ihadthisdreamwhereonetime

[ihadthisdreamwhereonetime]

It’s fuzzy at the beginning. I was in my dorm doing work and I left for some reason. I think class was happening on the floor below me. Somewhere along the way, I feel a jolt and sinking feeling in my stomach. I fall to my knees. I wake up, and I can’t feel anything. But I see myself next to me. I look around, I can’t figure out what’s happening. The not me next to me sits up, and rubs their head, confused. I don’t know what’s happening and begin to panic, but no one can hear me or even seems to notice I’m there, except the not me. I look down and realize I’m not there. I don’t have a form, and I’m stuck. I try to move around and get away but the further I go the more pain I feel. It’s the only thing I can feel. The person inside my body looks at me. They do not have my eyes. They know what I am. They quickly run upstairs and into my dorm room before locking the door. 

The other person explained that they accidentally performed a dangerous spell incorrectly and had been lost to the ether, their own body unprotected and soulless had been snatched away and destroyed, his own tether snapped. He didn’t remember much, but time slowly slipped from his senses, leaving a cold, blank void, with nothing and no way for him to perceive anything. I still had my earthly tether, which meant I could still utilize earthly senses without being in my body. He apologized, because he honestly didn’t realize what he was doing. There was but a small gap between my body and would and he had taken his chance. He acknowledged that only he would ever be able to see me, because he knew magic and was inhabiting my form. I asked him to return my body. He refused. 

I tried to fight back, to pull myself back into my own form. Nothing worked. I tried to flee, my spectral legs pulling against whatever tether connected us, and the boy's steely eyes grew concerned when he saw how my form stretched and tightened, painfully trying to sever my own consciousness. He shouted at me to stop, that I would mutilate myself and kill my form, before waving his arm and trapping me within a small crystal. He had to keep me on his person, so my life force would continue to feed my body through the tether like an umbilical cord. His own soul could possibly have provided such energy, but why risk the magical surgery. He did feel bad for having stolen my form, but to perceive, to exist once more, it was too great a thrill to give up. He also wasn’t entirely sure he could. 

Eventually, he let me out. We slowly became friends after he did attempt to leave, but was unable to. We were close, but having no body or way to interact was something I loathed him for. After many months of this, the boy asked if I wanted to try to get my body back. I was ecstatic, but cautious. I can’t let him possess anyone else. What was the catch? He told me that he had an idea for a spell that could allow us both to exist in my body, creating a kind of compromise. I disliked any “compromises” seeing as it was my physical form he had stolen, but I was willing to do anything for my own agency again. We set up the ritual and he cast the spell. I felt dizzy, and passed out. 

When I woke up, I looked around. I was myself again! It was me. But something inside felt tight, and squished. I felt a small pop and my eyes rolled back in my head, only to wake up, and there was the boy. His soul tethered to my body. This was the first time I’d perceived him as he perceived himself. About my age, features fuzzy, but deep, steel grey eyes. I noticed the tether and freaked out, asking him what he thought he was doing. As I tried to move away, I felt my body slipping away like thick honey through fingers. My spectral form sliding in and out of my body, having difficulty controlling it. Somehow, with him lodging himself inside of me, he had begun to think of himself in my form, and had accidentally attached himself to me, leaving a body with two souls. This is why he couldn’t leave my form earlier. It was just as much his as it was mine now. He reached out with his own spectral arm, inserting it into part of me and stabilized my frantic, uncertain motions. I felt my body settle around me. It had been so long. But neither of us had full control of the body while the other was inside. I pushed him away, outside my home, my heart. Dejected, he did his best to give me space as I lived my life for the first time in months. He tried to talk to me, to reason or apologize, but I ignored him. 

One day, he finally drove me to the brink, and threatened to sever both our ties to the body. With tears in his eyes he asked me to understand. I told him to explain then, to tell me what’s going on. I felt myself leave my body, easy to do. It became easier every time it’d happened, like popping a sticker off and on, the adhesive slowly just stops working. I hardly even noticed as we argued. I reached out, myself moving into his, and I was hit with thousands of memories and emotions, then pain like nothing else. Suddenly, nothing. Endless, infinite nothing. Barely conscious enough to think and only endless existence. Then, a crack. A small window of feeling. Stimulation, then suddenly, awakening! Life, sight, touch, different than before, of course, but something, anything that wasn’t nothing. I understood. 

I returned to reality, his own eyes locked on something far away. We locked eyes, smiled and gave each other the biggest hug. We spoke over each other, each apologizing for not understanding, for not listening. We both sunk back into our form below, and lived the rest of our life as one being. First taking turns, learning about each other, then being able to switch nearly instantly, to the point of becoming almost the same person. 

Then I woke up

[ihadthisdreamwhereonetime]

I was following a man, average white guy, maybe somewhere between his 20s and 30s. He wore jeans and a flannel with a big ol cowboy hat. He was running a summer camp for little kids out in the middle of a gorgeous area. They began at some cabins for sleeping, but eventually it was time to head out for the headlining part of the trip. 

After many hours of walking, he had finally leas the campers to the location in the woods they would be staying at. The campers did all the necessary setup and were having so much fun running around together, when suddenly the man felt a presence, one he had hoped he wouldn’t feel for a long, long time. He called the children to him, nervous but calm. He huddled them into the center circle of camp and gathered them together. 

He called out to the woods, “I know you’re here. And you know I’ve negotiated safe stays for these children with the high alpha of this area.” He was met with growling. Suddenly a bear lunged out of the woods and struck a child. Yellow wolf’s eyes peered out of the brush, snarling and pacing, ready to attack. The man bashed the bear on the nose and pulled the camper in closer before grabbing a small piece of cork-like wood. He mumbled something to it, then it splintered in his hands. He put a needle-like splinter in his own mouth, swallowed and then began handing the rest to the children of the camp, each followed suit except one little girl, one of the youngest of the group. 

Switching to her, I saw that whenever she was handed a splinter, it looked like a 3 inch long house centipede, covered in legs and zebra patterning but thicker in the body, like a skinny slug. Something was changing the way the splinters appeared so she wouldn’t be safe. 

The man grew concerned. He didn’t understand what she was seeing and gave her another saying she had to do it to stay safe. The noises of wolves and the growl of the bear grew louder. He stood up to try and hold the animals off, but he turned around in one last ditch effort and felt a sting throughout his body as the girl, for just a moment, became a beaver, who crunched down on the protective splinter, though this time, he saw what she saw, a centipede turn into a log of wood, which her teeth crashed into before becoming human once again. 

At first he was confused, wondering if this little girl was a shapeshifter, but he realized the most likely scenario was that it was his own magic acting in desperation to save that little girl. He hoped that the change had been so brief she might not even remember, but he recognized that it’s possible he had given her the beaver shape to access for the rest of her life. Either way, she was safe, and without guidance or belief it would be difficult for her to access that magic anyways. 

Once realizing the children had all been protected by pack magic the largest of the wolves angrily growled. He spoke to the man saying he was a traitor, and not welcome here, no matter what the high alpha said. The man ignored them, but inwardly felt somewhat melancholy. After gaining this form, whether by his own magic or through some outside wish, he hadn’t become the wolf again. It’s said his pack was once shapeshifters, like the high alphas, but had not accessed their human forms in so long that it had become near impossible to do so. He wasn’t sure how he had gained this form, but he was unwilling to give up what he had longed for for so long, especially with no promise of becoming human again and no control or understanding of his own hidden magic.

The large wolf, the alpha of the pack, let out a final howl. 

“One day you will not have such protection, brother. And on that day you will regret leaving us,” he snarled. The man stood firm, and did not respond, but sadness emanated from deep within. Finally the wolf pack and bear trundled off into the forest. 

The man assured his campers they would not be back, and spent the rest of the evening doing camp activities, putting up tents, making campfire meals, and singing songs. By the end of the night, the incident with the pack had almost entirely been forgotten. Once the campers had fallen asleep, the man wandered over to the supply truck near the campsite and sat in front of it. Thinking about the attack and his past, he sat against the vehicle, before finally placing his hat over his eyes and falling asleep. 

After a few days of camping and comradery it was finally time to head back to the main campsite where parents would be waiting to collect the children. While he hadn’t wiped the memory of the kids (he wasn’t confident he could) he had played it off enough that he figured the worst would be a parent guessing it was a story he had told. For the kid who had suffered an injury, he had let some healing magic slip in and it was now no more than a large scab, nothing unexpected for the woods. He gathered the campers to a bus they’d be taking back, and ran a final head count. He had just two stragglers. 

He left the bus and found the last two campers in the campsite, next to the tree with 7 dots punched into it. A new high score their group had achieved for being brave, playing games and learning skills. Almost every tree around them featured such marks. Thinking about it, he realized he had probably taken some of their parents on these trips. Not that he looked much older than before. He thought about how it might be a good idea to figure out the whole aging thing sooner rather than later, as this area was a good home for him and he’d rather not leave. Not dwelling on this for much longer, he called the two girls back to the bus, and they both moved towards him, out of the circle that helped keep the campers safe. He turned and headed back, but only heard one set of pounding feet. He jerked around, and saw the eldest camper walking deeper into the woods. He knew where she was going. He turned and sprinted after her, trying to grab her, but his terms with the high alpha restricted him from going to far into his brother’s, the alpha’s territory. He called out to her but she was hypnotized by the wolf’s song. He tried to get her to come to, and he could see her just out of reach, entering the pack meeting area, standing on a rock stage. She began to howl along, and the man could feel the other wolves around him. Desperately wanting to do something, but bound by pack magic,  his skin began to break out in fuzz. He hadn’t lost his wolf, but he wasn’t sure he could come back if he let the change take him. 

No, he thought. It didn’t matter. He hadn’t lost a camper yet and he wasn’t planning on doing it now. He leapt through the air, and into the clearing. While his human was bounded from sacred pack areas his wolf had been part of this pack, and followed no such laws. Upon seeing the man, the girl had begun to snap out of it, and the sudden arrival of the wolf caused the pack to break its song. He began to growl and tell the others to back off before telling the girl to get on him. Luckily, though she didn’t understand what was happening, she felt the wolf was familiar and kind and held on for dear life while he raced through the woods and brought her to the bus. His campers were waiting for him right outside, and still in his wolf form, he walked them up to the bus, the kids somehow just knowing who he was. The pack gathered around them, the brother smiling in a wide wolfy grin. 

“I knew you hadn’t left us. You should come back. Leave those humans alone and do what you really want.”

The air around the man shifted and his human form responded, “Thank you for the kind offer, but I don’t think we’ll be back this way again.” He turned, loaded the bus, and took the kids home. 

Then, I woke up.