Hey, everyone. Remember that new Cadpig story I promised you? Here it is, and I'm very excited because this is a special one. It is the very first crossover between 101 Dalmatians and Alpha and Omega on FanFiction and the focus is on my two all-time favorite female characters: Cadpig and Lilly.

This is going to be great. Without further ado, read on and welcome as we join:

Cadpig and Lilly

in

A Confluence of Hearts

"All that we are is the result of what we have thought; we are formed and molded by our thoughts."

- Siddhartha Gautama, The Buddha

I. The Moon. I.

The full moon shined, silvery and bright – almost as bright as its sister orb which dominates the heavens during day – over the lush fields of Grutely. It was a sweet, melancholy moon tonight, the kind which makes one want to rest quietly and sleep under its gentle rays. Cadpig sighed at the sight.

So many moons like this one had she seen in the past months. So many moons had she had no one to share them with. No more brothers or sisters to chat with on warm summer nights, no more friends to find frolicsome adventures with. Up high in the loft of the barn, looking into the distance, Cadpig was all alone.

Well, not all alone. She still had her parents and her pets. She still had her friends among the barnyard animals – most of them, at any rate. But all her brothers and sisters were gone now, adopted by new families and living in new homes. Those companions of her youth, whom she loved more than any others – well, they were gone now. And none would return, for they had new lives and new worlds to enjoy.

But Cadpig could not have the same happiness. Though she had now grown into a proud and dignified Dalmatian, and though maintaining her characteristic long ears and the large blue eyes that sparkled, still she was the runt. And nobody ever wants the runt. So she had to watch people come and people go, always choosing anyone but the runt. It was hard even for someone like Cadpig, who believed in the power of positive thinking and the law of attraction and all that, to maintain a cheerful and upbeat attitude when faced with ninety-seven separate rejections. Cadpig had always been interested in past lives, and she could say now that she had seen many lives pass by without her receiving a single one.

All because she was the runt. For once, the universe seemed as though it was playing a cruel trick on her. As the silver orb danced in Cadpig's shining azure eyes, she wondered why fate had allotted this to her. Surely, this could not be what she was meant to do with her life, waste it away sulking. Then what should she do? What could she do?

As Cadpig studied the moonlit sky and the fixed stars within, she lifted a chant to the heavens:

Oh, shining Moon! that dances high above

In you is incarnate the soul of love,

Why then do you not come save me?

Why do you not set my heart free?

You are joyous and kind in the upper air

But what of when you are needed down here?

The dog, the wolf that howls to you in faith

Is driven mad, like a haunted wraith

By your omnipotent lunacy

Is that to be the only legacy

Of our worship of you?

When she had said these things, Cadpig sighed again and looked away from the window. Give it time, her parents had said. Someone will take you home, her parents had said. And yet, it never came to be. Cadpig was still left completely alone.

Then, suddenly, Cadpig picked up her head and smiled. She had an idea. Maybe the problem was not her, but her surroundings. A change of scenery – some place she could connect with stronger local auras – might just do the trick. And besides, what was she really leaving behind?

Cadpig was there when the train rolled into the Stiffle station. She did not hesitate. It was goodbye to the farm life she had come to know so well. But it was time to go. Cadpig felt with a spiritual certainty that it was time to go. She did not look back. She would not look back.

With a swift leap, she was in the train car. She did not for a moment look back. Her eyes were too strongly focused ahead, where new adventures beckoned over the horizon.

The moon that stood proudly in the sky seemed to mock Lilly. She would have thought it was a beautiful sight, had it come at any other time. But now, its happiness seemed to taunt her misery and increase it a thousand-fold.

Lilly was looking up at it from one of the high peaks of the central mountain, beside Eve, Winston, and Tony. The three parents of the packs were looking upward to the highest spot on the ridge, the very summit, where Kate and Garth stood, howling together.

It was the day of the marriage that united the two packs. Kate had returned with Humphrey just as war was about to break out. She had vowed to marry Garth. And now they had. Humphrey had disappeared somewhere, but Lilly did not really care where. She only cared about how her heart seemed to break with every note of the song the mates were singing.

The song Lilly had taught Garth to sing in the first place.

Tears came to Lilly's eyes as she remembered this. She had been to blame, she felt, for even teaching Garth how to howl properly in the first place. Had she not taught him to howl from the heart, he could never have broken hers.

Silly Omega! Was her reaction. It was her own fault, she told herself, for loving above her station. Even though she was a daughter of the Western Pack leaders, she had always been the failure and the outcast and was treated no better than the lowliest wolf in the pack. Scratch that, she was the lowliest wolf in the pack.

Had her parents and Tony been listening properly, they would have heard how hollow Garth and Kate's melody sounded, how soulless their voices. But nobody was paying much attention to that. Everyone was too happy. Everyone except Lilly.

Even someone as meek and gentle as Lilly had a breaking point. Lilly had just reached it. She could not do what she thought she would do, simply put on a false smile and accept that the love of her life would never be hers, but her sister's. But she also knew that she did not have the strength – either of body or of personality – to demand Garth for herself no matter what the world said. Lilly fell into despair as she realized that she was caught between two alternatives, each equally horrible. Both only promised more heartache.

Then a small thought occurred to her. She could just leave. She could leave this valley and this life and this pain forever. She scolded herself for ever thinking such a foolish thought. But what if it were possible….

Later that night, Lilly steadied her shivering body and leapt with all her might into the train speeding through Jasper. It was a hard landing, but given what Lilly had suffered, it did not phase her much. What pained her more was the thought of leaving everything behind, everything she had always known. Lilly's luminous lavender lights turned one last forlorn glance toward Jasper as it sped quickly out of sight.

I cannot say which of these two events happened first, or whether the white dog or the white wolf first boarded the train. The truth was that neither Cadpig nor Lilly could even say. All they knew was that they gradually became aware of each other's presence in the train-car. Neither of them could remember where the other had come from or whether they had already been there. They just knew that there they were.

But this did not encourage immediate comradeship between the two. For a number of hours, neither of them made any attempt to interact. Mostly, they tried to ignore each other. They kept to themselves in their own corners. Cadpig had founded a piece of cloth which would make a decent yoga mat and spent most of the night in meditation, busying her mind by emptying it. Lilly just studied her paws and silently mourned the shattering of her heart.

They occasionally showed interest in one another, but such interest was limited to a suspicious glance by one toward the other as she tried to figure out whether her unlooked-for companion posed any sort of threat. It was, however, quite evident that neither was there to do the other harm. And so, in this way, by recognizing that they were not enemies, they began to accept each other's existence.

Still, there was not any true sort of interaction. Both were content, for the time being, to remain by themselves and within themselves. Well, Cadpig was content with this. Lilly still felt like she was being torn apart inside, but it was an emotion which she felt impossible to share. Nobody would understand it, she thought. So she had to keep it hidden, just like she always did. She had always had to keep her emotions hidden, because no one could ever understand.

But things were different now. Lilly could not hold it in any longer. She had been holding back her tears for hours and something inside of her would just not let it continue. Whether it was the melancholy hum and blasting noise of train upon tracks, or the sorrowful beauty of the orange streaks of light breaking through darkened clouds as the dawn approached, Lilly could not be sure. But she could feel that something had knocked down the floodgates and knew that the flood was loosed. Her tears swirled down her gentle snout and the soft strands of her mane with a capricious force that many would find frightening to behold.

Cadpig got up. She walked over to where Lilly sat crying to herself and sat down beside her. She put her foreleg around Lilly's shoulder and let Lilly's head fall upon her own. She held her there, letting her cry out all of the secret sorrows that bewildered her heart. A pure heart poured itself out to a pure heart without a word even being said.

Read on.