow, “Naneth na- hi. Im am hi.”

He was too entranced by the play of shadow and light overhead to notice that he was cold; no one remained at their side to keep the babes warm. It didn't last for too long, thankfully. Aure descended on them in the thicket, humming soft words in a strange tongue he could not hear. His ears remained small and pressed to his scalp, unresponsive for now, but Dragomir did respond to Aure's colourless face looming over him.

His face split into a giddy baby's smile, with a bubbling of huffed giggles, but then he gathered all his strength in his legs and sought to push her away when she started nibbling on his brow. He met the action with a ticklish shriek and a heave of his small body as he tried to push himself away—it seemed he was too overwhelmed to be coddled in that fashion just now.

The doughy paws were there; pushing at her face again in resistance as he squealed about. It hadn’t occurred to her, in her rosy daze, that opening one’s eyes and getting your brow ruffled were two sensations that didn’t meld warmly for now.

So Aure retreated with a tiny hum of apology, and laved his tuft gently back into place. A smile still played at her scarred lips, though, and she roosted back about Drago and Isi; her little night and sprightly star. “You two will want to venture into ze world, someday,” came her musing, tinged with some worry. Aure believed, though, that her children had been born to remake the world — didn’t many parents believe the same?

“Before you can, though, you must learn to see it for what it is.” She arced her neck in a wincey little stretch, before curving it down and around her blackberry son; her words a gentle vibration against his bum, her riddled cheek at his elbow. “And you must see it for what it could become, meu mure.”

Aure pulled away and Dragomir's fussing ended, but only for a moment. Soon he was twisting around until he rested once more on his belly, while his dam murmured words against him that he could not hear but only felt. He shrieked again, a quiet sound of discovery, as he suddenly rocketed away from her with swiftly pulling limbs. He could only crawl still, but it was a marked different from the week before. Now Dragomir had real strength in his legs, and grip in his paws. Now he could go fast, and he did, fleeing toward the bright dance of light where the den opened into the thicket.

It seemed they’d reconcile, when his fussing had quieted — but only for a few heartbeats. Aure is certain she felt the lack of one or two ebbs in her breast, because . Put against his usual crawl  ( even though this was an elevated version ), Dragomir was dashing for the entrance of the thicket. With a clucking of “Ah-ta-ta-ta!” Aure waddled right on after her blackberry boy, halting whatever progress he’d made by swooping onto the earth upon her side, and cradling his wriggling self in a curved embrace.

“Patience, sweetling. Patience,” despite the hilarity of encouraging patience towards a wanderlusting bairn. Her children wouldn’t be allowed out from the thicket just yet... but Aurëwen wouldn’t smother them with too much protection, either. Tongue still clucking, she readjusted Dragomir so he was secured between long, long forelegs. He could wriggle and make complaints, but he wouldn’t be clambering from her anytime soon. 

She at least did him the service of letting him gaze blurrily out into the world, somewhat. Thankfully, in evening, color and light was muted and not as sharp as it would’ve been noon-day. Aure’s throat lingered at the crown of her son’s head; watchful, guardsome, but not stifling. Once he walked, and saw, he would run, and howl, and all those other events they would learn together that came with raising and growing up.

He thought he was going to make it, and then there was Aure, curving into a neat white comma to block his access to the outside world. He went right on motoring, colliding with her soft side and even going so far as to attempt to climb over her, because the swaying light beckoned him and Dragomir was the kind of boy to seize his every whim. Eventually he had to concede that this climb was too much for him, with his efforts no doubt hindered by his well-meaning mother, and he slid defeated back to the den floor.

She allowed him a peek out, though, and his eyes grew wide and then squinted shut as light filtered in and veritably blinded him. It would be some time yet before he would be able to handle that much of it; longer still before he could stride boldly out and meet all the world's light with his father's brazenness and his mother's sense of wonder. That didn't stop him from blinking futilely and trying to make sense of it, but even if the light didn't hurt his fresh new eyes, Dragomir's sight was sorely lacking. That haze of sleep that filmed one's vision in the moments just after waking was tenfold for him, and didn't clear after just a few blinks.

Give it a week or so and he'd be able to see just fine, but for now, he was quite limited.

And Aurëwen gazed along with her son, nosing gently at the pudgy cheekbones and the raveny down about his shoulders — let them both sit in quietude for a time. But when she felt her own gaze of sleep press against her, and felt the same of Dragomir, she knew it was time to return to the shadows.

Gently, as if in a fleeting and familiar dance, the silver mother took Drago between her jaws and shepherded him  ( back to where Isilmë dozed )  further into the thicket so as not to be so hazardously-near to the entrance. She curled herself sickle-like about her babes, and paid particular mind to Dragomir, humming and trilling with understanding. Aure didn’t like to see him mope as he did; there was nothing more she wished than to let the children experience and explore all they wished.

They were children first, though. And children needing nurturing, guiding; to let a little more their way, bit by bit.

The wanderlust he felt must surely have been bartered from her line — what other explanation was there? When she’d been a whelp, she had been entirely like her blackberry boy; eager, in that freeing, endless way, hungering for the world and all its histories, even when she’d turned to starlight  ( for a time. )  The moment her legs strengthened and her eyes could see and her ears heard — she was voracious. 

Of course, not as wildly ravenous, anymore, but that trait never failed to break through her porcelain masque more oft than not. Aurëwen thought all of this while humming some vague cradle song, passing and laving her tongue lovingly along Dragomir’s dusted self. Let the  melody rumble through her throat at his shoulders, all in an attempt to soothe that restlessness regardless of whether her actions proved futile or no.

Dragomir did not mope; he strained against his mother's grasp as she pulled him back into the thicket, then fought some more, eager to continue out into that light-filled world beyond their small home. She'd really done it this time. One glimpse was all he needed, and Dragomir was ready to fly the coop. For the next few weeks, as long as it took for the reins to loosen, he would take every chance he got to run for that entryway. Everyone—Verx, Aure, their various sitters—would have their hands full with him.

But Aure didn't let him go, and eventually he just drifted down into sleep. But it was fitful, filled with images that were not the ones of his dream realities. They were images of the real world, of light on dark and new leaves fluttering in the breeze. He would wake with the same longing he fell asleep with, later, but for now he slept.