AN: It's... Been a quite a while since I've been on here huh? Hell, it's been a while since I've written anything. This was made a few months - no, half a year? - ago. Ah, watching Song of the Sea compelled me to look at my old SoK stuff and post this. Enjoy.
Secret of Kells (c) Tomm More
He didn't believe what he was seeing.
He spent so long thinking it was all imagined. That it was all the product of a lonely childhood and an overactive imagination.
The white wolf stared at him with disconcertingly intelligent green eyes.
No, it can't be...
He reached out a slightly shaking hand; it can't be real, it never was real...
The wolf turned away before his hand came close. It took off and something compelled Brendan to follow.
To chase down the illusion.
Was it an illusion?
He ran past vaguely familiar sights; the old oak tree he climbed to get the ink berries (he almost remembered a girl climbing with him); the clearing with the ancient stone in the middle (he once climbed the stone to avoid being mauled by wolves. why did the wolves leave again?); a decrepit temple full of delicate white flowers (he remembered being scared, why was he so scared? he remembered calling out for a friend who wasn't there).
The spectral wolf stopped before the edge of the forest and looked back. There was something in its stare that was so achingly familiar. Comforting in a way he can't explain.
Brendan felt a word wake up in his mind and fight its way to his throat.
It wasn't just a word, it was a name. A name that brought back a flood of memories he didn't remember and pain in his chest he forgot he had.
"Aisling?"
Something shifted in the wolf's stance. It looked almost relieved.
In a flash the wolf was gone. Instead there was a little girl.
A pale girl whose long, long hair was the same color of the white flowers. Whose dress was made of moss and bark. Whose bright green eyes were so old and so filled with wisdom. The air around her was weighed down with the presence of the forest itself.
She smiled.
In a blink she was gone.
Where she stood, showing through the break in the trees, was the abbey that was once his home.
Brendan emerged from the forest with the weight of a book at his side and the sound of laughter ringing in his ears.