It was dark. Seth was confused, because he remembered it being afternoon. He blinked several times but couldn’t see anything. Was he blind? His head hurt and his face felt sticky. He tried to wipe off the stickiness but a wave of pain prevented him from moving his arm.

That’s right. I fell.

His whole body hurt. His breathing was achy, but not too bad. He decided he might have a couple broken ribs, but probably not worse. He couldn’t move his right arm at all, and it was intensely painful. He reached up with his left to gently touch his shoulder. It was dislocated. 

It hurt to think. He needed help. He couldn’t see anything. 

I need to get up. No one can find me here.

Seth moved his legs. They were bruised and sore, but not broken. He tried to push to his knees and his head painfully brushed a pine branch. When the wave of nausea passed he reached out with his left hand. He was under a pine tree, and several of the branches were broken. When he crawled out from under it he could see dimly. 

Seth looked around. He was at the bottom of the cliff in a ravine. It was densely wooded here. The full moon was out but it was still dark beneath the trees. His eyes had adjusted well enough he could make out the objects closest to him. He didn't see any sign of the wagon he’d been riding on earlier. He was certain it had gone over the cliff with him. 

“Hello?” Talking hurt. Not his voice, but his head. The sound scrambled his thoughts and echoed painfully in his skull.  He gingerly touched his head with his left hand. His scalp had bled quite a bit, his short hair was sticky and stiff with the dried blood, but it didn't seem to still be bleeding.

He took his time trying to stand, and leaned against a tree until the dizziness passed. Then he realized he was missing his shoes. He didn’t know why, but this inordinately upset him. He liked those shoes! How was he supposed to find them in the dark? They wouldn’t let him in school without shoes!

And no one was here to help him. No one would be coming here either, or they’d have already found him. And found his shoes. He was alone.

No, I need to find the wagon. There was a first aid kit on it that might have a healing stone or even a potion. He needed to think of the things that would help. Even though he needed his shoes for school, he should find the wagon first. The wagon was helpful right now. His shoes were not.

Which way to go? He couldn't wander aimlessly. He didn't have the energy for that, and without the first aid kit he was not likely to last long. Nothing about what he could see gave him any clue where to go. Damn, but he didn’t want to die down here.

Come on. Think. Figure this out. Which way? His brain still felt sluggish and it really hurt to think. His brother, Saben, often told him he needed to listen to his wind. The magic would tell him things if he could just listen. But it never really worked for Seth the way it had for Saben.

The more he concentrated, the sharper the pain became. He wasn’t going to be able to wrestle his magic into a structured spell this way. He was in no condition to command it. Finally he summoned his power, but didn't give it any distinct form. It felt wrong to him to surrender control of the power, but did it anyway. He felt the breeze as it swirled around him. It smelled nice, of cedar trees and late summer night. Show me the way to go, he thought to the breeze.

Maybe he was just punch drunk, but he was sure he felt the way to go, and followed the scent of the wind. And it felt a lot kinder to him than it usually did.

The wind was right. It was some time later, Seth couldn't really be sure how long as simply keeping moving felt like forever, that he found the first shattered crate from the wagon. He paused to examine the contents, but it was beyond any use. He did notice that there were weird strings on some of the pieces. 

"This way," he whispered, trying to reassure himself. "I can do this. Almost there, just a little more. I got a job to do. Gotta help Saben. Can't— can't stop now."

He noticed more strings trailing from the trees. He really didn't have the clarity of mind to figure out why they were there. He did feel that he should have recognized them though. The forest was getting louder too. 

He reached a clearing well lit by moonlight. This was where the noise was coming from. He was lucky he didn't just wander out into the clearing, as a battle was taking place. A huge silver leopard with pronghorns was fighting a swarm of table sized spiders. 

Seth stood in the shadows staring at the battle for several seconds. This should terrify me, he thought. But he felt nothing. 

The cat was holding its own pretty well.  A dozen or so spiders were strewn around the clearing in varying states of dismemberment.  Three spiders still fought the cat, darting in to bite it and darting back out before the huge paws could shred them.  As he watched, the cat snagged the front legs of one spider and sliced them clean through.

On the other side of the clearing, clearly visible in the moonlight, was the shattered wagon.  Right.  He needed that.  It made perfect sense to him right then to just walk over to the wagon and get what he needed while the monsters were distracted. He would just need to be careful of extra spiders, that's all. No problem.

—-----------------

 

The weirdest shit was happening to me. I don’t remember a whole lot about it, but I was on a job. I don’t remember what the job was for, but I remember a room with funky designs in it and crazy old stuff. Ah, antiquities. I like old stuff. Then I’d been betrayed. Yeah, I had definitely been betrayed. And then confined. But not in jail or anything, I straight up couldn’t move. I couldn’t see. I couldn’t hear. I couldn’t even breathe. And this lasted for such a long fucking time. 

I wondered if I’d died. It was the only reason I could think of that I didn’t need to breathe. Shit stayed that way for I don’t know how long. I think I went crazy with boredom because I became aware of something talking to me in my head. But I didn’t speak that language. So I wondered if the job had been foreign, and now I was in some kind of foreign afterlife. But I knew languages. A few of them actually, but I couldn’t remember any of them right now. My memory isn’t normally this shit.

Suddenly, I could feel it.

For the first time in way too fucking long I could feel fresh air. I haven’t been able to breathe properly, and I wanted to. I wanted that clean, fresh air. I wanted to smell it, to breathe and move. The last few... hours? days? weeks? ... had been like a bad LSD trip. 

Fuck this shit. 

I wanted that clean air. And something touched me, and I wanted to feel normal again. And I'd fucking take it.

And for the first time since the job went bad, I opened my eyes and took a deep breath.

It was night. I was outside in the moonlight and there was an animal beside me. My first thought was that it was the fucking dog, but that wasn’t it. I stared at it for a moment but it was unnaturally still. It was probably dead. Another animal similar to the first, this one I could see was a leopard, was partially wrapped in white spider silk as if a spider had been interrupted while wrapping it like a freshly caught fly. Beyond the dead cat the corpses of multiple spiders were strewn about.

Well fuck this shit some more. Those things were huge. Spiders bigger than me? Was I in a coma or something? Was this actually a drug trip?

When I tried to stand up I promptly landed on my face. No part of my body wanted to work properly. Fuck, no part of my body was shaped properly. I stared down at my fluffy paws. 

I was a fucking cat.

What the everloving fuck? 

Coma. I had to be in a coma, and this was just some drug induced delusions or some shit. Well okay. Coma or LSD trip it is, and I may as well ride the ride. I stood up on all fours like a cat, and I marveled at how trippy my brain was to invent this shit. 

There were two dead cats next to me, including the one partially wrapped in spider silk. They were a bit bigger than me, and looked like snow leopards, or maybe like canadian lynx? I’m not some zoologist. They were big cats of some type, and very much smaller than the insane spiders in the clearing. There was a huge cat the same color as me on the other side of the clearing fighting with a bunch of the spiders. So, I’m a kitten in this drug dream and that over there was mama cat. Mama cat was protecting the kittens from the spiders. 

So, dream analysis. The kittens were me and my team-- wait, did I have a team? Didn't I usually work alone? I wracked my brain a bit but couldn't remember. Fine, I had a team, and we were attacked and someone came to rescue us. Mama cat must represent whoever was rescuing us. 

But seriously brain, turning a cat burglar into a cat is super cliche. 

I looked around, not really wanting to look at the gross spiders. On the far side of the clearing near mama cat was a cliff with a crevice going into it and more spiders. On this side were dead spiders, the other dead cats, and broken and scattered crates and jars. Towards the center was a broken old-timey wagon with some junk still on it.

I decided the clearing was too busy and wandered closer to the broken crates. Loot was always nice, even if it was dream loot. 

In dreams treasures are gold and jewels and fancy shit. In this dream it was junk out of a HomeGoods store. It was all broken plates and stuff, nice ones sure, but just regular household goods. There was a metal crate, lined with cotton stuffing, that was open on its side with the hinges twisted. 

That one just had egg shells in it. Ooooh, Fabergé Eggs? I reached in and clawed out the stuffing (convenient things, claws) but found nothing but the broken shells. I checked them out anyway, because only valuable things get locked up. 

The shells were multicolored and jewel toned, unlike any natural egg I’d ever seen or heard of. There was a bit of goop on them and a puddle of goop on the ground. This apparently was a live egg, not just the shell, and well, too bad for whatever was in it.

Why lock up an egg? It had to be really valuable somehow. Was it the shells that mattered, like those fancy dye ingredients? Or maybe a prize winning chicken? Well, it could be dream logic I suppose. Eggs are treasures. Okay.

The fight with mama cat was winding down. Most of the spiders were dead, but mama cat was looking pretty shakey. Come on mama cat! I'm rooting for you! Squish those bugs! 

Wait a second. Did mama cat have fucking horns? Sparkly glowing horns?

A brush of air along the fur of my tail freaked me out, and I leapt straight up into the air. The slash and snap of spider claws and spider fangs just missed me. Holy shit.

What the fuck brain? You trying to kill me? It suddenly occurred to me that if I died in the dream, I'd die for real. Maybe this was representing what was happening in real life then? Something dangerous, maybe surviving surgery or something?

Fuck. I'll have to fight the spider then.

It was a good thing my cat body had excellent reflexes that didn't need actual control by me. I just had to let it fling itself out of the way in a panic response whenever the spider got close. And as the monster with nasty big fangs and weird eyes and huge creepy legs tried to bite or grab me in a super fast, super scary, super imma-eat-your-face way, I was pretty permanently panicked.

I leapt, rolled, scrambled, and hopped as fast as I could to get away, trusting my cat body to just do its thing as I tried to get some distance. My own gymnastic talents certainly helped a bit. There was water a little further down, and I thought I might have a shot of escaping if the spider couldn't swim. As far as I could remember, spiders couldn't swim. It was a solid plan.

Until the-taller-than-me spider walked into the water after me. I couldn't dodge or leap while in water deeper than I could stand. This was such fucking bullshit. I swam for it anyway.

A big splash and a struggle caught my attention, but I didn't turn to look until I sensed the spider was no longer behind me.

Some kid was stabbing the spider. He was kneeling on it and holding it under the water, and stabbing it repeatedly in the head. The kid must have jumped on it while it was chasing me.

He got off the spider and kicked it to the side and let it float away. He glanced at me then turned back to shore. 

I turned back to shore too. The kid looked at me, knife ready, but didn't move to attack me. I’m a harmless kitten! Look at me meowing cutely! I’m not dangerous at all.

Honestly, the kid was a bloody mess. Kid was a young teen, maybe thirteen, and skinny. It looked like he'd done a round in a blender, wasn't satisfied, and went back for another slicing. Blood caked his short dark hair and was smeared all over him. There were rips in his clothes and he was missing his shoes. He'd have to be careful walking near all the broken dishes.

Another spider was on the shoreline, creeping creepily as spiders do.

I didn’t think this kid had a chance. If mama cat, who was enormous, was barely holding on with these obviously venomous spiders, this beat up kid was going to bite it for sure.

The kid looked exhausted and just done with the spider. He waved his hand and said something and the spider was flung away in a gust of air.

So. The kid was fucking Gandalf. Nah, this shit wasn’t going to surprise me anymore.

I swam for shore as Mama cat finished off the last of the spiders, including the one Gandalf launched her way. She spat a dismembered leg out and staggered towards them. I felt bad for mama cat, and went over to her, giving Gandalf a wide berth. It never occurred to me to be afraid of her. Mama cat was my mama in this crazy dream. Mama sniffed me for a moment then lay down heavily. She licked me a few times, I was surprised at how soothing it felt, and then laid down her head. She didn't move again.

I stayed with the mama cat for a bit, feeling sorry for it, and grateful. Mama had protected me and killed the spiders. She was a very good mama. She had been beautiful too. Silver gray with rosettes like a snow leopard with saber toothed fangs and … glowing pronghorns. Like no cat ever. She was bigger than any tiger or lion too, easily the size of a van. Her babies hadn't done so well though. Both had died.

I took the first real good look around. The clearing was on average twenty eight feet wide from tree line to tree line, and a hundred and thirty feet from water to cliff. The cliff had a crevice, almost five feet wide and eleven feet high. I couldn’t judge the height of the cliff well from this angle in the dark. The trees were evergreen types mostly, with some deciduous. The water was long and narrow, no more than two hundred feet across, and I couldn’t see either end. Might be a river, but it didn’t seem to have flow. The far side had more cliffs. Seventeen spider corpses that I could see. Eleven crates of goods, only four of which remained near the wagon. Six bales of soft goods, cloth by the look of it. One metal box that looked to have been concealed in another crate. All of the goods were standard grade household stuff, plates, jars, and the like. None of this was expensive stuff. Even the shipping crates were rough hewn and inexpensive.

The wagon was right side up, but really smashed up. There was no repairing it and the goods pretty much were a wash.

The kid ignored me and the mama cat. He picked up one of the egg shells and then tossed it aside. He poked at the goop on the ground, this Gandalf was braver than I, and then wiped his hand off. He then searched through the crates and debris, clearly looking for something specific. He was doing everything left-handed. I watched him for a bit from where I sat near mama cat. 

His clothes were simple, and in as bad a shape as he was. They weren’t in any fashion or style I recognized and made me think I was in a foreign country for sure. He was really injured. He moved stiffly, his balance was bad, and he looked really confused. I felt bad for the little scrapper, he'd saved my bacon by offing that spider and he really needed some help. 

He was tossing stuff off of the wagon. It looked like he was trying to get to the driver's area. I walked over for a closer look. Well, stumbled really, as I did not have a good handle on this whole four foot thing yet. Why wasn’t I human in my own dreams? Anyway the kid bent down and reached under the driver's seat. He couldn't reach whatever he was looking for. After a few tries he fell on his ass, and then collapsed back onto the dirt. I got close to him, carefully as I didn't know where that knife had gone, and got a good look. 

The kid was concussed. Badly too, judging by his pupils. One was much bigger than the other. Based on the blood on his scalp, he could have a brain bleed or something. This might be a drug dream, but I didn't like the idea of a kid dying no matter if it wasn't real. Welp, Gandalf was looking for something, I'd find that something. My job was a retriever after all. 

I easily squirmed under the wagon and found a leather package strapped up underneath. It looked intact, so I cut it loose with my wonderful claws and dragged it back to the kid. It took some prodding for the kid to realize what was there. When he did, he pulled out a bottle and drank it. He then lay back on the ground and closed his eyes.

Oh, no. You're not supposed to let someone with a concussion go to sleep. I nuzzled his face, nipped at him and did every annoying thing any cat ever has done.

Dude was out.

It was my dream, wasn't it? Wake the fuck up, dammit! 

Then I noticed his wounds visibly closing. Well then. Healing potions. What shit.

Righty. I'd let Gandalf sleep for a bit. And poke through whatever else was on that wagon. And keep watch for more spiders.