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Not getting enough sleep is hard. Your eyes go blurry, things in front of you seem just a little bit out of proportion. After about a week on an hour of sleep a night, it gets hard to walk without losing your balance. It's hard to get out of bed when the sun breaks through your window each morning even though you're not doing any good just lying there. You convince yourself no good could come of going through the day over again even though you have work to do.

Twilight had been on the road for days now, maybe a week; she couldn't tell. Every day things looked the same. The thin dirt road in front of her, always, no towns, no villages, just hills and forests to both sides. It was autumn, getting late towards winter. If she didn't find a place to stay soon, she'd catch her death. Or if she didn't make it far enough south quickly. All she had was her cloak and staff. The food supply she'd brought had been little at best so she could travel fast and light--and it had run out two days ago. She silently thanked Nature she'd learned how to forage while she'd been with the tribe.

The tribe had been kind to her. Twilight had been born near the border in tropical lands. Her mother had been a normal Yoshi, but she hadn't made it through the birth. Non-anthros were never just never meant to give birth to anything bigger than their own young, yet the egg that Twi would hatch out of had been more than twice as big as her mother's head. She was lucky to have gotten it out at all.

Twi never knew her mother. Her father was a Human, Jarad, and she only knew him for six, maybe seven years. When Twi was hatched an anthro, even though they were in the freelands of the middle, he fled with her into the north, into Dragon territory. Heaven knows why. It was only a matter of time after that.

There was this valley in the north, between snow-capped peaks, and there was a small village nestled in it of circular, thatched-roof cottages. Food was scarce sometimes, and it was cold, but everyone lived happily there. Twi didn't have many memories of it left now, but she remembered the short summers if nothing else, that and what her father told her.

Literally the one guiding star he'd given her was a necklace with a locket as the pendant. Silver, and the locket was in the shape of a star, but that, she'd always guessed, was trivial. He'd never put anything inside, and neither had she, but inside were engraved the words, "fill me." Twi had always supposed that was a sign of Human wisdom.

When Twi was seven years, the Dragons burned the village. Her father was burned to death in the hellfire defending his home. It was a shame in addition to everything else. He used a heavy recurve and was a fantastic shot. He shot a red Mountain breed in the heart, then was breathed on from the side. At the last moment, he looked around at Twi from where he was writhing on the ground and pointed with his whole arm and immense purpose in his eyes--with a look so fierce even a child wouldn't have been able to mistake its meaning.

Tears ran heavy from the Yoshi's eyes, but she didn't cry. She turned before she could see her father burn any more and ran, ran where he'd pointed, and ran without stopping till nightfall. Till she'd reached a cliff face rising up before her and couldn't go any farther. The smoke still rising into the dusk even now from the village so far away now was another memory she had with her today. She was young back then, but she was sure she'd die out there if night kept falling. She was shivering intolerably, mercilessly nauseated.

A purple Dragon rose over the mountain, same color as the night, slowly flapping its magnificent, bony wings. It took a minute for him to descend, and when he did, the little naked Twilight was knocked back by the great force of his gust of wind.

"Believe it or not, I'm not here to harm you," he said in a deep but quiet and kind voice, then scooped the little anthro gently up in his huge, warm maw. They left the valley over those mountains, the memories and the sadness got farther and farther away as they did. Twi giggled and laughed, holding her arms out. She loved flying.

The Gushlar Dragons, one of the few of the remaining nomadic tribes, raised her from then on. There were a few purple Dragons other than the one that had saved her, but the majority were white and shiny as pearls, blending against the sparkling mountain snow. The white ones were significantly smaller than the purple, a little bit taller than her father, perhaps, but wide and long, of course, being non-anthro Dragons.

She eventually got the sense that the tribe had originally been two. The purple ones had huge, thick tails and fought amoungst themselves a lot. The white ones were gently and passive with smaller, longer tails. The white ones, that's what Twi thought her mother must have been like. The purple ones reminded her of her father.

Her life began again and again became a happy one, just different. An old, widowed white Dragon took her in as a grandchild; and Twi had childhood friends and, eventually, a mate. She had passionate sex all the time with her female mate but was deflowered on her first heat by a huge male when she was twelve as part of the adulthood ritual. At thirteen, she was accepted into several guilds at once, labeled a gifted child.

She seemd to be unusually talented in rhetoric as well as being very flexible physically and having a lot of stamina and a good eye. She was trained simultaneously in hand-to-hand (in a style adapted especially for her from the traditional Gushlar style), in magic (natural and transmutation, traditional for the tribe), and in writing and record keeping (the skills of a scribe). Unlike most children, she had many paths she could take in life, but still at no time seemed unconfident or unsure of which she wanted to take. She wanted to be an artist and a traveler.

Everyone told her she didn't need to do that, she had a home and the skills to escape that fate, but she was committed, and when Twi committed herself to something, no one at all could ever change her mind. Anyone could see the fire burning in her eyes when stories were being told of the outside world, and people fell in love with her over it. The tribe moved around a lot, like gypsies, and you could see the same gleam in her eyes when she was on the road.

She emerged from her apprenticeships at fifteen a bright, knowledgeable, beautiful girl. Then she was taken into the Ranger's guild by offer of the master, which was unheard of. She had become admired throughout the tribe over the years, and so it was becoming with her passion for the arts and for traveling as well. Of course, she excelled at being a Ranger: in everything from shooting to foraging to falconing. At fifteen, she was already the pride of the tribe, but she also knew by then that she had never been meant to stay with the tribe forever.

Just after emerging from her fourth apprenticeship at seventeen, she quietly packed a light satchel with a hatchet, a small notebook, and emergency provisions. In the dead of night, she slipped in the back of her girlfriend's tent and woke her to say goodbye. Her mate understood immediately, and the two yiffed outside one final time with no regrets. Then Twi was gone the same way she'd arrived those years ago, under cover of darkness. That's when her happiness ended.

Twilight had been on the road for days now, maybe a week; she couldn't tell. Every day things looked the same. The thin dirt road in front of her, always, no towns, no villages, just hills and forests to both sides. It was autumn, getting late towards winter. If she didn't find a place to stay soon, she'd catch her death. Or if she didn't make it far enough south quickly. All she had was her cloak and staff. The food supply she'd brought had been little at best so she could travel fast and light--and it had run out two days ago. She silently thanked Nature she'd learned how to forage while she'd been with the tribe.

She was traveling southwest looking for her birthplace, the tropical paradise her father had told her about so long ago, when she was a young child. Maybe the peradise was just a story, a convenient lie he'd made up because something terrible happened instead and that's why he'd taken her north. But then again, maybe that was her mind making up stories again. She felt bad she never knew her mother. The families in the tribe were all complete, wholes, and it was a young age when Twi learned she'd never lived a normal life.

It was cold around here. Over the past day or so, it had been getting to the point where the cloud cover was very thick and it was snowing more often--and Twi was always shivering throughout the day. On the other hand, she'd make it far enough south soon to where she'd start seeing the almond trees and there'd be rain instead of snow.

She longed for a piece of fruit to suppliment the Rabbits she'd been hunting and the grains she'd been finding around, left over from the autumn harvests. Still, she knew she wasn't far enough south yet to where she could escape the frost. Her shadow was getting very long as the second sun was setting each day.

During the day, a few birds chirped, but that was it. She had little to do walking but think about herself and her life. Back for the years when she'd been with the Dragons, she'd been so focused on them, on the social, and on her ambitions to imagine what she'd have to go through to actually achieve them. She'd always been a writer, and she realized she always used to see writing as a way of communicating, as a way of showing others the most pristine view of what lay deep inside her. Now that she was alone, it wasn't that way anymore.

She'd tried to write the night after the one she'd left on, but she couldn't think of anything to say. The next night was the same, and the next; there was nothing left to write about except what was around her. She considered starting a diary, but she'd never been able to keep one. She wrote stories because those were hers. She created the worlds she wrote about, even if they were related to her own.

If she could decide what happened in them, she owned them, and she could play God. That's why she wrote. If she tried to write about this world, nothing would come out. Her interest lay in making things up, making up the reasons for things happening, so writing diary entries just bored her. She already knew all about her own life.

Instead, she let herself fall deeper and deeper into depression, and she knew it. But she'd never admit it. She was just stronger than that. She was being dumb, inventing a lot of stupid reasons why she wasn't writing, why she was depressed, and why she'd left home in the first place. She never wanted to write a diary because that was what she was always doing, all day, every day, thinking about the reasons she did what she did, why others did what they did, why things happpened in the real world.

Writing fiction was an escape, and when she couldn't write, she couldn't escape. She'd lose faith in herself, and what's more, she'd lose faith in the world and in its beauty. She would walk faster whenever she would think about this, nervous. There'd be no turning back, and she'd left without considering that. And for what? A dream that didn't seem so beautiful now that she had a taste of it. She'd left her mate. She'd left her life.

There's a funny thing that happens if you stop living in reality for a while. It gets worse when you're worried about something or you're not sleeping well. The trees swaying in the wind start fragmenting, dissociating into a brown streak that was the trunk and a green smear that was the leaves. And you can't follow the clouds blowing overhead. It's because your eyes are working slower.

You catch a frame here, a frame there, but it's like you're part of the same world they're a part of. The tops of the trees start looking seperate from the trunks because they're a different color. You can't tell the difference between night and day because, even though the sun rises and sets, you don't feel like any time is passing. It's just the same thing every day.

Twi woke up as the suns were rising on the fifth day of her journey. She'd slept an hour, maybe two, and she felt just as tired as she always did. For a moment, she looked around and had no idea where she was. How many times had she woken up before without being able to remember anything? She was in a thicket of trees, the beginnings of a forest right off the path.

She was on a wide bed of soft moss; she must have laid herself down there. Which direction had she been going? Birds were chirping in the trees, the suns were behind her in the east; it was morning. Her whole life before now, it seemed like a long, hard dream. It might have been. But then again, that was something she felt every day.

She had been happy before, but now she wondered why. She hadn't pawed in a very long time. She hadn't gotten off since she'd left and Kira had gotten her off with her tongue. That was strange for her, not to be horny. At best, it was one of the vague thoughts floating somewhere around the back of her mind. She found her cloak and staff lying next to her and took them.

She tied her cloak back on as she stood up and stepped out from the trees back onto the path. She leaned on her staff. The sky was grey. Even if she could remember yesterday, it seemed like there would be little point in it. Nature had lost its beauty, and Time was just whiddling away at her. Soon she'd be dead, and none of it would matter. Soon.

The forest behind her was the first one along the path for a while, it looked like. In front of her stretched a field as far as the eye could see: tall, wheatlike grass, mostly. Its pale color made it look drab under the cloud cover. In the distance, far out to the west, were mountains forever. The path was beginning to collect dirt and sand of lighter colors now. That meant she was getting further and further south.

She remembered her pack suddenly and went back into the trees to look for it, but it was nowhere to be found. She had a notion she'd eaten all her food, and she found a pile of bones next to her moss bed to back up that conclusion. Maybe there'd been something else in that pack, but who knew? It'd just weigh her down now.

It's a funny thing, walking. Once you start, it's hard to stop even if you don't care a bit about it. One foot in front of the other was the way most of life was supposed to go. It was supposed to go that way for those that knew their direction in it, had something to go towards, who knew where they were going. Twilight wanted to be an artist. She was good at that. She was good at speaking, she was good at writing, and she loved exploring, but she fancied she'd never been any good at walking.

Walking took not only patience but humbleness. It took admiration for your enviornment. You had to be able to look down at the path in front of you or up at the skies ahead of you and wonder at their beauty. That came easy to Twi only when she wasn't walking. Sitting and listening to stories, it was easy to lose yourself in a sense of wonder. Living a story was a very different thing.

Twi thought one of the things that may have been in that sack was the diary she had tried to start writing. That was a lost cause now too, though whenever she thought about it, she felt like dropping to her knees and weeping. Even if she had dropped to her knees, though, the tears wouldn't have come, and she knew it. She hadn't cried when her father died. She remembered her eyes feeling wet, but there was never a moment when she dropped and wept for him.

The night he died was the first thing she remembered in her life with sparkling clarity. She could feel the streams of tears racing over her cheeks as her feet took her and the mountains came racing up to her, but she'd never wept. She'd never mourned. She got away in time, that was all that mattered; that's what her father had wanted of her. She lived with the Dragons and made friends and earned respect like she knew he had from his neighbors.

She remembered flying that night. She couldn't remember her father's death without remembering being picked up in the Dragon's jaw and flying, and she'd remembered many times. That had been one of the most spectacular things that had ever happened to her. Even when she rode on her mate Kira's back, it didn't compare to that first time, that first night.

Complete and utter horror followed by that inundation of bliss. There was something special about that. There was something wonderful, magical about that. It was either awful or beautifully ironic that she couldn't remember her father's death without smiling, smiling because that had been the night she'd flown for the first time. It felt like he'd given her a gift. Maybe that was true. But it had been a horrible gift to have had to give.

She knew why she'd chosen the thicket to sleep in last night. It had been cold and windy, and the trees had been shelter. There couldn't have been any more to it than that. That had been the beginning of the first forest for ages. The wall of trees was continuing on her left still now, huge Oaks and Redwoods. She was on a road taking her southwest after all.

It would likely be rain she'd have to contend with instead of snow in a few days, and that was a blessing in more ways than one. It was warmer today; that was another blessing. Though the wind was harsh and fast, and it was still close to freezing. She could tell that from her hard nipples. She smirked to herself and gave one a tweak. That was usually a good feeling.

She was trying to cheer herself up, and she knew it. With nothing left that she could think about, her mind went blank for a while. The wind got faster, whipping the canopy of the forest around like it was stirring watercolors. One of the suns would break out now and again, but it would never be really enough to lend any warmth to the grey day. There were no animals that she could see in the forest or the field. They knew better than to come out on a day like this. One foot in front of the other, down the path. She wondered where she was walking.

Suddenly those words flashed into her mind: "and I don't know where I was walking." They made her smile for some reason. They seemed bright; they seemed easy. Sad and dark they were, but something in the way they went together, flew through her mind, something about their rhythm comforted her. She smiled a little bit to admit it to herself: she didn't know where she was going.

And the nodded and noted it deep in her mind: one foot in front of the other, no matter which direction, would take her where she wanted to go. She had started out looking for adventure, now she just wanted to go home. The one thing those two goals had in common was, it didn't matter what path she chose, she'd get there in the end. She didn't know where home would be. She'd just have to find someplace.

She'd never written one poem in her life. She'd never really understood poetry. She was good at making words take the flow she wanted them to take, but never had she thought herself to have the skills of a poet. In the end, she probably didn't have nearly the potential for it she did for prose. But now, the words were coming to her mind, coming because she was letting them. She didn't know what they meant or how she could make them mean anything, but their rhythm was comforting to her. "And I don't know where I was walking." Something about that. She leaned on her staff and wept a while.

That night, Twi hunted and killed another Rabbit, praying solumnly for it. She managed to dig up a sweet potato and roast that too. The fire was warm, and the night was dark. Then it was grey morning again.

Birds have a language all their own. They sing happily, freely when you can just barely hear them and you're none of their concern. Then when you get under the tree they're in, the call becomes shrill and harsh. Because they're afraid of you, that makes you their enemy, and there's nothing you can do to make them not afraid of you. Any creature, no matter how gentle, would kill another, even one as beautiful as a dove, if it was their only hope to survive. It's written into the code, the code that makes living things go on living.

Anger keeps us alive too. Anger is what makes us able to overcome our inherent goodness in order to survive. Have you ever seen a dying bird? How about a mother trying to defend her eggs from a Snake? When she has something to defend, she'll sing, sing a shrill song, but the song will be made beautiful by her circumstance. A mother away from her nest, if she's broken her wing, will lie on the ground in silence, never moving. Then the Snake will eat her rather than her eggs. Is not then the silence more beautiful than the song?

The next moment Twi could remember was that night just after the second sun had set, at true dusk. She broke briefly out of her endless, reciprocal cycle of emotion and logic. On the ground, she saw a dying Bird. The Bird could have been lying there since midday, wings bent backwards. The blood she had spilled from a gash across her back had soaked into the leaves around her. The night had come, and tonight, she would freeze to death. It would be slow and painful for her, like being slowly consumed by a Snake, burnt by it's acid tongue.

Twi's soul, kind and guilty, told her to crush the Bird to death with her staff. Her mind, moral and cold, told her she couldn't interfere with the plans Nature had laid out for every living being. It was the conflict between her soul and mind that brought her strength, but it was also that conflict which brought her indecision. She wanted to bring a peace to the land, lasting peace between the Dragons and the Unicorns, but she had a lot to learn about the real world first. Killing the Bird or not, she had accepted that choice, and now she was responsible. In the end, she closed her eyes, knelt, and prayed; picked the Bird up; and cracked back her neck. The Bird would never sing again.

It was dark now, getting colder. One of the moons tonight was new, the other only a sliver, and that covered up with the clouds still flowing over her from the daytime. She walked on, the arm holding her staff shaking, scared and tired. She might have brought a map from the clan with her, and she had considered it, but the only maps they drew were of the northern province they moved about in. No one had charted any area outside of the borders in which they were tolerated.

She'd been keeping track by the stars, and altogether she'd traveled around five hundred kilometers, she guessed. She had no clue where the area she had been was with respect to any of the roads that crossed this land or any of the towns in it. She did know that she'd started out in colder-than-temperate conditions and was now in warmer-than-temperate ones. It hadn't snowed yet today.

There was a hill up ahead, one of the first she'd seen in a long time, along with a wide river the path she was following was coming up to meet. These were on her right as she walked towards them. She'd make it over that hill, then rest for the night. Food and drink wouldn't be too hard to come by with a river, and that was a blessing, especially considering she'd left her pack behind at the start of the day. She didn't know what she had been thinking; her hatchet had been in it. But she'd killed last night's Rabbit with her claws. That's how she'd have to catch fish, too.

She had cried again this morning, out of sadness. That wasn't something that happened very often. The morning had been bleak, empty, not right for that kind of expression. It felt out of place, like a stain on white silk, and she was ashamed. Only now she realized she'd never been on her own before, and too late. Too late to realize how dependent she was, or had become: one of those.

Had she ever been happy? Had she been the victim of a growing sadness since she'd been a little girl? Had she just been covering it up, telling herself lies all her life? Again, she didn't know, and she didn't know what had posessed her to come here. But this place was empty. Right and wrong were starting to seem like forks in the road to her. One was left and one was right, and both would take you places, so how could one be happy for being right or sad for being wrong? It didn't matter. It didn't matter. Time, morality, fact, they'd all become inconsequential. She didn't care if she died.

She felt like killing herself. Out of anger. She had been a fool to leave her life with the tribe. She thought maybe she could build her own life elsewhere, away from those that weren't like her. It was something that little girls want, to run away from home. She'd always thought something out here was calling her, but now she couldn't hear it.

Instead, she decided something from home must have been pushing her away. Being there had stopped feeling right, and now, inevitably, she wondered what right was. But scolding herself wouldn't do any good, not now. Going back had never been an option. It wasn't now because of the distance; it wasn't before because she'd made up her mind.

She should follow what she thought was right, that's what she kept telling herself, rambling on in her own head without anyone to listen to the nonsense. But really, without knowing where she was, what she was doing, or what had been calling her in the first place, she couldn't think anymore. Her mind kept going around and around in circles, bringing up little stories, circumstances, theories to play with--and they all contradicted each other and sounded stupid to her at the same time. The world around her got fuzzy again.

At one point, she made it to the base of the hill; she remembered that. It was the middle of the night. Her eyes were drooping and her legs were weak. Her forehead felt hot. The wind was blowing the black clouds overhead with incredible speed, and it was whipping around the branches of the trees. The river rushed by on her right, almost at ground level but wide, not compared to all the rivers in the world, she supposed; but standing next to it and hearing its roar, she was humbled.

The hill in front of her was scraggly: large boulders and shale covering the ground in between. It's the kind of hill her father would have told her not to climb because she'd scrape her knee, and how she cried when she did that. The hill was wide and deep, but not tall. She could see the top from the ground: a cliff overhanging the river, almost part of the hill on the other side. The two sides had once been one hill, and the river had divided it running through. The first cold moon was rising over the hill: a huge, white spot on a black sky.

Suddenly it occured to her that she was standing at the center of a giant basin and that she had been walking downhill, down the side of it, for days. The basin had once been a humungous lake, a hundred kilometers wide and long and deep, and that the range of hills she was standing in front of was once at the bottom of that lake. It had dried and redistributed over the thousands of years, and this river was all that was left of it.

When the lake was almost completely dry, the remaining water at the very bottom had found or formed a groove in the ground, hollowed out this hill from the top down. The first lesson in becoming a Ranger had been "if you follow a river, it will lead you to the sea." Mostly metaphoric, but it was true in the practical sense as well. She'd make it over this hill tonight, then rest, she kept telling herself It was starting to drizzle a cold rain.

It was as if this were truly the only metaphor suited to describing her deeply complicated, blurred, confounded existence. It was as if all her life were her going in and out of a dream, though perhaps it was meaningless to distinguish between in and out. Reality was a concept mostly represented in her mind by vague tendencies toward thought.

And whenever she had a need for reality, it was impossible for her to see it as it was. Reality, what she called it, had always made itself known to her through logical rationalization of her feelings at the time. And she was no seer. The more words that came out of her mouth in her defense, the less she knew what she was talking about.

It would be more difficult going down the hill than it had been climbing up. In a sense, that was a general truth. The wind whipped by her face so fast at the top of that hill that she almost could ignore how hot her forehead was, how hot it was in between her breasts, under her tail. The place at the top of the hill, the jutting out of rock over the river where the hill she was on eternally strained to reach the hill opposite.

The roar of the river was deafening. Up here, there was nothing to the world but the rock she was sitting on, the roar of the river, the star-speckled night sky, the gigantic moon, and the chill wind. It would be hard going down the other side of the mountain, so here she sat, practically unconscious, abruptly staring straight ahead into nothing.

It was morning and she lay on a bed of moss looking out of a thicket of trees. She had the strong feeling she'd been here before. How many times had she woken up before without being able to remember anything? Birds were chirping in the trees, the suns were behind her in the east; it was morning. Her whole life before now, it seemed like a long, hard dream. It might have been. But then again, that was something she felt every day.

Which direction had she been going? Her head felt like it was being ripped apart, and one tender touch revealed the wide gash she'd suffered to her forehead. The wound had been dressed and was healing well. Had she done that? Either it was a very, very hot day, or she was suffering the delusions of an incredible fever. She could feel the copious beads of sweat trickling down between her breasts.

Blessed, blessed, cooling rain! Suddenly the whole world was taken with it. Cold, harsh, cooling rain, down from the heavens, straight down through the canopy above her. The humidity resting still above the plains outside of the thicket. She closed her eyes and felt as she was pummeled with thousands of tiny droplets all over her body. The wind had died down since last night. The rain only blew around enough to soothe her. There was no thunder or lightening, no falling branches.

Suddenly there was no hunger or worry in her belly anymore, suddenly there was a wonderful heat and wetness between her legs. She was suffering an incredible fever. She needed to be fucked, fucked by a male with a huge pole, before it consumed her. She raised her body up to sitting. It was a need that drove everything else out of her mind.

"Please!" she screamed into the air, tears running fast down her face, mixing with the rain, nipples hard from the cold, crotch on fire, head being torn apart.

A Noctowl spun down from a branch above her and landed by her side. She was beautiful: a red, a deep passionate red, nearly brown. Plumage full, stance strong and proud--yet awkward. Her face cute, alluring. Her voice danced with the perfection of the rain splattering on the leaves.

"You need something?" she asked seriously.

Twi said nothing, staring, a look of irrational hatred crossing her face.

"You're ill. You have nothing to hide from me right now," the Owl told her. "Lie down."

The sound of her voice moved Twi to do so like a shackles binding her neck. The Yoshi looked over at the Owl.

"Take these," said the Owl, her voice calm. Dreamlike, she used her wings to open a small hide bag she had strapped to her breast and scoop out a pile of red berries along with a couple pieces of bark. "Eat the berries, then suck on the bark. It'll take care of the pain. Your fever was higher last night. It'll pass you by. Let the rain cool you."

Twi did as she said in silence, then she said "now sleep," and Twi did. Twi's dream was of a constant, painful white light.

It was evening, and the Owl swooped down again. "You need water," she said and took off her bag. She handed the bag to Twi with her beak. It was full of cool water, and there was more of it than Twi thought could possibly fit in a skin that size. Her thirst had disappeared by the time the water was gone. The Owl patiently waited until Twi had drunk, then she asked, "need more?"

"No," said Twi aloud.

The Owl smiled, "fine," and sat down on her feet off a little to Twi's right.

"Why have you been taking care of me?"

"That question," said the Owl, her head half turned out towards the field, "is for another time." It was still raining, but it hadn't snowed, at least, and except for the wind, it was warm for winter.

"Fine," said Twi, turning her head to face back up into the canopy. The two passed a few moments in silence. There would be no need for thanks. This was her companion now. Or maybe it was more like she had always been and it was only just now they were meeting. It was as if the Owl was the Dragon who had saved her.

"Your fever is gone?" asked the Owl.

"It's balanced with the rain," Twi told her.

She nodded and looked away again.

"...Who are you?" Twi asked into the canopy far above her. The question seemed almost superfluous.

"My name?" she said. "Artemis."

"How did I get here?" Twi asked her.

"You fell. If you had fallen forward into the river, you'd be gone. You passed out, and you rolled down the hill backwards. You should have broken your spine."

"That's how I got this cut?" She reached up to touch the mush the blood had formed over the scar in her forehead.

"You hit your head on a stone. The Goddesses want you to survive, else you'd be dead," Artemis said.

"I'm hungry," said Twi.

"You'll throw it up," said Artemis.

Again they were silent. Artemis just sat there. Twi closed her eyes again.

The rain was steadily falling, and the buzzing in Twi's ears had left her enough that she could hear the Frogs over it. She'd been chewing on the bark Artemis had brought her, and the pain from the gash had gone completely for the moment. The fever still burned.

Artemis was looking out through the trees to the blanket of rain and darkness. "You're in heat," she said. "It's making your fever worse."

Twi blushed and didn't respond except by turning away. Then she got to her knees on the moss and sat down crosslegged, facing the bird.

"I've been smelling you all day," Artemis said, trying to be calm but faltering a little in her voice.

"Girls excite you?" asked Twi.

"I'm lesbian," Artemis told her.

"I'm gonna paw. You can watch me if you want," said Twi awkwardly.

"Something about the rain always makes my heart beat very fast," said Artemis, looking at her.

"I'm so wet..." Twi whispered, shivering in excitement and anticipcation.

The Owl blushed. "You shouldn't."

Twi blushed hard and looked down for a second; then her gaze was drawn back up to Artemis: those beautiful, rich feathers, soaked from the rain. "I know," Twilight said.

"Get some rest, okay?" Artemis said quietly.

"I just had some. I'm not sleepy at all anymore," Twi said almost belligerently. Then neither of them said anything for a little while, and Twi relaxed a little, feeling dizzy, watching the smoky image of Artemis staring out into the rain.

"It's not just your heat, the fever," said Artemis once. "You've been ill for days. How long have you been on the road?"

"I can't remember. Maybe days, maybe weeks." As soon as she was done saying it, Twi felt herself shake her head erraticly as if she was trying to fling something off it. Suddenly she felt very out of place, like she was floating. What she'd just said, it sounded like it had come out of someone else's mouth, and the content of the message had frightened her more than almost anything had in her life.

How many days had she woken up before now without being able to remember anything? Could she really trust anything she saw, heard, knew? How long had it been since she'd left her life with the Dragons? Had she had a life with them in the first place or had she just been imagining it? She knew better. She had memories.

But the very substance of them was suddenly something she found herself questioning very much against her own will. Just how long had she been on the road? Why had she ever left her life before? There'd been a reason, but there was little point in trying to remember it now.

Twi was looking down on herself, watching her body shake with chill and fear. She saw Artemis next to that, looking down. She looked as if she were praying or sobbing. Twi herself, floating in the air, she felt warm and happy. She closed her eyes.

It was still nighttime next time she opened them. She was lying back on the ground, and her body felt cooler overall. The rain was still coming down. It felt nice. She put her hands over her head and stretched, still lying on the moss. Her legs ached like a Bitch. When she shifted around to make herself comfortable, Artemis looked over. It was like she hadn't moved the whole time.

"Welcome back," she said.

"How did you know I was gone?" was Twi's unhesitating reponse.

Artemis didn't say anything in return.

"Don't you ever sleep?" Twi asked her, sitting up, wincing for a second at the pounding in her head but ultimately finding it tolerable.

Artemis chuckled. "You're feeling better. I'm taking care of you, dumbshit. I can go without an hour's sleep." (Artemis was turned away, but she seemed to be smiling, and the escalation of insults seemed to be supportive of that theory.) Twi giggled softly.

Then Artemis hopped off of the log where she'd been perched and walked towards Twi, a tear running from her eye. She used her wing to feel Twi's forehead, cheeks, and heart. Twi almost burst into laughter when Artemis started feeling around her tits. The Owl smirked. "Don't get any funny ideas. Your head feel okay?"

"Ya," said Twi.

"Your fever is almost gone" Artemis said. "Your head is healing nicely. Do you remember anything from the past few days?"

Twi thought about it for a second. "Not really," she answered, brushing it off lightly.

"That's not unusual."

"Where am I?" Twi asked her.

"In a valley near the farmlands near Obb."

Twi blinked. "Where's that?"

"Near the two middle borders. You mean you're not from here? How did you get here, for Heaven's sake?"

"You mean I'm near the center of the continent?" asked Twi, disregarding the question.

"You're very lucky to be alive right now, you know," Artemis told her, doing the same.

"Gods," said Twi. "I used to live up in the north! With a Dragon tribe. We were nomads."

Artemis stood looking at her for a couple seconds, unable to get her beak around the right words. "...nomads? It's like you're from the past! No one does that anymore."

"I wasn't born with them. They took me in after my village burned down. The Dragons came to kill me; my father got killed defending me."

Artemis said nothing, just hung her head. Twi was pretty sure that was meant to be a sign of respect. The Owl didn't say anything until after Twi spoke again.

"Another Dragon came to save me after I ran away. He picked me up and brought me to be with the Gushlar."

"The Gushlar? I've never..."

"It's okay. We kept very much to ourselves."

"Where were you?"

"Assar."

"Well, you came south for sure," Artemis said. "Why'd you leave them?"

"I can't remember." Twi looked like she was gonna cry for a second, but it passed. "I think I had to move on."

"We all do sometimes," said Artemis.

Twi smiled. "Ya, I think that's right."

The Yoshi scooted back against a tree and patted the ground next to her, which made Artemis look at her in befuddlement till Twi said, "Come sit by me, Arts?"

Artemis giggled as she did, happily. "Arts?" She smiled happily, closing her eyes for a moment. "I like that."

"I can't believe I can talk with you," Twi said.

"What do you mean?"

"Well... I can't get along with just anyone. A lot of people bore me. It has to be a special person."

Artemis cackled. "Maybe you're just immature."

Twi blushed angrily but said, "maybe."

Artemis sat down on her behind like an anthro would and put her legs straight out in front of her instead of standing or sitting perched on anything, which Twi found a little odd. And it was just about then when the two noticed the sound of the rain was gone except for what was coming down off the leaves.

"Ummm..." Artemis quivered a bit, the two looking at each other awkwardly now.

Twi bit her lip. "It's a cool night, huh?"

"Yea..." Artemis said, nervous. She had a feeling Twi was getting ready to pounce her.

"How'd you find me?" The Yoshi asked her.

"Huh?"

"When I was at the base of the hill."

"Later," Artemis told her.

"...Oh, kay..."

The two returned to looking awkwardly at each other, sometimes out into the trees around them. Barely able to see each other, anything that the light of the moons or the stars didn't touch was blackness. Crickets and Frogs chirruped to the cool breeze.

"You know," Artemis burst out suddenly, "you shouldn't find it strange that I wanted to take care of you."

"I don't!" said Twi, looking at her. "But I... um... I'm not really sure how to feel or... I mean... It's surprising, is all. I thought I was on my own. I didn't expect to meet anyone new. And it's weird talking with a stranger so intimately."

"You kinda ran away from home, didn't ya?" said Artemis.

"Ya, kinda," Twi told her.

"Where were you going?"

"I have no idea. I don't think I knew."

"I couldn't find your supplies anywhere around. And it was dumb to be traveling alone anyway! I have no idea what you did to survive. You must have not been carrying anything at all."

"My staff!" Twi's back straightened with a jolt. "Did you find my staff?"

"No. Calm down," said Artemis. "We'll look for it tomororrow. Right now, you sleep. You need it, trust me. You may not feel tired at this very, very moment, but you will as soon as I'm away. Besides, I haven't had anything to eat for a while."

"Okay. Bye, Arts!" She was starting to seem more and more like a funny little kid to Twi than she had before. Truth be told, Artemis was almost four years older, but it was a little hard to tell. Maybe it wasn't so hard to make friends, after all.

The Owl disappeared into the forest, and Twi lay down on the moss on her side, tenderly feeling the healing gash in her forehead. She slept very, very soundly that night.

Truth isn't something that we as people can locate very easily. It appears that there's only one way things can progress, then we're surprised when they turn out totally differently. Plans only seem locked in place when we're too confident in them to change our minds. Sometimes when we're dreaming, there are clues that we're living in our heads. Things not happening quite logically, that's one clue, or when events don't quite seem to connect with one another. Huge leaps in time and people fading in and out conveniently, as they're needed, that can be another. Sometimes a dream is too real. Sometimes one fits in with our perceptions so perfectly that we never think to question it much less doubt it.

Not getting enough sleep is hard. Your eyes go blurry, things in front of you seem just a little bit out of proportion. After about a week on an hour of sleep a night, it gets hard to walk without losing your balance. And things start to repeat, conveniently, as if someone were trying to tell you something, then you wake up. As soon as you move even one muscle, the dream disappears, fades in a cloud of mist, and you go through the day like nothing's changed. But that's because what has changed is buried too deep to look at. With each dream, something fundamental shifts inside us.

Twi woke up, but she could barely open her eyes. Her head was pounding; little, sharp tacks shooting through it; and her legs felt like they had heavy weights on top of them. From what little she could see in the dark, she could tell she wasn't in the forest on the bed of moss anymore; there was a wooden roof over her head.

She let her eyes fall closed again. She kind of chuckled quietly to herself about the idea of "the forest." That's how she thought of it. She'd seen so much of the same scenery over the past few days, it seemed like only one place.

She wasn't in heat anymore, that was for sure. Her thighs were soaking, but that was sweat. She didn't feel the least bit horny, at least not like she had the night before. She must have lain there for half an hour, just concentrating on the pain from her forehead. It was itching like crazy, too, which was a good sign; meant it was starting to scab over.

At one point, she tried to turn to her side, but her head would by no means let her. Any movement at all seemed to stir up the painful electricity inside her skull sitting there in little unstable clouds just waiting for the slightest agitation. Not to mention, moving made her nauseated.

One thing was for sure, and that was that she was thinking much more clearly now than she had been able to for a long time. Even with the pain, her thoughts seemed relatively unimpeded. Her body wasn't burning or chilled, her crotch wasn't on fire, and she wasn't going crazy with the stress of having to find a place to stay the night.

Though she liked being on the road a great deal, somehow the idea of having a roof over her head made her feel very comfortable. She let herself relax for the first time in a long time. She noticed her deep, even breathing, and then she must have fallen asleep for another couple hours because the next moment she was conscious, her head hurt a lot less, and her stomach wasn't bothering her anymore, either.

She opened her eyes quite comfortably now--to the same warm roof--and breathed in deeply at the same time, making her aware of the room's musky, sweet smell. Incense, no doubt about it, maybe some drying wood and pheremones too.

"I'm glad you're awake," came Artemis's voice tenderly from next to her, like a mother's voice. Only, when Twi turned to look, the Owl wasn't there, and she turned this way and that in confusion. "Over here, silly!" the voice came from the corner of the room in front of Twi and to her left.

Twi looked over and confirmed the Owl's location by her gleaming yellow eyes. "Artemis?"

The eyes blinked twice. "How the hell do you know my name?" The voice seemed very frightened all of a sudden.

Now it was Twi's turn to blink in confusion. "You... you saved me. When I fell down the hill, you spent days taking care of me in the forest."

"Well, that's true..." the Owl responded slowly, hesitating a great deal, between almost every pair of words, as if she was struggling to explain. "I did take care of you after you fell. You cut your forehead wide open on a boulder as you fell, and you barely survived," she related a little too matter-of-factly for Twi's comfort, "but we were never in a forest. I found you while I was flying one day, and I got help and brought you directly back here."

"That's impossible!" exclaimed the Yoshi, getting frightened herself now and trying to sit up (though finding it too painful to, ultimately). "It was at least one day, a morning and an evening. I remember talking with you! So clearly! And you brought me medicine and water and we were about to fuck, but..."

"Excuse me???" Artemis burst out, audibly ruffling her feathers up. "I absolutely do not know you, and you're lucky you survived, and I did take care of you, but it was here, and so maybe you shouldn't be starting out with these insinuations!"

Twi blinked. Maybe she was telling the truth, impossible though that seemed. It had been for quite a while now that Twi had been getting the feeling that she didn't quite live in the same world as everyone else. Maybe she'd somehow done something to enter an alternate reality or something to make everyone forget what had happened. That might explain it.

"Okay, forget it," the Yoshi said after a moment. "But somehow, I know your name. It is Artemis, isn't it?"

"Yes, it is," the eyes said, "but I'm not quite sure how... Sometimes we dream about real events, things we've actually experienced, muddled and changed by our minds in weird ways, but... We can't look into the future. No one, I don't care what kind of abilities they have, can do that. There are too many different possibilities to be able to predict which one for sure will happen. The very notion of predicting the future is a little ridiculous. What I'm saying is..."

"What you're saying is," Twi said, "I shouldn't have been able to dream about you since I've never met you before."

"That's right. That's absolutely what I'm saying." (The intellectual discussion seemed to be calming the Bird down some.) "And see, I don't know your name, so..."

"I'm Twilight," the Yoshi said. "Call me Twi, ya?"

"Twilight." Artemis smiled and repeated it. "Twilight." She seemed almost obsessed over it, like it was something that held great blessing or great irony. She seemed to get over it after a moment, though. (She seemed a little obsessive on the whole, maybe a little different from what she'd seemed like before, but maybe it was just the situation.)

"That's a pretty name," she concluded finally, as if she'd been sloshing around a sip of wine in her beak for the past minute and was just now spitting it out.

Twi giggled and blushed, feeling compimented to an unexpected degree. "Thank you," she said genuinely.

"Well..." Artemis said, getting up and crossing to the opposite corner of the room where she lit a candle, "Did I act the same in your dream as I am now? Did I look the same as I do now?" Artemis asked.

"...Kinda," Twi replied after a moment spent squinting at the light. Arts seemed convinced that it had been a dream. Oh well. "...Where are we, Arts?" the Yoshi asked, looking around the bare, Japanese-style room.

Artemis giggled. "Arts?" She smiled happily, closing her eyes for a moment. "I like that. Anyway, I'm afraid we'll have to wait on where we are," she said immediately. "There's something else needs to be explained to you first."

"Ah... okay," Twi said, about to protest but thinking better of it.

Then Artemis got up. "I'm going to go get my mate. Hold on a minute." Without further explanation, she went over, opened the shouji that was the border of the room to Twi's left, and left the room without bothering to close the shouji behind her.

The Yoshi took the time she was alone now to look around the room. The room was similar to what you might see in a Fox-tribe's home. She might have guessed, even without the candle, that it was that style; she was lying in a futon on the floor in the middle of the sparse room. The room itself, there was something very calming about it, maybe because of its simplicity.

There were neatly folded piles of clothes along the wooden wall at her right, a low table in each corner with either a candle or an incense burner sitting in it, and that was it except for a longer table, just as low, against the wall behind her. By a couple windows in the wall to her right, she could see it was nighttime outside: a pretty cloudy one at that; there was hardly any moonlight coming in at all.

Into the room stumbled a pretty sleepy looking male Noctowl. But even dischevled as he was at the moment, his immense beauty stood out. His silver plumage was so pure it made him look like a patch of moonlight found its way down to Naaiyar. His eyes (when she could see them) shined a brilliant but soft blue, the shade matched perfectly with the color of his feathers.

He looked strong and masculine yet kind and softhearted. And not at all threatening, at least in his current state. He kind of stumbled into the room, rubbing his eyes with his wings, which were wide and graceful. He was a really fine specimen.

Artemis followed him in, shutting the shouji behind her this time. She and the male came up to her feet and stood there smiling for a second, letting the Yoshi look them over together.

Then the male said, "My name is Demetrius. I am Artemis's mate. It is truly a pleasure to finally meet you." He bowed to Twi, and she nodded her head in return. To her sensibility, he seemed overformal by a great deal, but she realized from her schooling that this was how Owls were groomed by their society.

Speaking without contractions and in very simple sentences, always keeping up physical appearances, never shy to present himself: these were the things Twi picked up by his presentation. He must have been a very high class member of his community, possibly even royal.

Twi thought he was a little silly, but at the same time found herself deeply impressed and attracted to him. He seemed very well mannered without being uptight, the kind of male that would make just about any girl's heart melt.

"Hello," Twi said, honestly a little flustered, to a soft chuckle from him.

"We..." Artemis began, but Twi jumped in:

"Sorry to interrupt, but aren't you two nocturnal? It's nighttime and Demetrius, you were asleep, weren't you?"

"Yes, but..." he started.

"We're not nocturnal," Artemis butted in. "We aren't Owls, remember; we're Noctowls. Most pokemon are closer to mammals than to the species they resemble, if that species isn't a mammal itself..."

"What Artemis is trying to say," said Demetrius, "is that it would not be accurate to assume we are nocturnal simply because we resemble Owls. I assure you, we are very much diurnal."

Twi blinked, feeling herself blush hot from the deep, rich voice that he spoke with but which didn't seem to quite belong to him. "I... I'm sorry for waking you up, then," she managed clumsily.

Demetrius chuckled softly. "It is not something that you need to worry about. How is your head?"

The effect his voice was having was that she couldn't quite concentrate on what he was saying, exactly, just how he was saying it. She stared blankly at him until he looked at Artemis for guidence.

"He asked how your head was," she told the Yoshi, looking like a fit of giggles was creeping up on her and she was just about to fail miserably at avoiding it.

"Oh!" Twi burst out, suddenly breaking her long stare at the male. "It's... it's okay," she said, putting her hand up to touch the scar, touching it too forcefully, and wincing. That was the last straw for Artemis, and the giggles burst out of her more like caws of laughter loud enough to wake the neighborhood.

Demetrius shot an obvious sidelong glance of disapproval at his mate but didn't bother to stop her from enjoying herself. "I, for one, am glad you are alright," he said, implying that it seemed Artemis didn't, what with her clear lack of respect for the situation. "I cannot keep it from you," he went on, "you almost perished. You only escaped it by a swift wing."

"So I've been hearing," Twi said. Then something clicked. "Wait! Artemis! You told me you were lesbian. How are you and he mates?"

"What??" she cawed right away, breaking out of her giggles instantly and looking up at the Yoshi. "I absolutely did not tell you that!"

"Um, in the forest," Twi qualified.

Artemis blinked and calmed down. "In your dream I told you I was lesbian?"

"Um," said Twi again, "I don't think it was a dream, but..."

"It totally was," Artemis insisted.

"Whatever it was!" Twi said, "I have the recollection that you told me you were, but... you're not?"

(Demetrius was looking rather amused watching the two girls sqabble, looking both more awake now and happy that Twi was doing alright.)

"No," Artemis said, "I most certainly am not lesbian. Females appeal to me, but so do males and herms, thank you. I've never even gotten how someone can be attracted to only one or two sexes, anyway."

"Oh," Twi said kind of blankly, not feeling the need to continue. "Okay."

"I never," Artemis mumbled just for the superfluity.

Twi felt herself getting a little frustrated at how far the conversation had gone astray, so she shook her head and burst out, "Anyway! Where am I? Where is this? I feel like I've already asked that a great many times."

"Okay, okay," Artemis said.

"You are in the city of Obb," Demetrius said in an attempt at helpfulness, "not twenty kilometers from either the north-south or the east-west border."

"See, that's what Artemis told me before, just about, in my 'dream,'" said Twi.

Demetrius blinked. "I do not understand. What is this dream you keep mentioning?" he asked.

"She thinks I took care of her in a forest near here," Artemis told him, turning. "She had a dream about the whole thing, and it seems like it was a pretty clear, convincing one, but it doesn't make any sense. Why would I keep her in a forest instead of bringing her to the city? And how would I even have gotten her as far as a forest without help? It's dumb. The thing is, I was in it. She'd never even heard my name spoken before, and here I was, body and spirit, in her dream."

Demetrius seemed not quite sure how to take that. "That... is a little odd" is what finally came out.

"Okay, okay," the Yoshi butted in, "dream or no dream, I somehow already knew we were around Obb... though I didn't know we were in it till now, actually, thanks... but, um, what I meant was, like... whose house is this?"

"It is owned by a friend of our master," said Demetrius, turning back from his mate to Twi.

"Who is?"

"I do not see why it would make a difference to you," he responded, "as there is no way you would know them, but the friend is named Spark, and our mistress is named Dusk. Mistress Dusk is keeping the house while Sir Spark is on vacation. In any case, they are both upright-standing anthopomorphic Yoshies like you are."

Twi's eyes opened wide. "You mean there are more?"

"More?" Demetrius replied, befuddled.

"She means she's never seen another Yoshi before," Artemis told him. "You didn't know your parents?"

"Um, I did, one of them, at least," Twi said. "But, ah, my father was a Human, and my mother was a non-anthro, and I thought that was how anthro Yoshies were made."

"Oh my Heavens," exclaimed Artemis, "a first-gen."

Twi couldn't really tell if that was an exclamation of suprise or of worry or what, but Demetrius didn't seem too affected by it.

"In a fantastic conflation of terms," he began (and you know an excellent sentence has to follow an opening like that), "we use 'first-gen' to describe anthros who have Human fathers and mothers of their matching species. It makes very little sense, if you ask me. We refer to a set of creatures all born around the same time as a generation; not those born at a specific point in a line," he said.

"Oh shut up," Artemis told him, "we do both, and you know it. You're just making trouble."

"I am not!"

"You are too!"

"I am not!" (At this point, the two owls turned their backs to each other and looked huffy, and Twi bit her lip in felicity.)

Having just seen exactly what made the two Owls a great couple and harbouring a wide grin from it, Twi cleared her throat to get their attention again, and on cue, they both turned back to her, grinning themselves, proud of their display. "I would very much like to meet another Yoshi," Twi said. "Is your mistress at home?"

They both shook their heads. "Nope," Artemis said. "She's been away for a couple of days now. He had to head back to Ru to take care of some business. It's the next city south of here, and it's where we normally live, um, when we're not taking care of someone else's house."

"You two are here alone?" Twi asked, hardly able to believe it.

"We can take care of things just fine!" Artemis squawked. "Besides, we're not alone anymore. You're here now."

Twi's head was starting to spin. "You know, a lot of this story makes very little sense at all," she said, to which she literally facepalmed because that was the kind of thing Artemis might say, that was understandable but didn't really make grammatical sense if you listened closely to it.

"I am sorry to hear that," Demetrius said, which didn't really solve anything.

Owls were confusing. They seem pretty normal on the surface, when you first get to talking with them, but you slowly start to realize that something is just very subtlely off about them. Then again, these were the first two Owls Twi had ever met. Maybe it was just these two.

"Okay," Twi said, "tell me this." She took a moment to collect her thoughts, during which both Artemis and Demetrius finally, after a great deal of conversation, took the chance to sit down (like normal Owls would, by simply bending their legs). "Okay," Twi started. "Few quick questions, ya?"

"Yea," Artemis responded unnecessarily.

"Okay," Twi said again. "First, how did you get me from the base of the hill to here?"

"When I saw you," Artemis answered, "I came down, and when I saw how badly you were bleeding, I knew I needed to get you to town right away. So I flew back, and right away, I was lucky to find a Gryphon sleeping at his transit post. I woke him, we flew back, and he brought you back here and helped us see to you the first night."

"The first night?" Twi was confused again.

"You have been here four days and nights already. This would be the fifth night you have been here," Demetrius said.

"I don't know what's going on!" Twi exclaimed, then winced because her head wasn't liking how emphatic she was getting. "I thought there was a forest..."

"There was no forest," Artemis insisted.

"Yes, I know, but..."

"May I endevor to explain?" Demetrius put in.

"Please!" Twi told him.

"I believe Artemis is correct in her assumption that you were having a dream. I do not know the content of this dream or how long it lasted, but it seems it is a state your mind fell into to keep itself alive. You have had a high fever every one of the nights you were here. Despite the dressing we put on your wound and the cleaning, the gash was so wide it was no surprise it got infected. Often we would hear you tossing in your futon or screaming, and we would regularly bathe you in cool water and feed you mashed berries or pour water down your throat."

"So you think..." Twi started, but Demetrius went on:

"I believe you were conscious up until the point when you fell from the hill, then perhaps..."

"You relived the past few days in your dream," Artemis said. "That makes a lot of sense, doesn't it?"

"Okay," said Twi. "That part makes sense. Parts of the past week I can remember, and parts I can't. Like I can remember sitting on top of the hill, but I can't remember climbing it. Fine. But what about the part where Artemis was taking care of me in the forest? How was that part so accurate? I saw Artemis, and she told me her name, and she seemed attracted to me."

"I am attracted to you," Artemis said.

"See?" Twi continued but then stopped and blushed. "Um, thanks!"

"I cannot explain that," said Demetrius. "Its accuracy is puzzling. Still, it is not unusual for one's dreams to continue a story or to be affected by what one is perceiving subconsciously about their enviornment at the time of the dream."

"That's true," said Twi.

"What else do you remember from the it?" Artemis asked her.

"Well, I was in heat."

Demetrius blushed at the word, but Artemis immediately responded, "the sweat between your legs."

"Um," said Twi, "and rain, it was raining outside the forest, and there were Crickets."

"That is not surprising," said Demetrius, "since it is the rainy season here."

"But those are just convenient rationalizations," Twi said. "It still doesn't explain..."

"We know," said Artemis. "Don't get your feathers all ruffled up."

"The whole matter strikes me as relatively odd," said Demetrius to Twi in an Owlish expression that meant very little, "but I do not think it makes too much sense to think on it now. You might hurt your head again." He chuckled.

"Ha-ha," commented the Yoshi, smiling.

"Anyways," said Artemis, "we can talk more tomorrow. About this and other things. We've been talking nearly an hour, and Demetrius and I should be asleep. Twilight, I am truly glad you made it."

"Yes," said Demetrius. "And I have found it enjoyable to talk with you."

"As I with you," said Twi, bowing slightly to him. (She felt it was appropriate.)

With that, the two Owls smiled and left the room, Artemis shutting the shouji behind her. But a second later she reappeared through it and scuffled over to Twi and wrapped her wings tightly around the Yoshi. "Demetrius is shy," she whispered, "but he wanted to do this, too. We're very relieved. Don't take it the wrong way, but we were both sure you would die."

Twi smiled and hugged Artemis warmly back, closing her eyes. "It was thanks to you I didn't. In my dream... or whatever it was... before, I saw you praying for me. I know you and your mate took good care of me."

Artemis nodded, brushing soft feathers against Twi's shoulder. "We both did pray for you, often," she said.

Twi just hugged her tighter.

"Tomorrow will be a good day," Artemis said. "Your wound is healing wonderfully; we can go out and you can meet the community. Dusk will also be back by day's end, hopefully."

"That..." Then Twi paused for a moment. "...That's the best thing I've heard in a long time. I'm glad I was found, and I'm glad I'm alive, and I'm glad the two who took care of me are such friendly, wonderful creatures."

Artemis gave her an extra squeeze and let the Yoshi go. Twi lay back down on the pillows at her head and covered herself in the futon while Artemis went over and put out the candle. Then her voice came from the door: "goodnight, Twilight."

"Goodnight, Artemis."

The door shut.

Twi wasn't sure how she could still be tired, but she was. She wasn't hungry or thirsty, even after days of not eating, and she felt very warm and comfortable. She had found a home, at least for a while. It was like she had died and gone to Naai. She sat bolt upright, wondering if that were possible. But she brushed off the idea as ridiculous and lay back down in the futon, where she fell into a deep, calming, dream-free sleep.