Cold fog clung to the tips of her tawny hairs like the fog that wrapped itself around her brain as the wolf lurched forward against the dawn. In the original plan she had no intention of stopping. Her numb legs yearned with the desire to never stop moving, fearful of the phantoms that might catch her if she ever broke motion. But the sun was rising too bright for her current state, and agonizing white light starting through the freezing fog and winter clouds. Her anxious steps slowed, her lilac-blue eyes scanned the frosted treeline and then closed in defeat.

Laboriously the female turned away from her destined path, finally examining exactly where she was. She squinted her eyes against her lack of sleep, trying to differentiate shapes of grey into some sort of territory. Winter's thaw and spring's green would have maybe made it an easier task, but the weary traveler's suffering did not help either. Only with a few deep sniffs was she able to pinpoint a distinguishing feature in the landscape - the tempting scent of water hiding beneath thin ice. It wasn't water, however, that dredged up her heavy approach. The promise of relief was hiding where the dirt met snow, right within the top of a brown mushroom. She pressed her dark nose against the spongy top, inhaling the life that it clung to with desperation against the cold season. She grasped the bulb between her teeth, hoping winter's cruel touch hadn't taken the best parts of it away. She chewed it quickly, before she remembered.

The mushroom burned in her gut, a telling tale that perhaps her misery would be softened after all. Hastily she turned away, only half-finished swallowing, to seek through her clouded gaze some sort of shelter where she could rest. She headed for an expanse of trees, finding a spot where the ground had worn into the thick roots to create a dip in the earth beneath the branches. Her legs buckled beneath her and she met the semi-frozen ground like meeting an ex-lover: uncomfortable but familiar at the same time. The clouds began to part from her eyes as she narrowed them nearly closed. The dull grass that sprouted in between patches of ice pulsated in waves of yellow and blue, haloed by a green light that hummed songs of sleep. Reality was slipping, and not a moment too soon. The fog turned to tendrils and began to reach for her, wagging like a naughty finger, curling like overgrown claws and spiraling as though toward an abyss. When they finally grasped her fur she forgot what it was that caused her so much pain, a blissful smile tentatively hanging on the edge of her tortured lips.

The softest hum filled her mind, replacing the sounds of the outside world with a pleasing fog that kept her safe from reality. Beyond the gentle tone her ears were deaf beneath the influence, failing to realize the paw-steps of his approach. It was only by chance that she turned her head and saw the shape of a black wolf so close to her. Perhaps, she thought, it was only a shadow. Then it opened up its jaws, and out came the squeaking of a hungry squirrel.

For some reason the chatter caught her wildly divided attention. Her eyes, nearly all pupil, were just wide enough to show the reddening sclera as she tried to focus on the figure before her. In her sessions she saw plenty of shadow wolves - him most often - and Ami could not discern at all if he was really, real. In fact, she figured he was not. Her self-brought isolation had proven successful for nearly as long as she had placed herself under its arrest. Visits from real, breath-and-fur wolves came few and far between. Thusly believing him to be just another spectre from her tormented head, the she wolf laid her chin flat on the ground and stared at the male, absent of fear and sound mind.

"I didn't understand you," Ami started, her voice weak. It was so heavy to speak, but surely he wanted her to know whatever it was he'd squirrel-squeaked at her before. "What do you have to tell me?" she asked of the ghost, knowing that their visits were seldom in silence. The silvers of his fur twinkled like stars. They traveled up his pelt and toward his eyes, circling them like a mask of light, with more and more intensity until they began to glow. Amisun shrunk; had she spoken too much? Awestruck by his celestial power, she kept her silence, only looking on with sad, wide eyes and hoping the ghost would deliver his message in a language she could hear.