Oneshots and Crazy Little Stories

A Silver Fox

This is a dream I had a while ago, or the part in italics is anyway. Decided to make a short story with it :)

I yawned. It had been such an exhausting day, running errands, bringing the sheep down from the high fields, digging up potatoes and harvesting apples all morning. Not to mention trying to round up thirty or so chickens and lock them up for the night, and then catch the rooster who had hidden up a tree and lock him in too. Now I finally had time to myself, and that time was to be spent sleeping. I flopped down on my bed of straw and blankets and curled up in a ball. After a while I fell asleep, and dreamed for the first time in ages...

.        .        .

For some reason I was up in the sky, watching what was going on down below. From where I was I could see a huge glass box, rows of chairs were spaced out in front of it, most of the seats were taken by people dressed in white, others were standing in groups chatting. As I drifted closer I could make out a boy in the box and a woman in a long purple coat standing in front of it. She spoke to some of the white coated people and they rushed off, coming back seconds later with thick ropes with some sort of metal thing attached to one end. They began to push the metal ends into holes at the base of the box, the brown haired boy looked on, terrified. Behind him an almost invisible door opened slightly, someone reached in and beckoned. The boy saw it reflected in the glass in front of him, but the people outside did not. The purple coated women turned her back on the box to shout at some people. The boy took the chance and raced for the door, he flung it open and leapt out, running down a path to the left. Someone gave a shout from behind, but he kept running, he leapt over a fence and disappeared into a pine forest. The scene flickered and I was  in the forest, watching a silver fox running as fast as it  could, somehow I knew this was the boy. I followed him to a village, where he quickly slipped through alleyways and round the back of houses, and then he was running again, down a dirt track between two rows of houses, more shouts coming from behind. Suddenly I was beneath a wall, looking up. The silver fox skidded to a halt above and stones hurtled down from where he was, he looked over his shoulder. And leapt. He sailed down from the top of the wall, his forelegs outstretched, his paws touched the ground and I felt it, I felt as though I was the fox. Then I woke up.

.

        .        .

The dream stayed with me all the next day, haunting my thoughts. I got told off more than once for daydreaming. Eventually my mistress got bored of me and told me to take a letter to a friend of hers in the village, someone called Mrs Sanders. I set off to the the village at a jog, my mind drifting away. It was a nice day and I longed to be in the forest or the corn fields, somewhere other than this dusty road. To run faster than I ever had before, to be like that fox standing in the middle of the road ahead of me.
    My attention snapped back just in time to see a silver fox disappearing through a gateway. I ran after it, and there he was, my dream fox, standing with one paw raised and watching me with coppery brown eyes. I gazed at him in awe for a few moments and then he turned and started to trot away along a fox sized path.
    'Wait!' I cried. He stopped, waiting. I blurted out my dream and he stood, listening, showing a flicker of interest in those eyes. He put his head to one side when I said about me being a fox. 'If you are the shapeshifter,' I finished. 'Meet me at the old oak in the village.' It was a daft hope really, but I had to try. Having that dream then meeting the fox from it couldn't be a coincidence, surely.
    The fox trotted away and vanished into the hedge, this time I didn't stop him. I stayed where I was for a few seconds, then got up and went back to the road. I ran the rest of the way to the village, meeting no one. I took the letter to Mrs Sanders and then wound my way to the old oak. The oak stood at the western edge of the village, it was gnarled and some of the branches had broken off, but I loved it. It was my favourite place to come when I had a day off, which was rare. the birds twittered in the branches and I wandered over to it, there was no fox, nor any people. I sighed sadly, I was wrong, the silver fox had just been a fox, and my dream had just been a dream. I turned and started to walk away. That was when I heard it. A whistle behind me. I turned back and there he was, the boy from my dream, leaning against the oak with his arms crossed. He grinned. I couldn't believe he was actually real and I think he could see it in my eyes, because he said, 'you said I should meet you here, didn't you.' And he changed to a silver fox, the same fox from the field, the same fox from my dream.