direction
. For instance, traveling two hundred miles
outwards
from his home (which was roughly in the middle of the North Sea), Wilhelm was equally likely to encounter sleepers in the British Isles, Scandinavia, or Denmark. He was quite a bit further away than that at the moment, but how far exactly was a mystery.
Wilhelm's solution was simple: he would stop and ask somebody where he was.
In execution, this was not nearly as simple as it sounded. Entering any one of the dreams around him was as easy as breathing, but communicating with a dreamer was tricky at best. In a very real sense, any person is at his or her most powerful when dreaming. Each dreamer creates his own personal bubble of reality and can shape it to his every whim. Most people, however, are not aware when they dream, instead letting their wild imaginations run amok.
The bottom line to a dreamwalker like Wilhelm was that simply popping into a randomly chosen dream was rather useless. Most people in a dream state would not comprehend a simple question like "where are you," even without a language barrier. To combat this rather annoying set of facts, Wilhelm had learned to look for dreams that were relatively organized and stable. This usually indicated someone who was aware within his or her dream, and who could therefore answer questions.
He had met all manner of fascinating people in this way. Some had been quite friendly. Some had tried to kill him. One vampiress had taken great delight in attempting to traumatize him with as much disturbing imagery as possible. Wilhelm was in no danger; though a dreamer could marshal the very fabric of his personal bit of reality to destroy an intruder, a dreamwalker could simply wake up at any time, instantly and completely returning to reality. But doing that meant 'losing his place' in the In-Between, which Wilhelm preferred to avoid.
<Still, he who risks nothing must lose everything in the end,>
Wilhelm reminded himself. <
Ah, there is a promising dream.>
It appeared very stable, with a sense of peacefulness to it. There was an odd sort of darkness hovering around it, though. For some reason he could not explain, the darkness reminded Wilhelm of a thick blanket, poised and about to be wrapped around the face of a murder victim.
<How very odd
.>
Hovering doom aside, the dream appealed to the young man very much. His decision made, he moved towards the pocket of reality and slipped inside.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
<Beautiful...>
Wilhelm took a very long moment to simply stare at the dream world he'd entered. He was in a pine forest, the green needles glazed with hoarfrost by the winter's ice and snow. The cold shook him back to his senses—deep, bitter cold. It was then that he realized how compete and... well,
normal
this dream was. Its owner's mind was either highly disciplined or naturally gifted. Was he or she even human? Parahumans, as magical scholars called them, seemed to have more control over their dreams than typical humans. Well, he would see soon enough.
As always when first entering another's dream, Wilhelm was stark naked. He would look exactly like himself to the dreamer when they met—every soul knew what its body looked like—but he had no wish to shock the dreamer with his nudity. Accordingly, the first step was always to 'think' himself a suit of clothes. Wilhelm imagined a thick woolen tunic of deep green hue, thick black trousers, and black leather gloves and jackboots. To combat the cold here he imagined his socks being doubly thick, as well as his blue hooded cloak. No sooner had he pictured the clothing he wanted than he was wearing it. In a dream, reality bent to the whim of the mind, and his clothes would stay until he either he or the dreamer sought to change them.
Now guarded against the cold, Wilhelm made his way through the forest. His booted feet made all the proper soft 'crunching' noises in the fresh snow, and once again he marveled at the distinct detail of this dream. This must be a real place, he surmised, and the dreamer must know it very well.
Another interesting fact is that one hour in the waking world can be as many as five or six in a dream. Wilhelm therefore took his time walking through the sleeping forest, enjoying the
waldeinsamkeit
. He soon reached the edge of the woods, looking out at a large meadow.
Then he saw her.
A black she-wolf was running across the field. Rather, "frolicking" was a better word, Wilhelm decided. She was playing, purely and simply enjoying herself. And she was definitely the dreamer of this dream.
Though Wilhelm had little psionic aptitude, it was quite easy to feel another's mind from inside her dream. He was limited to empathic contact rather than true telepathy, but the wolf in the middle of the meadow clearly had human emotions within her. Alongside her human "twist" of emotions (as Wilhelm thought of it) was another "twist," simpler and stronger, that he recognized even though he could not read it.
She was a Werewolf.
Wilhelm had met Werewolves before, and he rather liked them. In his experience they were plainspoken and fair-minded, with a strong belief in live and let-live. Many humans could learn from that example. Weres also tended to react badly to being surprised. Though he moved quietly by force of habit, Wilhelm made no attempt to mask his scent or to shield his presence. She would notice him soon enough, he was sure.
In the meantime, the young man leaned against a tree and really
looked
at the dreamer for the first time. There was a simple beauty about her that made him smile, and the joy she was feeling right now was infectious. It was the complete abandon of a person who usually held the weight of the world on her shoulders and suddenly found it lifted. Wilhelm's brothers were the same way on the rare occasions when they got drunk. The young female before him, though, had a purity of spirit that he had never before seen in a mortal being. She reminded Wilhelm of nothing so much as an angel.
A beautiful black-furred angel, playing in the snow.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Zsálya loved the time she spent alone here. It was so different from home and her everyday life. Here there were no visions of darkness to haunt her, no father or grandmother worrying over her. This was her freedom, and she reveled in it. And winter was her favorite time of year. Or at least until spring burst forth with new life. And then of course there were summer and fall. But for now it was winter, and she wanted to play in the snow. She loved the feel of the ice on a fresh layer of snow when her paws broke through for the first time. She loved the taste of fresh snow on her tongue and the coldness of it on her nose.
~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~-~
Time slipped by and by, but the little black angel, as Wilhelm had begun to think of her, still did not appear to notice him. Perhaps she didn't know that her snowy sanctuary could be entered. Perhaps she had seen him and simply didn't care. Wilhelm was torn between his desire to keep watching her at play and the thought that he should make himself known. For one thing, he had come here for a reason, but he was also feeling increasingly guilty for watching her like a common voyeur. Squaring his shoulders, Wilhelm decided to introduce himself.
No sooner had he reached the edge of the meadow when the she-wolf froze, her emotions changing from joy to stark terror, with a thin undercurrent of despair. She was facing away from him, though, so Wilhelm knew that it wasn't him she feared. Following the line of her gaze, he saw another black Werewolf emerging from the tree line on the opposite side of the meadow.
Zsálya had had the feeling she was being watched for quite some time. The same black wolf that stalked her dreams each night was back. She hoped that someday he would leave her alone, leave her to her joy and fun. But no, he always found a way to send her screaming into the waking world. Maybe she could outrun him, just this once. Maybe she would elude him, just this one time.
Where the angel's fur was a glossy, shimmering black, this newcomer's fur looked matte-black to Wilhelm, sinister rather than sensual. He had black eyes too, a sharp contrast with the little angel's sapphire orbs. The expression in those beady black eyes, though, made Wilhelm's blood boil. He had seen that expression once before, in the eyes of a rapist about to take a victim in a back-alley in Hamburg.
Wilhelm didn't need to think about what to do: an innocent was in danger, and he had to protect her. The well-trained young human was already sprinting across the snowy field, his feet scarcely touching the ground as he streaked past the little she-wolf and charged her assailant. The intruder reacted with a bellowing snarl, raising his hackles and baring his teeth. Though he was not a live person—no emotions, either wolf or human—he seemed somehow more substantial than normal dreamstuff.
Zsálya had expected the black wolf, despite hoping she would be wrong... but a human in her dream? She had never dreamt of a human before. And he seemed to be protecting her! Could it be? She watched in fascination as the human went on the attack and faced the other Werewolf. She was spellbound, her eyes following his every move. Was he someone she had seen in the forest? She didn't remember ever meeting a human.
Putting his observation to the test, Wilhelm focused his thoughts on the he-wolf as the two circled, eyeing each other warily. The rapist wolf
was
not
. He did not exist. Wilhelm's mind narrowed upon that point, trying to
think
