Bitterroot Valley Enter, Pursued by a Memory

the world spins in shades of green and brown and blue until she skids to a stop on her side, breath gone, chest heaving uselessly. “ow.” she hisses, but the disapproval is thin, hardly genuine. her limbs flail like a newborn fawn, trying to find which direction was up. a whine scraped out of her as she dragged in a lungful of air that burned all the way down. “took that boulder comment personally, i see.”

once she rights herself, she stills. for a long moment, she only lays there stunned, ribs fluttering in shallow, useless breaths. then her head jerked up, ears pinned, eyes blown wide like a fawn. callahan doesn’t appear to have any easier of a landing, ending up on his back like overturned tree roots.

“me? cheat?” she rasped, still catching her breath, “nonsense, you can’t prove it, you were turned around,” she coughed, trying to wheeze the air back into her chest. there was laughter under it, thin and breathless, but real.

her tail thumped once against the grass in a weak, lopsided wag. she could feel her heart hammering under her ribs, each beat too big for her small frame.

she watches him stand and walk closer to the tree through messy strands of fur stuck to her face. nods, even if he is not looking to see. it’s a quaint place, wrapped in green with leaves dripping down like curtains, wildflowers at her feet. dotted with pink and violent and varying shades of yellow, pretty petals and vines of all sorts. “depends, like it?” she won’t believe him if he says no.