Epilogue

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Three weeks later, I was standing in a small apartment in a bad part of town waiting for someone to make a choice.

I still wasn’t entirely sure this would work. I’d worked through the theory extensively. I’d consulted with a ton of people about it. Alice, the wizard from the Tribe, had helped a lot with the underlying theory and principles involved. I’d been introduced to a guy named Nate who mixed magic with graffiti and was more shamanic in his focus, less tied to concrete and rational thought than a wizard. The categorization tools for mages would always be inadequate, but it was informative in this case. Wizards, as the most common categorization system defined them, were characterized by linear reasoning, structured and abstract thought, and rational logic. Alice fit that description perfectly, which was great for my education. But for this I also needed to draw on that more intuitive thought process.

So, I met Nate and we talked for a while. He introduced me to a girl named Opari who had personal experience of what I was doing here. Derek, Cassie, and Robert all had some amount of insight because of werewolf things. They also had a veterinarian that they worked with in town, which I found fascinating when they told me about her. Werewolves rarely needed medical care at all, but apparently there were some very specific things that sometimes came up that a vet was helpful with. So there was a vet in Pittsburgh who knew what they were, and I talked with her for a while. Hell, I even went back to my old cognitive neuroscience connections and asked them some questions.

In short, I’d consulted with as many experts as I could find, and in theory, this would work. But I wouldn’t know for sure until we’d done it. I was nervous, and I could feel that the spirit in the back of my mind was nervous, too.

But it needed to happen. My mind and body were an adequate host for him, enough to anchor his mind and perception and sense of self so that these things wouldn’t dissipate. But it was uncomfortable for him, to put it mildly. Actually perceiving the world through my senses was at best awkward and disorienting for him. He had found that bipedal locomotion gave him motion sickness, and my sensory oddities meant that sharing my senses was overwhelming. The one time I’d dropped my perceptual filters while he was sharing that experience, it had been instantly miserable for him, and it wasn’t even a particularly strong input.

In short, while I’d been a perfectly adequate host in an emergency, he was going to need something else. While he was hosted in me, he had to pretty much cut himself off from sensory experience entirely, since mine were the only senses available to him and they made him sick. That was a nightmarish way to live, long-term. Hence, this project, an attempt to find somewhere better for him.

A plant was out of the question. It didn’t have enough mind to provide an anchor for his, and it wasn’t animate, was barely sensate at all. That would be hell, not sanctuary. A human, even if I could find one who was willing, was complicated. They were too far from his nature for him to anchor himself to their mind easily. He would also still have the motion sickness going on, because that didn’t seem to be getting better with time. It just wasn’t a feasible idea.

And, thus, I found myself here, looking down at a dog. She had the classic black-and-white markings of a Siberian husky, and cold blue eyes. She was striking, healthy, and surprisingly relaxed around me considering she’d never seen me before. This was particularly remarkable given that she had several puppies curled up beside her.

We’d eventually settled on this as the best available option. Siberian huskies were just about the closest a dog comes to being a wolf, in several senses; their body structure, genetics, and behavior were all pretty strongly lupine relative to most dogs. The quadrupedal body shape should remove that issue with motion sickness, and the resemblance to his original body was close enough that he should be able to use the dog as a connection point. And everyone from the werewolves to the veterinarian to the neuroscientists had agreed this was about the right age for this. The puppy’s brain would still be quite plastic with how young they were, which should make adjustment easier than if this were an adult dog, for both of them. But the puppies were old enough to have formed a discrete sense of self, a clear enough one that they wouldn’t be overwhelmed or subsumed by the mind of the tree spirit.

I’d made that very clear to him. This would certainly change the dog’s experience of life substantially. It was inevitable. They would be growing up with a supernatural, sapient presence sharing their mind, and that was very far removed from a puppy’s normal experience. I was willing to do that in order to provide him with a way to survive. I was not willing to actually damage or destroy the dog’s mind in the process. If he was aggressive in that way, we would have serious issues.

But I was almost sure that they would be able to coexist. The tree spirit didn’t need to actually take over or occupy the dog’s body, only to have it as an anchor so that the relatively fragile metaphysical structure of the mind was not ripped apart by environmental energy flows.

They could live. It would be an unusual life for both; this kind of sharing, of peaceful cohabitation, was not a common event even in the supernatural realm. They would see through the same eyes, but their minds would be discrete. I would be present to help them with adapting to that life. It was the best solution I could manage. Now, I was just waiting on him to settle on which of the puppies he felt the strongest affinity for.

They were beautiful. The mother’s owner was standing next to me, and I could tell that she cared deeply about these dogs. It wasn’t hard to see why she wasn’t keeping the puppies, though. This apartment was small enough to be cramped just with the mother, and huskies were a demanding breed to care for. This climate was also warmer than they were adapted for, and I’d need to be mindful of that; it added a few more complications.

We stood there in silence for a few long moments, and then I felt a sense of certainty and focus from the spirit, followed by words. That one. There is a sharpness in her.

I’d been astonished at how quickly he’d picked up language. After just a handful of weeks, he could think in words and construct sentences. It was amazing, and I strongly suspected that his presence would lead this puppy to develop a great deal more intelligence than an ordinary dog. If sharing my mind for a few weeks could allow him to move from emotion-concept-imagery communication to complex language skills, I was guessing that sharing with him would be exceptional in its impact on her.

I reached out, brushed my fingers against her fur. “I think I’d like this one, if that’s alright?”

The woman nodded. “That’s fine, yeah. Nobody’s spoken for her yet.”

I smiled, and I pushed, just a tiny bit, with my mind. I still didn’t have a clue how this worked, and I was pretty sure it was mostly the spirit himself doing it. All I knew for sure was that I felt a strange, full-body tingling sensation for a moment, there was a tiny bit of static electricity between my fingertips, and then the spirit was gone.

It felt strange, disorienting even. I’d gotten accustomed to that background feeling of emotion and thought happening independently of me. For a moment, in that mental silence, I thought he’d died, and this was all a colossal waste of time and energy.

But then I felt it. An emotional resonance, curious and peaceful and familiar. I smiled. I’d been reasonably confident in this, too. Given the familiarity between us, and his relative closeness to the plants that I seemed to be capable of some sort of communication with, it had seemed likely I would still have that empathic link. That would be helpful. The puppy was still sleeping peacefully, and I was sure that the theory had been correct and they were both intact.

I pulled my hand away, with a little bit of reluctance. “I’m glad,” I said. “I think she’ll be very good for me.”

The mother’s owner was smiling too. “Sounds good. Her name is Raincloud.”

I managed to restrain a sigh. Of course it was. If my dog’s name wasn’t further reinforcing the impression that I had an obsession with weather phenomena, how would anyone know she was mine? And as with Thorn, I wasn’t willing to change it. It was her name; it didn’t belong to me.

“Great. Thank you. When should I come back to get her?” I was pretty sure she needed a little more time with her mother before she was ready to live independently.

“Give it about a week, I think, and she’ll be ready.”

“Excellent. If you have any advice for me, in terms of making sure everything’s prepared and ready for her, I’d appreciate it.”

The woman smiled wider, and I got the impression she approved of that question. We talked for a while about things that would be necessary and things that would be helpful. I arranged payment, since even coming from an owner who seemed to care more about the dogs’ well-being than cash, purebred Siberian huskies are rarely free. And then it was done. I’d finished the last of my tasks, in terms of getting people home from that battle.

I stepped out into the dusk, and started walking, with no particular destination. I watched the sunset, and I watched the city lights come on all around me to replace the sunlight. It started to rain, a soft, slow autumn rain that felt gentle on my skin, and I smiled.

It was time to go home. I was exhausted. I was nowhere near fully recovered from my injuries yet, and it had been a long week. It would be good to rest for a little while.

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