Loved

. . .

Where… are you?

You’re shunted from your slumber… a sharp and biting breeze brings your body into focus, and a bleary smattering of lights resolves into… the horizon. You take a deep breath of the cold air. It’s… thin, it almost stings your lungs and carries the faintest scent of burning firewood.

You sit up, rubbing the sleep from your eyes and gazing over the cliff. The cliff? You’re on a cliffside. Your eyes shoot wide open, struggling to take in scene in front of you: through gnarled bowers bearing thin red leaves, you see hundreds of miles of forest span below you. The clouds are beneath you, but the trees below seem to scrape through them, crowns poking through like needles in a pincushion… there’s no way they can be that large, surely?

Your head turns sharply at a sound, and you’re subject to even more incomprehensible scenery—you’re not on a cliff, you’re on a… balcony, of sorts. A platform of natural wood that has woven itself into an overlook, lead into by a… cavern. A cavern, in a tree the size and almost the shape of a mountain. A strange light plays through the knotty wood that forms its walls, though you can’t see much more as its depths twist out of sight not too far in.

You can’t help but freeze here, for a bit. It’s a dream, right? This must be a dream. This is all wrong—everything about this doesn’t make sense. Where on Elstren are you? How did you even get all the way up here? But the details are so fine… the way the air smells, like flowers in bloom mixed with ash, the way the wood creaks and bows under your feet, the way your heart beats in your chest, it all makes you feel awake and… alive.

Cautious exploration, then. That’s the right way, right?

You step into the cave, a hand still clutching at its mouth as if that’ll somehow make you safer, peering down into it. The turn is sharp, but now you can see the source of the light—what you assume must be wild magic, coursing through unseen channels and casting a lovely glow through the gaps in the intertwined wood that forms the walls here. The way it all comes together, it’s as if an aurora snakes down the tunnel, beckoning you to follow it…

Where else to go? With a deep breath, you start to trudge deeper. The tangle of wood flexes beneath your paws, but something deep inside of you urges you to trust that it can bear your weight. You don’t know why.

The tunnel tightens steadily as you make your way down. It comes to the point where you have to pull your arms in a bit, and keep your head down to avoid scraping your horns on the ceiling. The twists and turns even out into a long, straight and sloped hallway, and though the dim light is enough to illuminate your immediate steps, it looks so dark ahead…

And indeed, the light grows dimmer. You just keep marching. You can’t go back, because there’s nothing at the other end except a long fall to your death.

One moment, there’s still faint wisps pulsing through the walls, and the next it’s pitch black… even for many steps behind you.

You reach out, to try and find the wall, but it’s not there. You scramble, starting to feel for anything, but all you can feel is… solid ground under your feet. Not the same interlocked woody vines as before; there’s simply no texture at all, as if you’re standing on solid air, somehow. You take a deep breath, and then another, and it starts to get hard to breathe… the choking stench of ash is so strong, and it’s the only scent left, having long subsumed the rest.

And then, as if breaching the water after a long time below, you gasp, eyes shooting wide open. Again, you bolt upright, head darting around as you try to take in another scene…

This time, vastly different.

The first thing you notice is the sun in the sky… it’s so warm on your skin, a refreshing reprieve from the thin, cold air. The smell of smoke lingers, but is overtaken by something far more familiar—a meadow, dampened from gentle rain. As you stand up, you feel your pants are wet. A bit annoying, but the feeling of glittering sunshower pattering against your face and your hair is… nice.

This place is just a bit off, though. As you look around, you see trees that you don’t recognize hugging the edges of the meadow, bearing broad, almost neon yellow-green leaves that all seem tilted to face the sun. These leaves crown ashen-grey gnarls of wood, and they all seem entangled through each other; it’s hard to tell where one tree ends and another begins.

The grass beneath your paws… the thin, needle-like blades are almost translucent, like tinted glass. They catch the sunlight so strangely, especially with the sheen of fresh rain on them.

Then, finally, you look up at the sun again. And you realize… hiding in the shine of its bigger sibling is a twin sun, contrasting its cold glow with a faint red of its own.

But somehow, just somehow, you’re not worried. Everything feels right. Little sparks of concern rise and then are smothered by an overwhelming warmth. You take a few steps towards the treeline, eager to see what those waxy-looking leaves feel like between your fingers…

The grass crumbles underfoot, suddenly becoming brittle. You look down as you take another step, and your foot sinks into the hot, dry soil. It crumbles apart and all of the sudden a gaping pit opens in front of you! Dirt cascades down its walls, disappearing into roaring flames…

Blink, blink.

You just… keep walking. You’ll look back at this moment a hundred, a thousand times in your life and you’ll never know why you didn’t even react. You’ll never know why you kept walking.

But you stride into the pit, as sure as you’ve ever been. You feel the flames at your feet, but they bow around you as if they’re desperate to avoid you. It grows terribly hot around you, the air is thick with ash and flickers with embers, and eventually you descend so deep into the chasm that its mouth disappears, overwhelmed by the fire.

But you keep walking, deeper into its heart. You take steady breaths, and draw your hands across the walls, feeling the dirt and stone turn cold under them.

Everything is okay. The fires extinguish at your touch. Burning though it may be, you came from this place.

And it loves you too much to burn you.

…

You jolt awake, again, and probably for real this time. You look around, expecting to see another alien world around you, but instead just… find your bedroom. Your heart pounds in your chest, and your limbs are hot enough that you have to kick your blanket off of yourself almost as soon as you register it.

The early morning fog scatters cold sunlight into your room through a little circular window; a lovely, pleasant light that doesn’t sear your tired eyes. The light of but one sun.

You try your hardest to remember that dream… and you remember all of it. Effortlessly. It’s not like any other dream before, where you snatch it by its tail and it squirms its best and sometimes it just slips right through your fingers… no. It’s as if you’re remembering something you just did.

Why do you still feel so warm…? Why do you feel so…

Loved?