baku

Dreams had always held a certain allure that the waking world did not. They opened ashen eyes to a paradise like one they'd only seen depicted in religious texts - a promise of an afterlife in exchange for belief and devotion. A gift, should one pay the price for it.

Had Nagito paid the price for it?

Surely not. The life they'd lived had been one of self-gratification, thievery, lust, and greed. One did not get to live as they did and not deserve punishment of some kind.

But it was a nice dream. A nice moment, however fleeting.

They rested on a large leaf, comically so, floating down a river. Birdsong drifted to their ears, the breeze through their fur. All seemed peaceful and correct in the world, and why would it not? Dreams, in Nagito's experience, were rarely otherwise.

It was nice, to relax. They allowed themself to drift, dipping a paw lazily into the slow-moving current beneath them.

---

@Endellion <3

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Her mind once again transported her to this idyllic retreat full of bird song, flowers and oddly…. canines floating on leaves. The dragon-wolf wondered why her mind was fascinated by such scenes, but decided to pay no mind to it. At least she had company while in her slumber to drive away the nightmares that sometimes came when her heart and head were heavy with regrets. Endellion once again approached the water and lifted a paw in an awkward wave as she had seen her humans greet one another before. “Yo!” she called in her deadpan tone, repeating the greeting that Ryu had taught her.

“I greet you, wolf hatchling,” she followed on to say, incorrectly assuming that the fox was a wolf pup because she had never seen a fox before and from what she knew of them was limited. They were famously orange or russet so she did not realise the small ashen canine was a fox.

Endellion's features remained neutral despite her excitement at meeting a wolf hatchling, a dream wolf hatchling, but a wolf hatchling all the same. The order had youths, but her training kept her far too busy to engage with them as she longed to.
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Pawsteps sounded on the shore behind them and Nagito glanced over their shoulder just in time to witness this... very large, beautifully-patterned wolf approach, lift one paw, and speak:

Yo.

Brows lifted in surprise at the strangeness of the greeting. This truly must have been a dream, for this encounter had already begun so strangely. 

I greet you, wolf hatchling.

And it got stranger. 

A wolf that spoke and waved like a human, though humans typically did not refer to juvenile animals as hatchlings unless they were reptilian or avian. Then again, a wolf would not mistake a fox for a pup, either. Nagito squinted dark eyes at the canine, knowing that there must be something going on beneath the surface - behind that canine mask. 

"Yo," they began, playfully greeting the wolf-looking creature with a thump of their tail on the leaf's surface where they lay. "I fear I must disappoint you, but I am no wolf, nor am I a hatchling." 

A small smile crept along their maw as they turned themself to face the stranger directly, thoroughly intrigued by her. "What might you be?" The question was casual, easy. Perhaps not the most polite one to ask, but this was the fox's dream, and so they felt less inclined toward propriety. 

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Her greeting was echoed back to her much to the dragon-wolf’s pleasure. It seemed to be the correct way to greet wolves so she was relieved that she was playing the role of a wolf so well. Yet her stoic features twitched slightly in confusion when the wolf hatchling revealed that they were neither. “Then you are a riddle to me, small canine. Might you enlighten me about the mystery of your species?” she requested, odd eyes scrutinizing the features of the not-wolf closely.

The ease at which the creature floated serenely on the leaf without any worry that they might sink puzzled her. She was still skeptical of the leaf’s ability to bear any weight at all. Such was the mystery of dreams that reality was nonsense. After all, here she was chatting comfortably with a canine that looked like a wolf that was not a wolf. “Have you not seen a wolf before?” Endellion asked, completely serious because she believed that to be the case. It didn't occur to her that her behaviour was far too unwolflike not to be suspicious. In her mind she was the wolfiest wolf that she could possibly be, not a dragon poorly cosplaying as a wolf.
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How strange this one was. A fox, a riddle? Where had this "wolf" come from, if they could not recognize something so commonplace? Were foxes not on all continents?

“I am a fox,” they said instead, because they were not in the mood to tease or ridicule. This wolf truly did not seem to know what they were, and so they must explain. It was simple. “A kitsune, if you've heard of it, but a fox will do if you have not.”

A smile quirked their lips at her next question, their tail thumping on the leaf they were lying on. How surreal this experience was. “I have seen many,” they said. “But never one who would mistake a fox for a wolf pup, nor one who would refer to a pup as a "hatchling."”

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The answer to her question was not one she expected. A fox that wore the fur of a wolf. What a strange dream this was, even stranger yet when the grey fox told her they were a kitsune. Endellion had heard many legends throughout her life and the tale of the kitsune had been one of them. “You are not orange,” Endellion remarked, still struggling to accept the fox as a fox even though she was a wolf that once lived as a dragon. Somehow it seemed too fantastical for a fox that wasn't orange to exist. Maybe kitsunes were the exception to the rule.

“Ah that's right. Most warmbloods excrete their young from their back ends,” she said, shaking her head at her mistake. “After carrying the whole nest in their stomach for weeks. How inefficient,” the dragon criticised, once more lamenting the loss of her reptilian body. Still it wasn't like she had any interest in procreating as a wolf. If her warmbloods decided to pair up then she would happily protect their hatchlings-pups as their guardian dragon.

“You are correct, kitsune. I am not a wolf. I am a dragon in the body of a wolf,” she admitted, seeing no reason to keep her true self a secret.
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