Sera's POV
The dream starts the way dreams do, without an entrance, like I've always been standing in this forest and only now noticed.
It isn't the Hollow. Not exactly. The trees are taller than any I've seen since I crossed the border; their canopy is so thick the moonlight comes through in threads instead of sheets, and the ground beneath my bare feet is soft in a way that feels older than soil should feel, like it's been forest for longer than the word 'forest' has existed.
I hear the wolf before I see her.
Not a growl, not a howl, but something quieter: breath and the soft, displaced sound of paws over moss, moving fast, moving like she has somewhere she's needed for a very long time. When she breaks into the clearing ahead of me, I forget, for a moment, to breathe myself.
She's
