midair

He was dreaming.

Ries often dreamed of running, of eating up miles and miles of ground underfoot. Endless, open fields for him to dash across, passing familiar faces that would join him in brief, fleeting moments.

Other times, he would dream of falling. Himself. Renn. His father.

Those were the dreams he despised.

This one was neither. Ries woke to the sound of birds and the rustle of wind in the strange trees that towered over him. He was walking before he knew it, heading down to the nearby pond that resided at the bottom of the hill.

Sunlight rippled across the surface of the water, reflecting broken blue sky far above. This place was idyllic, enchanting, beckoning. Ries felt warm, comfortable. Like there was nothing wrong in the entire world. Like he'd never lost anything.

He didn't fight it. Ries allowed himself to be pulled in, allowed himself to plunge into the cool water and chase away the small fish that lingered in the shallows. Water flew in crystalline droplets all around, catching in the sunlight and causing a ruckus.

But this was Ries' dream. He did not have to worry about disrupting anyone else's.

Did he?

---

open to one other!

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Between trees and through underbrush, Remort was running. Umbral paws carried the shadow quickly over the grass. Frosted gold eyes were transfixed upon a rabbit.

For once in his life, luck was on his side. The rabbit was a slow one, despite lacking the tang of illness he would have suspected in lethargic prey. Weighed down by fat that would be all his to wolf down. But it was still fast enough to gift him with the thrill of the chase. The satisfaction of besting a challenge. Something he rarely cared for, frankly. He was hardly proud but, in that moment, he was.

Slowly but surely, the distance between him and his quarry was shortening. Dumbly, the rabbit only ran in a straight line. Remort was right on its tail when his head craned down to snap his jaws around its meaty neck. It died quickly between his teeth.

He came skidding to a halt, sliding past the treeline across the grass to the edge of a pond.

An easy kill. He could have been dreaming.

Just as he was about to drop the rabbit at his paws, splashing nearby made him go stock-still. His pale eyes froze upon the disturbed surface of the water, his hackles bristled along his spine. Drool trailed down the side of the carcass between his jaws.

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The thing was, when you're splashing around and creating a ruckus, you can't always hear when someone sneaks up on you. Or, rather, when someone runs up on you by accident. Either way, when Ries spun around, twirling like a ballerina in the water he was disrupting, he found himself making very awkward eye contact with a stranger. A dream-stranger. Could that even happen? Had Ries ever dreamed about someone he had never seen before? 

He suddenly couldn't remember. 

A tall man, spindly and dark, with pale golden eyes like filtered sunlight through heavy winter clouds. Had Ries' subconscious conjured this man up for him? What was the etiquette for this type of thing? Was he meant to be polite, even in the dreamscape he found himself in? 

"Um," he began, blinking owlishly, fur dripping off of his frame and likely making him look more a drowned rat than a wolf. "Hello."

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so sorry for the wait! (strong language)

---

When the water began to settle, his eyes darted to the figure he found standing in the middle. A coat of dull browns and grays, unassuming build, eyes a deep shade of yellow. Poster boy of mundanity. Remort hadn't a clue who he was—not a single bell was rung.

Speckled nostrils flared, drawing in scents. Familiar in the sense that the trees smelt like trees, the water like water, the rabbit and so on. But he recognized nothing. He realized he couldn't even recall the start of his hunt, let alone where he had been or what he had been doing before.

The fresh kill, slick with spit, dropped pathetically to the ground at his paws.

He tucked his head as his right foreleg was brought up rub at his torn ear with his dewclaw.

“Oh, what the fuck,” he muttered.

Where the fuck was he now?

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No need to be sorry!

---

Oh, what the fuck.

More a statement than a question, really. Ries wasn't sure how to answer. Dreams did not normally go this way - he normally did not meet strangers, and the characters in his dreams rarely seemed so confused. Rarely did he have dreams this detailed at all.

Upon closer inspection, this stranger was... thin. Too thin. 

"I think... this is a dream," Ries said, though he was not as certain as he'd have liked to be. Goldenrod eyes flicked from the man to the rabbit, and he wagged his tail a little. What else was he meant to do?

He tipped his head to the side, then, a small smile working its way onto his lips. "Are you hungry?" he hazarded a guess, though he made no move to approach. "You should eat. Probably." If that even made sense, here. If anything made sense, here. 

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His head was still lowered as he regarded the wolf before him. Water dripped from wet clumps of his fur.

A dream. Just a simple dream. His eyes became restless, darting around but focusing on nothing as the information was process.

“Dreams don't usually go like this,” he said, more so to himself than the stranger. They certainly never outed themselves as a dream. Usually, he gradually came to the conclusion on his own when he began to recognize the outlandish nature of the dream. And then he would wake up. So... he must be waking up soon?

But since when did his dream apparitions become of aware of the dream, too?

The word "eat" brought his attention back to the "apparition". A paw was thoughtlessly, reflexively placed upon the untouched carcass. All the words that had been said while his mind had drifted elsewhere were gradually pieced together.

“Yeah...” he said, voice sounding far away. His brows knitted together as he recollected himself and regarded the roan wolf.

“Are you my conscious or something?”

Remort craned down his head. His teeth began to work away at the kill's flank.

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Yeah, the guy was right. Dreams really didn't usually go like this, did they?

He prepared himself to wake, closed his eyes and thought of the real world, but when he opened them again, there stood the too-thin man and the dead rabbit. A macabre way for his mind to go, but here they were. The strangeness was not lost on him - this out-of-place feeling that he could not shake. 

Are you my conscious or something?

Hello, existential crisis. 

"I... don't think so?" he said, each word laced with uncertainty. This was supposed to be a good dream, and here he was, racking his brain for what, exactly, was going on. Was any of this even real? Had his own mind conjured this all up?

Ries doubted he was this creative. 

"My name's Ries," he introduced, finally, still hesitant as he watched the man eat. "Sorry, I just... this is so weird. I don't have dreams like this, usually." A small laugh, unsure in its delivery, and then: "Maybe we're each other's conscious?"

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No?

Then maybe just a fourth wall-breaking apparition.

His ears flicked at the introduction as his graying muzzle became reddened by the kill. Ries. He couldn't recall a "Ries", either. A hum was made around a mouthful of meat.

“Remort.”

Frosted gold eyes rolled up as Ries spoke, echoing his own thoughts. And then asked if they were both each other's conscious. Maybe when he was less hungry, he might ponder that can of worms further.

“Sucks to be you, then,” he muttered glumly. And then, before taking another bite, he clicked his tongue and narrowed his eyes as if he were annoyed, and asked: “Are you just gonna keep standing in the water?”

Wouldn't it get uncomfortable? Just... soaking.

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