(Un)wise Read Online Free

chance to enjoy the feeling.  Immediately, images of a dark haired girl surfaced behind my closed eyes.  Crap.  I didn’t want to die again.
    She stood panting at the edge of a cliff, staring straight ahead at nothing.  The craggy face of the rock dropped steeply to the tree-filled valley below.  Moonlight highlighted each rock and scrub brush.
    The details soaked into me, and the perspective shifted as usual.  I slipped further into the dream, becoming her.
    Clutching my hands together, I could imagine each scratch and break my body would suffer.  I looked down at a large rip in the forearm of my leather tunic.  Dark clotting blood from a vicious bite glistened in the silvery light.
    An eerie cry echoed behind me.  My panicked heart slowed as I made a decision.  I turned from the cliff to watch my pursuers silently emerge from the trees and close the distance.  Sleek, furred heads rose to howl together in triumph.
    The leader slowly loped forward, shifting forms as he approached. His paws widened and fingers emerged where pads once existed.  Black claws shrank and flattened into human nails.  Fur receded into skin as bones popped and reshaped giving the forelimbs a human appearance.  As soon as his feet developed, he reared back to stand on his morphing legs.
    Snuffling through his shrinking snout, he spoke before his tongue fully changed.  It garbled his words, but I still understood him.
    “Amusing chase, but it is time to choose.  We will keep you safe as they couldn’t.”
    Safe?  Rage boiled in my heart.  One of them had bit me during their attack on my village, a poor example of their care for me.  Did he honestly think he could persuade me to go with them?  They were unnatural.  Evil.  The dark glint in his eyes showed it.  I saw only one outcome.
    “I choose death,” I said savagely as I pushed off with my feet doing a backward dive off the cliff’s edge.  Inside I screamed with fear.
    I felt each bounce against the rocky surface until my neck broke bringing dark respite.
    Warmth blanketed me, weighing me down comfortably.  Something gentle pressed briefly against my forehead.  I felt comforted as the dream shifted.  I didn’t want to witness another death.  I tried to surface, but I was in too deep.
    Tall stalks of grass and wild flowers swayed in the gentle breeze.  To the west, the sun’s dying rays painted the sky.  A single furrowed dirt track, perhaps made by game, followed the edge of the woods to the east. The air smelled fresh and crisp with no hint of pollution.
    In this dream, I drifted as a bodiless bystander without someone else’s thoughts or feelings pushing into me as if my own.  I observed the area, curious about the change in perspective.
    A circle of stones crowned a patch of barren earth in the middle of the wind-ruffled grasses.  Seven women stood within.  I could see them clearly.  One of them had a round, distended stomach, very large with child, and she was dressed better than the rest.  Her taupe gown, a thin flowing material, molded itself to her belly in the breeze.  The rest knelt in a half circle before her, dressed in rough skins and furs.  Dirt dusted their skin and matted hair.
    The pregnant one spoke in a guttural tongue.  It took a moment for her words to make any sense.
    “These I give onto you for your protection.”
    The speaker motioned for the woman to her right to come to her.  The woman stood and approached the one in the taupe gown, her steps hesitant.  The woman in taupe gave a small encouraging smile.  Her eyes held so many emotions: concern, sadness, hope...
    Placing a hand on her swollen belly and the other on the coarse woman’s flat stomach, she spoke a single word, “Strength.”  Immediately, her roundness decreased while a bump formed on the other woman’s previously flat stomach.
    The woman gave a startled yelp and quickly moved back to her kneeling position, her hand protectively cradling her newly rounded