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I dreamed of a meadow at the edge of the dark forest. It was a forest I knew well, one that I had seen many times in the depths of Sean's eyes. Tall dark trees, deep green and black, pine and fir, over a heavy undergrowth of tangled shadows. It wasn't an unfriendly wood, but it was certainly a wild place, not a tame place.
A scarred wolf lived here, equally wild, huge and dark-furred with lambent yellow-amber eyes. The first time I had seen the wolf he had stayed well back in the trees, visible only as a flash of eyes and a dark outline. Slowly, over the time I had known Sean, the wolf had started to come forward, to watch me to see how close I would come to him or let him come to me. Now he would come out of his forest for me in my dreams and sometimes we would sit together and sometimes we roamed together, just the two of us in the dark quiet forest.
I moved forward through the meadow, toward the trees at the edge. I felt myself being watched and I turned to my right to see the massive scarred wolf, resting in the tall grass at the forest's edge, staring at me. He was beautiful, my wolf, dark fur and amber gold eyes, his scars the marks of a predator's hard life. There was nothing tame or civilized in him, he did not pretend to be anything but the wild apex predator that he was, yet there was no threat to me in his eyes, either.
“Hello, again,” I said softly and sat in the meadow grass, about ten feet away from the wolf. He calmly accepted my presence and turned to look behind him and then back to me, as though waiting for something.
Often the wolf came in my dreams to bring me gifts – intangible things, like calm when I was troubled, support or reassurance when I was feeling anxious, peace when I was worried.
The grass rustled behind the wolf and a very young amber-eyed male wolf cub sprang out of the tall grass, fierce but comical with his thick dark fuzz, shiny black nose, pointed ears and massively oversized paws. The cub pounced, landing on his sire's tail, wrestling with it and growling, nipping with his tiny sharp teeth. The wolf looked at me with what I could only describe as infinite calm patience as his cub gnawed on his tail and reared and pounced on it again, batting the tail with his paws.
I laughed at the cub's antics. I'd wondered if any child I had with Sean would be a werewolf. Apparently so, or at least according to my dream wolf.
In a few moments the cub tired of the game and flopped down by his sire's side, tucking his nose under his tail to nap. The big wolf curled his body protectively around his cub, his eyes scanning the woods and the meadow around us, ever alert, ever watchful.
“He's beautiful,” I whispered. The wolf looked at me, blinked his eyes and opened his jaws ...
“Dina?”
I startled awake. The forest and meadow were gone, replaced by our cool quiet bedroom. I looked up at Sean, his own eyes flashing wolf amber in the dim light of the room. He was propped up on an arm, looking down at me.
“You were talking in your sleep.”
“I was dreaming. What did I say?”
“Nothing I understood. You were smiling. Your face...” he paused, reaching out to run his fingers across the contours of my face, “whatever you saw in your dream made you happy. I'm... sorry I woke you.”
“Oh,” I said, reaching out to wrap my arms around him. “It was a good dream.” He was warm and solid, the muscles under his skin tightening under my fingers as I ran my hands over his shoulders and arms.
“What were you dreaming about?”
“Dark scary woods. A certain wild wolf. You know, wolf things.”
“Wolf things,” he repeated, raising an eyebrow. “What kind of wolf things?”
“Hmm,” I said with a laugh and a stretch. “You're just going to have to wait and be surprised.”
He snorted. “I hate it when you say that, you know I don't like surprises.”
“You might have to take that back.” I kissed him. “Come a little bit closer, Sean, and let's find out.” I grinned and bared my teeth at him, wolf-style, and he chuckled, baring his own teeth at me with a wolfish snarl as he wrapped both of his arms around me.