mmmhm, she smiled. Just like Look-see. Why had she struggled to explain? It was obvious Catcher was clever in more ways than one. Her spiral-horned friend accepted, in an instant, what Eyas considered too obtuse to say outright. Without a blink or a moment to consider it all, the truth was taken in a single dose. Afterward, the weight of all her unspoken secrets left Eyas’s conscious just as quickly; she felt physically buoyant, now that one person aside from her twin knew the exact definition of her gift. A gift Heartfire had given her, and one that tormented her. A gift whose burden now seemed equally shared and respected by the present company. For the first time in many, many years, Eyas felt herself placing that rare, fragile bud of trust into the welcoming soil of Catcher’s own heart, and it rooted there.

She felt breathless as the scenery around them changed, and the giddy smile drawn over her black lips related that her happiness in this instant was infinitely boundless. Together they lived their first moments of friendship over again. Together they watched it fade away into the present reflection of that friendship - something stronger, wholly unexpected but fully welcomed by Eyas. The crippling feeling of loneliness wouldn’t haunt her anymore.

Catcher could ask her anything, and Eyas feared she’d answer it without delay. She could lean into the buckskin mare and not fear rejection, because Eyas wanted that same closeness as well. She actually shifted her wing up a bit, allowing a hollow pocket of space to open up where Catcher could fit comfortably into her side, and leaned her suddenly heavy forehead into the tangle of Catcher’s cosmic mane, sighing contentedly. The weight of the mare beside her reminded Eyas that this dream was more like reality than anything, and she wished (more than ever) that it could continue on like this always.

Reading her unspoken thoughts, the graying unicorn spoke up. “Oh it is, and I’m glad I haven’t spooked you.” The little pegasus eagerly replied when she was able, not yet reading the room or the unspoken question in the silence soon after her friend fell quiet again. She only lifted her head to rub her cheek gratefully into Catcher’s nose, satisfied as any cat could be when they'd found a particularly warm ray of sunshine. But when the hesitant question did come at last, Eyas hardly expected it.

Her small, fluttering heart clenched with despair.

“Oh…” Was all she could manage at first, though Eyas did her best to mask any extreme look of displeasure from coloring her golden face. She fought for control and, after a second or two, found it. “Catcher,” The sight-seer spok her name no higher than a whisper, reverently, “I had no idea you felt like this.”

Eyas did her best to think and stay focused. It wasn’t that the idea of it upset her - quite the opposite - it was just that… well, “Right now, I’m not sure that we can.” Her throat tightened at having to give such an immediate refusal. As if she could possibly make up for it, Eyas did her best to smile. “As soon as I wake up I need to be on my way again, and I won’t stop until I’ve gotten a hold of Wolfbane and brought him to justice. There’s… a lot of family issues I need to work out first, before I’m free enough to explore my own wants and needs.” She managed to laugh just a little. “And I do want to try. Very, very much. But I won’t risk losing someone else I care about - I wouldn’t dream of putting you in harm’s way.” Eyas told her dearest friend.

Her expression had turned despite her attempts at keeping a neutral stance. The glint in her black eyes hardened from determination and her mouth set itself into a reserved line. To some it might appear prideful, but to Catcher she hoped it appeared as what it was: an expression of earnest love, of the deepest kind of commitment. She’d lost Gale, now Heartfire. How could she go on without the dreamweaver? Impossible.
She gave the silvering mare a moment or two to think and reply on her own, then Eyas asked, “Can you wait for me until then?”

catcher’s dream coat had been a beautiful thing. Woven from stars and the galaxy itself, forming dancing constellations Eyas could’ve stared at endlessly for hours. Her dark eyes would have drank in the splendor of the universe all night long, and Eyas would have happily commented time and time again on the loveliness, but when her friend slid off the cloak and returned to the granite gray-and-white (still peppered with a bit of bright red here and there) she'd normally been, Eyas felt herself sighing aloud.

Yes, the wonder of time and space was a costume fit for an empress - but plain Catcher was the filly who Eyas had fallen into friendship with, and plain Catcher was the same mare who was making her fall even deeper. Eyas loved every inch of her mottled skin just as it was intended to be. No dream could possibly take away that truth.

The buckskin mare felt so lucky to know her at all. Now she was offered something precious from the other horse, and despite Eyas’s stupid reasoning Catcher was still giving her more. More space. More time. More trust. Could I do the same if the situation was reversed? The pegasus wondered, feeling a moment’s worth of selfish rejection at the role-reversal. Could she agree to leave Catcher to her own problems, if the unicorn asked it of her?

For now, the answer was an uncertain one. All the more reason to wait and be sure of these feelings. Eyas thought, re-adjusting her wing as the overo mare separated herself from the warm embrace. When they met again Eyas would know for certain if she could give everything in her willpower toward something so fragile and precious as true love. The concept scared her, admittedly, because she hardly knew who she was without this life-long goal of bringing Wolfbane down, but it also exhilarated her to know she had something - no, someone - to look forward to once her purpose had been completed.

She could hardly expect the moment to turn serious even when it did, so she smirked at Catcher when the other horse grew hesitant. Some things I should know, huh? She grinned mischievously, her black eyes sparkling with the idea that Catcher - sweet, doting, always-caring Catcher - was preparing to unleash a dark secret. Did she accidentally step on a butterfly once? Eyas guessed to herself, biting her tongue to keep from laughing aloud at the stony expression on her friend’s long face.

The truth, as it turned out, was a bit more serious but not alarming... at first. Catcher told her that inside of her lived something else, another spirit bound to her own that brought out unusual urges and sometimes made her fear herself, which Eyas could understand. Beqanna had plenty of single-animal shapeshifters; that her newfound crush was one of them (and a predator at that!) made very little difference to Eyas. Compared to things she’d seen? Eh… watching her unicorn gal-pal swallow another creature might actually be entertaining.

Really, the only time that her confident grin stuttered and dropped from her mouth was when Catcher mentioned that along with visiting the living, she could also visit the dead in her dreams. That was the rug pulled out from under Eyas’s hooves, and her smallish head rose with the quick, forward flick of her ears.
“Hot damn, you’ve been holding out on me.” Her astonishment brought her voice up a pitch or two. “This is a lot to process all at once... but don’t worry. I won’t let the big, bad wolf get me. Not when I have someone like you watching over me.” Eyas shook her head in disbelief. She chortled and gathered her thoughts together.

“No, you haven’t. Don’t go saying that or then it’ll be true.” She lowered her voice again, this time having the sensibility to read her companion’s emotions as they were literally reflected in the imagined world around them. Planets hanging in the sky slowed their dizzying rotations, spinning their rings and moons a bit more carefully from the tension. “Snake-lady, Dreamweaver… whatever you are, I clearly like it. And if you think you might be losing control, then don’t worry. I’ll come and make things right. I won’t abandon you in the woods of your fear.” She promised, boldly stretching out her dappled gold neck to plant a firm kiss on Catcher’s spotted shoulder.

“We all have our own darkness inside. I do too, even without my second sight. A while ago I met with a magician named Set and he showed me my own soul.” Eyas withdrew, mirroring that same tension from earlier, “There’s something, some part of me, that can physically possess another horse. I’ve tried it before…” Eyas admitted with a twinge of shame at the memory. She’d taken another living, breathing creature’s will away from them. “I liked it: the power, the control. All of it. And that scared me bad.”

Since they were in the strange habit of sharing secrets, Eyas figured she might as well share hers, too. If Catcher felt it was necessary that her inner demons be barenaked in order for them to progress into something deeper than friendship, then Eyas would let her know exactly who it was she was dealing with. What was it that ‘Tana had called her? “I’m literally a witch.” The admission exposed itself in the form of a bitter laugh.