This she knows: it isn’t a dream.
Everything is too real, too tangible: the crunch of the leaves beneath her hooves, the scratches left behind on her body from the branches and bushes she walks through. The colors of the forest are too vibrant, oranges and reds and yellows; nothing like the muted grays and tans of her afterlife-desert. She stops occasionally to snack on a leaf or a berry, to remember how it feels to taste again.
This she knows: she is alive.
She can feel her heart beating in her chest, her blood pumping. She breathes deeply, in and out, and repeat—the air seems clearer here, crisper.
She knows this, she knows this and yet, when she sees her, catches a glimpse of gold coming towards her—
she isn’t quite as sure.
She looks the same as Ana remembers, like sunshine, and perhaps it is cliché but when she sees her, the rest of the forest fades away.
“Craft,” she says with a soft smile, “it has, hasn’t it?”
She reaches out to her, hesitant, scared that if Ana touches her she might disappear, but she does anyway, touching her muzzle to Craft’s neck, lipping at her golden mane.
“What are we doing here?” she asks softly, green eyes finding Craft’s.
@[craft] pls forgive this phone post