SUMMER WOLVES
by Hyel

Chapter One: Dreaming

It was a bright summer day somewhere far away, but where Tiro was sitting there was only a wall anc central heating between her and freezing cold. The window was frosted into patterns that might have been called flowers, if anyone could find such delicate and strange flora.

In other words, it was winter. Tiro was sitting in her mother's kitchen looking at the white and blueish-grey patterns on the window, framed in the darkness beyond. She was an ordinary-looking girl - short brown hair, eyeglasses, large brown eyes that might have been called cow-like by someone who wasn't embarrassed to admit that cow-eyes were pretty. The striped wool shirt she was wearing was also abundantly ordinary. It was ordinariness that had nothing to do with statistics or lack of originality, really - it was simply what people would describe as 'ordinary', whereas in fact it was getting to be much more ordinary for a girl to be blonde and wear a tight pink babydoll shirt.

Her mother nudged the kitchen door open with her hip and rolled her ample shapes into the little room, carrying a tray of empty coffee cups. She set them on the table and went directly for the heaps of cupcakes hidden under a white cherry-patterned cloth. "Tiro DEAR, won't you join us for a moment? The girls haven't gotten a decent look at you in YEARS." She only had time to glance at Tiro before she turned away again. Tiro couldn't remember ever seeing her not busy. Mother always found something to be busy about.

"Yeah, I'm coming."

***

The ladies were seated in a circle around the little coffee table in the living room. They were massive creatures. It wasn't so much that they were big, but they filled up the room with their presence as guests, the queens of the world, or at least this little pocket of warmth against the night outside.

"...to the puppies!" said Lady Luva. The other roared in laughter. "And the repairman was just standing there, mouth open. Bess had to run all the way home."

"Oh, gawd." Lady Minuva was wiping tears from her eyes and holding her back, she was laughing so hard.

"Some cupcakes?" asked Mother, beaming at the success of her little party. Tiro seated herself on the rocking chair. Nobody had claimed that, because it was hard wood and the cushions on it were very thin indeed.

"Tiro my you have grown," said Lady Karava. "How is school?"

"It's good." She had to stop herself from saying she'd just got full marks in English. There was nothing to gain by giving them something they would feel they had to remark on.

As she had expected, none of the ladies paid her the least bit of attention after that.

***

She was floating in a white and light blue space between the worlds. Somewhere, her hands held a cooling cup of tea, but she couldn't see or feel it.

***

The boy had been smoking a cigarette in the corner of his cell. It wasn't allowed, but the hacks hardly ever checked in on this cell, in case one of the other hacks was in there doing something no one wanted to put into a report. He took a drag, then lazily formed a cloud of smoke in front of his face. He kept trying for circles. Well, one had to have some ambition in life.

His cellmate wouldn't have agreed. He thought there was no point in ambition, unless it was ambition for pleasure. The boy didn't understand him at all.

He flicked the cigarette. Ash patterned roses on the floor.

***

"..from the kitchen?"

"What?"

"Didn't you hear? More coffee, please, darling, would you?"

"Oh, sorry. Sure."

She dallied in the kitchen while the coffee was brewing. She wished she had her notebook with her, but in order to get to her room she'd have to pass through the living room. She looked around furtively, but unless she wanted to write on napkins, there was nothing for her here.

Tiro wished that the winter holiday was over already. She missed her sleeping hall at the school. Sure, she had to share it with ten other girls, but that was nothing. She had her own locker, all her things neatly tucked away, and no-one there to put invisible barriers around her. The pain of not getting to do something and the pain of being forced to do something - both seemed perfectly bearable when compared to the pain of being forced to pretend.

Well, at least, even in here, she had her dreams and thoughts and writings. As long as she could hide somewhere with enough light, a notebook and a working pen, it wouldn't be so bad. And at night, even if she couldn't turn on a light after her supposed bedtime, not even under the covers, because her little sister would wake up in a second and start complaining, she could think. And she'd slip her hand between her legs and, staring up into the darkness above, and oh oh OH so quiet, she'd let the foreign world above the world contort her muscles and make her liquids flow. And afterwards she would fumble underneath the bed, pull out her pen and notebook and scribble down words and phrases like

diamond cave only an inch wide
TOTAL AGGRESSION

and in the morning she would look at them and not understand what they meant.

There were people living inside her head that she knew better than anyone else. There were people she'd read of in fantastic worlds that she loved with the passion of Juliet for her Romeo. She wanted to possess them. Were they real, she thought, she would follow them around helplessly. Were they real, and she pretty...

In her dreams she was pretty. She would be willowy slim without having bones jut out of her - just slim, naturally, and PURE. There wouldn't be any extra grease anywhere, nor unsightly bulging of muscles (although she would be invincible in a fight). Her breasts would be large and perfectly rounded, and they would never sag the way Mother's did. Her bum would be luscious without being lewd, and her hair would be warm dark and thick, curling, and reaching down to her thighs...

She'd dream of her hair spread out on the pillow and mattress beneath her, and of gathering it up against her pale perfect skin, silken swaths framing her perfection.

She ached to be able to draw herself like this. And in her dreams she would go to these characters, and they would be as real as her beauty, and she would embrace them, and love them, and not care if others said that she was too beautiful to be the lover of a kender, or a wizened old man, or a drug addict, or a vicious snake like this character here. Her love was pure and true.

***

The music flowed through the hallways of the prison. The women's voices sang the same syllables over and over, and then the men would start, and the voices mingled together, rhythm within the changing, simple melody. A a a a a... The violins agreed.

Aldrin sat still, oh so still, trying to block out all else, eyes closed, hoping against hope no-one would slap the back of his head before the music was done. Just blocking out reality. He let the voices of a purer world take him aside from this one, just for a while... Please...

The violins were joined with drums, and then the final rise and silence.

He opened his eyes.