The Compromise

By Syncopation

Everything is simply so much more acute and focused, and that is why Ambrose knows he must be dreaming.

It is an odd thing, being aware of his slumber, but he takes it in stride. It is a dream, after all, and dreams are not known for their logic. He briefly supposes that it will all make sense in the morning or he will have forgotten it, and either way it will be none of his business then or now. All that is left is to allow the dream to take him where it will.

When it first takes him home, however, he regrets that decision.

He sees his father, the trials of age upon him, and he knows somehow in his dream logic that this is his father as he is now. The dream has not taken him to a memory; it has taken him to the present. This place, this room, this is...was his world. His home. Taking it in is painful, but looking back upon his father wounds him much deeper.

His father is an old man now; or perhaps he was always an old man, and Ambrose can only see the truth of that now. He rests upon the seat of the Maurlias house, his eyes closed. Is he dreaming, then? Dreaming of his son, as his son dreams of him? The color fades from him as Ambrose watches, as though a thousand winters are passing him by. He sinks deeper and deeper into the chair, until at last he sinks beneath his robes and is gone from sight.

Ambrose wants to go to him, to perhaps say something to him, to make peace, but he knows he cannot. Aware now that he is watching his father through a window, he knows equally well that the window will not yield to him. The logic of the dream cannot be refused, and with melancholy regret, he feels his feet carry him away. To visit his brothers, perhaps? It would be a charming little excursion. They should learn that their father is dying.

Yet he does not walk to his brothers. His footsteps carry him across the sea, and he knows then that they have chosen to retrace that fateful journey into the land of Ravenloft. Ambrose ponders briefly the benefits of visiting his father, if they indeed existed. It seemed unnecessary, and yet there is a feeling lingering in his heart that he cannot place.

Is it because he is wrapped in his thoughts that he does notice when he arrives? Or is it simply that he forgets when he arrives, and when he tries to think on it he remembers nothing, even though it happened seconds ago? It is unimportant. Now, he is in the woods.

“You saw your father?” the wolf asks. It emerges from the trees in front of him, appearing in the air. It did not appear far away and get closer, as most things did when approaching. It was merely there. “You visited him before he left the world?”

“I did,” Ambrose answers, not allowing his voice to falter in the discussions with the beast, “I saw him.”

“That is good,” the wolf nods, “That is good.”

It turns and walks away, but it turns its head as it passes, to speak one last time. “It is the way of the wolf to honor the old blood of the pack when they expire.”

“I walk the way of the man,” Ambrose responds angrily, before taking a moment to soothe himself. “It is the way of the man to honor your family. It is the way of the gentleman to honor your father.”

“You will walk a different path in time,” the wolf nods, aware of more than it lets on. It turns and pads its way through the underbrush, disappearing from sight with nothing more than a blink of the eyes. Ambrose watches it before it vanishes, and in his dream, he learns to despise the wolf. To hate its fur and fangs, to loathe its gait and hunger. The wolf is the enemy, he tells himself. The wolf is the enemy.

Then, he wonders of Angelina. He desires to see her, and in the ways a dream manages such requests, it takes him to her. The details of travel are unimportant, and escape his mind the instant she is within his vision. The Angelina he sees in the dream, however, is unlike the Angelina he knows.

She is shifting, changing. It is as though he is a many-eyed beast, he thinks, observing her through each of those many eyes. She is a girl, almost a woman, looking out upon the world with fresh eyes, clad in a white dress. And she is also skinned in green, with the tail of a sea serpent, and the fins that belong to the creatures sailors speak of lecherously. And she is a beautiful bird, long-necked and long-winged, proud and honest. There is more there, but Ambrose cannot focus on it.

“You left your father,” she says, and she says, and it says, and they say, “Have you accepted it then?”

Ambrose knows what she is talking about, even though it has never been said - the fact that he will never return home. It is the way of dreams, he thinks briefly, to reveal such information, and then he ignores the thought and speaks to her. “I think that perhaps I have, but I do not want to,” he replies to her, and to her, and to it, and to them. “It is the truth that I do not want to accept.”

“It is like the wolf, you know,” the many Angelinas say in unison, but none of them speak together, “To leave their dead and keep the pack safe.”

“I am not like the wolf,” Ambrose replies, stubbornly.

“Are we your pack, Ambrose?” Angelina and Angelina and Angelina and the rest ask.

“I am not like the wolf,” Ambrose replies again.

“Do you wish to keep the pack alive with me, Ambrose?” they ask.

“I am not like the wolf,” Ambrose says again, but there is a growing uncertainty in his voice, “I am not a...creature,” he says, pronouncing the word with utter disdain.

“Then what am I?” Angelina asks, and the mermaid asks, and the swan asks, and the countless others just beyond Ambrose’s vision ask.

“I don’t mean...” Ambrose begins, “It’s not to say...You’re not...”

He cannot, however, find the words that he wants to say. He has a burning desire to grab Angelina’s hand as she drifts away, but he realizes he is no longer certain which of them Angelina is. And then he realizes the fool he is, for of course they all are, and he could’ve grabbed any hand. The moment has passed, though, and he is alone in the dream again.

It is in the nature of dreams to not linger in one area for long. What is not in their nature is to expound at length on the travel one takes. Ambrose does not know if he travels at all, but he knows that he is somewhere else.

Yes. He is with a man.

The first thing Ambrose knows about him is that he does not smell like a man, and already for thinking that, Ambrose is furious that he would use his nose to discern anything of that sort. The second thing Ambrose knows is that, in a sense, the man is like him.

The man is bound from every direction by shadow. It seals around him, holds him in place, stops him from moving. His flowing white hair and elegant blue eyes frame his pale face. There is something about him Ambrose does not like, but he does not know what.

“...I think we are alike, you and I,” the man says after a silence they cannot measure, “I think we both have something different than the rest.”

“Whoever you are, I am not like you,” Ambrose says, and although he is courteous, his patience has already run thin with the man.

“Who are you like, then?” the man asks, tipping his head to the side.

“None but myself,” Ambrose replies.

“An admirable answer,” the man admits, nodding, “But do you even know who you are?”

“Of course-” Ambrose begins to say, but the rest of his sentence is lost forever when the man interrupts him.

“No,” he said, shaking his head, “You deny yourself. You ignore yourself. You must understand,” the man says, extending his hand, and Ambrose realizes why he distrusts him, “All aspects of you must be allowed to exist.”

The illusion fades from the man, and Ambrose sees him for what he is. He has not been imprisoned by the shadow, but has embraced it! There he stands, six red eyes, skin of utter black, and Ambrose knows that he does not like him. He is growling in his throat, and he does not even bother to stop himself.

“You are despicable,” Ambrose says, his words stretched out in his impatience, “Resting in your shadow like that.”

“Do not misunderstand,” the nightmare man attempts to explain, “You must reach a compromise. Both parties must be satisfied, or at least mutually displeased.”

“I am not the wolf!” Ambrose shouts, suddenly and harshly. It is unlike him, and he breathes heavily, attempting to calm himself.

“No?” the nightmare man asks, fading away, “Curious. The wolf, after all, is you.”

And then Ambrose is alone again. But as is the way of dreams, he knows that he is not alone, and he turns to meet the wolf once again.

“There is a wolf in all of us, if you think long and hard on it,” it says, “Though some may not be as literal as you are, all humans have the desires they repress. The wild that they attempt to subdue. The need to hunt. To survive.”

“I have no desire to embrace them,” Ambrose says dismissively, waving the wolf off.

“But you have desire,” the wolf says, “And in that simple emotion, you have the wolf.”

“I have no wolf!” Ambrose shouts, his anger rising.

“You have the wolf should you deny it or not!” the wolf replies in kind, “Do you desire to be haunted by a specter all your life? Do you want to deny yourself what you have always wanted? Your neurotic masochistic ways will do nothing but harm you!”

“Be gone,” Ambrose says, turning and waving the wolf away. When he turns, the wolf is on the other side as well.

“I cannot,” the wolf answers, “I will be here now. I will be here when you awake. I will be here when you sleep again. I will be here when at last they lay you into the ground, an old man who, at night, still shakes at the moon, for the fear that he will bring harm to those he loves!”

“I would not!”

“Compromise is the only answer,” the wolf says, “Compromise so that both parties are happy, or at least mutually displeased. If the wolf emerges in the human, the human too will emerge in the wolf. You will have the chance to stop yourself from doing the wrong thing, and you will have the chance to finally release what you have kept inside all this time.”

Ambrose speaks no words for some time, before he at last looks at the wolf again. Now, however, it is changing. The wolf’s snout is receding into its face, looking like a normal human chin. And at the same time, Ambrose feels his nails growing and stretching. He briefly thinks of how terribly uncomfortable his boots will be, and then realizes that of course, he isn’t wearing boots, and how strange of him to think that.

It is a strange thing the wolf in front of him is becoming, Ambrose thinks, for its hair is beginning to disappear. There is a creaking and a crunching, and its skin is shaking and quivering as the muscle tissue and the bones change their placement. The same, Ambrose realizes, is happening to him, and a sprinkling of hair is growing on him as well. He takes a moment to look at his hand, and ponders how strange it is to see his fingers...shrinking, for lack of a better word. He falls to the ground, as he has realized it would be so much more comfortable to be on his hands and feet, and then he realizes that he is completely comfortable like this. Why doesn’t he walk like this more often?

Looking at the wolf again, Ambrose cannot help but be amused at how uncertain it seems, as its legs swell up and its feet develop into actual feet. It stumbles once or twice, for it is standing upright. The fur on the wolf retracts completely, leaving behind some hair on the scalp, the chest, and a light sprinkling on the hands and legs. At the same time, Ambrose feels a series of hairs push through and cover his body, and there is something emerging at the bottom of his back.

His chin and his nose slowly stretches out, his canines much more defined. His nose has flattened and flared out now, into more of a snout, which is certainly the more correct term. Ambrose shakes himself, feeling his ears push up to the top of his head, and they twitch slightly as they take in the sounds of the dream, which are none.

The wolf walks up to him, crouching down and resting its hand on the back of his neck. “I would thank you, I think,” he says, in Ambrose’s voice, “And it may be selfish of me, but I think that the compromise is itself thanks enough. We both gain some, we both lose some. An agreement everyone can be mutually displeased with.”

Ambrose does not say anything, still accepting what had occurred. It was a pity, he reflects, that this is only a dream. For like a dream, it would end. And when it ended, he did not know if he would retain any of this. It was the way of dreams. They exist apart from the waking world, working without logic. It will either make sense in the morning (although Ambrose supposes he has made all the sense he will make of it) or he will have forgotten it, and it will not matter now. He could only let the dream occur.

And like a dream, it ended.