The day before is like any other day. Eat, attend classes, frown through homework. Feed the minipets. Take a few pictures, log in and do a few instances. Run in the woods and the graveyard. Send Hollandaise a few silly little pictures on the phone. Going to sleep is like any other day, putting aside the laptop, arranging the row of plushies along the wall, turning four-footed and curling up comfortably on the fluffy rug with his nose under his tail.

Here is where it changes: he knows that this is a dream.

Most of his dreams are just dreams, ordinary dreams where he is hunting in the woods or late for class or he has forgotten something or he is having a conversation he won't remember with a friend who doesn't look quite the same as they do in the waking world. He never knows he's dreaming till he wakes, and then the dreams fade rapidly into hazy unimportance.

In this dream, he stands in the long and gloomy hall of an ancient manor house and knows that he is dreaming. He could wake up, if he wanted to, but he doesn't wake up. Instead he walks slowly down the center of the hall, under the tattered cobwebby banners of a noble family long gone or maybe still here, all the way down along the cold stone flags to stand in front of the fireplace where a fire burns uneasily low, feeding on blackened cinders that are still log-shaped, though not for much longer.

A lean figure stands there before the dying fire. Chaya stops and waits, unwilling somehow to speak first, even though this is a dream, or maybe because this is a dream. Eventually, she turns. She is not at all what Chaya thinks of as a Huntsman. She is small and slender, almost delicate. Instead of leather and linen, she wears layers on layers of knits and lace, ragged and obscuring, folding around her like a cloak, like camouflage, skirts and sweaters and shawls and scarves that do nothing to hide that she is little and bony and not pretty at all. Antlers rise up out of her tangled hair, but they are not a great spreading rack; her antlers only bear two points, small and young, bloody ragged velvet around the bases showing that she has just only shed. She is as young as he is.

She carries a hunting horn slung on a leather strap across her body, and as she raises her hand to push straggling hair from her too-thin face he sees a leather strap wound around her wrist. It bears one new bronze stud punched through it. Chaya's eyes fix on the bronze stud. Is it the symbol of some other Hound she's collared? Or is it, somehow, his? He wants to ask, but he does not. His mouth stays closed, as though he is already under a contract of obedience.

"You've decided, then," she says, and looks him up and down with a critical eye.

It's not a question, not quite, so he doesn't answer. But he nods. The pressure of her eyes makes him suddenly aware that he is wearing only his skin and his pelt around his shoulders. He wants to cover himself, arm across his too-soft chest, hand over the juncture of his legs. But he stands still, hands at his sides, and if he had a heartbeat it would be thundering in panic.

She approaches, walks a slow circle around him, looking in a cool and assessing way that has nothing to do with the other things that bodies can do. One circle. Two, and her slow footsteps stop directly behind him. "You're sure."

He nods again.

"I shan't be doing this again," she warns. "I don't like boils or ghouls who can't make up their minds."

He nods again.

"Very well." She steps closer, so close that he can feel the warmth of her presence radiating against the skin of his back. His tail tucks submissively, automatically. Her small dark hands cover his eyes, and he closes his eyes.

Her fingers and her palms are cool and soft and gentle. Her hands trail down his face, pause at his cheekbones, cup his jaw. They circle his throat gently, so gently, and mold it, the ectoplasm of his flesh obeying her without question. It is neither comfortable nor uncomfortable. Her hands shape his collarbones, his shoulders, slide down his arms to touch his wrists. Her hands slide flat over his chest, and what is there changes with her touch, pliable as clay, flattening and drawing in. They slide down again, over his stomach, his waist, his hips, making deft and subtle changes, slipping around to touch his tail and the muscles of his rear, shaping with a cool and compassionate touch. Down again, to his legs, his knees, his ankles.

She removes her hands, still standing close behind him. "You're sure," she asks again, one last time. "Tell me."

"I'm sure," he croaks, his voice raspy with his feelings, with the alterations she's making.

A long and indrawn breath, a sigh that could be resignation or could be approval. Her hands touch gently on his hips, slide down and in, and go about the business of sculpting. It's a strange feeling. It doesn't feel good, but it doesn't hurt, and he bites his tongue and waits, eyes closed because she closed his eyes and he is, or wants to be, a Good Dog.

When she's done, her hands lift away. He hears her soft footsteps move back around him, back up to the spot in front of the fireplace where she stood when he began dreaming. "You may look now," she says, and maybe what he hears as nervousness in her voice is his own nerves.

He opens his eyes.

He is awake. He is himself.