“Hey, Squishface,” Katie says.
Wait, Katie’s here too?
I open my eyes and find myself kneeling on the carpet of my bedroom back at Stony Point, my arms wrapped around myself. My wolf is gone…no not gone, he’s just not apart from me any longer.
“You’re going to be late,” Katie says from where she’s sitting on my bed, “as usual.”
Her back is against the headboard and one knee is pulled to her chest, and she looks younger than I remember, as if she’s de-aged by about four years, back to when we were an inseparable duo, besties forever.
“Oh yeah. Late for what?” I ask.
“Oh you know,” she says with a casual shrug. “Everything.”
“How do I get back?”
She tilts her head in the direction of the door. “Through there.”
“Thank you,” I say and head for the door. “And Katie…”
“Yeah?”
“I miss you.”
Young Katie smiles as I step through my bedroom door and suddenly the world is full of light.
I open my eyes and this time I’m back in the real world. Pale dawn light is creeping over the edge of the desert basin. The rocks that surround me look less like teeth now and more like mountains, a series of peaks between which run any number of valleys, each its own path.
Yoki and Omar aren’t here. The accoutrements from the ritual sit in a circle around me, the plate of wolf teeth right in front, only now it’s empty. Feeling strangely awake and nowhere near as sore as a person who slept sitting cross-legged on a patch of sand should, I stand and dust myself off.
Slowly, I make my way to the top of the ridge. The sun is just peeking over the horizon, a few stars remain visible, and to the west a pale outline of the moon hangs low. A short distance from the basin I spot Omar, asleep on his side, half in, half out of a sleeping bag, and a little farther beyond that Yoki is sitting upright, facing the moon, with their eyes closed and their hands palm up on their knees.
I approach cautiously, not wanting to disturb them.
“You’re back,” Yoki says before I’ve quite reached them, a knowing smile playing in the corner of their mouth.
“I am.”
“I hope you found what you were looking for.”
I rub the back of my neck, then catch myself doing it and stop.
“Yeah, I think I did.”
I plop myself down next to Yoki and for a moment I study the moon, just barely visible but still there, always there, moving around and above, always shining.
“Shall we wake the sleeping beast?” Yoki asks, referring to Omar I assume.
“No, let him sleep a little longer. It’s still early.”
Yoki and I watch the moon until it’s fully hidden behind the horizon and the sun is almost a quarter of the way through the sky. Behind us Omar sits up, yawning and stretching. Without speaking we stand in unison, dust off the sand, and prepare to head back.
A ROGUE CELEBRATION
“So what did you see?” Omar asks as we trek back to camp.
My mind is still reeling a little from the whole experience. As the day has heated up, my drifting, calm state of mind has turned into more of a haze and I think the lack of sleep may be affecting me. I keep yawning and my eyelids weigh a ton.
“A whole lot,” I say.
