Color dances before my eyes, the sudden rush of sensation pressing vague, half-formed memory out of my mind. I try to sit upright, though my limbs are hardly functioning, and my head still swims with confusion. I'm beneath a tree, evident by the roots curling around the ceiling, and the distant entrance casts red trails of light through the downcast room. Dark bars cut the ground like teeth, rising into a tangled array before me, and they almost manage to obscure the gold-eyed, gray-furred stranger who watches me through them, long, lithe ears perked.

"They sure got a strange one this time." he says, and the edges of his mouth twitch up in a familiar way.

I mimic it, feeling vague emotion buzz in the recesses of my mind, and memory begins to eek back into my addled brain.

"Strange for sure," he says, his voice smooth and almost devious. If he wasn't so scrawny, he might be intimidating, but as it stands I can't stop beaming at him. His ears alone are half the size of his legs, and they twitch in an unflattering manner when he talks. He's still growing in a ruff of thicker fur around the neck, which is patchy at best. I'm pulled back to his face, noting dark, unnatural streaks of pigmentation behind his leering half-moon eyes. He notices me sizing him up and snaps, "Bad time to be smiling, err--"

"Rena." I say, still ogling him. "Little disoriented right now, but I think I've got it. I appreciate the hospitality, but I'll be going." I step towards the tree bars, reach out to touch them with one paw, and cold sensation shoots up my body. I draw back. "Can you...?"

He narrows his eyes, ears falling back. With a quick glimpse towards the light behind us, he asks, "One second. Can you explain how you managed to stumble halfway into a marked, guarded territory before thinking the better of it?"

I squint back at him. Somewhere in the murk of my mind, something seems to click, accompanied by the alluring memory of something bright and familiar. "I think a tree might have told me to come here."

He snorts. "A tree?"

I tilt my head, alarmed by his outburst, but explain, "It was a beautiful tree, but all the branches were bent over. Do you know any like that? It wasn't broken, only... tilted, if that makes--"

He cuts me off. "That wasn't an invitation."

"Oh." I say. I mimic his stare, the dull way his pupils seem to look down at mine, despite our evenness in height. If anything, I could be a little taller than him, especially given that his ears account for most of his stature, but he still gives the appearance of casting downwards as he looks at me. As we size each other up in the dark, my tail wagging (is this some kind of game? Feels like one. I have no clue what he's thinking), my ears perk to a swell of noise from outside. This is accompanied by the scent of ash, rich and thick. "Are they howling out there?"

"Yes."

I step forwards, almost pressing myself back up against the bars, just to make out the tones. The voices are husky and mumbling, but the sheer force of the melody, which is light as leaves in high wind, carries it through. "That's... a beautiful song."

"It's a sort of mourning hymn." he explains, and though the words are still rough around the edges in my mind, I can sense the solemn connotations hiding beneath their lyrical facade.
"Did someone die?" I ask.
His ears slide slightly back. "Someone's about to."

"Really?"

His golden eyes rise slightly, so that he's fixing me straight in the face. "Oh, sure. You."

Dead already? A chill runs down my limbs and settles around my back. I feel my stomach pull in towards me. "Why am I here?" I whisper. "I don't know- I don't-"

"Something about trees?" he suggests.

"No, no, the tree told me to look for something. I don't- I didn't want to die, yet, I had to do something, I'm not sure what but it had to be important. I can't die now. Can you get me out?"

He looks down at his paws, shrewdly, and his ears perk up. With an air of nonchalance, he mutters, "Okay."

I look up. "Th-thank you."

He swivels towards the exit. At the same time, a greater darkness than any shadow of the room rises from the floor, becoming tangible in the form of a massive claw, and swipes through the bars as if trampling insignificant twigs underpaw. I hear barks in the distance, breaking the kyrie. My muscles tense with desperation. He, too, seems to realize what he's done, because despite the bravado of his perked ears and gently swinging tail, he trembles.

In deft silence, he takes the back exit, spitting us out into the woods. A few brutish, horned canines, of the same shape and form as me, snarl at us, barking orders back at their friends, although one is yelling at my new companion. "You can't be serious! One job and you lost her? They'll have you on the skewer next, whelp."

A claw of darkness drives this offender back, driving her head against the tree several times. When she slides against the bark, eyes rolled into head, the others step back. The patchy fur of my sole ally blows in the wind, and an unfamiliar scent ripples through the air, thicker and more poisonous than the smoke.

"You're going to need to run," he mutters, his jowls still pulled far back and his eyes full of frenzied emotion. I can almost feel the beat of his racing heart. His eyes flick up to mine, softening. "Can you... use those wings? Or any kind of powers? At all?"

My eyes widen. This body remembers the lack of ground, the raw power of the sun in my mouth and beneath my paws, but I'm unsure of how to flip the trigger on either. Optimistically, I mutter, "I don't think so?"

"Narrows our options down. Time to hit it." he mutters.

The smoke is rising behind us, billowing around the tree, and the shapes in the distance, coated in the brilliant, spiteful light, are growing in size and number. He bolts for the forest, and I follow in his every pawstep, Bays fill the night and my paws hit cold, wet leaves and brush, fleeing through the narrow gaps between trees. The forest is a blur of dark, half-remembered shapes and the scent of fear, and my throat burns harshly. Pain overcomes me, then falls and is trampled beneath me, then rises like a flock of butterflies, their wingbeats coloring my every motion. When my mouth is dry and it feels that the trees are receding into the darkness, crumpling into themselves to reveal the end, we stop. The motion is so abrupt I nearly fall forwards, legs giving out.

He's bought us to a river. He lowers his head, lapping at the star-struck waters, and his gray fur darkens, leaving dark trails down the sides of his mouth when he raises his head. I sip as well, gratefulness filling me faster than any drink, and my own blue eyes are reflected back in the river. They are fawn-like, and when accompanied by the scattering of pale pink spots across my face and the bridge of my snout, they make me look far from fierce. They fill me with a deep, inscrutable guilt, and for a second my mind rebels. This can not be my face--though I am not certain of why.

"Where do you hail from?"

"Everywhere," I whisper, which is right. Memories pass back through my mind, but all of them are far from explanatory. I see flashes of forest, of grassland, but all of it is me in the singular, wandering the land. There is no one there, no matter what I search. Any living being in my mind does not last more than heartbeats. I couldn't have been alone my whole life, could I? Could I fail to remember anything because there was nothing worth remembering?

"You're ridiculous."

"No, I'm Rena," I insist.

He sucks in a breath. "Awful. Anyways, I'm Gale," he offers.

"Are you one of them?" I ask.

"I guess." he twists his face, then corrects himself. "Not anymore, I suppose."

"Oh," I say. "Sorry."

"You shouldn't be. It was a lackluster pack. I'd definitely... been in better." he trails off. His tail convulses violently, and I catch that same mania in his eyes as before, if momentarily. His whole face shines with it. "Damn. We'll have to find somewhere else. It's not safe for us out here."

I look around, but nothing seems to stir in the land. "Why not?" There's nothing else in my memory, at least, no immediate danger. Nothing as powerful as us could conceivably be prey.

His expression burns with frustration. "You know there's nothing more suspicious than amnesia, don't you? That's one of the first signs. No, wait, not even a first sign. That's likely one of the last ways the Plague screws you."

I retort, "It's not gone, it's vague. Like an even landscape, but someone... someone tried to dig it all up. There's overturned dirt everywhere, everything is... it'll come back, I know it. It's already coming back, in pieces. I'm trying to turn everything back over, smooth the patches down, but I need time. I can't be out here," I gulp. "Alone. With this Plague. Whatever wants us. I don't think I can run forever."

He's silent.

"Sorry. Please don't leave me."

I can sense him twitching. "I have nowhere to go either. I guess we're going to have to take our chances on each other."

"Really," I breathe.

"I have a death wish. You'll get used to it." He tilts his head, and moves back from the banks. I notice a hollow in the underbrush, protected on most sides by briars, and he flicks in a few leaves. Outside, a chill silence fills the tepid air, broken only by a few curious insects and the rush of water. Both are unsettling, framing a distinct lack in the ambience. "I'll explain things. Tomorrow."

He's drowsy as he says it. I lean a little bit outwards, towards the woods, and one wing extends back, from instinct, to drape around him. Darkness almost masks the movement, but I can feel a distinct shifting as he moves inwards, so that my outermost feathers just cover his hide and tap the ground.

"I'd like that," I say, but I'm just as soon asleep.