Cuppy's eyes fluttered open against the caustic sting of the polluted waters he sank through, weighted down by his waterlogged cloak and entangled in his own strings like a dolphin caught in a fisherman's net. The deep pond the drainage pipe had dropped him into was devoid of life, gloomy with dark contaminants. A few precious bubbles with images of Cuppy's life flashing within escaped his parted lips, mouth twisted in a silent scream as he drowned.

As the icy waters flooded down his throat and into his lungs, painfully grating on and sinking them, Cuppy saw something in the hazy flashes of sight between the looming darkness trying to claim his consciousness. Cuppy saw a glossy ebony-furred wolf break the surface above and dive down toward him. Even through the murk, Cuppy could make out piercing blue eyes rimmed with glowing yellow rings that illuminated the darkness like night lights.

Blacking out, only his subconscious felt the wolf's jaws close on the fabric of the back of his hood, and her strained struggle to swim back to the surface. Time seemed to slow to a crawl on the verge of death, but once he had actually lost consciousness, time returned with instant speed to the point of playing out like snapshots from one instant to another, with an eternal gulf of oblivion between them. The snapshot Cuppy woke up in saw his back pressed against the withered pond shore, sand and irritating little pebbles pressing into his back and clinging to him. His lips felt deathly cold, and as sensation returned to the rest of his body, that awareness of being cold spread to the rest of his body as well, starting with his core, and terminating in the ends of his limbs. He was shaking and hugged himself for warmth. He tried to stand, rose too quickly, and stumbled onto his knees, grating the coarse sediment of the damp ground against them painfully. His hands planted themselves against the ground, and his chest was suddenly on fire as he finished hacking up the last drops of water he had inhaled.

A second wave of fading consciousness overtook Cuppy's senses, and in the space of those blinks he saw the black wolf trotting across the edge of tangled underbrush in front of him, fur slicked back with dampness and sides heaving heavily with the rhythm of exerted panting. The wolf was looking at him curiously as it walked parallel to where he struggled to regain his senses. Twice Cuppy's vision briefly faded to black again. When darkness did not come a third time, Cuppy saw that his guardian angel wolf was gone - and in its place stood a girl.

She was raven-haired, the wavy waterfall of locks trailing midway down her back, framing a face that regarded Cuppy with cautious curiosity. Her eyes were unmistakably those of the wolf, encircled by those same glowing golden rings. Her grungy clothes clung to her body, uncomfortably tightened by the pond. However, it wasn't the constriction of her outfit that seemed to be bothering her so much as apprehension. Even as Cuppy stood and shook himself off like a wet dog, the young woman drew back reflexively, seemingly with what sounded almost like a canine whine. A trio of silver studs in each ear glinted in the sunlight as she backed up into a break in the clouds.

"Who are you guys?" she finally asked.

"Cuppy is Cuppy. He was with a friend. Did you see an angry-looking Japanese guy covered in dragon tattoos get flushed out of the sewer with me?" the boy asked, nervously glancing around for his missing friend.

The woman shook her head. "Sorry, you're the only one who fell out of that exact pipe. If the other boy didn't drown, he must have turned up somewhere else. I thought I had just imagined him, and the both of you, for that matter, but I guess I'm wide awake, huh?" she said.

"Do you want me to pinch you to make sure you aren't dreaming?" Cuppy offered.

"I think I'll pass." the woman chuckled. "Cuppy, right? I'm Freyja. I don't get many visitors in my woods."

Cuppy's train of thought was interrupted by a sudden gust of wind, and he hugged himself again, shivering.

"You'll catch hypothermia like that. Lose the cloak and come sit over here." Freyja led Cuppy to a makeshift fire pit dug out in the center of a circle of logs deeper into the trees, and sat him down on one of them.

She snapped her fingers, and an orange flame appeared between them, which she cast down into the small pile of twigs and dried wild grasses. A small campfire combusted, crackling steadily there. The heat radiated out onto Cuppy's exposed face, and he found the strength to cast off his cloak and drape it across the spot on the log next to him to dry. He felt exposed and colder for a moment in just his thin undershirt, but that cold faded away as the fire burned brighter, and he put his hands out against the fire to warm life back into his numbed fingers.

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"That's a neat trick. Where'd you learn it?" Cuppy asked.

"I was born with it, I just didn't know it right away. Took some time to figure that out." Freyja said, sitting on the log across from him. "You people have some weird skills yourselves. Is that why you were able to see the Backyards?" Freyja asked.

"If you mean the weird tunnels Richie keeps talking about, I haven't got a clue. I don't remember anything else before then. What about you? Do you remember anything before the altered space? Anything beside your name?" Cuppy asked.

"Nothing I want to remember. I had a dream that I was a wolf who dreamed she was a person, but ever since I saw the two of you in my dream, I've started to wake up. I haven't stretched out my human legs in two whole years, give or take. I don't really know why I saved you just now." Freyja said.

"Well, it's appreciated. You got anything to eat, while you're at it?" Cuppy asked hopefully.

Freyja took a few strips of beef jerky from a plastic bagbag of it, then tossed the bag to Cuppy. "Just this. One of the only things I had on me before I shifted."

"So you are the same black wolf Richie saw, then." Cuppy asked.

"He remembers that?" Freyja asked, chewing on a strip of the dried meat thoughtfully.

"Yeah." Cuppy said, and popped a piece of the salty-sweet jerky into his mouth. "He shares his dreams sometimes. What did you mean about him being lucky to have people he's important to?"

"It's self-explanatory, isn't it? He can only feel the pain of losing a loved one because he had a loved one in the first place. At the very least, his mother died pure and good in his eyes, so he'll have fond memories of her to carry with him. In wolf form, my cognition is a bit different, more instinct and sensory inference than anything else. Kind of like synesthesia if you take too much acid - tasting colors and hearing textures - you get the idea, right?"

Cuppy blinked a few times and held his throat, grimacing. "Acid would be painful."

Freyja looked at him for a fewhim a few long seconds, then started giggling. "You're a bit sheltered, aren't you?" she said through an amused smile.

Cuppy looked over his head and around for any kind of roof or walls.

"Nope."

Freyja stifled her laughter with the back of her hand. "Thanks for the chuckles, I haven'thaven't laughed in all that time. In fact, I can't really remember the last time I laughed. Anyway, as a wolf, I could just get impressions from people. I could feel loss on him, but under it was a kind of guilty hope, like he didn't feel deserving of hope. It felt kind of warm, and I guess that drew me to him."

Cuppy looked at the fire, and pointed to it, curiously.

Freyja shook her head. "It's a different kind of warmth." she sat back, opening her palm and watching a candle-like flame dance there with a hint of longing in her unusual eyes. "Fire doesn't feel hot to me, not my own, anyway. I've never been able to make myself feel warm, even sitting in a steaming shower for hours at a time." a bittersweet grin tugged the corners of her mouth.

Cuppy waited and listened.

"Anyway," Freyja said, "what will you do now? Go look for your friend?"

"That's the idea." Cuppy nodded. "If you know about the magic tunnels, could you take a shortcut to get to wherever he is?"

Freyja shook her head. "I told you, it feels like a fading dream. The details are already getting fuzzy of what I did during the two years I was mode-locked in wolf form. The only thing that's really crystal clear to me was the decision to dive into the pond after you. I don't remember how I navigated the Backyards. I'm sorry."

"The Backyards, Richie says the cereal killer called them that too. What exactly are they?" Cuppy asked.

"I used to think they were just a place I made up, my own personal wonderland to retreat to inside my closet, or in the caves beneath exposed tree roots, or through doors I didn't remember being there. As far as I can tell, they're something like the space between fences, if fences are the boundaries of other worlds instead of just houses. That's why I call them the Backyards. Something about them feels almost nostalgic." Freyja said.

Cuppy looked up at the blue sky and wondered at thatin that moment if the sky was the same everywhere. "I think I know what you mean."

He was dry enough and warm enough now, so he stood up and stretched.

"Off back into the sewers to drown again?" Freyja asked.

"No." Cuppy said. "I know Richie's not dead, not that easily. I'm just going to go back to the apartment and work on getting the place feeling more like home for when he gets back." he smiled.

Freyja nodded and stood up as well. "Good luck then. Come and visit me in the woods sometime, if you feel like it."

Cuppy stared at her, blinking blankly. "What are you talking about? Come on." he gestured to her to follow him.

Freyja blinked back in visible confusion. "What are you talking about?"

"We're going home." Cuppy smiled.