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 Posted: Fri Mar 18, 2011 1:40 pm
 Aislin sprawled out upon a flat rock, enjoying the warmth of the afternoon sun as it beat down upon her. Her paws and the soft fur of her underbelly were wet and caked with sand from splashing in the tidepool, and she had a slightly briny scent. Overall she was feeling quite pleased, if a little sleepy.
She liked the water. It wasn't quite as magical as the endless ocean of stars she'd once dreamt about, but it was special in its own way, and today felt especially wonderful because for the first time she'd been able to share an experience with someone other than her dream-friends. Even if the older wolf seemed a bit overly-earnest about everything.
"Well," she said, peering over at her new friend, offering him a little half-smile. Her tail thudded the rock behind her, hitting with wet splashes that left sprays of water behind. "I didn't drown, and you didn't get stolen by an eagle. All in all, a pretty good day, don't you think?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2011 3:13 pm
 Nimbus seemed rather thoroughly immersed in his own thoughts; the stocky little wolf was watching the waves break and pull at the shoreline, his damp face pensive. He had been wary of the ocean, fearful of dawdling in such a vast, uncaring entity, and he still was. The experience of salt water in his nose and throat, of sand and slime between his paws, was of a rawer sort than he chose to go after...but it felt good for him. Like he was working away at some of the nothingness that he was made of. Aislin's airy voice tugged him back into reality, and he turned to look at his odd friend, looking self-satisfied and dozy, and enviously comfortable with herself. "I suppose," he sighed, feeling himself wrung with melancholy. "Do you get tired, going on adventures like this and when you dream?"
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Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2011 3:28 pm
She smiled at him, a soft childish smile, the smile of one who has never felt hardship. Oh, sure, she was in an unconventional family. But she was primarily a fortunate animal, probably because she spent so very little time in the real world.
"Kind of, I guess?" She said, watching him. He always seemed so sad! She wished she could take all of his sadness and worry and throw it into the water, to be washed away by the tide. "I mean, I'm always tired when I wake up, so maybe that's why."
But that wasn't the kind of tired he meant, was it?
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Posted: Tue Mar 29, 2011 12:30 pm
Nimbus nodded in response, looking both dissatisfied and eager not to admit it - even from his own funk, he could tell that this was hardly the time or the place, or even the audience with which to discuss his deepest crises. Looking at Aislin, he thought perhaps it might simply be that his measure of contentment had mistakenly been doled out to the buttery little female, on top of her own; maybe it counted as a birth defect on both of their parts.
He winced, rubbed his nose with a sandy black paw, and wished he could stop inflicting these thoughts on himself. Turning a yellowy eye back to Aislin, ever so tentatively, he tried out talking about something he had never, ever shared. "I'm always tired when I wake up, too. But I think it's because I worry in my sleep." He watched her soberly for a minute - not so much her face as her paws, the stringy texture of her fur tangling behind her ears and at the joint of her hip. "Do you ever wonder..." oh no, he felt the words crumbling like ash on his tongue, "what we're here for?"
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Posted: Wed Mar 30, 2011 12:13 am
She started in licking her pawpads, thoughtfully, biting the sand from between her toes. Her feet tasted like salt and seashells. It didn't surprise her at all that Nimbus would worry in his sleep, seeing as he worried all the other times too as near as she could tell. She felt so sorry for him!
"Sometimes," she admitted, and an oddly stony look crossed her features as she continued, almost meditatively, to lick her paws. "Mostly, I wonder why I have to wake up."
She meant that more seriously than most who made such proclamations.
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Posted: Thu Mar 31, 2011 7:07 pm
Another silence. He had already figured out enough not to take Aislin's words at face value, and he liked to think that, maybe, nestled into all that spark and vigor, there was a little barb of angst not unlike his own. Maybe she was secretly despairing that she had to be a part of the waking world at all! Oh, it pulled at his little wolf heart! He tilted his head, somewhat hypnotized by her tongue. "I just think about that, sometimes." (He thought about it a lot.) "Like...there are wolves who seem happy just doing whatever, hunting and having a litter and then sitting around until they die."
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Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2011 2:38 pm
"It's a waste of a life," she agreed, nodding. "When I'm dreaming, I'm powerful and the whole world is full of magic. And I'm important."
She had perhaps never spoken so seriously and earnestly about anything in her whole life. But Cue brought that out in her, and she kind of liked it. It stirred in her, this philosophical thought, this deep melancholy -- it touched an ill-used place in her heart. "But here, in the real world, I'm just....an overgrown puppy. I'm not important, I'm not powerful, I'm not anybody. And someday I'm going to meet...some guy...and I'll have pups, and then they'll grow up to be nobody, too."
She sighed. She had never thought about that before, but now that she'd actually said it out loud the weight of existential misery fell over her like a shroud. "...There's got to be something else out there. Something more than just...eating and sleeping and having babies."
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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 5:19 pm
Suddenly, Cue's heart was pounding. He had been right! Not only about there being any sadness in his friend, but he was right about his own angst, too! Here she was, a wolf completely different than he, confident and happy and full to the brim with life, and even she was worried, gravely worried, at what seemed to be the only future available to them. His heart swelled, and his eyes shone almost feverishly. "I don't want to be nobody, either! I don't..." his head ducked down, abashed by this confession, "I don't feel like I don't matter. I just don't understand why no one seems to care!" His brow furrowed as he tried to attend to the flush of thoughts surging through his head, fought the hopeless fight of turning a feeling into the correct expression. "You've got your dreams, though." He stood, restless, nervous, and turned to walk back into the water. "I wonder if that's a start."
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Posted: Mon Apr 04, 2011 6:48 pm
She looked up at him, tail thumping. There were a great number of things she wanted to say, but she couldn't quite find the words. After a bit of thought, she said, a little meekly, "Maybe you are important. Maybe we both are." Then she smiled and laughed an uncomfortable laugh, not sure if whatever she was saying was absurd or profound. "Maybe the reason both of us hate it so much is because we're actually supposed to be doing something really, really important, and we don't even know what it is."
Well now. That didn't make her feel better at all. Her nose wrinkled and she set her head back on her sand-covered paws. Ahh, the dreams. Thinking about them was making her sleepy. "If they were real then it would be," she said, in response to his last comment. "I keep hoping that maybe they are. Real, I mean. To someone other than just me."
Was that insanity? For something to be real but only to you? She'd never thought about it before, but then, she'd usually been alone before, and young, and it hadn't seemed so important. But now she was getting maybe a little too old to be having such earnest dreams and on the edge of her thoughts it began to worry her. She didn't like all this worrying that Nimbus made her do. But she also did like it, because it made things feel...profound.
She wondered if she could share her dreams with him. If they were both having the same dream, it couldn't be crazy, could it?
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Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 7:00 pm
Bashfulness kept him staring where he was, watching the light on the water, though his heart gusted up like a flurry of leaves at her words. She was the only wolf he had ever heard speak like that, and its effect was exhilarating, and curiously intoxicating. His ear flicked (a crackling sound buzzed there momentarily), and he continued watching the glint and arcs of white light scrawling over the water's surface, unsure now of whether he ought to be seeing colors there. Unsure of the spectral zig-zagging that he suddenly could not banish from his vision. Unbidden, his hackles raised in their undignified, adolescent fashion, and he jerked his head away from the water, away from the sun, sloshed and stumbled like an animal tangled in a lead until he was in the shadow of the rocks, quivering and gazing in awe at something that seemed affixed more to his mind's eye than any corporeal body. His mouth was pulled into an ambivalent grimace, and his legs shook, his courage quailed; who would ever have the requisite confidence to be dignified in the presence of God, anyway?
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Posted: Wed Apr 06, 2011 10:11 pm
She waited, awhile, for him to speak, but when he did not she lifted her eyes to him, a little hurt that he hadn't even dignified her with a response. Certainly, she knew she was speaking nonsense, but at least he could humor her?
Her brow furrowed as she caught sight of her friend and his curiously intense gaze. This didn't seem right. "Nimbus?" She said, tentatively, watching as his hackles rose, watching as he pulled himself like a thing possessed away from her and out, out, toward...what? "Mr. Nimbus?"
Alarmed, afraid that perhaps the melancholy wolf was going to drown himself in the sea, she scrambled up to her paws and chased after him, slipping rather ungracefully over slimy stones. "...Nimbus, what is it? What are you looking at?"
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 6:45 pm
Unresponsive, Cue quaked against a wall of rock, his lolling tongue a bright, hot pink. He could hear, internally, an elaborate hiss; did it relate to the orb that swelled and buzzed before him? It looked white-hot, electrically hot, and the bright, crimping lines of color swirled around it like a fabulous raiment. He felt his heart swell, felt the skin of his throat and face burn and tingle, felt himself overwhelmed by a feeling he could not name.
He cowered for an endless half-minute more, until the vision began to recede; his face was numb. He felt wiped-out and good in a way that was new to him; settled, maybe, realigned. He realized he could hear the ocean, and that Aislin was with him and struggled to unbend his posture, and when he met her gaze his eyes were wide and strangely empty. "Ais," he whispered with his unfeeling mouth. "I saw...a star."
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 7:06 pm
Throughout all of this, Aislin watched him uneasily, muscles tensed, uncertain if she should run for help or stay by his side. If she ran, where would she go? What could she possibly do? She could think of no one who could help -- no one who would help.
And, help with what?
She stared at him critically, trying to discern what was going on, and when he finally spoke she felt an odd, awe-filled sensation come over her. "...A star?" She asked, not sure at all what he meant by that but feeling that, for some reason, this was very significant. This whole moment had a significance to it, a weight as though it were a memory she was reliving...or a dream that someone else was having that she only just now got to peek in at.
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 8:32 pm
Nimbus swallowed, and nodded, overwhelmed. His eye was caught again by the reflective water, and she shivered. "Let's go back to shore."
He walked in silence, and he didn't stop at the beach - he continued until he was somewhere familiar again, somewhere out of earshot of the restless sea. He knew Aislin would follow, and was in some peripheral way aware of how she must want him to speak, but his mind was wholly occupied by what had happened. It was like a dream, but real. And a thousand times more gripping, a hundred times more intense than anything he had experienced awake. He felt rubbed raw all over, but what had happened? Finally, he glanced at Aislin, as if she might be standing beside him waiting to supply an answer.
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Posted: Sun Apr 10, 2011 9:01 pm
"Alright," she said, suddenly eager to be away from that place as well, a deep-seated superstitious feeling that something ominous was lurking in the water. But it had been a star, not an eagle, not a seamonster. Wasn't it?
She trailed after him, both excited and uneasy. Any other wolf, and Aislin would not have been concerned -- but Nimbus was so serious, so stern. So...not prone to dramatics. If something had happened to him, then it must have really happened, and Aislin's head was reeling with the sudden suspicion that a magical event had just taken place.
But it was foolish to hope for such things.
When he looked back at her, she stopped, flustered. He looked expectant. She didn't know what had transpired, nor how to explain it, and she shifted uneasily under the pressure of wanting to provide an answer but finding herself unable to do so.
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