Marcus was floating in that space between dreaming and waking. He felt like a feather swirling through space, gently landing on a soft, soft deep- sleep – breathing wolf belly. He felt the warmth, he heard the breath, he was one with that fuzzy, thick winter fur there in his featherness for a while.

“Oh, if I could grasp this and put it in the symphony”, a thought drifted through his mind. He woke up.

“Nooooo, I want to go baaaaaack”, he stretched out under the duvet.

“The grasping brought you back”, Barry’s voice from outside the bedroom window. “Just lean in to that tune again, drift on the first octave, let yourself be featherly carried and you can go back. Through any music.”

Barry had taken the habit of sleeping under Marcus bedroom window. That way they could both breathe in symphony he’d said. Marcus quite often got the feeling that the polar bear took finishing writing this symphony even more serious than he himself did.

“OK”, Marcus said. “I am awake already. Might as well get up and get out. I am done with this onyxing. I can hear the moonstones calling.”

“That can only mean one thing”, Barry’s voice now came from the front door. “There is just one way to journey to the place where we meet all the moonstones. Make sure to pack more than lunch my dear Marcus.”

Marcus made his staple breakfast of oats, apricots, bananas and nuts for himself, a full side of smoked salmon with some dried lingonberries for Barry. Sat down out on the porch with the bear as they both watched a full show of Northern Lights making its way through and around the Milky Way. It was 3 minutes past 3 in the morning. No moon.

“New Moon today”, Marcus said. “I guess there could not really be a better time to start the journey to the moonstones. I mean, we finished quite some chapters yesterday, both the movements for the symphony and the heavy chapters for the book”.

“You are so right my dear WolfHearted Human of the Wilderness”, Barry replied. “I can sense that our guides are not very far from here. They heard the cry of readiness in your dream as you landed and started on their last leg this way already.”

Marcus had just finished making what Barry had called “not just a lunch package”, closed his backpack, got his “good walking shoes” out as he called them, staff in hand – no clue why, but he felt he’d needed what his neighbour Gina called “the witching wizard’s staff” for this walk. It was a pretty long staff which Star had found in the river when she was just a little puppy. She’d pulled it out of the water with all her might and dragged it up to the house. Put it in front of his feet. He smiled at the memory as he tied it to the backpack.

A howl. Quiet. Then a choir of howls. Through the treeline at the back of the house he could see countless eyes shining in the dark. One large, grey wolf stood out front. The rest of the pack waited in the trees.

“Our guides are here”, Barry waved at Marcus with his head and then gestured towards the family of greys.

• Cecilia Götherström, Dec 14th 2020.