Chapter 5

The Dreamer

Kodi was deep in sleep, dreaming sweet dreams, the sweetest he could ever recall having. In his dream, Kodi was walking into a field of wild Timothy and Sharproot Hay, smelling the faint aroma of Spring in the air, the scent of life beginning anew tickling his olfactory senses. The trees were ripe, the air reeking of the sickly sweet smell of pinesap…and of another, more husky smell. The smell of dogs, Kirby, Ralph, Axel, Carlos, and many others, all of them his friends and family. But buried beneath it, woven into and around the scent, was the one of the same…yet this one carried with it the smell of Wild Flowers and red luscious Roses.

And instanly, instictively, he knew it to be her smell, the only one he'd ever known which had the ablitiy to drown him as he was now being drowned. Yet this was a different kind of drowning, one far more beautiful than anything he'd felt before. It was her smell…Dusty's smell. And suddenly, he wanted her, no needed her, needed her more than anything else in the world. He felt that his heart would simply crack and shatter if he could not be with her.

And so, he spurred his legs to propel him forward, into the stretch of plantlife, the laughing, calling voices of the others boring into his ears. Yet he heard them faintly, as if from a great distance, or through murky water. All his senses were tuned to her smell, her voice, the melodious sound of her laughter…He grew hot, his soul burning within him, pushing him, throttling him to even greater speeds in his desperate desire to be with her…

There was an abrupt flash of gray to his right, a giggle like the sound of Angels, and suddenly his nose was assaulted by her reeking beauty, and his head grew strangely light. Yet this did not hinder him, and so he turned, following the flash of color, the vuluptious scent, his mind screaming to him that he must reach her, must be with her, if only for an instant and no more. He went on and on, the chase enveloping every fiber of his being. He could feel his rapidly beating heart, could feel the way his paws passed and thudded on the ground. But none of it mattered…all that mattered was her…He could even see her gray tail and the way her paws stirred up little puffs of dust, and oh, what he would've given to pause and breathe deeply of it, the very knowledge that she'd blessed it with her touch seeming to magnify his need and he pushed himself harder than he'd ever gone before, harder than he'd thought possible by any canine…

She turned, the startling about-face making his franticly beating heart freeze for an instant in his chest. And she saw it happen, and it that instnat, she jumped upon him, laughing madly, tumbling him from his feet with an almost gentle push of her shoulder. He was helpless to stifle a startled cry of amusement and then he was lost, swimming in her smell as the two of them wrestled and rolled together in this place, his laughter now joining hers as they played. The ground suddenly took a slight dip beneath him and abruptly, he found himself lying atop her, with his smiling face struck dumb by the sight in front of him.

He could not believe what his eyes were telling him, and for a moment,could only stare and gape, mouth hanging open like a door left ajar. She lay before and under him, smiling and still letting lose the occasional flutter of giggles. She lay on her back, the dust motes cuaght in the sunlight streaming from above drifting around them. And then he was drowning. Drowning, drowning in a pool so deep and sweet he felt sure he would never be able to resurface. Nor did he want to, so sweet and glorious was the feeling, and all the more did he want to, so great was his need to not simply lay here, mouth open, gaping at her.

All this he knew she saw by the way her eyes widened slightly and her giggles slowly ceased. She herself was falling into him as he was into her, and a savage kind of truimph and pleasure filled him with the thought. He leaned his long, corded neck down close to her. Her smell…God. This close, her scent was…intoxicating and now so thick and strong it was almost a liquid he would've drank if given the chance. He would've drank and drank until his stomach simply burst.. Her mouth opened, lips curving into that heavenly smile once again, and her voice flowed forth, ripping him from the pool of her beauty with the sound.

"…Kodi."

The word, spoken by so many others and said in so many contexts and with so many implications, was somehow made unearthily smooth and sensual when coming from her mouth, spoken in the tones of deepest love and affection which he now heard. No, he realized, it was more than that, much, much more! Her voice was exhilarating, too great for words to describe. The spoken description would do not even a tenth of justice to her, not so much as a hundredth!

"…Yes Love?…" he heard himself reply, and was astonished at his ability to form intelegent words or even sylobls so close to her. He felt he would do anything she asked of him, no matter the cost or the effort required! His love for her would make even the most daunting of obsticles seem like nothing!

She stared into his face, into his eyes as though they were portals to his very soul. And his gaze was likewise as deep, just as all-seeing as hers was. And in her eyes he saw, was reflected the same amount of emotion and feeling too great to be given justice as merely to be described hence forth as simply Love. The feelings he saw within her were more like a physical nesecity to have him, here, now, with her, forever and for always. As a blind man requires a cane to survive life's chalenges, so he needed her, and she needed him. The depth of feelings passing between them could not be described by any means of communication other than sight and smell and touch. All else fell short of their reality.

"I love you…" the words, so simplistic, sent a typhoon of emotion crashing through hiim. She spoke that as though they themselves came from the very mouth of God.

"And I you…" he replied, now breathless as well as mystified. He would've stayed this way forever if time permittied it, simply looking and seeing her Love for him would've been more than enough.

He was seized by an instinct so powerfull and so urgent, that he couldn't have ignored it, even under threat of death. He needed to show her see how much he loved her, how deep his feelings ran, deeper than the blood coursing through his very body. His head lowered, and he nuzzled her, her fur seeming to carry with it an electrical charge as it slid against his own. She responded, pushing her head long the underside of his jaw and sending jolts of energy down his back, seeming to fry his nerves.

He licked her cheek, the fur, now free of the grime and blood and dirt when he'd first done it, was the sweetest thing he'd ever felt or tasted. She licked his own cheek in return, sending waves of heat through them both.

Suddenly, the sky darkened as clouds, blacker than tar, spread throughout the sky, blotting out the sun. The wind picked up, seeming to snatch at their bodies as it ruffled their thick coats. He looked towards Dusty and saw her love replaced by fear as she looked over his shoulder, seeing what he, for the moment, could not. He rolled swiftly off her, his need to protect her instantly filling his mind. He would do whatever it took! He couldn't live without her! He would die before he let anyone even touch her again!

As the clouds grew darker still, lightening and thunder ripped through their velvety undersides to flash and stirke the ground and shake the earth. Kodi's lips peeled back in a snarl as his saw a dog-like shape materialize itself out of the grass to stand before them. It was now so dark that Kodi was unable to see who it was, and his nose was already overloaded with a million scents as to be useless.

"Well, ain't this cute?" the figure asked derisively, sick laughter booming out again. "Lover-Boy and Little Miss Bitch going at it, huh? Hope I didn't interupt anything important…" Kodi could hear the smile in the beast's tone and it made him all the angrier and he growled ferociously. The canine chuckled again, and Kodi was dismayed to see that the light was growing steadily darker, the blackness closing in all around them as though at the beckon of that hideous sound.

"Hey, hey! No need to get hostile!" the voice boomed mockingly. "What's the matter? I get here before you could screw her or something?" And he laughed again.

Kodi was very frightened now. The darkness was all but complete. He turned to Dusty, thinking that, if he could not protect her, than he would die with her, die with the one he cherished. But he was horrified to find that he could see nothing. Only darkness. He called her name over and over again, until his throat hurt but he kept on and on, fear intensifying with every unanswered call.

"Ah, don't worry, Lover-Boy," the voice, coming from all around him, almost like the voice of God. "We'll make sure to break her in for you before I kill you both...not that you'll ever get the chance to do your own breaking in!" Laughter resounded all around him and Kodi screamed for Dusty and cursed the unknown, yet somehow farmilar demon…

And as he asscented from the deep resovoures of slumber, he heard the nightmarish cries of his Dusty calling for help, and the beast's crys of pleasure, mixed with the shouting jeers of two others, both unfarmilar but equally cruel. Their cries muffled her sobbs, but not completely…And oh, how much better it would've been, how much more bearable, if only they did!

"Kodi! Kodi! Help me, Kodi! Please…help…me…"

((()-()))

Kodi awoke with a start, eyes wide, panting for breath as the screams repeated inside his head, seeming to rebound off his skull to reverberate like distant echoes…He lay there in his hole, gasping for breath, heart thumping wildly. Such a nightmare…He'd had them before yes, but never one so frighteningly realistic…He shook his head, trying to dispell the bad parts and remember the good ones. He found it helped, a little. Not much, but a little anyway…

He felt the dream seeming to detiriourate from his mind and instincitively clutched at it with a wild, frantic sort of panic. But, it was like trying to hold an all-out sprint forever, he realized as it slowly began to fade into indistinct blurrs and swirls of color, live phantoms seen in fog…But, if remembering nothing was what it came down to, than that was better than remembering the final –

"Hey Kodi…you okay?" a voice asked, making the dog in question jump into the air and nearly shriek with startled fright. Breathing heavily once more, Kodi looked behind him to see Kirby stitting at the edge of his hole, looking concerned.

"Y-yeah," Kodi replied, voice stuttering and he helpless to stop it. Not that he cared much at the persent time, however. "I…I had a bad dream, t-that's all…" he went on, voice low. He could feel his body trembling slightly and welcomed the feeling. Anything to get rid of that insane voice…

"You sure…?" Kirby asked. Kodi's reply only seemed to have caused Kirby's concern to grow rather than shrink. "…Because you were…" he paused as if unsure weather on not it was a good idea to continue. "…You were screaming something awful in your sleep…" He said, clearly uncomfortable. Kodi didn't blame him. After all, he had been screaming in his dream, and if what he could remember was acurate, then Kirby and the others must've though he was in agony.

'God, I must've scared the poop outta everyone…' he thought and another shiver slipped donw his spine, this one smaller than the last. "Such a horrible nightmare…" he whispered, his voice shaking. So real…

"Sorry Kodi, I couldn't hear you, what'd you say?" Kirby asked gently.

"N-nothing…" Kodi replied lamely, unable to think of anything else. He felt heat rising to his cheeks, but couldn't bring himself to do anything but look down at his paws. His heartbeat had finally slowed to its normal pace though and that was something.

He stood abruptly, and leapt lightly from his hole in a single liquid motion, pausing only briefly to stretch and releave the stiffness in his joints. He turned to a slightly puzzled-looking Kirby and said, "Well, c'mon! Aren't we going to miss breakfast?" and then trotted off towards where the others were already gathered and awaiting the morning meal.

((()-()))

Kirby remained where he was a moment longer, still puzzled. He shrugged, after a few moments of consideration. Kodi was obviously uncomfortable with something in his dream/nightmare and couldn't talk about it just yet, so that was that. Besides, it was none of Kirby's business to press his friend about anything like that…Such things were personal, and sometimes best kept private.

Discarding these bothersome thoughts, Kirby quickly followed in the younger dog's footsteps, towards where their Master was preparing to dole out the morning's ration of fish and dry food.

((()-()))

They were hitched and moving along the trial once more in the usual fifteen or twenty minutes. Breakfast had almost been normal. Almost. Forest, having finished his portion and after looking around and spying Nova's not quite finished one, made his move. The result had been a short, but furious scuffle, one which – thankfully – had ended in a draw, as their Master, in no mood for unnecessary delays, had laid the lash into Forest, who swiftly backed down, affording Kodi and the others ample time to snigger as the bad-tempered brute received his long overdue reprimand.

This incident had put Kodi and his friends in unusually high spirits – their moral had lessened somewhat with the removal of cheerful and good-natured Dusty in return for the foul-tempered Husky – and for most of the day they made better than their usual time; Kodi himself felt as light as a feather, and was almost able to forget his horrible dream in the aftermath of such a pleasing sight.

But the dream never completely left him. Something about the situation, or more specifically, something about the voice troubled him. It was so familiar that it was weird. Yet he couldn't for all the life of him, figure out who it was. It'd been a…bad voice. That was all he could say for sure, it'd sounded…like some hideous monster. The Boogeyman maybe…or…

He pushed the idea away. Best not to think about it for now…besides, there was work to be done. Yet all the same, while he managed to push the dream itself away, thoughts of Dusty, of his newly beloved, rose to take its place. He felt the pang in his heart again and this time recognized it for what it truly was; he didn't just miss Dusty, he needed her. 'I…I love her…' Kodi thought and as if at this very invocation of the truth, some immense mental wall seemed to crumble and suddenly, he felt better than he had for longer than he could recall, even before the horrendous addition of Forest.

But with this mental let-go, something new came to take the place of the wall; a seed of doubt, of worry, had been planted within his heart and he thought 'I love her…but what if she doesn't return it…?' This in itself was, at the moment, too depressingly horrible to think about, so he did his best to store it to the junk-bin at the back of his mind.

He pushed on, now building the pace until they were traveling as fast or faster than they had the day before. He tried to use his now slightly achy body to distract his troubled, milling thoughts of Dusty but didn't succeed quite fast enough to stop one last troubling whim:

What if she didn't love him…? What would he do then…?

He didn't know, and the realization sent a shiver of unease through his body.

((()-()))

At the end of their first half of the day's run, Kodi and the rest of the dogs instantly halted at their Master's command and sat or lay in the traces, panting with their tongues lolling from their mouths, the hot air from their labored respiration condensing into small individual clouds as they rested. All were too tired for the usual little dose of good-hearted horseplay, and even Forest did nothing but eat his ration of food before merely lying down and seeming to pass out. Kodi was barely able to eat his own ration before simply collapsing on the snowy ground where he lay, exhausted and mulling over the various thoughts swimming throughout his head one last time before allowing sleep to claim him for a brief catnap.

A deeper dislike of Forest had been growing within the Husky all morning, albeit a simple cause of an unknown effect; he was plagued by a feeling that the albino Husky had something to do with Dusty, a suspicion that seemed ludicrous even in his own head. He attempted to dismiss the idea, using the excuse that Forest wasn't that kind of dog. Oh sure, he was mean, and he could be very infuriating at times, but Kodi just wasn't able to picture Forest as someone who'd be cruel enough – let alone having the guts – to take on someone like Dusty all alone. 'Stupid turd would probably chicken out and go running home to his Mommy if he tried to take on Dusty.' This thought, combined with the mental image of Forest doing just that while Dusty followed behind, throwing insults at him, was enough to make Kodi smile broadly.

Dusty had been beaten, yes. But by Forest… Nah! He just couldn't buy that…besides, it wasn't like he was evil or anything…

((()-()))

Dusty's eyes opened and this time, were not blinded by sunlight – she'd been careful to pull her basket out of the reach of the radiance that would spill through the window in the morning last night before turning in – and she rolled out, yawning expansively and licking her muzzle. She got to her feet, and felt relieved when not jolt of pain sprang through her body when she tried to move. 'Looks like I was wrong! I'll be back on the team in no time!' she thought with utter glee. She was even tempted to let out a little barking yip, which she did with great pleasure. In truth, she was very thankful; after her somewhat chaotic little romp with Muk and Luk, she'd feared her tumble over the smaller polar bear might've only made her injuries worse.

Very happy, she went outside, even going so far as to hum a little tune as she did. After doing her business she walked out front to watch the sunrise, something she'd grown quite fond of recently. But this morning's was different somehow…and then she knew why; Kodi, that's what was different. She was helpless not to stare at the spectacle and wonder if he was also gazing at the blazing ball of orange flame or getting ready to head off, or even just finishing breakfast for that matter. She sighed. She supposed now that she'd finally recognized her feelings for what they were, she would be helpless not to think or worry about him…

'Until…Until I tell him how I feel, that is…' part of her thought and at the mere idea she felt her innards clench. She'd never be able to work up the courage to tell him…besides, what if he didn't feel the same? Come to think of it, why would he in the first place? She was no particular treat for the eyes to begin with and now, she supposed, even less so with the numerous wounds and the scars they would leave, however faint…

'And why would he want me after I was nearly rapped anyway?' she thought, 'after all…I'm unclean…' This was, as we know very well, not at all true. She had been beaten, yes, and badly too, but the monsters who'd done it to her had never gotten the chance to fulfill their last, and most disgusting need; they hadn't gotten the chance, and so she judged that had been a little too harsh. She wasn't dirty…

'…But it was a near miss all the same…' that agonizingly childish part of her thought again, and this time, instead of listening to it, she swatted it aside as if it were no more than a fly. She didn't care, and knew from experience that Kodi wouldn't either. If he loved her like she loved him then none of that would matter. But what if… And that was the pure hell of it! That stupid 'IF' part!

"ARRRGGG!" she moaned in a guttural cry of frustration. She'd never imagined that a single two-letter word could cause her so much grief! An old proverb suddenly came to her, one created by her life-long friend Kavik – who was also Kodi's Uncle, go figure. (Who saw THAT coming?) As she could best recall, it went something like this:

If, the only word in the English language a thousand letters long…

It had always made him laugh. Then it hit her; Kodi's Uncle, of course! Kodi must've tried to explain how he felt to someone, and if not his parents than she could at least ask Kavik if he'd said anything about her to him. As far as Kodi's parents, Balto and Jenna went…yeah, like she could just waltz on up to them and ask a question like that. She giggled as she played out the possible line in her head.

'Hi, I'm Dusty. Remember me? I'm on the Mail Dog Team with Kodi. Anyway, listen I've got to ask you guys something; did Kodi ever say…oh, I don't know…that maybe he was in love with me or anything like that?' She snorted with mirth. Yeah, right! She'd be caught dead before she just went off asking people stuff like that right out of the blue! Then a sudden, shockingly logical idea came to her, and it when it did, it seemed so obvious that in truth, it was a little scary.

'Why not ask him yourself, then? After all, what could be more perfect?' her Mother's voice resounded in her head, thought this time it sounded more like when she and her brothers and sisters had been planning a prank on Dad that their Mother had been in on more often than not. And she had to admit…it did sound tempting…But no, fist she would confront Kavik and then, if he didn't give her the wrong kind of answer…she would ask Kodi himself…

'I must be going crazy!' she thought as she started off in the direction of Kavik's place of residence.

'Love makes us do strange things, Dusty…' her mother's voice replied, chuckling. 'Trust me, I of all people should know!'