The sand is hot between my toes, warmed by the blazing heat of the late afternoon sun, the tide looming higher and closer with each wave as I stand, staring out over the vastness of the sea. To combat the heat, I have stripped to the bare essentials: the torn, dirty white dress has been transformed into a makeshift sarong, tied clumsily but well at my right shoulder with that silly velvet bow. My reed-slender body, criss-crossed by odd, thin scars pale with age, is bare beneath it, hoping to catch a breeze that is not laden with the taste of water.

The huge, sleek white cat with the jagged black stripes sits patiently near my legs, not leaning but not so far that her coat does not tickle my flesh. She seems content to simply watch with me. Occasionally she will purr, low and soft, tipping her fearsome muzzle skyward to drink from the wind. It is at these times that I drop my right hand and lay it gently upon her cool black nose, mingling my scent with the salt of sea and sand, assuring her that I am still here, that if I cannot remember all of the past, I do feel the present and know she is here because she loves me. That she stays because she knows I should love her.

I glance down at her face, turned away from both the sea and me now as she tracks the progress of a long-legged bird down the beach. I know that if she were not looking away, if she were thinking of more than her nearly empty belly, there would be a fearsome intelligence in her eyes, a waiting that still begs more from me than I know how to give. That I have taken the time and effort to begin marking the days of our exile in the soft wood of the little shack, that this is the third day I have stood here, on the shore with her by my side, that I have remembered her name, are not enough. Something in the way she watches me, patiently and without judgment, makes me only yearn more for the memories and the life she knows.

The yearning makes me sick with shame and need and a hunger that has little to do with food.

Suddenly, with a quick movement and in complete silence, she streaks away from me across the sand, her ears slicked back, eyes narrowed. She is stalking. I have seen her do it countless times now, as she finds food for both herself and me, but each time is a separate thrill, a new bond to draw me closer to the past. I turn my body more fully toward her and the bird, balancing most of my weight on my right leg in a hip-shot stance that feels natural, flicking the heavy fall of my hair over my shoulder in a move that is comfortable, practiced. Before I can take the sudden revelation and examine it more closely for paths of memory, another sly movement from the cat sends my thoughts scattering.

Not five feet from the bird, who is patently unaware of her presence as it drops its long, slender bill to the sand, the cat drops her belly and muzzle, using her flexible spine to hold the pose for long, breathless moments. When she moves, it is carefully, deliberately, a slinking forward of paws and muscle. As she lifts herself higher, poised to strike, something fiery and painful rolls through my blood, roaring into my head, stiffening my limbs.

For the third day in a row, standing along the rolling shore, I feel the dark presence I do not recognize attempt to rule me. Its roar sounds like the cat who is even now devouring the hapless bird and feels like memory. I am terrified.

Is this why I have been forsaken?

My lips compress to keep in the cry but I feel it, feel it screaming into the back of my throat, lifting in pitch and volume as my body twists, contorting, attempting to fight, to keep what little of myself I have come to know and recognize. Claws rake through my belly from the inside, a demand to give in, to open myself to this Thing, this Other that is me and not me, real and not real, power and pain and pleasure and the endlessness of Dreaming.

The sand is rough against my palms and my knees, scraping my sensitive skin, a distant, fleeting pain as I fall, scrabbling for purchase in a world that has gone red with blood. My fingers curl into the hot sand, a wave of salty seawater buffeting me as my eyes squeeze shut over the agony and the distant thrill of ecstasy. I can feel the Other winning, feel my hands and legs and body and even my mind slipping into another form, another shape, another way of being, merging with what is mine to make another. I let out a growling sort of gasp and briefly, blessedly, find relief in the darkness of unconsciousness.

It is the wet rasp of a tongue and the gentle nudge of a whiskered muzzle that awakens me. With thoughts only of easing my discomfort, my flesh and bone and sinew aching, I reach out to stretch, only to pause in the act of arching my long, sinuous, flexible spine to stare, stupidly, at the large, heavy black paws that were once my hands. Very, very carefully, as if I might shatter at any moment, I probe the edges of my consciousness and find…me. I am still me, still whole, still here, but different; a Beast prowls along the corridors of my mind, poking its whiskered muzzle into corners, massaging with its padding paws the broken cobbles of my memory. A word, already remembered but not understood, finds roots and flowers, a starburst in my mind.

Adore.

Druid.

I am Druid. I am forest and brook and tree and sky and the soft crunch of detritus under my paws. I am wind and water and earth and fire, elemental and primal. I am healer and succor, breath and life. I am Beast and She is me.

I lift my muzzle to find the cat watching me with those kind, patient, waiting eyes. Opening the maw of sharp teeth that is the mouth of the nightsaber as it is the mouth of me, I roar, startling birds into the sky. The roar is her name, is understanding and joy and hope.

Fala'Andu.

Companion.

I am not alone.