buried beneath my own silence

Elevated.

Floating — maybe.

Warm. Definitely warm.

Rafferty lay in a heap, a mass of red and cream fur, thick and messy. Like a tangled bear he rumbled where he slept, brow furrowed deeply as he felt himself pulled in and out of sleep. Or further into sleep, he couldn't tell, only that it felt different. He felt different.

The warmth was sticky, he decided, as he shifted on the ground, but the air was sweet. Impossibly, strangely sweet, but Rafferty found that he didn't mind. It was — it was welcome. He wasn't used to sweet. His cheek shifted on the grass as he moved, a fumbling mass of sleepy limbs.

Alone, he knew he was alone, even as he drifted in and out of consciousness, and for a moment, Rafferty felt something akin to disappointment. Yet it zipped away as quick as it came, and the slumbering mess man grumbled in his sleep, tongue lolling from his mouth to rest against the grass as he stretched.

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It was familiar. The way the air wrapped around her feet and pulled her forward, embracing her wholly beneath the raptures of her subconscious. She'd grown used to the way the dreams carried her away—looked forward to it, really. It was a momentary reprieve from reality, a getaway that allowed her to be free. Without implication, without fault, without consequence. Even without the responsibility of faith, if she so wished it.

This dream was no different, startling again the bloom of warmth within her chest as she crossed the terrain with nimble steps. He was there, a faded memory cast upon the ground. Bundled tightly within the warmth of the season's hum of sun, he did not hear her—did not see her, either. How long had it been? Would he even remember her?

Patient steps disguised her eagerness as she approached, nose dipped to press it against the soft, russet fur of his spine. And his name, uttered beneath the hush of his dreams within dreams, and thick with her accent, fell from her lips. A smile, too, “Rafferty?”

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A touch to his spine.

His name transferring from warm lips to the fur of his spine.

Rafferty.

His brow twitched as he opened his eyes slowly, the scent of her the first thing he noticed as he blinked. He remembers her, of course he does. Rafferty tucked his tongue back into his mouth with hopes she hadn't seen, and lifted his cheek from the grass and angled his head towards her.

Grey fur just as he had known it before, highlights of russet amongst the monochrome. Soft eyes, kind eyes, strong eyes. Fierce, he would use, too. Her smile made his own twitch into his own version of a greeting, clearing his throat as he glanced at her. "Twyla," the Irishman rumbled, remaining on his belly, unaware of the strange scenery around them as he peered at her.

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It was a dream, surely, preened and primed from the makings of desires even Twyla did not know. She had not forgotten the soft Irishman, how could she? But she did not so soon expect him in a land where she wandered, a land untouched by the memories—however few—the two had made. She was giddy, perhaps not so evidently, but giddy as she took him in.

“Rafferty here? How?” She wondered curiously, shifting into a delicate sit just a few spaces before him. How had she conjured him so realistically, so perfectly? Would she remember any of this, remember the memory of him now? So many questions, so little details, so little explanations. Her star had not explained anything of certainty.

The woman's paw played with the furs of his tail mindlessly, eyes drifting across his fervently. Could he explain something, anything, to her?

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