A/N - This is Charly's latest obsession. Ryik is an original character of mine, as is his daemon, Dy. If you don't like that then click the back button in your browser.

If you're still here, the I presume you have no quarrels with this idea. I have taken quite a while to develop Ryik, and I sincerely hope he is not a Gary Stu. For one thing I am a girl and really don't want to be him. He has his faults, and they balance out his virtues. He doesn't have a really bad life, his family are all still alive and well. However he is looking for his best friend, Mikah who disappeared about a year ago. He is currently lost in a large forest, but he will not be spending the whole fic there.

Oh, and I don't own the title, it's also the title for a Cure song.

I also don't own the universe this is set in, that is copyright to Phillip Pullman. I don't own the concept of Daemons and other small things, but other than that I own everything in this story. Current setting, characters, plotline et al. So yeah. Hope you enjoy!

Ryik didn't drop off cliffs, if he could help it.

It gave him a welcome rush of adrenaline, yes, but then, generally it wasn't worth the risk. Thus far, his daemon had always taken on the form of some giant sort of bird and caught him, but there were no guarantees that next time she'd be able to switch forms that quickly. As puberty was happening her ability to switch  forms was hindered, and one of these days she'd be stuck in one form...

However, this time he hadn't done it on purpose. That was very important to him, to be able to say that and be truthful. He hadn't realised it was a cliff, although he knew he should have been more observant. But really, when you're in a forest thing, you don't really notice the ground starting to climb, and you certainly don't expect a whopping great cliff to just appear out of nowhere. Well, you might, but that's a strange thing to do and Ryik certainly didn't.

Anyway, this was all irrelevant. The matter of the fact was, he was stuck at the bottom of a bloody great cliff with his now very worn out daemon when he needed to be at the very top of it... He not only had left all his supplies and changes of clothes there but he was cold, tired and dirty. Not that it was anything unusual but he just wanted to curl under his soft warm blanket with Dy beside him in a snuggly animal form.

"Well, that was a very clever thing to do. Now we're stuck down here with only leaves for company and no supplies..." He stated, annoyed at himself.

"Hey, it's not.. that bad..." Dy replied, yawning. "It's still early autumn, it shouldn't be too cold tonight. We'll sleep down here and try to get back to the top of that cliff tomorrow. Sorry I can't just fly us up there... but I have no energy for it.."

Ryik just scratched her behind the ears as she lay down, taking on her wildcat form again.

"You get some sleep, I'll keep a lookout for tonight - I wouldn't be able to get to sleep feeling this jittery anyway."

Dy nodded before eloquently laying her head down on her paws and drifting into a seemingly deep and peaceful sleep. Ryik stared at her absent-mindedly for a minute, envious of how easily she could just... sleep. Recently he'd had problems getting to sleep and even when he managed to disregard the insomnia, his sleep was still fitful and broken.

After a couple of hours, when the darkness had set in and even Ryik's eyes were getting heavy, a noise was suddenly made a few feet behind him, in a thicket of trees. Ryik's heart started to beat twice as fast as he deftly leapt to his feet, all feelings of drowsiness replaced by curiosity and a deep, sickening fear.