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Celeste Taylor

I opened my eyes, taking a deep inhale of my breath as I looked around. I’m dreaming again. This is definitely another one of those dreams where I was in the middle of a dark forest again. Looking up, I saw millions of stars in the sky but most of it was cluttered with leaves and branches sticking out and intertwining together. I looked down at my hands and feet covered in mud as I slowly stood up to find my balance.

It’s quiet. For it to be woods in the middle of the night with no clear sign of opening or foreign lights, this was eerily too quiet. I started to walk, stepping over twigs and dried out leaves falling for the change of seasons. There was a certain snap in the air as the wind blew by that sent chills down my spine.

“Where the hell am I, now?” I asked out loud, touching one tree trunk as leverage to step over a dead log.

There was no end to the forest. Something was definitely pulling me forward, and driving me to walk in this direction. I looked up again in an attempt to see clear skies but the trees seemed to twist and intertwine with one another, closing the small gaps of the stars and clouds in the night sky .

I stopped walking as I brushed my hands down on my jeans, trying to get rid of the mud and dirt before adjusting my glasses on my face. This is definitely one of those fucked-up dreams again where everything seemed so real…so clear. I just need to find a way to wake up.

“Hellooooooooo!” I called out.

Irritated, I kept moving, pushing through the forest until I heard a sound. It was faint but I could tell I was being followed. The padded footsteps crunched through the leaves like a soft march until slowly coming to a stop. The low, guttural growl rumbled and echoed through the dark as I slowly relaxed my shoulders.

“This is a dream…Celeste…this is a dream…This is what writers do. They vision it and then they write it. That’s all. You got this girl,” I said to myself. “Nothing but a weird dream…”

“Who are you?”

The voice suddenly said from behind as my shoulders bunched up. My skin began to crawl in response to the deep, commanding tone. Male…not sure if they were human but the voice definitely belonged to a male. I slowly turned around just in time to see the large, dark as a shadow, wolf with piercing yellow eyes, suddenly reach up. Its body slowly morphed into a human body standing on two firm brown legs .

Putting my hand over my forehead, I covered my gaze from his completely naked body. I only caught a glimpse but I knew he was dark brown complexion, rivaling any chocolate bar, and his kinky hair was a wild, thick mane he let grow in any direction. That’s all I saw of him because the rest was dangling between his legs like a pendulum. Just bouncing and swaying in whatever direction he felt like.

“Do you not have any clothes?” I asked.

“Who are you?” he asked again.

I rolled my eyes as I turned to the side so I wouldn’t have to stare at him. The temptation was there but knowing this was a dream kept me sane. I refused to lust after some imaginary person I made up in my head.

“My name is Celeste,” I replied before dryly adding, “and this is a dream. I know you’re not real. I just saw you shift into a human from a wolf, which makes you a shapeshifter…or a werewolf? I’m not sure of the technicalities.”

I heard him step as the leaves crunched underneath his toes. I glanced down at his feet and cringed because his legs looked stacked, like a workhorse, veins and muscles just pushing out beneath the tough skin.

“A dream?” he repeated. “How do you know this is a dream? ”

“I know it's a dream because what I just saw is not humanly possible.”

“But I’m not all the way human,” he said calmly, hearing the amusement in his voice. “You are…a seer or an oracle?”

“No. I’m just Celeste.”

“Heavenly…”

“Yes, yes…Celeste means from the heavens,” I dragged with a roll of my eyes. I glanced back at his feet, seeing he was closer than I needed him to be. “How about those clothes?”

“You’ve never seen a man before?”

“You said you weren’t human so whatever you are,” I said, looking at a random tree in front of me, “I don’t want to see it.”

“Hmm,” he chuckled. He sniffed the air, trying to catch a scent lingering with the breeze. “My name is Seth…”

“Nice to meet you, Seth,” I said, still refusing to look at him. “Any minute now, I’ll wake up and this will all be forgotten. This isn’t my first time, you know…”

“You’ve…been in a dream like this before?”

“Not exactly but…I imagine things…see things…and it usually stems from something like this although…this…” I glanced at his feet as they stepped closer. “…is something new for me. I’ve never been this close…usually, I see things that happen and watch or hear it in my head… ”

Come to think of it…I’m not sure why I was even talking to him. That’s never happened before in my dreams…Could it be that I’d actually started to lose my damn mind?

“Such is the life of a tortured writer.” I sighed dramatically.

“What do you write?” he asked.

Now, his feet were standing directly in front of me as I stared down at the ground, refusing to raise my eyes.

“Stories…fantasies…things that I see, like this…I write about werewolves, too, which is why I’m not shocked to see you. I just wish you would have clothes on. This isn’t that type of dream…”

“Do you not want to see me in my natural form?”

“I don’t want to see you in any form without clothes on…”

I heard him chuckle again but it mimicked something like an evil…sinister laugh from a villain in a cartoon character. His energy was dark but not…threatening. I couldn’t explain it except that he felt…familiar to me. I wondered if he was the wolf I’d been seeing walking alone.

“What about werewolves do you write if you don’t mind me asking?” Seth asked .

I pursed my lips, annoyed that I wasn’t snapping out of this dream before deciding to cave in.

“Well…I’m going to call it the Tale of the Three Brothers, still a working title, of course. It's tension building within this wolf pack that I’ve been writing on for years now.” I started to walk through the forest, letting him trail behind me. “It starts with three brothers. The first stayed away in order to protect his mother and sisters… The second becomes an alpha and lets fear and pressure get the best of him. The third falls in love with his soulmate. It’s a classic fairytale about brotherhood and power. In the end…only one is meant to actually be a leader…”

Seth walked behind me as the leaves crunched to the sound of his feet.

“What happens when the second lets fear and pressure get to him if you don’t mind me asking?” Seth questioned.

I almost jumped at the sight of his dark fur on four legs, stalking beside me. He shook his head as the rest of the body followed all the way to the tip of his tail. Somehow, even in his wolf form, I could tell this was a Black man walking beside me, keeping a step or two ahead of me .

“He attempts to kill the first out of fear, and betrays the third out of pressure, or maybe it’s the other way around. He kills the first from pressure and betrays the third out of fear.”

Seth became quiet as we continued to walk together. He didn’t say much of anything for a while before randomly asking, “Will I see you again?”

“I doubt it…” I pushed my hair back from my face. “…it's only a dream after all and you’re not real.”

“And if we meet in the real world, what are you gonna say then?”

“Then, I’ll say…I like a nice dinner, wine, no coffee dates…that’s cheap and lazy. Movies are fine, preferably action or romantic comedy.”

“I can do that.”

“Of course, you can, dream-wolf…Of course, you can.”

I looked down at the wolf, who began to trot ahead of me, protectively scanning the area. This man really thought he was a damn wolf or this wolf thought he was really a man. Tuh! What in the world kind of dream was this?

I couldn’t wait to wake up.