Claws grasped into the spruce bark, the fear evident on her space as her widened gaze lifted to the voice that beckoned. A voice? A voice. It was a canine, and it was talking. The hold her fear had on her heart tightened, her rational thoughts struggling to grasp the strings that knotted so easily in her mind. You're a canine too, you also speak. It wasn't totally abnormal to understand the same species right? But she was a freaking canine and that was abnormal.

Shuddering breaths escaped her lips, the panic rising as her eyes fell back to the sheer drop beneath her. A strangled cry clipped her throat, the damsel only clinging tighter to the wooden trunk that held her. She tried to hide her face with little luck, eyes squinting closed so tightly she'd hoped it would remove her from this reality.

But this was no fairy tale, nor was it a dream. If she couldn't escape this fate, she was surely dead, right?

His voice, soft and reassuring, drifted to her. It was soothing like the stroking of a hand along the back of a cat. She could remember many a stressful day ended with her in the library with her cat, the long hair of her feline companion soft to the touch. His purring would often lure her into a slumber she struggled with in her own chamber.

The memory took her to a happy place, soothed her nerves but never steeled them. She could still feel the wind in her fur, the frantic beating of her heart in her ears. With a deep breath, she tried to ignore it all. It worked enough to allow her eyes to shyly open, looking up to the stranger with a pleading silence.

What was she to do?