pilosa

Timothy felt a vague awareness about him. He knew it was a dream. As his consciousness slowly became more aware he was able to take in his surroundings. Waterfalls everywhere in the distance, greenery flushing the mountain cliffs leading down into a large basin valley. The Valley of Xenarthra. This was his home, and it was written in the Ancient Ancestral Arts scriptures of the druidic order that lived here that this was the origin of all Pilosa. He sniffed the air and it reminded him of his time here. He remembered how often he would stare out towards the waterfalls watching the moonlight shining off them and marveled at them.
“If this Valley was this beautiful, just what else is out there?”
That shining curiosity was the only thing that saved his life. Is now the time to be reminiscing? “There’s something not right here, I would never dream of home like this. I can’t seem to remember for some reason. Maybe I just fell asleep? Usually I could remember clearly what I was doing before I slept though, is my training failing me?”
He tried to remember home even though it was all around him. The images of the corpses of the order and the valley burning were strong in his mind. He never thought about the waterfalls anymore. He would grow sick even at the sight of pouring water. Right now, he was seeing them just fine though from a treetop platform. Manipulating the absolute top of the treetops into a natural roof was used as practice for the young Pilosa. There was only one druidic order here though, and all who couldn’t pass that trial were exiled from the valley. Given that they were children, often they were raised to maturity in a controlled area and exiled from the valley. This wasn’t a debated practice even among the parents of the child. That was because the Pilosa would have no mind. They were beasts in every sense, and the druidic order regarded them as not worthy of the valley. They were unable to learn the secrets of the Ancient Ancestral Arts, druidic magic, contribute to dream exploration, and even unable to use ‘Soul Communication’. ‘Soul Communication’ allowed a being to speak to any other being, and read their deepest intentions and thoughts. Without that, it would be a rather one way conversation. It was just like giving orders to dumb beast.
 Just which Pilosa would pass the test and which wouldn’t, they didn’t know. Either way, Timothy’s friend Willem constantly reminded him that he barely passed the cut off date. Granted, Willem also barely passed the cut off date so Timothy had to remind him.
“Hey, it's a dream you know? If you think of me, I’ll appear from your subconscious right away. Don’t tell me after all these years you forgot something that basic?”
It was Willem. He had two broad black splotches on his flank and a gray coat. His hair was way too long.
“Ah, you’re just as I remember you, as expected of a dream. I haven’t thought about you for years. Really, even though it's a dream I wonder why I feel like I’m really back here.”
“Looks like your memory is shot. Probably some kind of mental magic, you saw that in the human world right?”
“Oh, yes that’s right. It’s a good thing my subconscious is mixing with you. This will make it easier to get out of the dream. Something’s off.”
Willem shook his nose.
“If you got hit by something like mental magic it had to be quite amazing to take you down. Even back then you never wanted to go to sleep. It’s really hard to go against someone’s will.”
“That doesn’t bother me, being here bothers me.”
Timothy touched his nose to the bottom of the treetop platform and closed his eyes. Even in a dream he could feel the high quality of the sound the wind rustling through the trees. It was always cool here.
“You’re lying. I’m your subconscious and your best friend.”
“Not anymore.”
“Hey, even if I’m dead we still spent all those years developing shapeshifting magic. You were the only one who could do it right though.”
He laughed and snorted through his long nose.
“Well, I wasn’t going to do dream exploration or that other nonsense. I suppose I have to believe in you, or myself. I can’t stay here forever. Don’t you agree?”
“What if there was something you could learn being here?”
He grinned from the bottom of his soul.
“By Xernarth seeing your smug soul say that pisses me off. Dream exploration was something I was awful at. The humans, they have this thing called math where they use images to convey complex problems in quantities. I’d rather do that.”
He knew he had to give in this time though. It was a dangerous state for a druid. The Xenarthic Order especially, since they sought all sorts of dreams and pleasant ones were the hardest to escape. Dream exploration was the study of following thoughts and feelings and letting them build upon one another to create new vistas of the mind. It was necessary for the development of consciousness, and even a small amount of it could lead to mastery of ‘Soul Communication’. It was considered vital to growth of the order and their knowledge of the world they lived. If he could remember right, to retrace his steps out of a pleasant dream…
“You’ve got to think of the bad parts about it, let them consume your focus, then the subconscious will begin to react.”
Willem had to interject. That was part of his personality that Timothy remembered.
“Well, you’re dead. That’s bad. Everyone died, the beautiful valley drowned in flame, and the only reason I survived was because I had flown off in the shape of dragon I saw in a fellow druid’s soul. He was showing it off, really, that thing was so scary. I had to try turning into it, see if I could fly. I never could get it right with the birds but such a strong image of fear and power like that dragon really helped with the shapeshifting. So then I took off, and you were laughing so loud from the depths of your soul that all the druids around couldn’t tune it out and one them even smacked you off the tree platform using ‘Drudic Force’ centered around their tongue. That was a happy time. Until I got back from touring the countryside taking in the sights. It was dusk and it was like there was a second red sun in the distance. As it got darker, I could see the burning red halo even more. By the time I struggled through the fire using my dragon form to cut through the burning treetops to home, all I saw…”
“You want me to finish?”
Willem was showing concern.
“Not this time. It’s my story.”
Timothy smiled. It was a long time ago. Things happen, don’t they? Was he glad to be alive? Was the caring he did for John and Xana enough to let him see that he still had a future left?
He didn’t want to admit it, but the dream exploration was helping.
“There were corpses. Everything, was corpses.”
Dead pilosa began phasing in all around him. The sky turned dark and the tree started to be wreathed in red. He felt the heat of the flames. It wasn’t that bad in his dragon form though. Oh, wait focus on the bad, he chided himself. This was why he hated dream exploration.
“I blamed myself. With my new found power, with my resistance to heat, I could have done something. Perished with you all at least. I never did find your corpse-”
Willem was gone.
“I knew I had to bury everything. The funeral rites were important. I kept yelling at myself as I dug, fighting off the crazed predators of valley as they tried to find food with everything burnt to the ground. Most of them were dying themselves just from the burns. Then I buried the monsters. I built the graves out of burnt wood. I inscribed them with ‘Druidic Force’. I made a grave for everyone I could remember, I couldn’t identify the corpses. I tried using ‘Life Transfer’ once but it just tired me out. I remember hating myself for that. Against druidic code, it wasn’t supposed to be used to revive the dead. The balance of nature would preserve itself, we had no business trying to change that too much. For days I kept digging and burying and when I ran out of names I just dug more graves. The next parts too positive though, so I’ll leave it out. The goal here is to want to wake up and escape the dream. Although, what I did next got me out of that hole of a valley. Then I just wandered aimlessly away from the valley, I was running away. Some days were better than others, and when I got captured there were all sorts of attempts to brand me but there was no way with ‘Drudic Force’ that something like that would work. The negative, focus on the negative. The self-hatred, yeah I slapped humans around and destroyed things. I hope nobody got too hurt. I healed a few of them with ‘Transfer Life’ when I had enough grass around. I didn’t want to kill anything bigger than grass. There was this one guy who was starving in a field of flowers when I was wandering. I spent the entire evening just looking at him and thinking ‘If only I was able to use healing magic like humans’ or ‘if only I had an identity crystal and had access to unique magic maybe I could have learned something that could help him’. It was nonsense. I could have saved him. I just wasn’t willing to kill flowers.”
Timothy felt the hatred build in his soul. If only I was willing, if only I cared more, if only I could use unique magic. If only I was stronger then I would-
He woke up in a foul mood.