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To Dream of Darkness

A story by DoggyStyle57

Chapter 2, Written December 2011

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Chapter 2 - What am I?

Sarah stared in amazement as her father's shape changed. The soft beard that wrapped his face seemed to spread down his throat and up his cheeks, as a thick pelt of grey/brown fur appeared in place of his skin. As the fur covered his body, his face reshaped, and his head became that of a timber wolf, with wolf ears twitching above where his Human ears used to be. His short hair blended into the wolf fur. He stood for a moment, still man-like in body and limbs, but with clawed hands and feet, as he shrugged out of his robe. Then his shape continued to change, as a long tail extended behind him, and his limbs shortened and changed shape. He dropped to all fours, and stood before his daughter, no longer Human, but now a very large timber wolf, whose dark brown fur was shot through with grey streaks. His tail was wagging like a friendly dog.

"Don't be afraid, dear. It's still daddy. He won't ever hurt us," Sarah's mother said.

"D-daddy... is a wolf?" Sarah asked, confused yet not afraid. "Like the magic wolves in my bed time stories?"

"Not quite," the wolf said, in the growling speech that Sarah now understood. "One of my ancestors was a great magician, long before the Church started to persecute those who performed magic without the benefit of a priest's vestments and the church's blessing. Apparently he was interested in animal transformation, and in being able to communicate with animals. I have read his journals, as you will get to do when you are older. You'll find they explain a lot about what he did, and how it affects our family, today. He performed some very... interesting spells in his day, and he successfully learned to transform himself into a wide range of animals. But the spells had a permanent effect on him, to the deepest level. What he spent years learning to do by spellcraft, his children inherited, as a basic Gift."

"Your father can become any animal, from something as small as a large dog, to something as large as a draft horse, and can communicate with any animal species," her mother said. "If you also have his gift for understanding the languages of natural animals, then you, too, may someday be able to transform yourself, as you just saw him do."

"R-really? You mean, I could be a doggy, or a wolf, or even a pony?" Sarah said, as she reached out and scratched her father between the ears.

Her father shifted form again, and morphed into a mastiff dog. Sarah heard him bark, and an instant later not only heard his speech, but also began to understand that most of the dogs in the yard were complaining that no one had fed them breakfast yet. She heard what she somehow knew was her father's dog-voice saying, "Yes. I think you can do that. It may take you a few years of study, though. Understanding an animal is much easier then becoming one."

Sarah rubbed the dog's tummy, her hand passing fairly close between the dog's hind legs, and a strange look came over her face, as she said, "Oh! You're a girl doggy!"

"When I change form, I can be either a girl or a boy, yes. I can even bear a litter of puppies, if I choose a female form. Or if I choose to be male, I can sire a litter. But if I mate with an animal, the pups are always animals. Smart ones, to be sure, and they are easier for any Human to talk to and train. But they are still just animals. They don't have the ability to change their shape, or to perform other sorts of magic. I can only produce a Human-looking child if I mate with a Human..." her father said.

"Or with another magical species that can already assume a Human form," Sarah's mother said. "Your father's ancestors were Human, though it's hard to say that of the past several generations of his family, considering the number of puppies, great cats and foals they have sired or given birth to. Your father's ancestor wasn't unique, however. Many mages over the centuries have discovered variations of the spells to do such transformations. Some were... more successful than others. The Human legends of werewolves come from mages that failed to retain Human intelligence when they transformed, or at least a Human degree of restraint, and their feral aspects took over their minds. True werewolves usually have no recollection of their actions while they are changed to a feral form, and have little control over the transformation. The successful mages, like your Human ancestor, became what my people call the 'feral folk'. Most feral folk can only accomplish a single type of transformation, such as Humans who can become dogs. Some can't even go all the way to becoming animals, and end up like your father looked before he took off his robe - a Human with fur and animal characteristics."

Sarah's father shifted back to Human form, and put his robe back on. He nodded to his wife and said, "Your mother, on the other hand, was never Human, nor was any ancestor of hers. Show her, my love."

Sarah's mother unfastened the sash that held the waist of her tunic dress closed. Sarah had never really paid much attention to how her mother chose to dress. But now she saw that like her father's night robe, her mother's dress was made in a way that made it very easy to remove in a hurry. Her mother's eyes glowed a moment, and her auburn hair seemed to spread to her face, while creamy white fur came up to meet it from her neckline. Her face changed form, now looking like a vixen, a female fox, but her body remained proportioned like a Human. She opened the front of her dress, and showed her daughter her fur-covered body. Three fox-like tails twitched sinuously behind her.

"I can stop the transformation here, quite easily, as this is one of my natural forms. Or I can become a natural looking four-legged fox," Sarah's mother said. "If my animal aspect is visible, I can communicate with other canids, including foxes, dogs and wolves. My people are almost unheard of in this country. In my homeland, we co-exist with the Humans. We punish bad Humans, play tricks on the mischievous ones, and do good deeds for Humans who are honest and in need. I am what they call a Kitsune, in my native lands."

"Daddy's a wolf, or a dog, or... and Mommy's a fox? W-what am I?" Sarah asked.

"You are our beloved child. You are half Kitsune, and half Feral Folk," her father replied, lifting his daughter up with both hands and resting her on one knee, like he was going to tell her a bed time story. "But the villagers must never know. They would fear us, if they knew we were not Human. Do you understand, my dear?"

"I think so, daddy. Is that why we don't spend a lotta time in the village?" Sarah asked.

"Yes. The less we associate with the Humans in the village, the better we will get along with them. The less they know about us, the less reason they have to fear us," her father replied.

===

Sarah's training in the magical arts began that spring, and continued for the next four years. She grew up playing in the woods with Moonlight and Grey Shadow's pack of wolves, and by the time she was eight, she had just learned to transform herself into a wolf, and back again, though she still found it difficult to control. Often, she found her eyes retained a feral, animal-like appearance, long after her Human form had returned.

Sarah also proved to have her mother's talents in oneromancy - the magic that deals with dreams. Sarah learned that her mother could do more than listen to someone describing a dream, and offering advice about what it meant. Her mother could actually enter the mind of another person, and experience the dream for herself. And what was more, she could influence those dreams, and change them, to ease nightmares, or to cause a troublesome repeating dream to cease repeating, and be replaced by something more pleasant.

"Can you read all of a person's thoughts, mommy?" Sarah asked one day, when she was about eight years old.

"No, my dear. Only what they have seen in their dreams or nightmares, and those thoughts that are at the surface of their mind. If a farmer is thinking about what he wants to have for supper, or about the odd stone he found in his field while plowing yesterday, I can pick up those thoughts. But I can't read his memories, if he isn't thinking about them at that moment," her mother replied.

"But we can change what they dream, or what they remember?" Sarah continued. "Is that how you can sneak up on people, mommy?"

"To a limited extent, yes, we can change their memories," her mother replied. "If we can see a dream or a thought, then we can change what they remember, if our will is stronger than theirs is. Most people have few defenses against oneromancy, and their will is weak. The more subtle the changes, the easier it is for us to make them. Sneaking up on someone is usually easy. Most people are not very observant. You just divert their attention to something else, like some other person they are already talking to, or a sound elsewhere, and make your own presence of little importance to them. As long as they were not actively seeking us, and had not yet focused their attention on our presence, we can slip up on them unnoticed. But a large change is dangerous. Once they clearly have seen and recognized our presence, it is much, much harder to erase that from their mind. They would almost certainly know something had affected them. If we make a major change in a dream or memory, they may see us, or see some aspect of us, in what is left behind, and realize we were affecting them. That would be very bad."

"Is that because they might fear us, and try to hurt us?" Sarah asked.

"Yes. Always remember, my dear, to only tell them what they have already told you," her mother said. "Humans get very upset if they realize you can affect their mind. They are very possessive of their little secrets. So always ask them to describe the dream for you, even though you can see it for yourself. And never, ever use your abilities in ways that make them realize you can interfere with or change anything in their minds."

"Like last week, when you complained about your sore knee, to get that farmer's wife to admit that she needed help with her own sore leg, and not for her horse?" Sarah asked. "Then she admitted she had been using daddy's ointment for her horse's sore leg to help her own leg, and that she needed more ointment for herself, and not her horse, that daddy and I knew was fine."

"Yes. Sometimes the villagers ask daddy to heal them, instead of their animals. But we try to only do that when they can't solve the problem with the village healer's efforts. The priest in the village does a reasonably good job with Human medicine. It is safer to allow him to heal the people. Animals don't question why a treatment works. They just accept that it does. Humans get suspicious, and want explanations," her mother replied.

===

One day a farmer and his son brought their plow horse to be treated. They said the horse had been caught in brambles. His back and flanks had many slashing cut marks in the fur, some of which were bleeding. But Sarah and her father understood from the horse that the son has beaten the horse with a bramble switch, because it had refused to allow him to ride it. It was an old horse, and its back couldn't take the weight of the teen aged boy.

Sarah was furious. She could tell the boy didn't feel bad at all about whipping the poor horse with those thorny branches. She reached out with her mind and found the memory of the boy whipping the horse with the thorns. It sickened her that the boy was actually thinking about it and enjoying recalling that memory, and laughing to himself that he was pulling a fast one on his father and the animal doctor, and making them think the animal had done this to itself. Sarah angrily took the thought and twisted it, so that night the boy would dream that he was the one tied to a post and being whipped mercilessly with thorny branches.

Sarah saw the boy shudder, as if a chill had passed over him, and she quietly walked away, smiling to herself about the clever vengeance that she had delivered for the poor, abused horsie.

===

That night, the boy had an intense nightmare, just as Sarah had intended. In the dream, he tried to ride the plow horse, and it kicked and bit at him and would not let him mount it. He took his knife and cut a handful of thorny brambles, and walked up to the horse to beat it, as he had done the day before. But the horse looked at him, and its eyes glowed an acid green, like a creature from hell. The world spun the boy around. Suddenly the boy was naked and tied to the post, and the horse was nowhere to be seen. He looked around in terror, and saw a shadowy version of himself picking up the brambles that he had cut, and advancing on him. The shadow boy's eyes glowed green, and his face was distorted and monster-like. Time and time again the thorny branches whipped down upon the boy's naked back and rump and legs, until he was raw and bleeding, and screaming for help.

The boy awoke screaming, with his father and the village priest by his bedside. The priest had been visiting for dinner, and had not yet left when the boy started screaming in his sleep. Now the priest was praying and performing a rite to exorcise demonic possession, and the boy's father looked terrified and grief stricken.

The boy told them he had been attacked by a dark demon in his sleep - a demon with eyes that glowed bright green. He said the monster had clawed his back, and that he felt even now as if his back was cut and bleeding. He didn't admit that he had whipped the horse with brambles, or that his dream had him whipping himself.

As the boy sat up, his father gasped aloud, and drew back. There were blood stains on the back of his son's night shirt, and on his bedding, and when they removed his shirt, his back was covered in bleeding welts, as if he had been whipped or clawed savagely.