Page 189 of Mates for the Raskarrans #1-6

The sun is dipping down beneath the canopy when I finally go to my cave.

I set the damp clothes over a drying rack I built for myself after losing a good pelt to mouldering in my first season outcast. A costly lesson.

All lessons are costly when you only have your own skill, your own resources and reserves to count upon.

I have nine seasons of lessons hard learned behind me now, I should feel confident in my continued survival.

And yet, I do not. More and more of late, I find I am grown weary of life on my own. With every skill I gain, it is as though a little of the will to use it burns out of me.

You will not need it.

Nelsah’s words from my dream return to me, and I wonder if this is a message from my heartspace to my headspace. Does my spirit know something my stubborn thoughts are not yet ready to acknowledge?

She is just a dream, I tell myself. Not an omen or a portent. Just a dream of a friend lost many seasons ago.

Sleep comes quick when I finally settle into my pelts, my body growing heavy in moments. The dream that follows is so real, so like the waking world, that for a moment, I do not even realise I am dreaming.

The travel tent I am in is warm and large, thick hide walls blocking out the outside world, as if no forest exists beyond it.

The floor is padded with pelts, my bare feet tickled by the fur that lines them.

So comfortable, so soft. A luxury I could not create for myself, and it is this thought that first tickles in the back of my headspace, making me realise I am asleep.

I have never summoned Nelsah to my dreams before.

Always she appears when I am not anticipating it, most often when I have fallen asleep without realising.

On occasions when I have gone to my pelts thinking of her, hoping to see her once more in my sleep, I have always been disappointed.

But I look round for her now, so certain that I will find her in this strange, vivid place.

Nelsah is not here, but I am not alone.

Rising up out of the pelts on the large bed at the centre of the tent is a female.

She is shaped like a raskarran - two arms stretching out above her head, two legs tucked beneath her - but smaller.

Much smaller. And pale, her skin not a green shade, but like the flesh of the skarris fish beneath its scales.

Her hair comes down only to her ears and is uneven, wild, like someone with no skill has taken a blade to it.

I wonder how my headspace has conjured her, what faded memory has informed her shape.

Nelsah visiting my dreams makes sense to me - she is what my friend would have been had the sickness never arrived.

But this female is new and strange. Similar enough to a raskarran female to be familiar, but too different to not be unsettling.

She runs her fingers through her hair as if to tame it, though it makes little difference, then turns, looking round the tent.

When her eyes land on me, she stills, her eyes widening in surprise.

Then a smile spreads across her face, stretching so wide her cheeks dimple, lips parting to reveal blunted little teeth.

Her eyes close a moment later, pinching shut as she does a strange little wiggle, her whole body shaking as her hands grip into fists.

Such a gesture might have looked aggressive on another, but she is too small to register as a threat.

Instead, she looks adorable, like a youngling before their naming day - bursting with an excitement that is too big to contain in their small form.

“Oh,” she says on a breath, her voice soft and throaty and very much not that of a youngling. “Oh, I’m so glad to finally meet you.”

I arch a brow at this declaration. It has been a long time since anyone was glad to meet me.

She jumps from the bed. Standing, she is barely tall enough to come to the middle of my chest. Her wild hair falls about her eyes, and she pushes it back again, beaming up at me.

“I’m Sam,” she says, bouncing on her heels.

Again, I am reminded of a youngling’s excitement, but there is nothing else about this female that says she is a youngling.

No, for all she is short in her stature and strangely coloured, there is something oddly alluring about this female.

Watching her sets something in my chest stirring, my breath coming quicker, a flush of heat coursing through my veins.

It is… disconcerting.

Despite my saying nothing in reply to her, the female grins.

“It’s okay - you’re right, you haven’t seen me before. I’m the girl who went with Maldek to Walset’s tribe. We’re on our way back to the village now. We must have just come into range.”

I understand each of her words separately, but together they make very little sense to me.

“It’ll be a few days before we’re back to the village yet - it’s slow going walking carrying everyone’s stuff. But you’ve just done the same, haven’t you? So you know. I hope you don’t mind waiting to meet in person. I’m dying to meet you.”

I frown. She does not have the look of one who is dying.

“Oh, sorry, not literally dying. I mean I’m just really excited. I’ve been hoping to find my mate from the moment I first heard about the whole dreamspace thing.”

“Dreamspace?” It is as though only a few words in every mouthful she speaks sinks into my ears, but this one stands out sharp amongst the rest.

This is no dreamspace. The dreamspace cannot exist for most males now that all our females are dead. I know this, and so I have invented some strange female who is not raskarran to come to this fake dreamspace with me?

“Yes…” the female sounds more cautious now, and she studies me from beneath knitted brows. “You… you’re not one of Darran’s tribe, are you? You’d know what I was talking about if you were one of Darran’s tribe.”

“Darran?” I think I know the name. The Deep Forest tribes used to be close friends in the days before the sickness, but even those that did not turn from Lina’s ways as mine did lost that closeness in the seasons after.

As elders have passed on, tribe chiefs have changed and it is difficult to recall the details.

But part of me must have memory of this. This female is come to my dreams from me, just as with Nelsah. Everything she knows is something I must know.

“Huh, okay.” The little female puts her hands on her hips, taking a steadying breath. “You’re not one of Darran’s tribe. That makes things a little more tricky.”

She goes to sit on the edge of the bed, waving me over.

I should wake myself up, I think. This is a result of too much work, not enough food and not enough sleep.

My headspace has cracked under the strain and now I invent females who talk no sense and speak of dreamspaces.

I should wake up and have a long talk with myself.

Eat my fill with no thought to the coming days until I am able to be sensible again.

And yet, when I look at the face of the female, her bright smile, and the imploring way she gestures for me to join her…

I am a fool, but I am curious what she will do next. Is it so bad to see this strange dream to its conclusion? I will not recover my strength if I awaken early, after all.

So I go to her side. Take a seat.