It's been a whole week. I don't know why I stay, but I feel I have some strange obligation to. He passes by me with a squirrel, the dawn light speckling his fur.

"Showing off again?" I ask, making a point of staring up at the rock slab that constitutes a ceiling, strangely enough. He chuckles at this, placing the squirrel down.

"It won't stop you from taking it, will it?" He nudges it towards me, whining a bit.

I look at the dead squirrel curled in a fetal position, and bite into it. The blood rolls down my dry throat, and I wag my tail in appreciation. Taking another bite, I look up at him, standing just a bit away as to sit there being smug as usual.

"You never told me." I say.

"What?" He asks, pricking his ears.

"Why you left your pack. What was it like?"

"It was a Canira pack. They made me Omega because of my markings, the chief storyteller hated me and told the pack my markings were a sign of a great evil. They were stupid to believe it."

"Everything in Dreamland is magic. It's not their fault they fell for superstition." I say, thinking about the books I've read.

"There's a difference between magic and lying. The two are actually really close together in this day and age, unfortunately... too many idiots out there."

I pass him the rest of my squirrel. "I think you're hungry."

He looks down at it, and eats it slowly and dubiously. I stretch my wings out, glowing gold with dawn light. "So what are we doing today?"

His ears swivel around, panning for any noise in the surrounding clearing. He holds me back, as if trying to protect me from the invisible demons that hang in the air around us.

I gaze boredly at him, and he mutters, "I don't know. What do you usually do?"

I fold my wings again, walking out into the forest. "Well, we have another day ahead of us. Got a decent stock of food. What else is there to it?" I say, a note of sadness in my voice.

"I think I know what will cheer you up." He says, his fast steps guiding me into the forest. I follow him to... a beehive. I look up at it reproachfully, the bees zooming in and out like angry minions building a delicious altar to some foreign god.

"I'm not getting stung fifty thousand times for a bit of honey." I point out.

"You won't have to." he says, and concentrates for a short moment. A claw of shadows extends from his own claws and traces a path up the tree, and the honeycomb falls to the ground with a solid thud. That's when the bees come out.

"Gale." I say.

"What?"

"You're an idiot."

The bees fly out in angry hordes, but knowing I can't escape, I turn around and try out some of my own tricks. My spots glow gold and then a burst of light shoots from my chest. I feel the energy sap away from me as I collapse in a heap.

Gale stands over me and says, "Rena, not to be rude, but most of them dodged that."

I groan.

He launches another one of his shadow claws to distract the bees and runs the other way, and I stumble after him. I feel a sudden tingling sensation as every molecule in my body is touched by some foreign power, and suddenly it's over.

Gale trots casually after me, wincing from his ten or so bee stings. He's carrying the hive in his mouth.

"I hate you." I slam myself into the ground.

"To the contrary, if you hated me, you could've gotten up and left at any time. So are you hungry?" I rip out the honeycomb, savoring the sweet taste on my tongue. My nose is alive with it, and it's thankfully bee free. Gale got all of the stings. "I hope you like that."

"I do."

Then I notice that the water is bubbling. Not like a few bubbles being carried downstream, I mean the water literally has bubbles the size of squirrels exploding from the surface. "Do you know where we are?"

He shakes his head, perplexed, as he watches the bubbles. Suddenly, the water condenses into a form and lunges at us. I step to the side and Gale gets hit in the face. The bristling Canira, a beautiful white furred one with blue eyes and a dark blue throat, snarls, "You crossed the border! Do you have Permission?!"

"Hey! What are you doing to him? We can't tell what your border is and... oh." My face falls as I realize where we are.

We're inside Natrina's Forest.

"Do you have Permission?!"

"We were just moving in here. No Plague, I promise. Check me." He tries to get up and the digs her claws into him. "Ow, ow, ow, ow, ow!"

"He really doesn't have it! I swear!" I yelp.

"Well, I don't know if we have room, so..."

"You'll let us go?"

"No. We're taking you to the authorities."

"Gale?" I say as he gets up, his ears flung back in distress at the word 'authorities'.

"Yeah?"

"You're an idiot."