Is this the other side?

No, this place was too familiar to be on the other side.

With flames engulfing what it hasn’t already. In my opinion, this place would be the perfect depiction of hell.

I believe I was, once again, in the dream. The same dream I was pulled into from time to time.

I'm not sure what it means; I'm not sure why it keeps coming back to me; and I'm not sure what it was supposed to represent.

I just know that when I dream, it's always the same scene, the same two-headed creature staring at me, the same thing happening over and over.

Yet, today there was something different. Thus far, in this strange and recurring dream, I have never been able to move on my own; I felt like an inanimate object. But today, today was different. I could move. Strangely, I couldn’t see myself. My arms, my torso, my feet, and my body as a whole were missing, and yet I knew they were there.

For each movement I made, I felt a semblance of a reaction to my action.

Floating like a balloon, I swam toward the dragon, at a place just in front of its two heads.

I couldn’t see myself, but one thing was certain: these dragons could.

With their pairs of inhumane eyes, they merely glared at me.

Having experienced a semblance of communication exchanged with the wolf, which happened to be a monster, I also wondered if this dragon, which I knew was from a dream, could also communicate with me, or at the very least understand what I was saying.

So I tried to engage in a conversation with them, only to discover that I, in fact, couldn’t even speak.

Though different, this situation vaguely reminded me of one of my earliest memories of being incapable of speech.

Maybe having noticed my attempt, the two-headed dragon effortlessly let out a long growl that shook heaven and earth.

It was a strange feeling, but the current me didn’t seem to be affected physiologically by the loudness of their growl, yet it felt deafeningly painful.

Suddenly, my eyes snapped open. I was leaning, but as someone suddenly awakened from a nightmare, I blenched, and that was a horrible mistake.

The moment I did, it was as if someone had struck me with a hammer from the back and front at the same time, or that someone had stabbed me with a spear.

"Aaackh!" I couldn’t help but shriek in pain.

My body, unable to react appropriately to anything, fell helpless, but once again I fell, leaning against what I leaned against a few seconds before.

It was something fluffy and warm.

It was warm, different from the warmth from Han, I was used to.

From the pain, I was completely unable to move, but memories of what happened came rushing into my head.

The fight against the wolf, our collaboration with the wolf to take down that woman, that …

"Finally awake, aren’t we?"

In front of me was Han in his first vessel form, his Death Seeker vessel.

With my trembling arm, I touched where I should’ve been stabbed, and instead of a gaping hole, I found some sort of burn injury.

Despite how much it hurt, I knew from experience that this thing had already taken several days of cicatrization to reach this level.

One could say that it was in the most dolorous phase of the process of healing.

By now, injury and near-death experiences have somehow become casual experiences, but that, that was too unpleasant.

"How long has it been?"

"How am I supposed to know."

"Are-" It was only then that I took notice of something, Han was in front, and what I was laying up against was fluffy and warm, warm in a sense of leaving heat, so it couldn’t be Han.

Glancing at the thing I was leaning against, I was welcomed by something I believe was a tongue, a giant tongue that came rubbing me upward on the entire left part of my body.

It then proceeded to push me, with its muzzle, I wouldn’t say it was gentle, but there was a certain sense of care when on it.

"Oi, can you explain to me what happened? Why am I leaning against the wolf that has not so long ago tried to kill us."

"I don’t know mate, I’m just as clueless, but I’m pretty sure she was the reason you got out of that cave alive."

"She?"

Yeah, I mean, we've never bothered to separate monsters based on their sex; we usually just kill them regardless of size and even less of gender, but that one is unsuitable as a female. I never bothered to check it, but during the fight, we went through, I got the opportunity to notice that detail. "

"I see, so you were a she. Why do you think she saved us? I mean, wasn’t killing us her first objective? I myself saw our collaboration as a temporary armistice and assumed that once we would’ve been freed from that woman's prison, we would’ve continued where we left off. "

"To be honest, I don’t know. Maybe she took pity on us."

"Pity, huh?"

"Do you think that monsters are incapable of empathy?"

"No, I don’t. It’s just that I am a little bit surprised. "

"Know that you should be among the first, if not the first, to understand how overly-emotional monsters can get."

"Huh, what do you mean?"

"Nothing, I was just speaking to myself. I think this wolf showing empathy should not come as much of a surprise to you. I mean, we fought it for days and didn’t she display what one would call pride. It should be much of a surprise if she were to have a range of emotions almost as varied as a human being."

"I see." I reached out and patted her warm and soothing furs. "I’m not sure if you can understand what it means, but thank you."

***

"For god’s sake, please, I’m fine, already!"

Gritting her teeth against one another like a nail against a blackboard while groaning right next to my left ear, she urged me in her very unique way to get back inside the cave.

"Just abandon it, you won’t convince her."

"I can’t stand just standing still like this anymore. Don’t you get bored being in a single place like this? "

"Eh, me? Well, I’m pretty much fine. It’s not like I was in a hurry or anything. There are times in life when you just have to sit and chill."

As if to assist what was said by Han, she and her groan got more and more threatening.

"Fine, fine."

It has been a few days since I woke up, I had no idea how much time had passed since I got injured, but during the time I spent there, I got to discover several things.

One, I was not sure if this was already her den, or a new one into which she moved in after the fight, but the facts were that we were inside some sort of cave.

Two, I was very well fed and was steadily healing from the wound on my chest, it is still unclear as to how she saved me from being killed by that rmnant, but facts remain that she would regularly go out to hunt and bring back a monster corpse for me to eat. She would also twice a day do something that I would qualify as very weird and definitely inappropriate if it weren’t for its healing virtues. I would be licked twice a day. Yes, licked on the wound. This was most certainly how she was able to heal my wound while I was unconscious. I can’t really describe how it feels. It is like being shocked by lightning, being scrubbed with a hot towel, and being tickled all at the same time. Though the process was quite questionable, I couldn’t deny the result it wielded. I saw my wound healing at a very remarkable pace.

This brings me to my third point, I couldn’t tell when exactly it had been decided, but I was completely prohibited from going outside. For the dozen days since I woke up here, I haven’t even put a single foot outside this cave. I did once when she was out hunting, but I was immediately dragged in like a puppy, as is the case right now.

Putting half of my body in her mouth, she brought me in.

***

Days went by, then weeks, then one month and a half.

At around one month, I was no longer prohibited from leaving the cave. My wound had drastically healed, and I was no longer a convalescent person but a person slightly incapacitated.

My impalement had pierced, I believe, one of my lungs, missing my heart by only a few centimeters. Having the wolf around was undoubtedly a blessing to me. If it weren’t for her, I’m sure my corpse would’ve been left there inside that with those two remnants.

I have now healed to a point where I may not be at the peak of my physical condition, but at the very least I am in a reasonable state to continue our journey.

Which means that we would leave the place that has been our temporary crib.

"Oi Hon, look- sorry, the wolf, she's got something for you."

"Hum,"

She approached me. Her being largely taller than we were, we were far from being in a face-to-face situation. Something fell off from her mouth and landed straight onto my hand.

thing, which I immediately recognized as the sword we got from the siblings’ fight. I personally thought it was lost during the time I was unconscious.

"So you even got to recover this? Thanks. Thanks for everything. But we must depart now. We can’t stay here forever. So this is a goodbye friend. "

A moment of silence took place, not an awkward one, but a quiet and silent one.

With that, I turned my heel and began to depart, along with Han, just in time to notice that she was following us closely.

"You… " To be honest, I was happy to hear her footsteps from behind, so I immediately asked, "Do you want to come with us?"

Having spent a lot of time with her, I grew to know some of her ways of communicating. She was not a dog, so she didn’t bark to say yes or no. Instead, she simply pushed forward in the direction of where we were heading for, once again deep into the forest.

For the two remnants we met in the forest, I‘ve come to the decision to leave them be. We weren’t particularly after them, we merely stumbled upon them by accident. Though the thought of making them pay for what they did still haunts me, I think it would be wiser to focus on moving forward.

There are things in this world, that are better left unearthed.

"By the way, Hon."

"Have you thought of a name for her?"

"A name?

"Yes, we won’t eternally keep calling her "her", "Canis Lupus" or "wolf," won’t we?"

"Well, I guess. Then what do you propose? "

"Heon!"

"Here comes another weird name."

"It was you who asked my opinion. Besides, that name is quite charming, I find. Ask her if she likes it."

"Why don’t you do it yourself?"

"Was I the one being pampered by her for one month and a half? Was I the one whose existence itself was completely ignored? Yes? Now ask her. "

"Okay, okay."

"Hey, what do you think of Heon as a name; I Hon. Him... Han, and you, Heon."

" … "

Can we interpret this silence as "yes, I like this name; in fact, it is so perfect that it perfectly encapsulates my entire proud, stubborn, and unreasonable personality"?

"Maybe."

With a new member added to the pack, we left this place for the place we would later call the Land where Dragons everlastingly lives.

The second place she and I would call our second home.