Dream Threads

I see fire. The flames lick and lap around my feet, leaping with greedy abaddon through the treetops, rapturously devouring the land, jumping defiantly across bodies of water and reaching its bright and terrible fingers into the sky. The entire world is made of fire. All I can hear is its malevolent laugh, and the crackling sound of it fills my ears as it mocks the very life it’s devouring. I feel the flames’ scorching breaths creeping down my neck, like the hot panting of a beast looming over me. It fills my vision, the face of the bright beast staring into my own as it howls its hateful glee into the night. Its terrible, tormenting visage is all I can see, all I can breathe, all I can feel. The heavy smoke sits thick in my throat and clouds my vision until tears stream down my face. Of course, the tears don’t stay on my face long. They disappear under the assaulting heat. The roaring beast devours them, as it does everything else, and as it will eventually devour me. In a futile attempt to escape the flames that are all around me, I turn to the side, falling to my knees as a violent cough takes me, my body trying to rid itself of the smoke and ash that is filling my lungs. It is all that’s left of the trees, the former life, that the fire took. As I crouch on the ground, waiting for the fire to take me, I see eyes. Eyes dimmed by pain, but glowing nonetheless with curiosity. The wolf approaches me, and now the fire is not the only beast whose breath I can feel on my face. The barriers that normally stand between beast and human dissolve as its eyes search mine, and it lays its great head on my lap. Its fur was scorched in places, and thick with ash. But I curl my hand in its great coat anyway. As the walls of heat and death loom in on use both, our gazes connect with a jolt. They say the eyes are a window into the soul, and it must be true, for suddenly, its soul is in my body. I’m feeling what it’s feeling. And it’s so scared.