You edge one way, then the other, not sure how to get away or really what you’re trying to run away from. Fear pounds up in your throat as you remember all the things your mum told you about what lurks in the dark. Vampires and werewolves, hags and ogres.... “Mum,” you mutter, somehow sure she can’t hear you. You’re alone in the middle of a forest you don’t recognize and no idea how to get home. The coin cuts lines into your palm.
Bits of gray shift slowly into sight, the stripes between the black tree trunks, giving you some idea of at least where you can walk if you decide to go anywhere. Another blast of wind races through the trees, throwing dead leaves against you, making the trees wail. You know it’s cold. You can feel it. But it doesn’t make you cold, at least not physically. But you shiver anyway. It only seems right to shiver at a cold wind.
Looking up with growing night vision, you see no stars peeking through the winter branches laced overhead. No silver sphere, only deep, iron-grey clouds. No telling what time it is or when day might break. When you might be able to find your way out. Looking round, you see no evidence of a place you can hide to wait. But maybe if you start walking you can at least find your way out of the forest, so you cautiously take a step, jumping at the splitting crack of a twig beneath your foot.
One step at a time, you make your way through the forest, not sure where you’re placing your feet because you can’t see them. They’re lost in the black velvety pool you’re wading in up to your waist, though it’s receding bit by bit. After a while, you can see down to your knees. The more you can see, however, the blacker the trees around you become, looming great sentinels watching your every step, silhouettes outlined in shades of gray. They whisper with every brush of wind, shifting and staring, speaking a language you cannot understand.
Out of the night before you”footsteps! Rapid footsteps of something small, running in your direction, but you stand frozen, still listening, not sure what it is or what to do. Seconds before it hits you full on, knocking you both into a tangle, you see a small silhouette. Pushing and shoving, the creature grunts in anger and distress, shoving its small, wrinkled head up against your face. It pulls free at last and runs off again, but you just lay there for a moment, wondering what happened. It might’ve been a gnome, but where was it going?
As you look up at the branches, the clouds shift, dazzling your eyes with the light of the moon. You do not move as your eyes adjust, but instead stare up at it, glad for the light despite everything, though the branches between lace black bars across the full sphere, as if you are in prison looking out.
Though you had not noticed much sound before now, suddenly you notice the quiet. The silence roars in your ears as the wind stills. Winter seemed to have killed everything but you, leaving only endless night in its place.
Abruptly, a terrible sound shreds the silence, and you sit up with a jolt, feeling leaves fall out of your hair, the howl ringing horribly through the stillness. All you know is that it came from the direction you were going, so you scramble back the way you came on your hands and knees at first, the coin still clutched in your fist long forgotten as you slip and slide over the leaves.
As soon as you regain your footing, you run off through the trees, only the grace of the moonlight shining through the branches keeping you from smacking into the black trunks all round. Only one word flashes through your mind as you run: werewolf. You can practically feel the presence looming behind you, gaining every second, though you can’t hear a sound over the roar of your own heart in your ears.
Once, you chance looking back, and see the glitter of eyes shining through the night, approaching faster than hope of escape, time slowing down as you see the outline of the wolfish head, the long legs, then even the tufted end of the tail before it catches you on the shoulder. The movement is shockingly casual, like you might pluck a berry off a bush, the drooling jaws clamping over your shoulder. It shakes you once, brutally, pain smacking you like a brick wall, and the coin goes flying off into the night as the werewolf continues past, tossing you to the side like a broken toy.
Salty tears sting your eyes, your cheeks as you lay there, afraid to get up for fear of calling it back, choked with fear so you can not even cry out. You don’t really know if your arm is still attached or will ever work again, everything in that part of your body seems detached from you as if the dark forest swallowed it up to protect you from the pain.
The black all around seems friendly, now. Comforting and protective, sheltering you from the sight of the werewolf. As long as it had been dark, you were safe, you knew that now. The darkness had been protecting you, but you had foolishly feared it and walked right into the jaws of the werewolf. The light of the moon glares harshly down, and you close your eyes, abandoning yourself to the darkness and its protection. You do not think you could get up now, anyway.
Slow, stately footprints reach your senses through the ground, vibrating up through your chest. When you finally muster the energy to open your eyes, a stag is standing over you, though it has lost its antlers for the winter. Those calm dark eyes reassure you that everything will be all right, and you accept it without question, wanting to believe it is so.
It looks back the way it had come, flicking one ear as if in welcome, the way you might wave your hand to call someone over. More footsteps, audible this time, only two feet, and a woman garbed in black robes with a long dark braid falling down her back appears before you. She kneels, and though you can’t feel it, you know she is gently feeling your shoulder and the deep fang marks imprinted in it.
The moon slowly gets covered again, shrouding everything once more in the warm darkness, and you sigh as the cold moonlight disappears. Something glows at your shoulder, but you are not alarmed, and time washes over you in waves.
The woman and deer are gone, but nothing else seems to have changed. You still feel no pain, and a glimmer of hope reaches you that maybe you have been cured.
With this thought, something clicks deep inside you, and you feel your body start to change shape against your will. Your limbs move and warp, your body shrinks, and you howl with pain, fear, and desperation that the sound coming from you is not human any longer....
Remus sat up straight, cold sweat covering his body. A beam of moonlight shone in the window, slashing a bar across his vision while the surrounding darkness pressed in as if alive. He put a hand over his eyes, bowing his head. That dream again.... It always came around this time of the month. He stole a fearful look at the window, the ray of moonlight which came from a sphere almost full. Another few days, and he would become the monster from his dream.
Though, he could not keep from wondering every time he had this dream if the woman and stag had been real. The night he had been bitten.... Was this dream more of a memory? Had someone tried to heal him of his bite? He put his hand on his left shoulder, knowing the exact contours of his scar without needing to feel them. If only she had. If only she could.
But still, he would like to know who she was and thank her. Even if it hadn’t helped, she had tried, which was more kind than most of the witches and wizards he’d met who knew he had the bite. He laughed softly under his breath. She probably wasn’t real, anyway, but he liked to pretend she was. It fit so well with the rest of his life, having a guardian who couldn’t help him. She always felt more like a mother to him, though, in those brief moments in the dream when everything seemed like it would be fine. He felt so safe, something very rare indeed for him these days.