The transition from waking to dreaming didn't feel like a fall; it felt like a homecoming.
One moment, Lena was staring at the popcorn ceiling of the guest room, her ears ringing with the silence of Ethan’s rejection. The next, the ceiling dissolved into a canopy of ancient, interlocking branches that blotted out everything but the rhythmic pulsing of a violet sky.
She wasn't lying down. She was upright, her weight balanced on the balls of her feet, her senses dialed to a frequency that made the world scream with detail. The smell of the forest was no longer just "pine"—it was a complex symphony of damp moss, the metallic tang of deep-earth minerals, and the warm, musk-heavy scent of a predator close by.
She looked down at her hands. They weren't hands. They were paws, heavy and furred,
