I wake up in the morning and something feels missing. At first, I can't really place it- the pain is so numbing, but then I look over at where Lotus would usually be, pressed up against me, and I realize that she's not there. I scramble to my feet and my head hits thorns instead of gentle underbrush, grown with love by a mother who tried, and I choke back something foreign and decaying that's found it's way into my throat.

The forest fire.

The transformation.

My mother.

The angel.

So much has happened in one day, and I begin shaking furiously. My head is throbbing where at least fifteen thorns hit me at once, and with a scowl, and I leave the den, barely squeezing through the tiny exit.

Lotus and Aislyn are already up, both of them chatting idly while Aislyn suspends three large rabbits in the air. I'd hardly call it a feast, but it should be enough to get us up and keep us going for the long day's journey. Lotus herself is carrying a large bundle of herbs on her back, her tail swishing wildly as it threatens to dethrone the victuals she's carrying. I approach them slowly, ignoring the sting of several thorns in my back.

"Next time, let's find somewhere more comfortable to sleep." I say.

"Grumpy Nat's finally up! You were muttering in your sleep," Lotus informs me.

I find my fur go very hot very suddenly as I look at Aislyn, who is clearly taking all of this in, with wide eyes. "Lotus! Stop it! First of all, you're embarrassing, and second of all, it was probably because of all of these thorns! I could barely sleep at all."

"You could say the shelters are a real... thorn in your paw!" Aislyn says cheerily, and Lotus makes her chirruping giggling noise. The two of them have clearly hit it off.

I give them the dullest look I can muster. "Can I have that rabbit now?"

Lotus picks the rabbit out of the air and Aislyn releases her telekinetic grasp on the other two, which fall to the ground limply.

I quickly eat my portion, adding in some of Lotus's herbs to help us keep moving over the long journey and then try to pull thorns out of my fur with my teeth, which is a painstaking process that yields few results. I resort to slamming my leg against my side multiple times, trying to brush it off, but I realize quickly that I look ridiculous and that Lotus is watching me with gleeful eyes.

I get up with an air of subtle grace, trying to regain my composure, and begin walking. Lotus scrambles to one side of me and Aislyn quickly moves to the other, her gait relaxed but also a little quick. She keeps rushing up to things and then stopping. She sniffs every single flower, even sticking her nose practically right into a bee. Miraculously, it doesn't sting her and she ambles along to the next completely insignificant thing in the road.

Lotus is looking off into nowhere, leaving me as the only one who probably knows where we're going at all. I've been told that the sun sets behind the castle, which is set close to some cliffs overlooking a broad valley. We're on the other side of the valley, where the land starts high and continues sloping softly upwards until it drops off completely. Though the sun is rising, I can use its current position to extrapolate where it will be later.

I decide to break the silence, as I turn to Aislyn, who is watching butterflies on a nearby bush as we pass by it. She looks completely carefree, her tail wagging fiercely and her wings unevenly pressed against her side like she was too lazy to keep them any closer to her.

"It's nice to meet you. Formally." I say. "Last night was pretty hectic, so I don't know if that counts."

"It's nice to meet you too! I missed you so much, Nat!" she says cheerily. "I kept thinking about you while I was away, but I'm back now."
"What? Away? I have no idea what you're talking about! We've never met before last night." I say, a bit astonished.
"You don't remember me? That stinks. Honestly, Nat, I thought you'd at least remember who I am." Her voice is mockingly condescending. I don't think she means to be, but it still ruffles my fur.

"Please stop calling me Nat." I growl.

"Why not? We're friends, right? Plus, that's what I call you when-"

Unable to take her rambling, I cut her off. "I told you to stop! My mom died, my home burned to crisps, and I'm off on some crazy errand to talk to a queen that for all I know is probably too busy for us, but I wanted to go anyways just to get away from home! I've only ever had one friend in my life, and I definitely don't want anyone who doesn't understand how to respect my emotions or what I'm going through as my friend!" I snap. "I don't care about your stupid nickname! Back off!"

She steps backwards, fear in her eyes. "I..." She stops looking at the path at all, and her wings open and she flees down the road. Luckily, she's going in the same direction as us, and she lands about fifty paw lengths away and keeps walking alone (still within eyesight), but she folds her wings in and stops deviating from the path at all.

We stop at around midday to hunt, though Aislyn is brooding and Lotus is still out of it. I find some poor creature deformed by the flames, but its meat seems safe enough so I bring it back to the meet up point.

Lotus is staring into the bushes, her eyes ever so slightly narrowed. Her tail is pointed, her teeth are bared and her Verhamera's horns are flexed ever so slightly upwards. Her whole body is positioned as if she's about to strike.

"Are you alright?"

"Fine. I thought I heard someone in the bushes. It's just my imagination again."

"We don't know that. There's nothing wrong with staying vigilant." I say, half reassuringly, half dead serious. At this point, a rabid Canira could jump out of the bushes and flay us all alive and it wouldn't even be the oddest thing to happen to us lately. Of course, on the more plausible but also more dangerous side would be a Felis attack. The Felis are a race of smaller, angrier creatures with longer whiskers. Their abilities allow them to supercharge their senses in small doses, turning them into battle machines at will. Thankfully, like most of the other sentient races outside of Canii and Canira, they're quite rare and we don't have to deal with them very often.

I find myself pushing towards the bush as well. "Think it's a Felis?"

She blinks. "Could be. Whoever they are, they're fast."
"You should definitely scent it. You know what Felis smell like, right? There was one by camp-"

"When we were six sweeps of the seasons, Natrina!" She scoffs and takes a deep breath.
Immediately, she begins coughing, her eyes watering up as if she was choking on something.

"What's wrong?" I ask.

"It smells... oh, it just smells really smoky. I think the fire is overpaugh-" She goes into a coughing fit before resuming, "overpowering everything. I'll be fine."
"Alright then." I say quietly, "Food's ready."

The feast is quick, and not one of us eats together. There are no travelling herbs to spice our food this time, and we hurry along, with Lotus in the center of Aislyn and I, blissfully unaware of the conflict between us.

The rest of the day is carried out in almost painful silence. My eyes wander as much as Lotus's do, but that's mainly because I feel guilty. I'm on the opposite side from Aislyn and still I can feel the pure and utter defeat and sadness emanating from her, grasping at my heart and trying to crush it.

You did this, you did this, you hurt the feelings of the angel of Dreamland.

You deserve to feel awful, you monster.

We stop by a creek, which burbles happily along, unaware of the tension in the air. Lotus is sound asleep, though she's whimpering ever so slightly in her dreams. I decide not to stir her from her dreams, nightmare or otherwise. She needs the rest more than I do. Instead, I sit down by the river with Aislyn, all the anger from earlier drained into an empty loneliness.

"You can call me Nat if you want." I say quietly.

"No, I can't." She snaps.

"I- I won't be offended. Promise. I was just being silly."

"That's not why." she sounds just as hostile as before, a complete change in tone from earlier.

"Why not?"

"You're not my Natrina. You don't remember me at all." She sounds utterly defeated by this realization. "I know this is the right one, so that means the last one was just an offshoot. All of it was just a big mistake." She clenches her wings tighter against herself. "I let them down."

"What do you mean, offshoot? Mistakes? Not the same Natrina? Why can't anything you say make sense?!" I yell, and I realize once again I've scared her. She's almost like a pup, scared of anything that might be louder or more dominant than she is.

"Natrina... I'm a dimension traveller." she says softly. "I told you I fell out of Verhamera's palace and into another world, right?"
"You mentioned that."

"Yes, well... think of it this way." She gets a stick and levitates it, carefully drawing a dot in the ground and then takes her paws and scuffs it up, creating a large hole in the ground. "This is the beginning of the universe. Every world has their own interpretation of who or what started it. You know the story of the beginning, right?"

"Yes," I say, confused as what this has to do with anything. "The Terreskians existed in nothingness in the mystical void until a great burst of light rose overhead. They followed it and one amongst their members had a child, Verhamera, who was born of the first light and the Terreskians. From there, they lept into the light and became one with it, existing at all times and always."

Aislyn nods. "So after that, billions of billions of billions of things happened within the very first few seconds. However, they didn't always happen."

"What?"

"With every action, before it happens, there's a chance it will or won't happen. When the event does occur, there's a parallel universe where it didn't. While blowing on dust may not have such a large effect now-" She blows on the dot to demonstrate, causing particles of dust to fly into the air, "-back then, a speck of dust formed of newly fused particles of simple rock could grow into an entire planet. So every small action had huge repercussions. Those make..." She takes her stick and draws a bunch of lines coming from the huge dot, "A bunch of new timelines. From all of those, new worlds emerge. New versions of everything arises, each universe with vastly different outcomes. Yet, at the same time, things manage to stay the same. Golden colored eyes are usually the symbol used to demonstrate those similarities. Golden eyes mean unity across dimensional versions of the same mind, between souls, within one's own heart. So you have all these worlds, right? It doesn't stop there. Every time anything happens, there are two new worlds, so you don't just have those first, vastly different worlds, but instead you have millions of millions of different worlds, some very similar to each other. We call these worlds dimensions, and as Verhamera's daughter, I have the power to travel between them."
She finishes proudly, and I nod slowly. I think I got about half of it, which is a start.

"Sorry you lost the other me," I say. "Thank you for explaining."

Aislyn looks away. "No, you understand what it's like to lose things. I should be apologizing to you for being so insensitive. It's just... I've seen so much sadness, loss, and hate. Eventually you realize that it's not what happens to these creatures that controls how happy they are. It's if they have enough trust to let go of their ills, enough hope to guide them to the future, enough love to keep them warm no matter what hurts them, and enough determination to help them blaze themselves a new future. I try to be all of those things, you know? Setting an example."
I nod. "I'll try too."
"Thanks, Nat."

The words no longer carry a sense of mockery with them. Instead, they make me feel warm inside. Despite all that's happened, I don't feel bitter and empty as I did even for years before the accident.

I feel at home.