2022-03-06 - How Coyote Stole Fire

Most people living in Gray Harbor fall into specific demographics. They are mostly (though not exclusively) of white, European descent. They tell stories that have roots in distant Europe; they know Hansel and Gretchen but the word skookum is not familiar.

Before there were white settlers, there were the first peoples; they called themselves Salish, Yakama, Klamath, Maklak, Kakalish, Shasta, Atsugewi, Nanaimo -- names that no longer always have meaning, names that were sometimes replaced by European terms; Nez Perce, Quinault, Hat Creek, Flathead, and other names that some of the first people recognise and some that they do not.

People have told stories for a very long time. Longer, perhaps, than reality has been ripped and frayed at a place at the bottom of a bay which the white settlers decided to call Gray Harbor because of the recurring mist and the shallow waters. There are entities in the mists who remember. Entities whose idea of time may not be linear, or maybe it moves differently for them. Maybe they figure that if it worked two hundred years ago, it also works now; don't fix what ain't broke.

Sometimes, people of Gray Harbor find themselves in a story. This is one of those times. You go to bed in 2022 as a human being doing whatever a human being living in Gray Harbor does; you wake up at the dawn of time as a --

-- well, that's a very good question. The animal kingdom is large. From white-tailed deer to colibri, from skunk to frog, the world is full of life. Each animal at the dawn of time are all the animals of its kind. Deer speaks for all of the deer; frog for all of his reed-dwelling brothers and sisters. This is the dawn of time, and the world is just beginning.

And here is Coyote, the trickster, summoning you to the valley below the mountain upon which fire lives, guarded by Skookums -- evil spirits who walk on two legs like men and make tools like men, but they are not men. They are larger, and they are cruel and stupid -- these are the shadows of men who will eat men. In a time to come, they will be entities who dwell in the mist and feed on the suffering of human beings living in Gray Harbor. Now, though, they are mere wisps. Proto-evil.

There is no fire, because animals do not need fire. There is the whispers of the tall pines and conifers on the mountainside, and the rustling of the wind in the reeds, and the pale starlight overhead as dawn approaches. There are creatures large and small, called here by Coyote, a trickster and a maker of stories. Some have come to see what Coyote is up to now, no doubt; others have come, maybe, to make certain that whatever the trick is, they are not the target this time.

"I will steal the fire," Coyote says. "I will sneak into the Skookum's camp and I take the fire when one sister goes to call upon another. And they will chase me down the mountain and try to take the fire back, but you animals will help me. You will distract the Skookums and buy me time to get the fire to the human beings. We will help the first people, and some day, they will help us in turn."

Dreams in Gray Harbor are often strange. And while men may have forgotten, the Skookums remember.

It's never going to stop feeling weird, is it? Falling asleep in a cozy nest of blankets, safe in one's very own bed, in one's very own house, and then waking and being somewhere else, some one else.

Some thing else.

Una, who was once one of those little girls who decisively declared that flying was the best of the super powers, may be faintly disappointed to discover that even when a Dream wants to put her in animal form, it chooses not to give her wings. Una is Squirrel, and her first thoughts upon waking are of her cache of nuts and seeds, and whether Coyote's outrageous, daring plan will put her winter's food at risk. That she's a four-legged furry creature is weird-- but it's not freak-out weird (not yet, anyway).

"Will they, though? Fire burns. Why should we want fire in our trees? My nuts."

(Squirrel speaks without thinking, Una being more-or-less comfortable enough in Dreams, by now, to fall in to character, and Squirrel is quick and loud and deeply protective of what is hers.)

After a busy day of 'gardening' and unpacking her things, Ava went to bed with thoughts of heading to the animal shelter in the morning to pick out a companion for herself to make the house feel a little less lonely. Thinking about all the different kinds of dogs that they might have may make it less of a surprise for her when her eyes open and she finds herself gazing down, in shades of black and white, and a pair of large paws.

Yep. Seems about right.

The grey wolf, tussles its head side to side as the fur fluffs. "We can't be sure thee humans will help us in turn. You would put yourself in danger, and us, in the hope that they might someday help? Humans are just as dangerous as Skookum. Why is it worth this risk?" The wolf wonders as those amber eyes settle calmly on the Coyote. "Squirrel is right. There is much to lose."

A midday shift allowed for some grocery shopping and after that, a nice long walk for Samwise. No, they didn't go near the ponds, but a loop or three around the neighborhood seemed to content the Sighthound. He'd curled up on the bed next to his person after they'd both had dinner and despite wanting to deny this ability, the barista propped up at an angle on pillows was tired enough to fall asleep watching TV. The sonorous narration of Attenborough proved too relaxing.

She awakens -- 'awakens' being the operative term -- to the feeling of back-winging up pine needles in order to land on the projected branch from a gnarled old fallen redwood. Coyote had called. Generally...generally...it's for a good reason when these gatherings occur. A raptor's taloned feet curl around the branch comfortably and she resettles her wings, looking around the gathering. "Wolf has a point," says Osprey-Ariadne. Ariadne-Osprey. Whomever she is with her intelligent golden eyes and well-known markings of brown upon white. Her beak parts again. "And so does Squirrel. These humans, some are kind, but not all. We are putting a lot of faith in 'someday'."

The garbage disposal in 204 was on the fritz again, and Conner Hawthorne finally just gave it an exasperated fix. That was his day, and that took up most of it, though Addie Fitz is a fine old lady who fed him lunch and dinner and cookies between. He'd taken a shower, had slipped into his favorite sweats and tee, had thrown on a Good Place binge and had fallen asleep.

And now he wakes up as Stag. Big and placid, though with dangerous antlers to use in defense of self or others.

Okay, look, everyone's played the if you were an animal, what animal would you be game, but this is the most damn literal he's ever heard of this game being played.

"They may help us, they may not," he says, raising his gentle head. "But they need help now. The Snookums are cruel beings."

Though really, he has a whole Moment. Where advocating for stealing fire spirals all the way down, in his big anxious apparently furry head, to freaking climate change and most animals not being at all helped. He paws a little anxiously at the ground.

Late, very late, the windows in Della's corner room had still glowed softly through their veiling sheers: the changing rectangles of her screens, the steady radiance of candles burnt down within their wax surrounds. She'd reached all the way from Gray Harbor to city after city and the odd nearly-off-the-grid habitation, channeling information, rearranging and distributing it; she'd fallen asleep, finally, within the downy warmth of her duvet.

Within her web, if that's not too on the nose, the web within which Spider wakes to herself. Not that she knows it yet (except she does); she stretches out, one arm -- one leg -- at a time, leg after leg after leg. Her web surrounds her, airy architecture that's as beautiful in the starlight where it is whole, where it is planned, as where it's been tangled and remade around her captured prey (and the odd twig that not only falls where it doesn't belong, but isn't tasty either). Spider isn't very Della, not now. This isn't her home web, but the one she's created while she's here: the one that she creates, even now, as she listens and does not yet speak.

Drive back to Gray Harbor from work, attend evening class, attempt homework, fall asleep late -- Jules' routine is fairly fixed. Falling into Dreams is far less routine.

It takes time to register her bearings. First, to stretch the arms -- no, wings -- and give an experimental flap, lifting her off the ground several inches. Then, to hop forward another few, duck her shiny black head, and grab a pebble in her beak. She plays with it, throwing it up into the air, head cocked as she watches it fall.

Raven attends to Coyote, then. Or perhaps she has been all along, not as distracted as she may seem at first. Raven is a trickster too, at times fickle, but apt to listen carefully when opportunities present themselves. "I'll do it," she declares, voice rough and throaty. No debate. "Skookum can eat shit." There's the modern flair to Raven's sentiments, how she despises despicable beings who won't share.

"The Skookums and the men are alike in many ways," Coyote agrees. "They walk in the same way, and they live in the same tepees and use the same weapons. But the Skookums have fire while the men huddle against each other in the night and their cubs freeze in their bundles. Without fire the men will not live -- and when they do not, who will the Skookums prey upon? We must give fire to Man so that there will be men for the Skookums to hunt. Otherwise, they will hunt us instead."

And so it must be. Not every animal agrees with the trickster -- but they are mere animal spirits and Coyote is Coyote.

When the dawn wind rises, the Skookum on guard calls: "Sister, sister, get up and watch the fire." But the sister is slow. Then Coyote seizes the fire and jumps down the mountain side. Quickly Skookum follows him. She catches the tip of his tail in her hand; therefore it is white, even to this day.

Amidst lark and conifer, tall pines and the occasional maple, the spirits of animals wait. They see the evil spirits pursue Coyote away from the Skookum camp towards themselves, and they know that it is up to them to somehow distract and delay the three giant Skookums from catching the trickster. But what can one animal do? And still there is the fear -- that once Man gets fire, he will become just like the Skookums, cruel and uncaring.

Beneath the animal minds there are human minds, modern minds, thinking that man certainly has encroached on the animal kingdom since this night, a very long time ago. Take one long look at Gray Harbor's dilapidated industrial harbour and the old lumber mill, or take walk along the Chehalis River and see what metal and plastic garbage the current carries to the sea. And yet -- if Man does not obtain fire, will this future even happen? If Man dies from cold in his tepee, his children freeze to death in winter, and his race never spreads out to conquer the animal kingdom, will there be a future? Will there be people, asleep in Gray Harbor, dreaming themselves into the minds of the very animals who now worry that it might be wiser to let them die?

Maybe it is meant to be. Maybe Coyote has a plan for this, too. It is the dawn of time and everything is possible.

Coyote is Coyote, and Squirrel, though she Does Not Like It, is merely Squirrel.

Una, within, has even more complex feelings. (Una, who has watched squirrels steal the bird seed she leaves out, despite all her attempts to buy squirrel-proof feeders.) She looks around, blinking at the world-- this world with its lack of red/green differentiation, and where the dawn light finally allows her to see more than just the edges of things. (So this is what it feels like, to be colorblind.)

She sits atop a tall branch, her body hunched in upon itself aside from that long, bushy tail; waiting. "I will throw my nuts at them," she calls to the others, the reluctance in her tone implying just how much of a big deal this is, giving up her winter stores for ungrateful, uncaring Man. Food shortage looms large in Squirrel's concerns. "And scratch them with my claws. But I am but small."

It must be done. They all have their part to play. Wolf may not fully agree, but the fact is, she doesn't wish for her pack to be hunted, and if this is the way to ensure that, then so be it. She is waiting with the others, watching as Coyote runs, the Skookum chasing so closely. That grey form presses low in the dark, blending as it's meant to, to be so very hard to trace in the night.

Distract. Ava can feel it in her mind. The word churning. That should be easy enough. "I will try to divide one from it's pack."

Her body moves in a flash of fur, ears flat as she moves parallel and then to the back of where the chase is occurring. She finds the spot where her voice will truly echo. Then she plants her backside down and rears back her head to let out a fearsome howl towards the moon. Distract. Scare. Skookum, you are surrounded!

"I will charge one," Stag announces, and so he does, pawing the earth and taking off at a run which belies his placid nature; he's fast, and he lowers his head with determination gleaming in his black eyes, his wicked cruel antlers surely something a Snookum will be loathe to contend with, or will at least be forced to deal with. 500 graceful pounds of pure power running at full speed.

It must be done, and Coyote's argument is at least one that puts Conner Hawthorne's mind at ease, there with his modern perspective in the mind of the beast, helps resolve the entire ethical dilemma that had spun out before him, Dream or no Dream.

All for one and one for all, as a future writer from another culture will pen.

Osprey turns a gleaming amber eye on the group and bobs her head, wings already lifting to spread and cast a broad shadow on the pine needle-carpeted ground. "Small but quick, Squirrel. Your scratches will be many. Even the rain drops wears down the mountain. I will be as the wind and use my talons from above." For Coyote's argument seems to have won her over too in the basest sense of logic. Feed the Skookum to save their own, a defense in redirection. Lifting up from the redwood branch, Osprey then takes to the sky until she's nothing more than a speck against the dawn.

When the sister grabs for Coyote, quick as he is, Osprey drops like a bolt from the blue. Her feet spread in aim at the sister's shoulders. Let go of the fire-thief!

Raven plays with her pebble while she waits, keeping herself busy. The woman in Dreams turns these things over in her head, too, puzzling over them, wondering at them, while her animal self juggles that little stone.

Restless, Raven is. She takes to the trees for a better vantage point, though little can be seen through the thick, fog-laced forest. "I will help you gather nuts after," she tells Squirrel, deciding to be generous. "I will pull their hair."

And when the time comes, she takes off after Osprey, following in her wake from a lower altitude. With her head cocked, one eye to the sky to keep track of her bigger sister and another to Coyote's plight, she skims the tree tops with her dark wings. Osprey is the heavier of the two, the more dangerous, but two sets of sharp, grabbing talons and pecking beaks are better than one.

Spider is the hunter; Spider is not prey. Spider does not eat what the Skookums eat, and neither does Spider eat what Man does. Spider has many eyes, to the front and to the side.

(Spider does not get motion sick, but Della might.)

"I will weave a net," she decides, for in those days the webs of Spider were just as strong but also more substantial than they are now. "You must lead them to where I will sit, and call out, that I may drop it down. But be quick." Be quick, and call out, lest the net catch more than simply Skookum.

She finds a place, a channel, and conveys its location to the others via the tapping of her feet and the rustle of the trees. She sits, and waits for dawn, and weaves. And when the chase begins, she anticipates.

Look at them, the Skookums. Tall and strange. They run on two legs instead of four, and their naked skin is matted and filthy. They wrap themselves in the skins and furs of the sisters and brothers of Stag and Wolf, and because they have not yet learned to scrape the fat from the hides, the smell of the Skookums is overwhelming. Like carcasses rotting in the sun they smell, like food gone bad, like meat wasted and left for maggots and flies.

Not that there is anything wrong with fattening up the flies. Ask Spider.

Coyote runs for his life, marked by the Skookum's touch, the tip of his tail forevermore white. The fire clings to the branch in his mouth, held in strong jaws. The fire wants to live, too.

The Skookums hear the howls of wolves and they feel fear; if they did not have fire, Wolf would come to the camp of the Skookums too. Wolf is teeth and claw and cunning, and even evil spirits have flesh to be eaten.

"Sister, the wolves are in the tall trees," cries one Skookum.

"No, they are in the tall reeds," cries another. "They are helping the thief!"

"They are all around us," cries the third. "Push them aside with spear and knife!"

Osprey plummets from the sky and sharp claws rake across a fur-less Skookum face. The evil spirit loses its grasp on Coyote's now-white tail.

"Thank you!" Coyote cries and bolts. Before the Skookums can see where he went he is gone.

One Skookum raises her spear, wood hardened in fire, and runs for the tall trees. "I will catch the thief!" Squirrel showers it with cones and nuts. The Skookum shakes its head so that its long braids fly about. When the Skookum howls in rage and raises its spear to threaten Squirrel, Stag charges. His large antlers pin the Skookum to a pine tree. The pine is Squirrel's friend. Pine holds on, with branch and sticky resin.

The second Skookum runs for the tall reeds by the river, raising its axe; the Skookums have learned to tie a sharp rock to wood with strings made from the guts of prey animals.

Raven flies in its face and pulls on its greasy braids. They are matted and grimy because the Skookums have not yet learned to make combs from bone and wood. The Skookum tries to wave it away, and this is why it does not see that it is walking into Spider's web. One day Man will realise that proportional to size, there is no web stronger than that of Spider. The Skookum trashes and flails but it cannot free itself.

The third Skookum continues to run. It keeps to the open path that Coyote must also use lest fire leaps to the trees and the bushes and the reeds. Its legs are longer than Coyote's and its anger greater. Its eyes glow in the half-dark.

"I will catch the thief," the third Skookum cries. "And when I do, I will use the fire to burn the forest, my sisters! Then these animals will bother us no more!"

Squirrel feels taller, basking in the words of her peers, and with Raven's promise in mind, gifts her winter cache to the cause. The loss of so many months of work is a bitter blow, but a valiant, courageous one: Squirrel mourns, but she also fights.

Her cry of fright as the Skookum threatens her turns to a howl of triumph as Stag protects her. She clings, and she clambers higher: safe and safer in the loving arms of pine.

"We will never give up," she taunts. "We will always be here. You cannot defeat us."

(Una, there-but-also-not, has feelings about that, but she's rather less proactive in this Dream than others: she plays a role. She watches.)

With the echo of the howl of the wolf, there is no way to tell just where the original voice was located. Another howl, and another. Two different locations, scattered. Once done that gives Wolf enough time to turn and run. Run back towards the other to try to continue to help. Distraction has been done. Let the Skookum fight the shadows and the fear.

The others have the two well in hand, wrapped in webbing and pinned, with acorns raining down on them. Wolf's tongue lolls to the side for a moment in enjoyment at the sight of it. Perhaps that's a bit of Ava peeking through the animal aspect of the Dream. But there is still one with a straight shot to Fox. It is closing in fast. Luckily Wolf is also fast. Paws begin to pound against the ground as she races forward, picking up speed with the intent to try to leap and bite into the back of the last Skookum.

If only she can reach it.

As Wolf chases the last Skookum, Spider makes her hold good: wrapping and wrapping and wrapping to tie up her prey's joints and thereby limbs and claws -- and, if she is not interrupted, soon its throat and head. (Little Della once wrapped presents that way, using up far too much paper and tape, but Spider's web is ecologically friendly as well as beautiful.) The furs make this more difficult, but Spider is tenacious; and, if a maggot should squirm from one, or a fly buzz from its hair, they may be packaged separately for snacks. (Not baked snacks, the way Una makes them, but delicious in their own right.)

Spider is still unused to things like axes and is not as careful as perhaps she should be. The ax, also, is not delicious.

Osprey feels her talons land their blow to the Skookum and quickly wings up into the sky again. "You are welcome!" she cries to Coyote, swaying into a sharp circle on the wind. She can see her fellow Forest-Dwellers hard at work and all is used: tooth, claw, antler, nuts, voice, wings, and webbing. It is a valiant battle in action.

Ariadne thinks to herself, Man, I remember that time in middle school where everyone thought I was the creepiest clever person for becoming up with the idea of blood-sucking butterflies and I should tell Della about this since she's Spider -- wait, never mind, too creepy, yeah. Filed away for future reference, perhaps.

Two of the Skookum are out of the fight. One remains, running, and cries out about destroying the land they all call home. Osprey screeches defiance again: no -- never -- not the trees she calls home, which shade the waters she hunts. The wind whispers in her feathers as she turns and tucks her wings again. "Raven! Come, let us teach them the fury of the sky!" comes the call as her shadow swiftly grows larger from on high. Again, she opens her feet to use her talons against the Skookum, fish-hooked beak parted in a war cry.

Raven breaks off just in time to avoid Spider’s web herself. She hovers behind while Spider completes her work, buffeting the Skookum’s head from behind with her wings and looking for an opportunity to dart in and peck hard at the wrist in an effort to get Skookum to drop the ax. Raven sees much, when she wings among the trees. She has seen how the ax can bite. “Careful, Spider! Don’t let it touch you! Pin its arm!”

“Big Sister! I hear you!” Osprey shrieks, and Raven rises to join her with her own crackling caw. Submerged in the Dream, Jules glories in this fight, in the teamwork and her part within The Who,e. Protect their Mother, the Earth. It’s been drilled into her, as deep as her bones.

The stag shakes his massive head a little, mostly to get some of that sap off his antlers. Sap that is harmless to him, as the Pine didn't want to trap him. He gives Pine a nod of respect and then lopes after the third Snookum, a little behind but unwilling to let it go burning a darn thing, attempting at this point just to catch up if he can, aware it may fall to the other animals in this fight to stop this sudden threat. Still, he certainly won't stop till the job is done, and if the thundering hooves of an angry beast behind the creature causes it to have to expend more energy on running away than on catching Coyote or burning forests, well, so much the better. He brays his charge like a war trumpet just to try to inspire that very reaction; a challenge for the foul one that says he is coming and the creature had best get his priorities straight.

"I will catch the thief," the third Skookum cries. "And when I do, I will use the fire to burn the forest, my sisters! Then these animals will bother us no more!"

Maybe Skookum and men are not so different after all. At the dawn of time Skookum forget that if the forest and the animals disappear, they will have no wood to burn and no meat to roast over the flames. In the modern, waking world, men seem to struggle with a similar, existential lack of foresight a lot.

Coyote's white tipped tail disappears between the tall trees. The fire goes with him for he carries it on a branch in his mouth. The third Skookum runs on its two legs and Stag runs on four. Skookum weaves in and out between the trees with ease because she is smaller than Stag, and the distance between them remains. Wolf has twice as many legs too, but Skookum runs across a warren of rabbits.

Rabbit was not called to the council of animals. "This way!" Rabbit calls to Skookum. "I will lead you on the safe path between my holes!" And so, Wolf finds holes where there should be solid ground, and heavy sand where the earth should be firm, and Skookum stays ahead. And this is why Wolf and Coyote kill Rabbit when they catch him.

"Sisters," Skookum cries out, I am nearly there!"

Man lives where the river meets the great water. It is not the ocean and it is not a lake, because at the dawn of time it does not matter which. It is where the land ends and the water begins. Coyote runs along the river bank, heading for the tepees of men. Osprey rises and plummets, taking the path of the river that winds its way down the mountain side. Raven dives between branches and reeds, sharp on the Skookum's heels.

The river winds and loops its way down the mountain and even Spider in her web and Squirrel in her tree can see how the Skookum waves its arms and tries to protect its eyes from the diving birds. With Wolf and Stag on its heels and Raven and Osprey in her face, the Skookum trips and flails for Coyote.

Who drops the branch.

Into the tall reeds.

The very dry tall reeds.

"Rabbits," disapproves Squirrel, full of the disdain one small variety of animal has for another. (That both are often considered pests by Men in later times is, for now, wholly beyond the point.)

Squirrel sticks to the trees, but it turns out she is agile and quick, and while Squirrel can't fly, Squirrel can jump: long distances, grasping for purchase with claws and paws. Squirrel follows, caught between thoroughly enjoying the exhilaration of it, and worrying over that Skookum.

"No," she streams, as the Skookum trips, as Coyote stumbles. "The Fire will burn us all. There will be nothing left."

No nuts.

Talons rake at the Skookum's oily hair and catch to snag and tear. Osprey flaps up again in time to see the Skookum's long limbs swing and manage to knock Coyote off-course --

-- and the Fire into the reeds.

"Bad!" screeches the fish-hawk (in a very Captain Obvious Ariadne manner). "Someone! Get Salmon! Orca! Too much Fire!" She's certainly not going to risk her delicate feathers anywhere near the hungry, licking tongues of red and gold now beginning to rise from the very dry reeds.

There is a snarl from Wolf as one of her paws almost falls into a hole. Cursed rabbits getting in the way. "I will feast on you later," she promises darkly as she continues her pursuit of the Skookum. The speed is slower now, having to take more care that she doesn't get hurt in the footfalls of new terrain, but she quickly begins to follow the exact path of the Skookum, letting that guide her. "Rabbits." A sentiment agreed upon between Squirrel and Wolf.

When the Skookum falls, the Wolf stands before it, fur lifted, body poised and ready. She growls with bared teeth. Through the teeth, or through the fire. "The Skookum has hands. Let the Skookum put it out!"

The Wolf and Stag (oh, and Coyote) have run and run, and Osprey and Raven have flown and flown, and Spider is far away. What she can do (aside from making sure as best she can that this one Skookum -- now axless, for she heeded Raven's advice -- will not hurt anyone, anyone ever again) is to relay Osprey's call. Not to Orca, for Orca lives in the great water where she is not, but to what Salmon may as yet be upstream. "Salmon, find the fire! Splash, Salmon, splash!"

Salmon may not care about what happens on land, but in those days Spider would cast her net widely for those who would jump within, and if necessary a bargain may be made.

Raven too balks at the fire, alarm taking her circling in the air above. She doesn’t come too close, lest the wind from her wings only encourage Fire further. Fire, after all, looks like a hungry, fickle thing, and Raven recognizes kinship for what it is; she has fickleness in her nature, too.

“Beat the water with your wings, Osprey!” She calls in alarm. “Yours are larger than mine! Splash water on the reeds and show Salmon where to go! I will fly ahead and lead them here!”

While the others go for water, Stag goes for the earth. He makes a powerful leap, intending to land right near the fire...

Where he will begin frantically kicking dirt at it with powerful hind hooves. Anything to smother it or suffocate it.

If he happens to catch the Snookum's head in the process, well. The Snookum shouldn't have put his head there. Or his fire there. What people choose to do to themselves while trying to do things to others isn't really any noble animal's concern.

Fire is not an animal spirit. Fire will not be commanded, by Skookum or by Coyote. Fire leaps from reeds to tall grass, and from tall grass to other clumps of reeds along the river bank.

Animals with strong bodies think of different solutions than animals with small, fragile bodies. Squirrel watches the fire creep towards the trees where her stashes lie hidden, and like Spider, Squirrel can only hope. Small animals have little power against fire, but Wolf and Stag are big and strong.

"Wolf is biting me! Stag is blinding me!" cries Skookum. "Sisters, sisters, help me!"

"I am trapped in the resin of Pine!" cries one sister. "I cannot help you!"

"I am trapped in the web of Spider," cries the other sister. "I cannot help you!"

"I will help!" cries Salmon. "I hear you, brothers and sisters! I will stir up the river and put out the fire!" And soon the river's waters run white where Salmon's powerful tail churns the water, sending it towards the river bank in powerful cascades.

"Kill the fire!" cries Grasshopper and Mayfly and Mallard and all the other living things in the reeds.

"I am trying!" Salmon cries back. "The fire, it is too strong!"

"Hide me!" cries Fire. "I will not be commanded by Skookum!" And then Fire lashes out to try to burn Salmon in the water. This is why Salmon's belly turns red forever after when she swims up into the river to lay her eggs and die: Salmon remembers fire.

Salmon is not alone in the river. Orca arrives late from the great water that is neither fresh nor salt. Orca's powerful tail sends fire fleeing, from the reeds and the pussy willows and into the woods where Spider and Squirrel wait.

"Come to me," says Pine. "I will shelter you, Fire."

"Stop the fire!" cries Squirrel, pacing about the branches of her tree. She'd be wringing her hands, if only she had proper hands and not paws. "The fire, it will burn. It will take everything!"

For Una, who is and also is not Squirrel, it means waking to a pillow sodden with tears.

Or is that water, water that is neither fresh nor salt?

No. No no no no no.

Spider has many hands, or, at least, her many legs and their claws. (Proper is not relevant here.) She scuttles this way and that on her web, briefly vacillating -- will Pine, or the dry sticks, house Fire so that it will not now go further? Or must she run?

What about (and this is more of a concern of Della's, at least regarding those not Spinner's prey) those who cannot scamper like Squirrel or swing from spinneret-spun silk like Spider, what about those who grub in the ground?

For Della, who appreciates vivid dreams when she can finish them right, it means an abrupt wakening to...

...Is that smoke?

Conner wakes up thoughtfully and stares at the ceiling for a long moment. And then he rises, still moving a bit like Stag, mostly slow and deliberate for there is no need, for the moment, to be roused. He shuffles over to his books in his sleep shorts and selects one; contemplative, thoughtful, turning his mind both to what there was to be learned from dream-living such an ancient story.

He has it in hand still when he decides he's not going to go back to bed tonight, and puts the coffee on.

Teeth tearing into flesh, the feel of the nearby flames singeing fur just to get pushed back thanks to the Orcas. It's the taste of copper just on the tip of her tongue that lingers in memory as Ava groggily awakens in her own bed. "Nnnng," is all that she manages as she rolls over to look at the clock nearby. No it's too early for all of this waking up nonsense. Her mind is abuzz with the dream and she swallows, shuddering at the taste memory. Is more sleep even possible now?

Wise words from Raven. Osprey uses her powerful wings to splash some water over the hungry crawl of Fire. It works, but only so well. Salmon and Orca, those beings who call the waters they home, they are more effective. It brings Osprey to wheel up and away from the rising heat of Fire, now dancing beyond the control of the humans along the endless water.

"Pine, no! Let Fire go to the People! That is what Coyote wanted!" She flaps harder to get higher into the sky.

Which means Ariadne wakes up with sore arms trapped under her covers. She was flapping, right? Samwise snores softly, whiffling his lips as he twitches, dreaming his own dream probably involving absolutely nothing about fire and animals and anything else. The barista stares up at the ceiling and then glances over at the clock. Ugh. Another hour she could have slept.

But not anymore. Looks like an earlier morning than she wanted.