He lay down on the makeshift bed and pulled a deer skin up under his chin. He allowed his eyes to stay open and the blackness of the cave loomed over him. Slowly his eyesight adjusted to the almost pure darkness that surrounded him. The spreading daylight filtered in through the opening of the cave. The sunlight was muted, and he had no trouble ignoring the disturbance to the almost perfect dark. While he didn’t feel peaceful at all he did start to feel a connection between the darkness and himself. He could feel the darkness stare back at him. All creatures are capable of looking at the darkness, few can withstand it when the darkness looked back at them.
The warmth of the skin and the sluggishness of his brain worked to pull him down to sleep faster than he would have believed. The last thought that he had before sleep overtook him was just how beautiful Tasha really was.
He was floating in the darkness. The floor of the manmade cave was gone and he floated on nothing. He was calm here and he felt no fear, no anxiousness, and no pain. Floating here he began to see a light. The light seemed to come from everywhere at once, soft as pure cotton. He wasn’t sure he was seeing it at first. The infinitesimally small increase of the light around him confused him and he began to wonder if he was in fact seeing what he thought he was seeing.
The light continued to grow and with the light, warmth spread through his limbs. Here he had absolute freedom of movement. He rotated around himself as the light increased around him. He felt more alive here than he did even when he was running with his pack in werewolf form. No matter how bright the light grew it was somehow soft, lacking any harshness of the light that he had come to know from the sun or artificial sources.
There was a misty quality to what his eyes were seeing, and he came to rest, standing upright and he was able to walk. Gravity had him once more and he explored his new surroundings. He could make out his hands in front of him, though they seemed to shimmer or fade at the edges, as if he was made of vapor instead of flesh.
He walked, aimless, in the soft white void. There was no detail here there was only the light and him. Was this Heaven? He couldn’t be sure. Was he sleeping again? He couldn’t be sure of that either. He was just walking. He felt no fatigue and no hunger. He saw something. Just ahead of him surrounded by swirls of air and mist was a form. It was a shadow amongst the swirling light.
The shadow stood upright, and it was tall. It stood a foot or so taller than him if he could be sure of the distances of this place. He wasn’t sure of anything not even his sight. Is this really happening? He took a step toward the shadow, and it moved away from him. The shadow was covered in the swirling light and remained obscure to him showing no real detail. He took a few quick steps toward the shadow and, like a polar opposite magnet moves away from its twin so too did the shadow stay a discrete distance away from him.
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He was puzzled at the movement of the shadow and wondered where he was and if the shadow was in fact just a reflection of himself. He continued toward the shadow and the shadow moved away leading him through the white expanse.
He followed the shadow. His thoughts came slower r to him and he soon gave up trying to think at all. It was much more pleasant to just walk, following this shadow as he had been doing.
The shadow was his world. It was the only thing that mattered.
He had always been following it. He had always been here, walking without stress or tiring.
The shadow played with him and he was happy to play the game he had always played. He took a step the shadow took a step away from him. He smiled as he shuffled forward and the shadow copied his movements, shuffling backwards away from him.
This was fun, as fun as it always had been. His soul was light as it always had been, and he was just as happy as he always had been. The swirling light was always here, and the shadow was his ever-faithful companion.
He kept walking.
The white never changed, and the swirling never stopped. The shadow, his shadow, swayed as he swayed. His breathing was coming in shorter and shorter gasps, and he felt light headed. He always felt lightheaded, and he continued to sway as his shadow danced with him.
His stride was shorter than it had been a minute ago. His stride was the same short strides that he had walked with since the beginning of time. He heard a calming voice filter through his head.
‘Relax, William.’
It sounded familiar. At once the voice called to his mind an odd form. It was a short thing that stood on four legs. It had two golden eyes. He didn’t know why but he felt that he knew what this form was called even though he was sure that he had never seen such a creature before in his life. The color, however, was a strange mix of the white he had always known and his shadow that he always followed. The thing was somehow noble and strong looking though he didn’t know exactly what that meant. It had a strange crown made of two things sticking up out of its head and its eyes were intense.
He smiled as his breathing continued to slow and shorten. The mist seemed to swirl around his eyes and his hands seemed blurrier than they were a moment ago.
‘Relax.’ The voice was as calming as it always had been. He had nothing to worry about here where he was, where he always had been.
His legs were wobbly, and he had trouble staying upright. He wanted to keep playing with his shadow. Why wouldn’t his legs work right? He started to panic as his body seemed to be betraying him.