Chase Away The Demons

Walk | Talk | Think

Adjusting to life in the Gulley had been the easy part. Though she was still learning the paths of the densely forested territory - and occasionally had to rely on the cat scouting ahead to get her through instances where she lost her way - Callisto found that she rather enjoyed her new home very well. The plant life and vegetation grew so thick here that she was offered the kind of privacy she very much desired, and she suspected that after she learned to better navigate her way around that the knowledge would give her an advantage in keeping herself unseen by those that she would have rather avoided or simply not associated with. And the plants - oh, all the plants! Already her cache was beginning to grow again, finally taking on the semblance of what she once had during her training. It was still not quite where she wanted it to be, and there was still a lot of Gulley left to investigate, but it was a good start and she saw promise in establishing herself here that she had not let herself think was possible before.

While her days were filled with exploration and testing her healer's sense identifying plants, nights were an entirely different matter. The trek she had made north in search of her children had reawakened old fears that triggered nightmares of the worst kind, mixtures of her own fantasies with those cruel realities that the healer had lived through. Lel featured most prominently in them, though often she never saw him, just as she never saw him inside the pitch black cavern where he had found her during her first heat. Usually the dreams took place in the north, recurrent themes of searching for her children and and being hunted in the process, though the last had been centered here in the Gulley. It had woken her up early, before the sun, and afraid of what more might plague her in the darkness if she slept again Callisto left the confines of her den and set off through the vegetation again to pick up where she had left off the afternoon before.

She kept herself active through the sunrise and well into the morning, falling into the slow, observant walk that allowed her time to investigate what surrounded her both with her eyes and with her keen nose. New plants that sprouted herbs that she had already collected elsewhere were logged away as backup sources, and only one plant that she recalled from her training that she had not yet collected had been found. Her course was redirected back toward her den to set it in her cache amongst the others, her gaze still searching even with her jaws carefully holding the flowering plant between her teeth, and once she nearly dropped her parcel as the sudden urge to yawn overcame her. She made it back to the den and her cache to set the plant in among the others before another yawn split her jaws wide and her early wake up time finally caught up with her. There was still so much Gulley to explore, but she had woken up exceedingly early. Maybe just a little nap?

Instead of retiring into the den, Callisto merely settled herself outside of it on the soft, partially grassy earth, hoping the ambiance of the daytime would stave off the worst of the nightmares that tended to haunt her dreams when she slept within the confined darkness of her den during the night. She lay upon her side, her spindly grey legs outstretched and stretched her neck out to rest her chin upon a foreleg. It seemed to take no time at all for sleep to quickly steal in and claim Callisto's consciousness, and at first her slumber was peaceful. The dreams, however, were far too persistent to allow her any kindness, and when they returned she was once more in the north, trudging her way through snow in a wood that reminded her eerily of the forest that surrounded the S.S. Antiox. In her mind, she searched, trying to locate the ship and the children that she had left behind, and at first it felt much like the trip she had only just taken to the north in order to look for them.

Only the closer she seemed the get, the worse the weather around her became. Winds whipped up, sending flurries of snow every which way as a blizzard of sorts obscured much of what surrounded her, making navigation near impossible. Callisto stumbled blindly along, moving almost as if by instinct in search of her pups, pups that should not even be pups any longer though she thought she heard their plaintive cries over the howl of the wind. As she fought to move forward, squinting against the unrelenting weather, she suddenly felt the sickening sense of being watched, and the hairs on the back of her neck rose in fear. She had had this dream before, and knew even in her dream what to expect. It made the panic and fear in her all the more real, and her slumbering body began to tremble and twitch, incoherent noises elicited unknowingly as her dream-self struggled and fought to get through the snow, thinking to herself, No, no, no, this can't be happening. Not again!