Chapter Text
the first thing she noticed is that dried blood mixed with dust really didn’t taste good.
there was a fire that burned something fierce as she rolled over, spitting and hacking to try and get the foul taste out. it seemed to fade at an even rate, which... was strange, but it was gone and the stark act had left her head much clearer than before, so she took a moment to get her bearings before proceeding.
okay, sight first. it... was dark.
yeah, no shit, it was night time and she'd been walking along the road near town, it was probably well past midnight. no stars, but - cheating the order a little - she felt a tree at her back, meaning she was likely off the side of the road, maybe kris had-
KRIS!
all thoughts of her bearings disregarded, she pushed against the tree in a smooth motion, darting her head around to see if she could find them. there was naught but dark, save for the ground beneath her barely illuminated a colour that's irrelevant right now because kris! isn't! here! she stood up in a rather unwieldy fashion, some distant part of her brain noting that it should hurt for some reason, and looked around.
the dark seemed... too dark, darker than what it should be. no matter where she looked aside from this tree, there were no silhouettes of anything, no fleeting glimpses of kris, just a fuckton of nothing.
she moved to the border of the ground and the dark. moving her leg forward, she tapped where the ground should extend to.
previously, the ground felt as grass. in the dark, it felt as... mud? very fine sand? but only in density, it seemed a tad too self-collected to leave a stain on her hoof. another quick glance around, another lot of nothing, and she took a step forward-
["-is, what happened to you? do you kn-"]
and by the time the static that flooded her brain had receded, her head was aching, because of course it was when she tried to step onto the weird fuckin' shadow goop. at least she got a very good look at the very-much-so magenta ground. weird. she groaned, but sat up, and ran a hand through her hair to get it out of her eyes - or rather, to have it in her eyes only as much as she wanted it.
...why was there a twig.
did. did the goop fuckin' throw her into the tree?? looking up, there were a few places where it looked like some twigs had snapped off, but the leaves were... blocky? fuck was this shit, minecrap?
wait.
strangely coloured ground, weird fucking tree, dark as shit, goopy shadows that frazzled her mind, kris nowhere to be seen. was this a-
'''you, look Lost Here; Friend?'''
there came a voice, and two eyes looked around to find two lights. upon the branches, sitting something fair, perched a little cat, who wasn’t there. with yellow and purple gazing down, the face was wearing something unlike a frown. a fluffed tail bat and forth, purple and yellow as a matter of course, and a back perched up and stretched, lengthening until the ground and the paws did match.
...maybe this night was a really bad fever dream. that made sense - asgore deciding to run her over, kris disappearing, the weird place she woke up, whatever the hell the thing that is chuckling right about now is meant to be. yes, that made sense. a bad batch of fuckin' something that was getting thrown out her window as soon as she was lucid.
although, maybe not? depending on how this went, this could be an wild muse...
still, her nerves were shot to high hell from what she had perceived earlier, so just. give her a moment, would you?
sitting back against the tree, she closed her eyes, sight completely vanishing. she rubbed her forehead for a bit, taking a moment to breathe and try to calm her heart.
nothing that was happening was real, it was merely a weird trip, asgore didn't actually run her over, kris hasn't disappeared, this place and that cat were drawn from the dark of her dream. this likely wasn't a...
why. why can she see those lights sliding into view on her side.
she opened her eyes, even if a part of her would really rather she didn't, and right where those lights had bled through her eyelids, prowled a cat who definitely had slid. right, enough of this fucking dream logic, she was going to get some bloody answers.
"okay, so, who, or what i guess, are you meant to be?"
the cat languidly blinked. was it... the one who spoke? she thought it was, but it could have been some other figure too much of a coward to show themselves. or maybe a figment of the mind.
'''why? Me! i'm your. Friend, you-See?'''
-okay, nope, it was the cat, the rippling of the grin and the undulation of the teeth (was it even teeth? she's seen noelle draw more accurate teeth when she was a toddler-) was synced to the speech.
"my... friend. alright then, what's your name?"
the cat tilted its head, and the world took a breath as she heard a-
* Clunk.
['''i'm your. Friend,''']
* Click.
-and the cat's head was the right way up, and the static had entered her head once more. notably less-so this time, more a visitor than a burglar. she barely noticed the little extra that had tacked onto her headache.
"friend. gotcha. of course my brain would come with friend as a name for a cat."
'''not. your Mind. i; walked Myself? into!'''
she held her head in her hands. took a breath. only didn't scream because that'd exacerbate the headache.
she lowered her hands, resting them on her lap.
"could you just. talk. without any of this cryptographic half-speak?"
''':3'''
"what the fuck was that sound-"
the cat's head turned and although she took a breath in preparation for yet more static, the only sensation that came was... huh. novel.
the cat had butted its head against her open palm, and twisted its head to look up at her.
she blinked.
it blinked.
a connection had been formed.
she blinked once more, before tentatively moving her hand, petting friend. it leaned into her touch, and something very distant started rumbling. she started to look around, but a moment of thought had her realise that it was probably friend. nothing about it made sense, and she still didn't know any words that fit what its fur felt like.
the fur that passed from under the left side of her palm had turned purple, and when she ran her hand back across that which came from the right side was yellow. she moved her hand right, purple. moving left again, yellow. she moved it up and down, but it seemed to split evenly, about where her hoof split. she ran her hand all the way to its left side, but almost mirrored on its right side came a patch of yellow.
she looked up at its face, half-expecting to see something smug, yet all that was there were half-crescent lights. seemingly content...?
eh, permission enough. friend was a cat - or cat-adjacent, at least - so any displeasure at the pets would be made known very clearly. she guided it to take a step forward, sitting on her lap as she kept running her hands through the description-anathemtic fur, her idly looking around as the purrs continued far away and it resting in her touch.
there were certainly worse ways to ride out a fever dream.