dream.

pulling u away from a party or something, his big broad shoulders holding u in place while ur head lulls back onto his chest, him reaching in front to shove his hand down ur shorts, just teasing you at first, whispering the dirtiest shit in ur ear. you want me don't you? simply nodding in return bc thats all u can bring urself to do.

licking ur neck, finding just the right spot that makes u tingle the most. what would u do if i fucked you with my fingers right now, hm? deep breaths from you, unable to answer. make you cum with all our friends in the other room. they may hear you. you're so loud when u bounce on my cock. would you be quieter on my fingers?

ur wet now and he slips two fingers into ur pussy, slowly circling ur clit with ur wetness, how's that feel?

you can only meekly reply with a quiet good. he chuckles, this pussy's mine. you nod. say it.

Pushing yourself up from the still cold mattress, you walk to the doorway of your room, from which you can see through the open door of the room opposite. Once again finding the bed inside empty, you breathe in a sigh. Despite your misguided hope, you had not expected to see anything otherwise. Exhaling deep and slow, you resign yourself to what you know; that something is not right, and that it's time for action.

Not bothering to eat, for you have no appetite, you wrap a shawl around yourself over the clothes you have not changed for days, and slip your feet into a pair of boots. With one last look around the strangely empty quarters, you step out into the brisk early morning air. 

The light of day is hidden behind a substantial layer of cloud, casting a grey gloom over the garden. At your feet are the tracks of your dear companion; little paw prints still sunken into the soft dirt of the path that leads from your door to the garden gate. Closing your eyes, you visualize the animal leaving that day, before you'd closed the door behind it. You focus on the feeling of the cat and the empathetic bond that you share, searching for the tether between you. 

There – you get your first instinct of where you should be headed, though vague and foggy, and step onto the middle path into the woods, trampling through layers of pine needle and shredded tree bark, scanning the landscape of rocks and trees. As you walk, you try to reach out through your bond, asking for a sign. The cold bites at your face, and you curse yourself for leaving it so long, for not gathering your remaining strength to search earlier. Your familiar knows its way around, never lost – you know that. If it had not returned home, it meant something was stopping it – something has certainly gone awry. Why have you not forced yourself into the forest sooner?

The wind in the trees makes it harder to listen out for movement, creating noise all around you. The chill of the breeze tries to distract you, make you focus on yourself, the feeling of the cold settling heavy into your face and limbs. A few times you almost stumble clumsily as you look around you and not at the placement of your steps. As you venture further and further still, pushing your weary body along even while it begs you to stop, you feel something; a faint presence not far away, though there is no living being in sight. Unconsciously, you pick up your pace, ignoring the exaggerated ache of your legs and feet, eyes straining and searching, until suddenly, you stop. Your eyelids close of their own accord.

In your mind you see yellow and orange leaves making the transition from green to red, different from the foliage of the trees around you that remained a deep green. You caught a fleeting scent of moist soil, as if it had flown by on the swiftest of breezes, shivering as the phantom sensation of cool water dripping down your neck tickles your skin. Water.

Without another thought, you instinctively turn in the direction you know there is a stream in a glade. You find yourself almost at a run now, your body despises you for it. As the evergreen trees around you thin, you see the yellow-orange leaves of the liquidambar trees ahead. You begin to feel another pain, a pain that is not your own. 

Approaching the stream, eyes trained on the plants around the bank, you see black shapes against the greenery. Shapes that, as you grow closer, focus into birds. Sleek black feathers and beady eyes – five of them. Your mother had always tried to teach you the symbolic meaning of the number of crows one came upon, but you can't remember now, for better or worse, which number meant death or misfortune or good luck. You shoo them away, making them clear out, screeching their loud piercing calls, a blur of feathers and a racket of strong flapping wings. Finally, as they fly off, you lay eyes on your closest friend, laying in the shrubbery. 

Your heart pulses as you take in your familiar's unkempt state. The cat's midnight black fur is damp in patches and ridden with leaves and twigs from the forest floor. The yellow of its eyes is less vibrant than usual, and less attentive of the scene around it. Not until you stepped closer, until the two of you made eye contact, did the animal's eyes seem to focus. Worst of all were the cuts and scratches to its face and body. Whipping your shawl from around you, you carefully scoop up the cat, eliciting a pained ‘orw’ from the poor creature. 

"Shh, we're going home," you soothe as you wrap your shawl around it. 

----

The house is warm and welcoming, and relief washes over you the moment you step inside. The cat is sleeping in your arms, having relaxed into you on your journey back, and you can sense how it has missed your presence, that it feels safe once more with you. You feel considerably more stable and capable yourself. 

Placing the sleeping bundle on the settee by the fire, you leave the room to fetch water and some cloth. The kitchen is in disarray, having had no strength or desire to see to any of your chores since the last full moon. Thankfully though, the bread you bought last week is still good, and you grab it on the way back. 

"Ah ah," you scold as you enter the room and find your familiar halfway off the settee. 

Dark eyes look up at you, the bloody cut across his nose shining in the firelight, your shawl falling over his shoulders, no longer big enough to keep him warm. "Sorry," he says quietly, bringing his foot back up off the floor. 

His wounds don't look as severe on his less tiny body, but they need to be cleaned nonetheless. You hand him the chunk of bread as you set the dish of water on the table and sit on the space of floor in front of him. You hear his stomach make itself known at the sight of food, catching his eye as he chuckles with a small smile. Oh, how you've missed that smile. 

Being home again is doing him good, giving him more strength and allowing him to shift. He would not have been able to shift to his human form at all while he was out there alone and injured, away from you and your magic. Your bond causes you to depend on one another, and though other magic users found this frustrating, you felt that it made the magic that you did use more meaningful. 

One hand clutches at the edge of the shawl and readjusts it around himself as he eats, eyes watching your fingers dip the cloth into the bowl. You should have brought a blanket, you realize, but then you feel the warmth of his skin as the hand you use to press the wet cloth to his arm comes in contact with, and decide the fire is enough. 

"You scared me, Hyuka."

His chewing stills as his eyes find yours; those big innocent eyes that let him get away with even more in his human form. You would be able to see every emotion of his in those eyes if you weren't able to feel them for yourself through the bond. 

"I didn't mean to be gone so long, o-or go so far. I lost track of time, and I was coming home but..." He trails off as he senses you aren't upset, your calmness washing over him. He sighs and leans back into the cushion of the settee tiredly. There's food in his belly, he's warm and cozy, taken care of, and most importantly, home. "I missed you."

Images play in your mind of when Hyuka had come into your life. You had begun to have dreams, more vivid each night until he arrived, of paw prints through your house. Then one morning you'd opened the door to a ball of midnight fur. He had been nervous about how you'd feel about him being a shifter, and shy when it came to revealing his human form, but he needn't have worried. He'd come to you just when you needed him and you grew alongside each other. Now you could not do without each other, magical bond or no. 

His hand moves to the back of his neck, a well-known habit of his. His eyes grow startled as he feels the absence of leather cord, his hand flying to his throat to confirm the loss. "My... my charm… Do you have it?"

"No," you answer. You'd been too worried about getting him home to notice his accessory was missing. 

"I must have lost it in the tousle… a wild cat picked a fight with me," He looked down at a scratch on his forearm as he spoke with a scowl, as if mentally cursing said animal. 

You knew the charm was important to him—it was special to you, too. It was a long running tradition amongst magic users to give their familiars a token of their bond. Not only as a symbol of the connection, but for other magic folk to determine familiars on sight, give them shelter or aid, accept or send messages, or follow them to their human counterpart if they were in need of help. "We can go and look for it. Maybe in a week, when we're both back to our best, hm?"

Hyuka agrees, his eyes back to their usual warmth and calmness. As you tend to his cuts and scratches, he watches the fire, his mind wandering back into the forest. He'd gone further than he'd ever been, and if it weren't for his cat form's senses, he probably would have been lost. 

"There was another familiar in the woods," he says suddenly, remembering more as the haze of hunger lifts and the warmth of home settles into his being. 

Hands stilling their work, your eyes lift to his face. You had lived in this area your whole life, born and raised and never left, and never met another magic kind—not one you weren't related to. "A familiar? Are you sure?" 

Hyuka nods, looking solemn. "I had walked a long way. I must have been halfway between our village and the next. I was about to turn back and make for home, but I spotted a house. It was abandoned, I think. But... there was a woman."

Sitting back on your heels, you listen intently, fingers worrying at the cloth in your hands subconsciously. "At an abandoned house? Was she a squatter?"

"She was using the shelter. She was weak. I could tell she'd been through an ordeal. She was like me. A shifter, I mean."

Blinking in this information, your mind begins to rush with possibilities. Has there been someone else with magic close by all this time? Just a walk through the forest? Could you have had a friend, someone to share everything with? To exchange notes about herbs and spend traditional holidays with? Just the thought of it made your chest squeeze with longing. You had Hyuka, of course, but a familiar was different; an extension of yourself, in essence.

“Was she separated from her witch?” you ask, intrigued. “Was she lost, like you?”

You feel his mood dip lower before he even formulates an answer. “No,” he answers, eyes blinking faster, the way you knew he always did when trying to keep his composure. He looks off again, remembering. “I’d never met another shifter before, you know. What they say is true; I could sense that she was one, and she sensed me too. She talked to me, told me I’m more lucky than I know to have a bond. She told me I should go home.“ You notice a longing in Hyuka, just as you had felt moments before, perhaps a little stronger now. “She told me her witch was dead. She knew it would be her turn soon.“

Moving on instinct, you get up from the floor, planting yourself on the settee beside him and clasping his hand in both of your own. “That's terrible.”

He looks at you again, with sorry eyes and a heavy heart. If only you could take it away for him. “I wanted to do something to comfort her, to be able to say something, but…”

“You couldn’t shift to your human form,” you finish. Hyuka nods. As ragged and tired as you are, the feelings of desperation and distress you feel, both your own and shared, outweigh everything else. “Do you think you could find your way back to that house?”

His eyes light up a fraction. “But you need to rest and–“

“We can't just let her die all alone out there.” You feel your frazzled nerves sparking as you speak, mentally preparing yourself and what little strength had returned since your reunion. “Someone should be with her. If you’re up to going back again.”

Hyuka stands faster than you can blink, almost knocking over the dish of water at his feet.

–---

 Leaving the house with Hyuka in human form alongside you is something new. While his animal side was a keen adventurer, as a human he was somewhat of a homebody. As someone who could change himself from man to animal, Hyuka didn’t own a single pair of shoes. You’d offered to buy him a pair in the beginning, but he’d refused. For one, he never planned on walking around outside of the house as a human, and, he’d pointed out, what was he to do with a pair of shoes once he’d shifted? Carry them around by his little cat mouth?

For the first time, you were witnessing his bare feet in the elements. The pine needles, broken twigs, stray stones and other natural materials that made up the forest floor didn’t seem to bother him the way it would your own feet. 

It was getting into the afternoon now, and the sun had made an appearance from behind the clouds. Hyuka was much easier to keep up with when he was a cat; his long human legs made for big strides, and while you struggle to keep the same pace, straggling only a few steps behind, you understand his haste. 

Fear creeps in as your mind wanders ahead. What if you were too late? You can feel the desperation in Hyuka, wanting to help even if it was just by being there for someone, even a stranger, in their final moments. You knew that if she was already gone, he’d be crushed. You would be crushed. Hoping against hope, you chant silent prayers in your mind that there is still time.

Hyuka turns to look over his shoulder at you as he dodges a stray branch that had already lost all of its leaves. For once, you can’t think of anything to say to him, so you give him a small reassuring smile which he returns, though you both know the other’s feelings like your own – there could be no hiding them. You both wanted to say something to comfort each other, and that knowledge was enough. 

The further you walk, the drier the surroundings grow, as if the place had been abandoned not only by people but by nature itself. Brambles catch on your clothes, dried needles crunch and snap underfoot, and the air somehow feels stale as your lungs breathe it in and push it out again. This was unfamiliar ground for you, and so different from the areas close to home you were used to.

“Almost there,” Hyuka announces as you pass the remnants of a broken down and weather worn horse cart.

Your heart squeezes with hope when you approach a clearing and a small cream coloured house with a faded roof comes into view. Sensing Hyuka’s pulse quicken, you attempt to slow your breathing and be strong for him – for the both of you. He was losing something that might have been too, but he was also seeing his fate first hand should anything take you from this world.

As the two of you draw nearer to the home, you can make out the figure laying still on the doorstep. The closer Hyuka advances, the more carefully he treads the dry woodland floor, so as not to startle the woman. A few paces from the step of the porch, he stops and calls out softly, “Hello.”

The woman’s weary eyes open, and or a moment she looks panicked, her body tensing, the expression of a scared animal wanting to flee crossing her features. But you can see she is too exhausted to make a move even if she wanted to run away. Your stomach pangs with the realisation that the woman is not far from death. To look at her, you can see how shallowly she breathes, as if each intake of oxygen is an effort. You wish with all your being that this was an ailment you could cure with magic, with some special brew, but there could be no righting her condition or her fate.

“It’s okay,” Hyuka assures her, his hands held out flat in what he hopes is a calming gesture. “We’re friends. Remember the black cat you spoke to?”

A wave of understanding and surrender rolls over her face and she physically relaxes. She must feel comforted by the fact that she is in the presence of her own kind – even as her eyes take you in, it looks as though she puts it together; a familiar and his magic user. You feel Hyuka relax slightly at her acceptance.

“What’s your name?” he asks.

The woman’s lips part, her tongue darting out to wet them before she speaks in a weak, hoarse voice. “Alita.”

“Alita,” you address her gently as you step wider out from Hyuka so she can see you in full. Her eyes are slow to drift over to you once more. “Where is your bonded one?”

Alita’s eyes fall closed as if recalling a nightmare. “She is gone.”

“What happened to her?” Hyuka asks. Carefully he steps forward onto the porch, and when Alita doesn’t look frightened by this, he kneels down by her side. You follow suit, crouching down next to your companion. Her eyes look broken as she looks up at the two of you, flitting between both pairs of eyes. There is a sadness there that you can only imagine. 

“They came in the night, the people of our village. Shouting and banging on the door, on the walls. So many men. A few women, but mostly men. They were angry – more rage and hate than I’ve ever seen in one person, multiplied many times over,” Her lips quivered as she found her next words. “They broke the door down and took her, my mistress. Dragged her from the house and into town, locked her up. She was locked up for days, and they wouldn’t say why. Then she was taken to the town hall. There were so many people there, even people we knew. People my mistress had helped. Everyone was shouting at her. They all looked at her like she was the most evil thing they’d ever laid eyes on. A trial, they called it.”

You watch as Alita shudders, a sign you recognise as the irreversible cold someone feels as they linger at death's door. Even if you had a blanket to give, she would not get warm. She would never be warm again.

“I’d name it a screaming match. They all shouted such terrible things, claimed my mistress had done things that just weren’t true. It went on for days.” Alita’s next inhale was so shaky and stuttered you thought she might’ve been choking until she spoke again. “They said they knew she was a witch. That part was true. It wouldn’t be tolerated, they said. So they took–” Her voice caught in her throat. Hyuka placed his hand comfortingly over hers which laid limp on the concrete of the porch. You could see the pain written all over her face, her eyes far away as she relived the whole ordeal, grief that she would never get to heal taking her over. “They took her away again, and they killed her. Slowly. I know because I could feel it.” 

She was looking at Hyuka now, and when you glance at him you see tears wet on his nose. You had never seen him cry. He always held it back on the rare occasion he got choked up. But in this moment, hearing this story, he couldn’t. “It’s been happening more and more in our town,” she continues. “We thought we’d be safe because we live just on the outskirts, close enough to visit but not really part of it. I thought we were safe because so many people appreciated my mistress's help. She always went to them when they asked for her.”

Feeling your own eyes prickle, you take a sidelong look at your familiar as he holds Alita’s hand. You imagine what it would be like if he were suddenly gone from you, from the world; to never again be able to look into his eyes and feel seen and understood; no longer feeling that connection, your bond severed, left feeling cold and untethered. A shiver threatens to take over as you consider your life without him, and you stifle a gasp as a pain throbs in your chest. Alita’s fingers weakly clench Hyuka’s hand as she sobs. You are so lucky, your thoughts remind you. Lucky he came into your life, lucky the two of you get along as well as you do, and that your bond is a strong one. Lucky not to be completely alone in the world and your little cottage. 

If you were to lose your life, Hyuka would soon follow after. But if Hyuka were to die, you'd go on, your life forever missing one integral piece. Other familiars might come, perhaps, but they wouldn't be Hyuka. Hyuka, with his superstitions about ravens, scowling at them through the window as if he might pounce through the glass even in his human form. Who always muttered in his sleep when he went to bed with a full stomach. Whose soft snoring you had come to be unable to sleep without hearing across the hall. The small black bundle of fur with glowing moon eyes he shifted to and fro, always making you laugh as he strayed from the path his human counterpart had told you he would take the minute he saw a butterfly; chasing them always seemed more important to the cat. You were sure you'd still see his phantom running around the house and garden for years to come if he were to be taken from you. All you can do is what you have always done; do your best to protect each other and hope that fate will be kind.

Alita turns Hyuka’s hand over and presses her palm into his with a weak squeeze, and Hyuka’s eyes are drawn to their touching hands with curiosity. Her hand slips away and he up-turns his palm to find a silver moon charm in a leather cord – the one he had lost. She meets his eyes with a slightly guilty look in hers. Her breathing is growing more ragged by the minute, her eyes losing more and more of their light, and you want to suggest that she save her strength, but you don’t want to deny her of her last interaction. 

“I’m sorry I took it,” she says a little breathlessly. “I slipped it off while petting you when first we met. I don’t know why…” You can see her body growing heavier against the concrete of the porch, hear her breathing more shallowly. “Maybe I just wanted something to hold onto. Something like… a friend…”

Suddenly her eyes go hollow, the breath draining from her chest. Hyuka just has time to draw back his hands before Alita’s body shifts one last time into her animal form – a grey dove. 

You take in a shaky breath, feeling so many emotions yet numb at the same time. Hyuka turns to you, his eyes wet, and presses his forehead to your shoulder. The two of you sit like that for a while, until you’re sure Alita’s spirit has passed on. Until you’re both ready to do what needs to be done. Then, you pick up the grey dove and follow Hyuka in silence to a nearby tree, the biggest one in the clearing. Using his hands, he scoops out enough dry earth to make a hole just big enough. You place the dove inside, then carefully bury her together, handful by handful. You place some stones to mark the spot, but don't dare to leave any likeness of a symbol of magic.

Standing side by side looking over the site, you grasp Hyuka's hand. The numbness has given way to questions and concerns, leading you to finally break the silence. “She said this has been happening a lot, and getting closer to the village,” you say in an almost whisper, as if the trees might overhear and spread your words. “Do you think… do you think we're safe?”

A brisk chill blew across the clearing, as if the very wind itself was relaying a warning. 

He meets your eyes and you find there a cloud of emotion and determination like you've never seen. When he replies, his voice is rough but firm. “We'll make sure of it. We'll lay low. At the first sign of trouble, we'll leave.” 

You nod solemnly. “I'll do everything in my power to protect you,” you say, as if it needs saying. 

“I know,” he replies in a gruff voice, and you feel your shared feelings of protectiveness intensify as his grip on your hand tightens.

He is so pissed at the world and so tired of keeping up his defenses by the time you come around. All the other shelter visitors take one glance at him and keep walking, looking for the more placid types. Not you. You stop outside the door, your full attention on him through the window, and though he fixes you an unyielding cold glare through the glass, he can't help his strange curiosity. Everyone else has written him off, but there you stand, considering him while the other humans fuss over the more friendly, cutesy hybrids.

Wolf hybrid Bangchan who nobody had ever looked at the way you did. Your eyes so warm and kind and unfazed by the dangerous hybrid he was trying to seem that something inside him flinched. His wounded animal side warned him that look in your eyes was just another human trick, and he keeps his gaze hard as he watches your every move …but when you come into the room, he forgets to growl, too fixated on your presence.

He doesn't say a word to you that first day. He stays in his spot, sat on the floor, back against the wall, body rigid with tension as if ready to make a break for the door. But he doesn't. He doesn't answer your friendly, gentle questions or ask any of his own, though he wants to know why you're wasting your time on someone like him when there are perfectly responsive hybrids down the hall. But he doesn't try to scare you away, either, which, as the staff tell you, is a first

Wolf hybrid Bangchan who is surprised when you come back again. And again, and again. More surprised still when during one of your visits he notices he's dropped his fierce demeanour. Your presence is different from the other humans he came across on the streets, from the workers who always wanted him to answer questions or eat on their schedule. You're kind and patient, unwaveringly so, and it seems like it isn't an act at all.

Slowly, day by day, he warms up to you. He sees your surprised but pleased reaction when he first speaks to you, and it fills him with a strange warmth he's never felt before. It scares him a little, that feeling. What if you suddenly stop coming back? What if you decide he's a lost cause like all the others have, that he'll never be one of those hybrids that crave human attention?

Wolf hybrid Bangchan who begins to dream of you at night on the few days in a row you don't visit him. He longs for your soothing presence, and he begins to fear the worst the longer you don't show up: that you've lost interest in him. The dreams make him grumpy, make him question everything he thought he knew about himself. Why is he dreaming about going home with you? Of sleeping in a bed? Of a quiet house where he is the only hybrid? He used to scoff at the thought of waiting around for a human, and now here he was subconsciously fantasising about sitting by the window in your house, eagerly waiting for you to walk through the door like some pet. For the first time, he climbs onto the bed, sighing at the surprising comfort of the side mattress, his muscles weary from so many nights on the laminated floor.

He can't keep his tail from twitching with excitement when you show up again, apologising and saying something about work that he hardly registers as he finds himself overjoyed with relief and the need to be close to you. Before he even knows it's happening he's stepping forward, closer and closer, to meet you. He sees your eyes light up at his sudden new proximity, and he ignores the lingering bitter voice of the tough wolf persona he had built berating him for the way his heart leaps at the sight, the feeling washing over him that maybe, just maybe, he'd do a lot of things to see that light, to be the one to put it there.

Wolf hybrid Bangchan who melts into your touch when you stroke his ears, his tail stirring behind him. Who lets you start calling him Channie and can't deny that he feels like a whole new hybrid. He doesn't want to seem desperate, but now that he's experienced your gentle touch, he finds he can't get enough, as if you've unlocked a need deep inside him that he didn't know he had. He tries to be subtle about his clinginess, casually standing so close to you that he's just pressed against your side enough to feel you, as if the two of you were standing in a fight space and not an adequately sized room. He can smell your unique scent from this proximity, and he breathes it in greedily, calming and grounding himself with it. You look at his bed, noticing that the sheets have been slept in for once, and then you're looking at him and he realises you've asked him a question that he was too distracted to hear, so he just nods sheepishly.

Wolf hybrid Channie who feels like bounding off the walls when he hears the words, “Channie, how would you feel about coming home with me?” His tail goes into a full enthusiastic wag for the first time since he was a kid. He pulls you into a hug with a resounding, “Yes! Yes…. yes…” as he buries his face in your neck without trying to be subtle about it in the slightest.