Cosmic Traveller awakened with a start. Shaking the remnants of sleep away from her first seconds of consciousness, her mind showed her a memory. A memory of a dream. A memory of a dream of a possible future. Yet, though she knew the vague content of the dream, the memory did not permit her the details of it--only the feelings that came with seeing it in her sleep.

These feelings must have caused her to stir or groan in her slumber since Harbinger was right beside her, sidling up to her flank in his usual consoling manner.

But wait. Why were they eye to eye? Was Harbinger always this big?

She looked down at her limbs and she saw paws where hooves ought to be. She twisted and found that her rear and tail--and most likely the rest of her body following suit--had turned into that of a wolf. She looked once again at Harbinger, his gentle concern obvious on his face.

This was not a dream. She had seen enough visions, dreamed enough dreams, to know the difference between the waking and the dreaming. That left the possibility that this was some sort of altered reality caused by the same energies that have plagued the last few Winter Markets in the swamp. Yes, her sudden transformation would be easily explained away by such an occurrence.

It was at this point in her realization that Harbinger walked a few steps in front of her, then looked back over his shoulder at her. A telltale sign of how he wanted her to follow him.

She stood slowly, testing out how well her consciousness worked with her momentary body. The body moved as she willed it, as though she had owned it all this time. Yes, like many of her dreams where she has taken on many different forms, this one gave her the same sense of proficiency. But in the back of her consciousness she knew inhabiting this form would be temporary.

She looked again to Harbinger and nodded. They walked together in the bright night up a hill she did not recognize. The landscape too seemed familiar--a part of the plains that Gathering Wings had once taken her through--but without enough details for her to pinpoint its exact location. As they crested the hill, a bad feeling washed over her. The same bad feeling she would get right before she would have an ominous vision.

Both she and Harbinger stood over a tall cliff overlooking what looked to be a vast area of the swamp home to the Kimeti and many of those that have been pulled to it by the urge. It was burning.

The red-orange light of the raging flames reflected off of Harbingers eyes as he looked into her own. She tried to scan the horizon to see if anything was the cause of it, if there was a indication of kin fleeing from it, or any other specific sign that would tell how when this would happen and how to prevent it.

But as she squinted her eyes to see details, Harbinger threw his head up at the moon and howled. The sound of it reverberated in her head and in her entire being. She could not control herself as she also threw her head back to appease the primordial instinct to join in the howling.

And then she awoke in her circle of stones, her children sound asleep around her. Harbinger across from her, awake and looking into her eyes with an understanding that they had both just shared this strange dream.