Old Friends

How long had it been? How long had it been since she'd seen or felt anything, anything at all, besides the black? It was crushing, consuming, encompassing. How long had it been all that she knew? The occasional flash of color, fleeting shapes, voices crying out. Visions, dreams, call them what you will. They were reprieves from the void-like blackness, fleetingly brief, but welcome. Sometimes, she recognized them, memories shuffling about in her subconscious. Other times, they were unfamiliar, subtly interring new knowledge unto her. These visions made her long for more.

And then, as though all at once, the black was dispelled, cut apart by white. No, not white. Light. A pained groan escaped her lips, sounding muffled to her ears, as she felt her eyes open, fluttering and blinking, trying to adjust to the sudden and scorching light. Slowly, her vision came into focus, blinding light gaining definition, contrast. At first, she was confused to see just white before her eyes, until the realization hit that there was something covering her face. Bandages. She could feel them over her nose, lips, neck, everywhere as feeling began to return to her extremities.

Managing to narrow her gaze through the bandages obscuring her vision, she could see shadows before her, and a crack of light parting them. Reaching out, her wrapped hands grasped at something solid, and she instinctively grasped at it, pushing the shadow away from her. More light filled her limited vision as she felt herself stumbling forward. Her body creaked and protested, sore from a lack of use, every tiny shift making her groan aloud. Shambling forward, she began to notice something besides her own grumbling. A noise that was constant, rhythmic, pulsating, uplifting. It took her tired mind a moment to process that it was music, though not as she'd ever heard before.

Shuffling along the floor, she willed herself to move along closer to the source of the music. She could feel her hands pressing against a door, pushing it open as she moved almost subconsciously. Moving past the door, she found even more light flooding her covered vision. Evidently, even the room she'd been in before had been quite dark, only bright in comparison to what she'd been in before. She could hear the music more clearly now, an almost annoying, beating hum really. Looking around, her eyes came to settle on a dark shape, moving about in time with the music.

Finally growing tired of the bandages, she reached up to tug at the wrappings around her head as she shambled forward, pulling them away, groaning louder and louder all the while. Managing to pull the covering away from her vision, she winced at first as the unfiltered light touched her eyes for the first time in an eternity. Or so it felt to her. But soon she could see clearly, and what she saw, quite simply, confused her.

 A few feet in front of her, separated by some kind of furniture she didn't quite recognize, was what appeared to be a young girl. She was dancing, her body shaking and writhing in time to the strange music, each movement synced to the pulsating beat. The girl was dressed in strange garments that were as unfamiliar to her as the furniture. A loose, sandy colored piece of cloth covered her upper body, her legs appearing bare except for when a dance step caused her shirt to rise, revealing some kind of tight blue clothing clinging to her hips and buttocks. This was all she could see at the moment, as the girl was facing away from her, having not apparently noticed her. A first for her life, truly.

More important than the strange clothes she didn't recognize however, were what she could recognize. A head of shadowy hair, flowing elegantly down her back, with a pair of twitching pointed ears at the top, while the bottom edge shook with her dance moves, matched by a rapidly wagging tail of similarly colored fur. The glimpses at the girls arms and legs revealed similar fur, covering what might otherwise be darkly tanned skin. These features, she recognized.

She tried to call out to her. Call a name in fact. All that came out, however, were more, if louder, groans. She winced at the feeling of her dry throat, but continued her attempted cries. Finally, her grumbling seemed to overtake the music, one furred ear twitching in her direction as the dancing girl's attention was apparently caught.

"Hmm? Is that you lover~? I didn't hear you come i-" The girl continued to dance and shake as she turned around, smiling brightly until her eyes landed on the bandaged figure that had been standing behind her.

Her eyes shot open as she abruptly cut herself off with a loud scream, appearing to trip as she fell backwards, the room seeming to shake a bit as she landed roughly on her behind. Wincing, both at the volume of the scream and the apparent harshness of the fall, the wrapped up woman shuffled forward as fast as she was able, leaning against the strange furniture between them to look down at the fallen girl. She soon met the girl's gaze, looking up at her with eyes wide and full of fear.

"Wh-Who are you?!" She shouted, her voice shaking with fear, "Lis-listen, I don't know how you got in here, j-just take whatever you want! Jus-just don't hurt me, please!" She begged, trying to shuffle back along the floor away from the apparent intruder.

The bandage-wrapped figure, however, simply tried to stretch an arm out at the frightened, fleeing girl, groaning still as she stretched out the sore limb. Somewhere in there, however, the groans started to resemble words, "Sej...Sewa...Jejua..." She slurred, finally managing a complete word, "Se...juani...?"

The fallen girl's frightened gaze abruptly changed to a confused one in a single blink as she looked up at the distinctly feminine mummy, "...how do you know my...-?" She began to question, before her eyes shot open in realization, "Y-Your Majesty?!"