She was a vision. The white sundress swayed around her legs, the soft cotton swishing as she walked towards him. His eyes roamed slowly, carefully, taking their time to map her form, watching how the fabric flowed freely, climbing her long legs in layers, the pleats giving it an almost soft, cloud like appearance. At her hips, the fabric was carefully, precisely gathered in with a thin belt like band, and from there it clung to her, hugging her curves and accentuating her features in all the right places. 

Midway up her chest, the crisp cleanness of the white was interrupted by a line of the ends of her hair, it’s thick chestnut shine a deep contrast. His eyes continued roaming, following the smooth locks to where they met with the roundness of her face, the smooth skin lightly tanned. He paused for a moment to study the fullness of her lips, the way that they remained plump and warm and inviting even when she smiled, a hint of pink on them, unlike most of the girls at her age who wore bright bold colours that reminded him of deliberately shocking paint splashed on a canvas. Lastly, he took in her eyes. They were bright, and twinkled, like deep pools, the hazel brown flecked with gold, and they reminded him very much of the eyes of a doe he’d seen last summer. They held the same gentleness and innocence and the sight of them caused the corner of his mouth to twitch, and pull up into a smile. 

It was the kind of smile that reached one’s eyes. The pure, genuine smiles that were rare and uncommon, especially for him. The type that were honest and true, not something forced onto a person’s lips to give an illusion of happiness when there was no meaning behind the gesture.

She stepped up to him, crowding him, and invaded his personal space. He could smell the fruity scent of her shampoo, feel the way the loose strands tickled at him in the light breeze, and feel the swish of her skirt against his jean clad legs. As his smile grew, wide enough to the point where his cheeks begin to ache just a little bit in the process, her lips curved into a smile to match his, her eyes shinning with joy.

“Hey.”

Was all he could say. His heart hammered in his chest and he was certain she could hear it, and he was struggling with the forming of words, especially with stringing more than one word together into a sentence, but he felt the need to say something.

“Hey back…”

She responded, with a grin. Her eyes dropping slightly, to stare at his mouth, her tongue flicking out gently to run across her lips and he felt very much like he would have melted, his knees turning to jello, if his back wasn’t pressed up against the trunk of a tree. 

Cherry lipgloss.

The scent of it had been tickling at his nose, and it finally dawned on him that that’s what he was smelling as he watched her bottom lip get pulled in between her teeth and nibbled. He wanted to taste it more than he wanted anything in this particular moment, and he leaned forwards ever so slowly, to do just that.

As his toes curled into the grass beneath his feet, his face easing close enough to feel her breath against him he slowly closed his eyes when suddenly something was touching his cheek but it was wrong and out of place and his brain struggled to try and put together why something small, and leathery and fur ringed would be touching him in this moment.

His body gave a grunt as the thing suddenly became sharp and four matching pinpricks of pain invaded his senses, and just as quickly the warm blue skies and the grass beneath him and the rough tree at his back melted away as his eyes slowly opened. 

They were met not with the brown doe eyes of the girl in his dreams (Or is itof his dreams?) but instead with the yellow-green slitted eyes of a rather grumpy looking feline who was perched on his chest, a paw on his cheek. 

He huffed at her then, the air blowing out of his nose in a mixture of frustration and sleepiness, and was replied to with a tap by the same paw.

“G’morning Princess…”  He mumbled tiredly at her, the low rumble of his voice, vibrating through his chest and being met with a purr.

As the words pass his lips, a thumping sound begins, and he feels theswishthump of something slapping into the mattress beside his leg in a slow and steady rhythm. At this, his lips slide into a smile, the true and genuine kind, and feels a head rest itself on his hip, it’s owner blinking up at him expectantly.

“An G’Morning to you too, Zeke.”

He smiles, raising his head enough to look down at the large, warm German Shepherd laying next to him, it’s body pressed tightly against him from his hip right to his toes and even beyond.

It’s then that the squirming begins. As though the beasts entire body had just been invaded by an army of fleas and it had an insatiable itch to scratch, the animal squirmed and wiggled and wriggled itself to a position on it’s back with all four paws in the air spread as far apart as canine-ly possible.

A rumble broke the silence again as his laugh eased from him, and his hand slid down over blankets and fur to rub the offered chest of the beast at his side for a few minutes. With the warmth of two furry bodies and the softness of his bed tugging at him, his eyes slowly slide closed again, and he slips back into a light sleep, hoping to return to his dream and the beautiful girl with the cherry lipgloss.

From somewhere in the back of his mind though, there is a niggling sensation of a need to get up and get his day started, as well as relieve the mounting pressure building to a certain level of urgency in his bladder, and he has the distinct impression if he doesn’t open his eyes and get movingnow he’s about to become a cat scratching post.

He eases one eye open, taking his time, and this time is met with the same feline eyes but they are now hovering at a point where he is nose to nose with an increasingly grumpy cat.

“A’right A’right…breakfast..I get it…”

He grumbles back at her, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes, before lifting the demanding little creature off of him and rolling to sit and eventually stand, stretching long and lazily, twisting and leaning this way and that, his fingers sliding down to the center of his chest to scratch where she’d been just a moment ago.

“Well…C’mon then you two..”

He rumbled at the two animals, opening the door in front of him and waiting for both to jump from his bed and he followed eight paws out through the doorway and into the morning.