4/1/2025, 3:52 PM
She couldn’t quite explain what ignited the butterflies that fluttered in her belly or what warmth coasted her veins in a heady delight—if it were him or the pheromones in the air, she could not be sure, but she did not mind it. Not as the man, the stranger of silver-imbued words ambled beside her.
It was nice, she concluded. To be able to exist without the pressure of death or monsters lurking in her rearview mirror. To live and feel for the briefest of moments.
However, while her mind was focused on the world, of the rabbit, and of the intricate feelings that wrapped like weeds across her veins, his words and that gentle bump brought her ears to a point and her eyes to fixate along his retreating steps. Where was he going? A part of her had almost the decency to ask—but as she hurried to meet his own, Alue would find her paws would come to a startling halt.
Ahead lay a loping hill, and above, nestled at the very top, were the spindly branches of a larger tree. How did that get there? She had briefly wondered, for a moment, her train of thought captured by the inklings of fantasy and reality that seemed to merge. The woodlands were certainly not the woodlands she had remembered.
But her companion---that handsome man of warmer shades was already halfway up the hill before Alue had come back down to earth. “Wait up!” She called out to him as she forced her paws to action, pursuing her steps to follow dutifully in his wake.
At the very top, Alue released a breath of wonder. This place was certainly not the Woodlands she had remembered, but at the very top, the horizon expanded for miles and miles ahead. The hill hadn’t looked very tall, surely not as steep as she had initially believed. Yet as her heterochromatic gaze washed across the milky horizon of sun and sky, the dappled tops of trees greeted her—as if she were standing atop a mountain cliff.
Beautiful and breathtaking, a gentle smile caressed her lips in a surge of beating blood.
’Ya ready, Sugar?’
Alue’s head turned—ready for what?
Within what felt like seconds, her ruddy companion was soaring down that hill, causing the briefest of flutters to harbor deep within her chest. What..what was he doing? She watched as his body tumbled and rolled, and for a moment, her head tilted, and her brows furrowed in quiet contemplation as she watched. Before the words could leave her lips, his name to call out from a worried tone, he rose from his descent and beckoned her forward.
Her turn?
She couldn’t.
Could she?
Her heartbeat pattered in her chest as she glanced down at the hill that now greeted her in a complexion of wavering depths, steep and gentle as her paw steps danced along its softened edge. She considered for a moment and then a moment longer, watching carefully as he instructed her to wait. Alue was notably unafraid of most things, her daringness evident by her need to waltz across a war-torn battle camp and nurture those on the cusp of death. And yet, rolling down a hill seemed to cause the briefest flutters of fear to warp her senses and hold her limbs, hostage, as she stared.
How odd, how ironic.
She swallowed down the lump that formed in her throat, her widening eyes staring off at Tarot as he once more beckoned her forward. A part of her wished to resist, to walk back down the hill they both had come from—and yet, that warming lull whispered her forward. To try, it seemed to say, and so she would.
Her paw steps were carefully placed as she readied herself against the hillside’s edge, her butt softly making its way to the ground as she positioned herself in the safest way possible. She would take it slow, nice and easy, she figured as she scooted a bit further. Yet, as if the wind had pushed her, her body suddenly was sailing down, and her yelp of surprise was a lingering note that echoed throughout the wind.
She couldn’t explain the resurgence of fear and joy that mixed within her smile as her body tumbled, twisted, fell, and rolled—but it did, and her heart soared. In some way and some fashion, she found herself enjoying the chaos that twisted the world in a kaleidoscope of spinning angles, and at some point, laughter bubbled from her lips as she twisted to her belly.
She hadn’t known when that had happened, but Alue would find herself at the base of the hill, her nose greeting the paws of her companion as her body practically dolphin-dived toward his feet.
After catching her breath through a series of giggles, the healer shifted toward her side as the growing pupils of her eyes rose to meet the man from a place upside down and on the ground.
That was…fun,she said through a racing heart and the labored breath of her lungs,
Again?
![[Image: 68778830_dBcsiQbsM3NMDTs.png]](https://f2.toyhou.se/file/f2-toyhou-se/images/68778830_dBcsiQbsM3NMDTs.png)
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