Someplace, somewhere, something.

Kirsten makes a small noise of annoyance, and Asi, stretched full length on the warm bricks, glances up at her. She stretches out a foot to scratch his belly, and he subsides. It is bad enough to find herself mooning over dreams; it is worse to find herself tolerating the vagueness of a dozen assumptions that she cannot root in fact. Almost without volition, her fingers begin to drift over her keyboard, spelling out the one name she can remember, seeking its place and time in the real world. With luck, she will find nothing and will be able to consign the entire episode to a traumatized and overactive imagination.

Douglass: Scottish Gaelic. From Dubh—black; dark, and glass—stream, water. 1. The name of a family prominent in Scottish history. 2. The site of one of the twelve legendary battles of King Arthur, said to be located in southwestern Scotland.

And the hero-light shone about you that time I first saw you on the banks of the Dubhglass, anama-chara, and I knew then I would do anything to have you for my soul-friend.

Her mind reels away from that as if she has been struck.. She refuses to lose herself in the fog of Arthuriana, in a fantasy para-historical at best. But it has given her a possible foothold in fact.

Item: The ancient Celts—the very ancient Celts, ancient enough to be free of the trailing fantasies of Camelot, she is relieved to find—trained the able of both sexes as warriors. Indeed, the greatest of the Celtic arms masters, those who educated heroes such as CuChullain, were women.

Item: The ancient Celts, including the women, fought naked. A brief anecdote relates how Onduava, wife of the martyred Vercingetorix, led the Gaulish women out against Caesar, “and did the Romans great damage before they got their minds back onto the business at hand.” Kirsten finds herself smiling at that, for reasons that are not quiet clear to her. There is something about the humiliation of the Divine Julius at the hands of a woman warrior that pleases her immensely.

Item: The ancient Celts painted, or sometimes tattooed, their bodies with designs in blue woad, a vegetable dye. They wore their hair in a complicated wreath of braids upon going into battle to deny the enemy a handhold. An illustration shows the helmet-like arrangement, with a sort of attenuated, clubbed pony-tail at the crown. Another shows the alternative, hair cropped short and stiffened into spikes like a hedgehog’s with lime. First millennium BCE punk. Move over, Sting.

Item: The ancient Celts were, according to Caesar, great proponents of “manly love.” Though JC does not mention it in his Gallic Wars, the commentator opines that the warrior ethos extended equally to “womanly love.”

Which brings her back to . . ..

Very softly, Kirsten closes the top of her computer, staring into the fire. Which brings her back to that fleeing moment in the hall, the brief brush of Dakota’s lips on hers. Heat rises in her face that has nothing to do with the fire. She knows, in that irrational part of her mind that she does not trust, that she need not fear the kiss means goodbye. Dakota is neither incompetent nor—except when charging across ruined bridges—careless, and Kirsten knows in her bones that the warrior will not fail in her mission.

But if not goodbye . . .. To the best of her knowledge, the Oglala Lakota do not share the French habit of kissing all and sundry, of either gender, with or without provocation or even the benefit of formal introduction.

Her eyes slide closed, almost of their own volition, and she allows herself to remember the brief contact, not in her mind, but on her lips. There is tenderness in its warmth, a promise of passion, yet it makes no demands. It bears no resemblance to anything in her meager experience, which has been limited to one or two awkward couplings in the back of an ancient Bronco, more out of curiosity than emotion. The experience, she had thought at the time, was not what it was cracked up to be.

But this. . .. Her dreams had been passionate, and had left the physical signs of that passion behind on her skin. An image from her dream forms, flickering in the firelight that plays across her closed eyelids. The red woman’s mouth descending on hers, open and sharing, her hair loose about her, her eyes the color of sapphires in the shadow. The light shifts, and the face has changed with it, the skin bronze now, stretched over high cheekbones, long hair like a waterfall of night cascading over broad shoulders. Only the eyes are the same, blue as the evening sky.

Deliberately Kirsten sets down the computer and goes to stand in the hall, in front of the mirror. Her reflection is shadowed by the firelight and the one lamp left burning in the room behind her. She takes in her own features, the corn-silk pale hair, grown past her collar in the past months, the face she has never considered better than plain, her eyes, probably her best feature, huge and dark in the low light. Dakota Rivers is beautiful, tall and graceful and confident.

Everything Kirsten is not.

And yet. . . . She touches her fingers to her lips, almost disbelieving. And yet, it seems, she finds Kirsten desirable, even when she has someone as assured and as elegant as herself for a lover.

The past is the future, Wika Tegalega had said. Her past? Dakota’s? There is nothing in her own that she cares to repeat, certainly not the puerile gropings of her undergraduate days. Dakota’s past is largely unknown, except for those few facts she has let slip, and the loss of Tali, her first love and first wife. Kirsten has nothing to lay alongside that to fit it to her own measure.

She will not allow herself to think that it may be more than desire. To do so would be to give her heart as hostage to fortune, and there is enough of herself at hazard as it is. For a moment longer, she lingers before the mirror. Then carefully, she banks the fire, leaving the lamp lit against Maggie’s return, or Dakota’s.

Asimov beside her, she slips out of her clothes and into the sweat pants and shirt she still wears against the spring chill. She does not know how long she lies awake, but it is long enough to hear the key in the lock and Maggie’s step, lighter than Dakota’s and quicker, on the floor of the entrance hall. The snick of Maggie’s door closing punctuates the silence, and after that, the only sound in the dark is the soft snoring of Asimov where he sleeps on the floor next to the narrow bed. Toward morning, she falls into sleep and into dream.

*

Dawn has just begun to lighten the horizon when Kirsten rolls from her bed and stretches, feeling oddly refreshed. Oddly, because ever since she’d begun sleeping on the lumpy, pitiful excuse for a mattress, she’s never been even within shouting distance of a good night’s sleep. Of course, it wouldn’t help to grouse about it—aloud, at least. She knows she’s lucky to have a roof over her head. Damn lucky. Many others are making due without even that. Those who are still alive, that is.

Shaking her head to clear away thoughts too maudlin for a newly dawning day, she stretches again and runs a hand through her sleep-spiraled hair, setting it somewhat to rights, as snatches of the dreams which kept her company through the night filter through her slowly awakening consciousness.

They aren’t images so much as colors, very much like the dreams she used to have when her deafness had set in so fully that even the memory of human speech seemed a lost and forgotten thing.

The swirling smoke gray of doubt and confusion merging into the bilious green of fear. The deep purple/red of rage lightening into the golden red of passion. The colors, and their attendant emotions, flow in and among and through each other in dizzying kaleidoscope patterns that change with each twitch of her eyes until she is all but screaming for respite.

It comes, then; a deep, Caribbean blue that nurtures and soothes, and settles over her, leaving nothing within untouched.

And, at last, she knows peace.

Asi hears the sounds a split second before she does, and paces to the door, whining and looking back at her with his best beseeching gaze. Kirsten smiles, and feels her pulse quicken in anticipation. The small room is covered in a quick stride, and she yanks the door open, breath already filling her lungs in preparation for speech.

Breath that leaks out slowly when she sees not Dakota, but Maggie standing in the middle of the living room, pulling on her jacket with short, savage motions, her noble brow deeply furrowed with worry.

“Maggie?”

“She didn’t come home last night,” Maggie bites off, yanking the hem of her jacket down. “I’m going after her. You stay here in case I miss her.”

“She’s back,” Kirsten soothes. “She’s safe.”

Maggie’s head lifts slowly. Her dark eyes dart past Kirsten and to the opened door of the room beyond. A flash of emotion that Kirsten can’t—or won’t—identify crosses her face and is quickly gone. “I see.”

The temperature in the room plummets to sub-arctic temperatures, leaving Kirsten struggling for purchase on this slippery emotional slope. “No!” she finally spits out just as Maggie is beginning to turn away. “She didn’t…I mean, she’s not…I mean….shit.” She sighs, and plays out a hunch. “Could you just…come with me? Please?”

“Where.”

If the spoken word was visible, that particular word, as spoken by Maggie, would be formed from blocks of brittle ice. Kirsten swallows hard, finding herself confronted with a woman very much unlike the one she’s come to know and consider, at least in some ways, a friend. Not lacking in courage, however, she pushes down her unease and faces the Colonel boldly. “Just come. Please?”

“Fine,” Maggie grunts. “Let’s just get this over with quickly. I have things I need to do today.”

“Great! Just let me get my jacket on, and we’re gone.”

The two women step out into the cool dawn. The sky overhead is a pearl gray, and the freshening breeze, while chilled, brings with it the heavy scent of moist earth and growing things. It brings an unconscious smile to Kristen’s face, and an equally unconscious spring to her step as she walks across Maggie’s small lawn and onto the street that will lead them to the vet clinic. Asi bounds ahead, stopping at his usual canine greeting posts and baptizing several newly budding trees. Maggie follows along at a more sedate pace, hands shoved deep in her pockets and eyes fixed to the ground at her feet. She’s feeling out-of-sorts, torn within the space of five minutes between the towering emotions of fear for Dakota’s safety, and a flashing jealousy she’d spent previous hours convincing herself she didn’t possess.

Great, she thinks, giving a soft snort of self-deprecation. I’ve finally gone nuts. Snapping a woman’s head off for absolutely no reason. A woman who, if you’ll remember, just happens to be your Commander-In-Chief. All before breakfast, yet. She snorts again. Great.

Lifting her head, she gazes out over the grounds, toward the hangar where she knows her Tomcat patiently waits. A brief stab of pain twists at her heart, and she wills her gaze away. Damn.

Unaware of Maggie’s turbulent thoughts, Kirsten crosses the last of the ground to the clinic quickly, almost buoyantly, and pulls open the door, taking in the blast of warm, animal scented air with a feeling of true pleasure. Asi rushes inside and assumes his accustomed place on the floor of the waiting room, grabbing a toy from the basket and attacking it with purpose.

Kirsten holds the door until Maggie enters, then follows, taking the lead as she pulls open a second door and walks through into the narrow, pristine white corridor lined with examining rooms on either side. The door at the end of the hall leads to the isolation area, and is presently blocked by the large bodies of Tacoma, Manny and Andrews, who stare, still as statues, through the glass and into the room beyond.

Hearing their entrance, Tacoma turns, smiling in welcome and beckoning them forward. Kirsten reaches the group first, and Manny edges aside, allowing her to fill the space left by his body. As she peers inside, she feels her eyes widen in wonder, even as her heart swells near to bursting.

There, on the plush mats set carefully on the floor, lies Dakota, sprawled out on her back, ebony hair forming a corona around her head. Lying full length against her is the female wolf, free of IV’s, her massive head tucked in tight against Koda’s left side. And, nestled safely upon the softness of Koda’s shirt covered chest, lies the wolf pup. All are blissfully, deeply asleep.

Kirsten can hear Maggie’s soft gasp in her right ear even as she hears Tacoma begin to whisper in her left.