The Bind

Dreams

CLAIRE POV

It was not until halfway home over the forest that I realised something with an electric shock that started in my forehead and ran through my airborne body; Two doctors had just asked to join my pack. Two were creatures had just chosen to follow me. I executed a little flip mid air and reached out to share it with Xavier on instinct.

As per usual, silence answered me. Silence and I were becoming unhappy bedfellows. There was an awareness that he was at peace though, so I assumed that he was unconscious. Hopefully sleeping.

Another display of aerial acrobatics interrupted my flight, refusing to allow Xavier's absence alter the joy I felt at the accomplishments. The pack... My pack was alive and I had doctors.

I celebrated alone with a hearty stew left by Tina, and finished the meal off with a rich, thick chocolate protein shake. I slurped on dessert and let my mind wander.

The wolves were fiercely loyal to Sandra. I understood and respected that, I really did, she had built what had truly been a truly gorgeous community thriving deep in the woods. They did not remember that her actions had been the key to its destruction.

Every single creature had uprooted their lives and followed Sandra and her dream into the woods. Together they created a haven where weres could be anything they desired. Under my care the pack had woken up to a reality of pain, fear and withdrawals.

Here I was swooping in like social services, doing what was best for the kids, trying to keep the family together...and unanimously hated. Understanding that they were acting like children, and holding them accountable for their actions as if they were emotionally intelligent adults, was not entirely fair of me.

I jokingly thought of them as my nightmare children, suppose I actually treated them as such? Just because their bodies were whole again, did not mean that their minds would be.

Perhaps in the coming days I could look into obtaining a psychologist for the pack. Or two. If two war veterans looking for a peaceful life could be convinced to stay and help, why not other professionals?

Ideas raced around my mind like squirrels in the springtime. What else would the pack need to thrive? I didn't have to fix it all by myself... just like with the troop of medics, why couldn't I outsource some aid?

I jotted down a few ideas and made a note to ask Becky. An actual note, a yellow sticky one with my spiky scrawl from a black fountain pen. It was stuck on the fridge with a rainbow of other fluttering tasks that would slip through the cracks in my mind if they were not quite literally in my face. Orange for the pack, yellow for politics, green for court, blue for owls, green for me.

There were not very many green ones. Only one in fact, reminding me that I didn't come all this way just to give up, and prove David right.

Silence wandered around the penthouse and knocked on my attention, asking if it could come in. I pushed it away, refusing to look towards the bedroom and the cage of a sinfully high thread count. Sleep was not kind to me these days.

I was terrorized by scenes of carnage that were not my own. Xavier could not link to me, but his sleeping brain was unable to cope alone with the hellscape of whatever was going on wherever he was. It reached out over the distance, calling for help; and my unconscious mind reached into the black swirling miasma and took whatever needed taking. At least I knew he was alive.

There are moments that imprint themselves with the indelible ink of trauma on your mind. That one mental picture is worth more than a thousand words; it conjures a shade of relevance that tips over all the dominos of circumstance that fell to bring that picture, that moment, into being.