Emberwood i don't know how to love anything without sinking my teeth into it

Per the conversation in #phone-a-friend, there is no formal policy on dream appearances, so I believe I have tacit permission to finish out these threads. ^^

Lotte knows that once her daughter falls asleep in this world, she will wake up in the other — and she wants to beg her to stay awake, to run with her through the misted fields, but she knows that she cannot. The rules imposed upon her for these visits to her loved ones are strict and immutable; she cannot jeopardize her future visits by breaking them. Six visits over the course of each family member’s life — it seems so little, but she is grateful for any minute she has. She pauses when her daughter does, trying to pour love and light into every second that ticks inexorably by — and at last, Mallaidh sinks wearily to her haunches.

After a beat, Lotte seems to grow. The backdrop fades away and shifts; the trees disappear. There is nothing against which to compare the matriarch’s size.

Perhaps Mallaidh is shrinking, instead.

Whatever the case, Lotte stops growing when she dwarfs her girl in size, and when Mallaidh seems about the height she was when she disappeared from the strath. Lotte’s mouth does not move, but her voice echoes through the unseen walls of the dream, singing Mallaidh’s song, singing the tule kotiin call. The two melodies weave together and are not dissonant but instead create an uncanny harmony — but even Lotte couldn’t say whether this was intentional or not. In slow, rhythmic motions, her tongue smooths across the puppy-soft fur that underscores her daughter’s coyote-tall ears. “What a beautiful morning,” she remarks in a velvety alto, the conversation seeming disjointed from the previous.

“Spring is here.”