Full Circle (Book 8 in Arrow/Spn Crossover)

The Path Through The Woods

I loped through the woods for who knows how long. Things kept trying to distract me, rabbits, deer, birds singing. The smells and sounds were almost overwhelming. There were times I could barely focus on the pulling sensation that guided my steps. I ended up swimming through two small rivers before cresting the top of a hill and seeing a coyote sitting next to a bonfire and unbelievably huge snow white wolf. It made Mairyn seem tiny. The pulling sensation stopped and the coyote's head turned.

"Dean!" I heard her voice in my head just as she started pelting full speed up the hill towards me. I barely processed that before she was rubbing along my side and yipping.

"Uh, this is...well...weird." Part of me wanted to return her affections in some sort of canine way but the rest of me was more than a little confused by that whole idea. "I love you and am thrilled to see you but, yeah. Can we not do the doggy greeting thing?"

She laughed, in my head, while running her tongue along my muzzle. "Sorry. Guess I'm more used to this whole alternate form thing than you are."

"Uh, guess so." I really hoped I wouldn't remember this whole episode when we got back to our bodies. "Any sign of anyone else? And are we stuck like this while we're here?"

She sat down, "Brother Wolf says Sam is on his way, Oliver and Roy are struggling. And yes, while we're here we stay furry."

Great. That didn't sound good. "Any way we can help them?"

She shook her head, "No. This is something they have to do. They are inside themselves, we can't intrude. Brother Wolf is doing what he can."

I heard something, an almost silent step coming from behind me and caught a new scent. A scent I recognized, which I decided to not think about why I knew it. I turned my head, "Glad you made it." I told him. Sam's wolf was about half the size of Brother Wolf, but still a bit bigger than I was. He wasn't as snowy white as Brother Wolf and had a few more scars but still a lot whiter than I was but it was the eyes that gave it away. In case the fact that I somehow recognized his scent as a wolf wasn't enough his eyes were the same as they would be if he was human, just in a wolf's head.

"Yeah, me too."

He wasn't nearly as confident as he was trying to sound. Something about the tilt of his ears, how he was walking and carrying his tail told me that it'd been pretty touch and go for him. Once again, I didn't dwell on how I would know to read wolf body language. My brain was hurting enough as it was.

"Glad to see you, all things considered," he continued, "You seem even less black. Is that a good sign?"

"We'll go with yes."

"Hey Coyote," he said as he brushed his shoulder along hers. Apparently he was more okay with canine displays of affection than I was.

"Sam, glad you're here."

"Which is where?" He asked before he sat down and looked towards Brother Wolf.

"We call it the Dreaming Lands," she answered. "Sort of like the veil that you talk about, but not really. We aren't dead or alive, we're in between."

"I seriously need a check list of all the afterlives we've been to. I'm starting to lose track," I said.

Sam gave me a pretty good doggy equivalent of his exasperated look, "We'll draw up a map when we get home."

"Wouldn't it need to be multi-dimensional? Like that Star Wars multi level chess game? Not sure we have the tech for that."

"Felicity could probably come up with something. Where's Oliver and Roy?"