“So, I thought I might leave, you know, go outside.”

I waited, golden eyes held against my parents and sister. Mother was asleep this morning so truly it was so really to her that I offered my words, though some part of myself perhaps hoped she would wake up, if only long enough to protest the audacity of my plan. Father would have liked that word- audacity. It was a shame perhaps he seemed too busy with his collection of old bones to notice, sister Pandora equally taken with them as he explained vertebrae to her. Maybe I should be more understanding, maybe I should try to show an interest in my Father and his academic pursuits but maybe….maybe it just isn’t for me. I suppose that makes me dumb or…something and maybe I am, but I can’t say I am entirely unhappy with that label. No one ever expects anything from the dumb child.

“I thought maybe I would go to the river and-“

Nobody was listening, Father didn’t even seem to notice I was alive, his dead bones apparently far more entertaining and I suppose for some moment I might admit that I smiled at the irony of my own thoughts, my Father failing to notice my own living presence ad yet enthralled with that of something dead. I smiled softly to myself before simply letting it pass. If he wanted to teach Pandora and Legion about bones then so be it, I wasn’t needed and that’s alright, I don’t need to be needed I just….have to find what I am looking for, who I am looking for even though I hardly know where to start. It has been the same since I was born, this knowledge that I just had to…find someone or something as if…I am trying to remember something I forgot. It’s silly, I know, you can’t remember things from before you were born and yet I guess something inside me thinks I can. Father says I dream when I am awake, that my mind does not like finding the truth when it clearly should- but maybe I like living this way, maybe I like not knowing the how and why of everything. There’s nothing wrong with a bit of mystery after all. Pan will never see it though and maybe my sister won’t either and like I said- that’s alright. I’m fine on my own.

“I’m going to go now, probably out of the pack, probably miles away- maybe I won’t come home, maybe I’ll be attacked by a giant bear. I think I’ll go somewhere terribly dangerous today.”

I smiled once more as I spoke to nothing more then my sire’s rear and my siblings sides before turning upon my golden paws, earthen coloured form sliding from within the den and out onto the mountain, doing just as I had said I would, heading for the borders of the mountain that had so long been my home and always would be, following the rushing waters just to see where they lead. Father could tell me, of that I was sure, exactly where the water went and yet I suppose I wanted to find it for myself, wanted to imagine a million things and a million places it might lead. I wasn’t afraid of these new lands and unfamiliar scents and wolves- though I should have been. I guess, well, like I said- I’ve been here before, in my dreams, I used to run here but not…here….when my legs were longer I used to live…near….here but not here. I think maybe sometimes my head is so filled with dreams it gets confused. Maybe my mind is just filled with clouds like the ones in the sky. I’m not sure. I moved my short, earth coloured limbs onward, bounding along beside the water though for how long I hardly knew, I just knew I was going the right way, at last. Yet it seems my journey for today will be stopped, the gold of my eyes resting upon two other pups like myself- one within the grass and one atop a rock. Neither held the earth and gold tones of myself nor the scent of the mountain but I was curious all the same and my short limbs and big paws carried myself forward to peer into the water- to see what it was the other boys searched for, though I saw little save for my own reflection. How odd.

I turned the golden brown of my head back towards the boy atop the rock (Levi), studying him a moment before allowing my gaze to drift to the other young male, eyes flicking momentarily between them both before my shoulders rolled in a shrug and I sat myself before them, the other boys still staring at the water.

“This game seems….fun.”

My Father always sad I was sarcastic. I’m not really sure what that means though I think perhaps he simply does not appreciate my telling him that which is obvious to me. My own features frowning slightly before I spoke once more to the others, the scent of another pack upon them though it was…not the scent I wanted.

“Do either of you know a place with….well…..like a big….field?”

I did not dare tell them it was a place from my dreams…sort of….a place I knew I had to find and yet one I seemed to struggle to describe all the same.

“It is very…big and has cliffs. Do you know it?”