The big man carried Drakon from the Academy and across the sleeping town, passing shuttered shopfronts and darkened windows. But Drakon sensed he was being watched: and murmured somethings chased along streets empty but for the warrior and the son of the King in his arms, carried like a weakling child.

It would have been an embarrassing affront before the events of the past few days, but Drakon would now chance calling the big man Friend – though perhaps not yet to his face.

"Put me down, Borysko."

"Sleep," said Borysko in his dream.

But Drakon knew this was not Borysko -- saw this was not his Borysko striding along the shadowed streets, this Borysko's eyes shut like a sleeper's  -- Borysko lay near death in the healer's hospital and would not ever be as he was, never as strong, and more and more clearly to Drakon this turn had come because of who he was born. 

Then Drakon found himself in a small bare room he did not know. The one small window glowed like a box and the moon in it. His eyes quickly adjusting, as a cat’s might in a dark place all shadows, he saw the great lump filling the simple bed. This was his dream, he reasoned, therefore its secrets were for him to discover – and he lifted back the coarse woolen covers.

Suddenly bright daylight that hurt the wincing eye -- and the great bear reared, roaring a curiously sweet breath in his face.

Drakon thought he should greet the she-bear: perhaps to placate her, to learn what her presence should mean in his odd dream.

She swatted him aside with one great paw. He crumpled by the wall. He had never felt such pain in any dream.

RATE THIS BRANCH!