Falling. I'm falling! No, no! I'm going to die. I can feel my heart racing. My chest feels ready to burst and I still can't see. Where is the ground? I've been falling too long. I'm going to die. Am I already dead? My body feels like it's burning from the lack of air.

“Breathe, breathe, breathe!” I scream inside my head as I fall further into the blackness, but every muscle seems paralyzed.

It's been there the whole time, but I suddenly notice a piercing, shrill noise. Like screaming. No, not like screaming, it is screaming. It's my screaming.

“Aaahg!” My body slams into the ground, but there's no pain, like when you fall in a dream and wake up suddenly startled by something you can't remember. Blinding white light fills my eyes, and the world is spinning.

“Huuhhn.” I try to stand up but instead I collapse and lay on the ground with my eyes shut, forcing myself to take deep breaths until my heart stops racing. The light is less obnoxious when I open them again, but everything still seems out of focus. It's all too much, too overwhelming, and I roll over to cough up a thick liquid onto the ground.

“Ranger?” I rub my eyes to try to clear my vision so that I can look around. “Ranger?” I ask again more desperately, but there's no response. Where is he? He never wanders far...

The fog that clouded my vision finally dissipates enough for me to take in my surroundings. Everything seems cast in a pale green light, but it's in focus now at least. I can hear birds flitting through the trees somewhere, but try as I might I can only seem to see their shadows. Their calls are strange and distended, seeming to echo off of every twig and branch. Everything seems foreign, and yet I recognize the trees around me, and the flowers, the ferns.

There's a painful throbbing in my head and my thoughts are clouded, but I push myself to try to stand up again.

 “Where am I?” I whisper to no one.

I know I need to go somewhere. But where? I don't remember picking a direction, yet I find myself walking through the forest in the direction that seems right. There's a path winding through the trees, but as to who made it I have no idea. There's no other evidence that anyone has ever been here except for it's presence. As I continue down the road I can't shake the feeling of floating. My footsteps don't seem to be making any noise, although I can feel the ground beneath my feet. I walk for what seems like hours until something compels me to stop. I feel safe here. I feel right. The pale green light ebbs and I blink, looking at my surroundings. There's a pile of rocks, and –

Gods, there's a body! What poor soul met their fate this far from home? Their clothing is torn, bloodied, and their body is face down in the dirt. They don't seem to have been here long. I can't help but think it might be someone I recognize from town, and I know I can't leave before I find out. Slowly, warily, I approach them, steeling myself for whatever I'm about to see.

I've seen a body once before, when my adopted mother died. Of course I've seen hundreds of butchered animals before but those died for a purpose, and their limp bodies never bothered me, nor did tearing their hides away from their muscle. Those deaths were for a reason, but this one looks like it was just bad luck. I remember looking at my mother, her face a contorted visage of peace. She had been sick for a long time, so her passing wasn't unexpected, but I still remember feeling angry when people told me that she was in a better place. What better place could there be than with your family? They were right of course; She wasn't in pain. But she wasn't in happiness, either. She wasn't anything. Just dead.

I take hold of the fabric at the persons shoulder and attempt to roll them over, but they're heavier than I expected. Despite my greatest efforts I can't seem to actually move them. The light that had subsided earlier suddenly gets brighter again and my mind starts swimming. A shrill noise slowly fills my ear, like a cicada who had the nerve to spend the night on your windowsill. Shaking my head does nothing to clear the sensation, but it does make me lose my balance and fall to the ground.

What the hell is going on? A mixture of anger and confusion bubbles up inside me. All I want to know is who this person before me used to be, and why they are so damned hard to move. Forcing myself to stand up I grab onto their clothes again and pull with all my might. “Damn it! Who are you?” I yell at them, until finally their limp body rolls over.

The light and sound, the shrieking noise, the confusion all fills my head again and for an instant I'm sure I'm going to vomit. Instead I crumple into a ball next to the corpse and find myself unable to move. All I can do is lay motionless, looking into their eyes. Such striking blue eyes, with a little streak of grey on the bottom of one. No one has eyes like that... except for me.

The light is getting brighter and brighter, overwhelming everything I can see beside her face. My face? Flashes of purple and green start dancing in my vision, and my entire body feels like it's vibrating. There's a sharp pain in my head and I start convulsing, unable to control myself.

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No! I don't want to die like this. I don't want to die at all! Panic. Fear and panic and desperation set in and I try to gain control of myself, but I can't stop shaking violently!

Something from my childhood comes back to me in a flash. I had started suffering from terrible nightmares shortly after I arrived at my new home. My family told me to focus on the smallest body part. A finger, or toe. Will it to move, and you can wake yourself from the nightmare. It's all I can do to still my mind and focus, but slowly, slowly I manage to take control of my smallest finger, and I can feel it move.

Amidst the blinding whiteness that's taken over my vision I can see flashes of color burst into existence before fading away again. I force another finger to twitch, until finally I close my hand into a fist. The colors come and go so quickly now that they start to make patterns, until all I can see is a scintillating vision of every imaginable color. I can hear blood rushing through my ears, and the swirling lights suddenly seem to be more subdued, twirling in time with my heartbeat, until they slowly fade away all together, leaving nothing but a dark void in their place.

A warm sensation takes over my body and I realize I can feel my arms and legs again. I'm covered in a thick layer of dust, and I 'm forced to blink as I open my eyes, but soon I'm looking up at the stars.

The warm feeling fades and pain takes over. Every inch of my body feels like it was stepped on by a horse. Cuts and bruises cover my arms and I can feel that my ankle must be broken. Even with all the pain, I can't help but to notice that it's a beautiful night. The moon is high in the sky illuminating everything with it's perfect face. It's amazing how much light it can put off sometimes. It almost feels like daytime.

Daytime. It's a long way off, I realize morosely, and I'm stuck here. The cool evening air doesn't feel so pleasant anymore. There's nothing nearby that I could hope to make a decent shelter under, just rocks and a few scraggly trees casting shadows onto the bushes. Even with all the light from the moon making it easier to see, I feel a bit uneasy looking at the line of darkness just a few feet away. No. This is nothing like daytime.

“Ranger?” I whisper cautiously into the night. He's never far, but who knows what else might be close by. A bird briefly flies in front of the moon. Or maybe it was a bat, I'm not sure. It was silent, whatever it was. Only the dip in light allowed me notice it. The wind is humming softly among the rocks farther down the mountain, and rustling the branches of the nearby bushes. It's almost peaceful, except for the searing pain in my leg, and the uneasy realization that I can't see anything farther than 20 feet away from me.

A twig snaps and I strain my eyes trying to see, but it's useless. It's nothing but shadows. My eyes must be playing tricks on me, but I feel like I can see a dark shape in the bushes. My heart beats faster, the natural response to being alone and vulnerable in a strange place, but the form doesn't seem to move. A pang of guilt shoots through me as I realize that the rock slide may have killed ranger, or seriously injured him.

“Ranger buddy.” I sing softly to the shadows, hoping to lure him to me. If he's alive he must be terrified. Rocks don't often fall from the sky after all.

“Ranger, come here.” I say much more loudly this time, willing my ears to hear a response, hoping that through the pitch black I'll see the shadows move.

Nothing.

“It's safe now buddy, come on.” Desperation tinges my voice.

Finally the shadow shifts and comes slightly closer.

“You're OK bud I know it scared you.” I assure him and he comes closer.

His familiar black form almost glides into view, in a way that seems almost too agile for his age, but he stops short of the moonlight, still veiled in shadows.

“Ranger?” I question the darkness as the black shape moves closer again. “Please let that be you.” My words echo off of the rocks as my thoughts clatter around my mind. I put away visions of the familiar dog stepping into view and wrestle with reality as a wolf steps into the moonlight.

“Ranger!” I shout one last time into the darkness as the wolf lunges at me, snapping.

I scrabble to find a nearby rock and throw it with all the force I can muster, but it bounces off of the wolf's shoulder without it seeming to notice. Lessons taught about wilderness survival flit through my head. Snakes won't attack unless provoked. Never turn your back on a catamount. If a bear finds you, don't fight back... there's no rule to draw on for wolves. Wolves don't attack people!

But then the wolf attacks...