𝓒𝓱𝓲𝓬𝓪𝓷𝓮𝓻𝔂 | Red Velvet x Fem!Reader

♠ Between Realities ♠

You woke up in the grass.

Morning dew caressed your body, and you sat up, stretching. There was a dull ache in your stomach; the ground briefly shook, and you grasped the dirt. The ache soon died down. It was barely dawn, as the sun wasn't even up yet; if you'd just woken up here, that means you must've slept here. You recognized these surroundings; it was one of the open fields next to the ranch. Judging from the lack of activity at the farmhouse, Pancake was with Almond for the week and Latte was at work. The ranch was your own, at least until she got back. Something nudged the back of your head.

Fructose; your companion, your heart horse. You smiled, standing up and patting him on the nose before putting back on the saddle. You also found his bridle and put that back on, mentally rewarding yourself for being considerate before you fell asleep. It was extremely early, which meant that most of the animals were still asleep, and likely wouldn't need caring yet. It was time for a trail ride. And off into the woods you went, sticking your foot in the stirrup and pulling yourself up.

Your favorite trail was a short one, but it always had the best experience in the morning. At one point, you and Fructose passed a pond that used to be so clean it reflected like a mirror. You were surprised by two things, though. Number one was that it was still clean; strange, the last time you saw it, it had been overtaken by algae. The second was how young you looked.

You looked like a kid or a young teen, not the adult you remember. Maybe that's why Fructose looked so tall. Nonetheless, you let Fructose get a drink from the creek flowing into it, and continued on. You remembered a fork in the road up ahead. The right path was fairly new; Latte had it put in as a shortcut to the road. However, when you got to it, you found nothing but forest. This was even weirder then the pond, as it had been cut before the pond was overtaken. No matter. You took him for a few more paces, before growling sounded in front of you, and a small cake hound jumped out, growling.

This was a memory. You'd been in this exact situation before; waking up in the grass, riding the trail, and running into the cake hound. It barked, the fur along its spine raising. In the past, you ran; afraid of what it would do, you ran away and returned later when it was gone. Fructose, a bomb-proof animal, hadn't even flinched. You were standing your ground this time. It was a stalemate for a while; this tiny cake hound with an oversized collar, growling and facing off against a horse that was ten times its size. You didn't know how long it lasted before a muffled voice sounded from much deeper in the woods. The cake hound turned, and ran off obediently. A small part of you thought they were familiar. But you moved on anyways, following the left path.

It didn't take long for you to reach the part of the memory you remembered most clearly; the view. Breaking from the trees unfolded a beautiful sight from atop the cliff; the pasture, framed by small rolling hills, and way off in the distance, the mountains that shrouded Water's Wake, jutting into and piercing the overcast sky. When Sparkling left, you'd often come up here just to look in that direction and wonder how he was doing. You did what you always liked to here. You got off of Fructose and let him graze as you sat on the cliff's edge. And all you did was think.

Did you forgive Red Velvet yet? You wanted to say you did. It was obvious now that he cared, even if he came back. You lost it on Madeleine and made yourself a criminal because of intense emotion; why shouldn't he get to do something like that? He knew you'd been captured. He definitely knew, if he came back. And right now he was probably trying to save you. After all, you knew that this was the dream.

Your first thought was that it had been the other way around, and everything you'd just done was a dream, but why, then, did everything have a rosy tint? How did you know everything that was happening in this dream state? You kicked your legs back and forth, sighing and laying down on your back, legs hanging down and hands thrown lazily above your head.