Sun Mote Copse On the 858th day...

She half-expected Wraen to vanish in her arms, perhaps fazing out like so much ghostly fog. But her friend remained solidly in her clutch until she pulled back, wiping at the tears in her eyes as she cursed goodbyes. Towhee smiled wanly, still feeling the warm press of their last embrace with every cell in her body.

No sooner had the word “this” left Wraen’s lips than Towhee surfaced calmly from a deep sleep. Her first conscious thought was that the word seemed strangely quiet, quieter than it had ever been before, which was of course an odd thought for a congenitally deaf wolf. She reached up to sleepily touch an ear, accidentally bumping Meerkat’s warm form curled up beside her.

Wei— Towhee mumbled, ready to drift off to sleep again, eyes already closing. Wraen, she abruptly remembered, eyes snapping open again as she stared off into the dark.

She would not fall back to sleep. Instead, she would lay there until sunrise, trying to recollect and preserve every precious detail of that peculiarly vivid and entirely bittersweet dream. Much of it would sieve from her mind like loose sand over time, as dreams often did. But until the end of her days, Towhee would never forget Wraen’s visitation, the closure it brought her or her promise to her dearly departed friend.