[Thayle]

@Scindere

Dream rp!

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The world was bright, everything toned the type of desaturated purple that only came with a sunset on a clear night. The air itself seemed to shimmer, as if you could press your paw into a certain spot and push your way through to somewhere else. Scindere's dreams were often colorful, mystical even, and she so enjoyed her moments in them. The speckled form of the spotted wolf, wavering and shimmering like the air, floated lazily across a field of flowers. She had no obligations, no worries, no fears....just fun and relaxation.

But the dreams never ended the way they began. Upon closer inspection, the flowers were venus flytraps with glistening teeth - they snapped at her toes with malice. In the distance, a black cloud began to form in the sky. She could see lightning flashing. It smelled like rain. It felt like dread.

It always ended this way.

She found herself in the middle of a storm cloud, grey and swirling, heavy, pungent. No. No, that wasn't right. Storm clouds were cold and wet. This was warm. This was searing. This was ash caught in her throat and filling her lungs to the brim.

The small she-wolf stumbled through the plume, coughing, while thunder rumbled close by. Through blurry eyes she caught a hazy figure, speckled and windblown. She called out, once.

She heard a noise, a voice? Strange, there had never been anyone else here. She was always alone, just her and the world, and now someone dared to darken her doorstep? The cloud came closer, and closer, faster than storm clouds should be, and soon her fur was blowing in a strong wind that nearly blew her away entirely.

"I'm here," she said - she didn't know what else to say to the figure that was emerging from storm and smoke. But even in her dreams, even as she felt the strangest, most unfamiliar sense of foreboding, she could not let go of her mischievious nature. "Come find me," she breathed, quietly but she knew she would be heard, this was her world, but she was fading away, her colors were blending in with the sky and she was truly disappearing.

There was a tugging sensation that she should leave now, wake up and return to the world of the living. But she had to see this through to the end. Where did someone go when they disappeared?

Ash tumbled from her mouth. Wait, wait, she tried to say as the wisps broke the other girl apart, but it was just more ash, falling, falling, falling. The taste was sour and too sweet all at once.

Not wanting to lose her entirely, Thayle leapt on burnt paws (the burns falling away, as she leaves this feature of the dreamer's world) and pointed her muzzle to the wind. She took a breath, then another, to clear away the smoke in her throat.

"Okay..." she started, looking side to side. "I'll need a clue."

Oh, it's so lonely here, she thought as she faded away. Perhaps this was the end for her, perhaps this was all she had ever truly been. And then, all at once, she was back - standing on solid ground, a few feet behind the stranger who had invaded her dream. Nothing nipped at her toes; no lightning threatened to strike her. It was...quiet.

Too quiet. "A clue?" she giggled, "Just follow the sound of my voice." Though her voice was coming from everywhere, wasn't it? Or maybe that was just how it sounded to her - they were in her head after all. "I've been waiting for youuuu," which wasn't true, of course, but the invader did not need to know that. "I've been. Looking. Everywhere."

She startled, crouching low with her tail tucked between her legs. Oh no, oh no. They were coming, still, always. Strips of light ran over the grass, chased by shadows.

"You have?" she whispered, then paused. "You didn't look very hard."

She was being criticized in her own dream? Scindere pouted, sitting back on her haunches and frowning at the stranger. "That's not a very nice thing to say," she whined. "It's hard...to look for something...when you don't know what it looks like?" She drifted toward the stranger then, unsure if she was walking or floating or simply materializing in a new location. She stopped with her nose an inch from the other's, and in this moment the two of them felt very solid. "Give me some credit."

Ears trained on the dreamer, she gave a thoughtful look. That was fair.

"I'm sorry," she started, cut off when she was eye to eye with someone she-- despite the fear and, well, unconciousness-- had to admit was very pretty. Staying as she was, belly hovering above the waving grass tips, she continued after a moment. "You did pretty good, though?"

"Thank you," she said, closing her eyes in a dramatic  display of vindication. "I feel better now." Red eyes opened again and stared at the stranger, unblinking and almost expectant. What would she do now?

There was a sound, a strange rhythm, coming down from the sky and up from the ground. She could feel the vibrations in her limbs, in her chest. "Are you scared?" she asked, eyes comically wide. "I can hear...your heart...beating."

Her brows furrowed, and her paws itched. Was it time to make a break for it? Was this getting too weird, or just regular weird? She opened her mouth, "I--"

Blue eyes blinked rapidly, taken aback. "Oh. Oh, well..." Yes, I'm terrified, basically always but especially now. "A little, I suppose. Are you?"

"Nothing scares me," she said with a playful giggle. "There's nothing to be afraid of, not here..." she trailed off, still staring too-closely at her new friend. "But if I were you, I might be a little worried about happens when you go back." Back where? Away from here. Anywhere.

"We all die in the end, but for, oh, your little heart is working so hard." She sucked in a breath over her teeth, as if she were reluctant to deliver bad news. A death sentence. "It won't beat forever."

She felt panic, in that dull, dreamer's way, where everything is real enough but not solid.  It was slow, and thick.

"Please," she gasped through a constricting throat. She knew where she would go. Beneath a tree, or in a field, hurting and tired, waiting for-- "Don't. This is, a nice dream, don't you, don't you think?"

Air caught and she couldn't breathe. Her thin chest shuddered with the failing throbs of her heart that the dream couldn't resist drawing attention to.

"Please," she begged. "Don't make me go. I can, I can help you, I'll do--" Anything.

She could feel the distress, rolling through the air in waves. Her new friend was so upset, choking on it, struggling to breathe. Scindere raised on delicate paw and placed it gently on the other's forehead, as if she were giving a blessing. "Come back to me," she whispered. "Don't leave me again."

She waited, listening to the cries and the begging, drinking it all in. This was what she lived for, what she dreamed of, only it had never felt so real before. "You don't have to go anywhere," she said finally, smiling reassuringly. "But when you leave...I need you...to take me with you." She removed her paw from the other's head, and teeth suddenly flashed in a grin. "I can make sure your heart won't stop."

Scindere's touch was electric, cruising from her mindseye through every little vein until it filled her struggling heart with lightning. The connection made things change.

The grasses-- lush, dew leaden, jungle-- became thorny purple flowers that spiraled and coiled. The trees were stripped away and fried until they abandoned the two she-wolves to a wide, open, storming sky. Thayle didn't seem to notice.

"How... you... can come," she promised, though she didn't know how to make it happen. "Please I, I'm lonely. Don't hurt me."

The landscape changed around them, and she looked around in wonder, taking her eyes off her companion for only a moment. "Look what you've done," she said with awe, again flashing those too-white teeth. She stood up, gazing at the open sky. "So this is where you're taking me. I like it." She nodded approvingly, feeling raindrops on her fur now, soaking her all the way to her skin. Her hair streamed down one side of her face, flattened by water.

"Lonely?" she asked in the sweetest, most pained voice. "I'll never hurt you." She looked into the other's eyes with an expression of deepest warmth and caring. "But it's not me you should worry about. It's you."

The valley spread in rolling patches, filling out the blank space the overlapped jungle left behind. Thayle drew a breath and held it when, at last, she recognized where they where. "Oh...!"

"Oh... oh no," she mumbled, trying to bump her obviously new best friend and life alert in the side to usher her along. "Oh no, oh no. We should... go somewhere else."

Sensing the apprehension, Scindere's smile grew wider. "is this a bad place?" she asked. "Don't you know how important it is to face your fears?" She turned away from her companion and began to prance off into the open world. She threw a glance over her shoulder, "Why don't you show me where to go? Where do the monsters live?"

She stared at the girl as if she just grew three heads, and not in a normal dream head growing way.

"Um. No. Not these fears," or any fears? That's how you die? Facing fears, which are things that kill you?

Watching Scindere prance away from her, Thayle was left with a choice. She could ditch this girl she just met and avoid what is surely a gruesome death, or she could... not... ditch this girl she just met... who might have some sort of healing abilities beyond what she was used to. Faced with the crossroads, her ears flattened and she whined. "Stay and you'll see, I suppose."

"Fear can't hurt you!" she called over her shoulder. "It only hurts you. On the inside." her voice was quieter now, but distance and volume had no meaning here. She stopped and looked back at her gloomy friend, sending her a smile with so many teeth. "Just watch!"

And with all the grace of a lifelong heathen, Scindere began to jump around, dancing in circles, genuine laughter ringing out across the field. "You can't hurt me, monsters!"

"Internal injuries," she nodded in agreement. Her new friend was wise but also an idiot, and she was walking right into a death trap. Oh. Well. It was nice having a friend for five minutes. "Um..."

One of the hills, dead center underneath Scindere because where else would it be, shifted. Earth fell away as it rose from it's deep bed, unfurling tattered wings. The membranes were torn, the bones in misshapen chunks, but they were mobile enough to reach and try to fold over the thing skittering around on its back.

Internal injuries didn't count, everyone knew that! It was only your outside scars that mattered, those were the ones that impressed your enemies.

The ground began to move beneath her feet and she paused for only a moment to regain her balance. Everything seemed to move in slow motion here, which worked to her benefit, as membranous wings unfurled beneath her and lifted her into the sky. A wild cackling filled the air, but it was not coming from the monster.

She was enclosed in darkness, and it was surprisingly cold, and alone, but she wasn't alone because her friend was here! "It can't hurt me~" she sang, and she lounged back against one of the soft-cold wings and waited for her Knight in shining (shaking) armor to save her. "Show him you're not afraid! '

Scindere's message was inspirational. Truly, this was something one hears and then turns their life around, that spark that sets in motion the first step of a journey, the outcome a shining light at the end of a long tunnel. Thayle didn't hear any of it though because she was pressed as flat as she could be against the ground, her paws over her ears so that they may block out what was about to happen. She screamed in the dream, though she wouldn't have in the real world. RIP new friend and also metaphorical bravery.

A voice rumbled from the bat, lower than the earth, long drawn out words in a language long forgotten. It peered one shining black eye in the gap between its wings to gaze down at the offering. Hey gurl.

She couldn't hear the screaming from within her shadowy cocoon, or maybe she could but was just ignoring it. The creature spoke to her, and although she could not hear words she could sense the meaning. It was time for her to go, it told her. The end comes for us all.

"Find me again," she called to her terrified friend. "But be careful." And suddenly, the wings released her and she fell, only to be caught by sharp fangs embedded in her neck. Blood began to spurt from the wound, but shadows flew out too, and the air shimmered all around her.

She stared down at her companion, tongue lolling out or her mouth as she dangled in the air, held by the monster she'd mocked. But this was okay, she thought, as the razor sharp tip of the wing plunged through her back and out of her chest, causing her body to convulse and hang limp like a rag doll. Her blood sprayed onto the grass below her and, choking on blood, she whispered a final 'goodbye',

This was how it always ended.